"The Counsel of the Elders"

September 16, 2001

Ordination and/or Installation of Elders: Ron Bechtel, Doug Bond, Phil German, Mike Pfefferle

Text: Ezekiel 7:23-27

I chose this text because in the shortest possible compass it describes the duty and the calling of an elder in a Christian church. Ezekiel is, of course, describing in that vivid, ominous way characteristic of the OT prophets, the judgment of the Lord befalling the faithless people of Israel. It is a way we have special reason to appreciate as a result of the events of last Tuesday. And in the midst of describing that calamity - the calamity fulfilled when Babylon captured Jerusalem, razed it to the ground, and led its people off into exile - he describes how at that time the people will be bereft of the Word of God. Heaven will fall silent and they will be left to make their way through the desolation of their world without the guidance, the encouragement, and the sustenance of the voice of God in their hearts and lives.

He puts it this way: "They will try to get a vision from the prophet; the teaching of the law by the priest will be lost; as will be the counsel of the elders. There, in this prophecy of doom, is the calling and the function of the biblical elder in a nutshell. What elders are for is to give counsel, what the church receives from them is counsel.

Now what does that word "counsel" mean? It is the Hebrew term 'esâ and it is an important and interesting word.

The first instance of its use in the OT is in Exodus 18:19. You remember that incident. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, observed the way in which Moses was exercising his leadership of the people and immediately detected a problem. Moses was trying to do everything. He was hearing every case, every complaint, every request for advice. So Jethro asked him: "What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning to evening?" Moses answered him, "Because the people come to me to seek God's will. Whenever they have a dispute it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God's decrees and laws." [18:14-16] Jethro then replied, "What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me and I will give you some advice…"

That word advice is our word 'esâ, the word rendered "counsel" in Ezekiel 7:26. Jethro's counsel to Moses, if you remember, was to appoint some able men, men who fear God and who hate dishonest gain, and share the ministry of oversight, judgment, and rule with them. The eldership existed before this as a feature of the life of family and clan. But it is at this moment that we may begin to speak of the elders of the church, of elder as an ecclesiastical office. Jethro gave wise counsel to Moses and the result of that counsel was the establishment of an office of counselor in the church. And from that time on that was the elder's role: he was an advisor and a counselor of the people of God.

You may remember the incident reported in 1 Kings 12, when the young king Rehoboam, Solomon's foolish son, rejected the counsel of the elders who had served his father and followed instead the foolish advice of his friends. That is our word, "counsel," again. The word appears again in the case of Absolom's rebellion against his father, David, when he rejects the wise advice or counsel of Ahithophel, David's long-time counselor, and accepts instead Hushai's foolish counsel which David had planted and by which he destroyed Absolom's conspiracy against him.

Very often in the Bible the counsel of men is compared with the counsel of God. In Psalm 33:10-11, for example, we read:

"The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever…"

In both instances the word the NIV translates "plans" is our word 'esâ. Of course in the case of the Lord, we are not speaking simply of advice or considered judgment, but of plans that are perfect and backed up by omnipotence. His plans becomes his unalterable purpose and so a transcript of the history of the world as it will and must unfold. So it is this word, counsel, that becomes a synonym for the Lord's will, his plan and purpose that is brought to pass in the world. As Paul says, he is the one who works out everything according to the counsel of his will.

Now, you notice that the term elder almost never occurs in the singular in the Bible. Except in places where individuals are referred to or refer to themselves as an elder, are identified as holding the office, or in such a passage as the one we read this evening on the qualifications of an elder, the term universally occurs in the plural. Elders give their counsel, by and large, together, as a body. And the principle behind that is expressed in Proverbs 11:14:

"For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure."

That word "advisers" is another form of our word counsel. Many counselors make for victory in life and the counselors of all counselors for Christians are elders. And why? Precisely because of what the word "elder" suggests. It is the word "old man." But the accent on age is not an emphasis on the number of years per se, but upon the assumption that a man has lived long enough to acquire wisdom, has walked with the Lord himself long enough to have gained understanding, has studied his Bible long enough to have gained some mastery of its teaching and the way to apply it to the issues of life, has practiced his faith long enough and through sufficiently varied circumstances that he can advise or counsel another Christian with wisdom, understanding, sound judgment, authority, and spiritual savoir faire. He knows the ropes. He has been around the block. He knows what ought to be done in a specific situation, he can detect the pitfalls in someone's plan, he can see through to the spiritual issues in someone's behavior and find the proper way through a particular ethical question.

When I entered the ministry I had no idea how many situations I would face that required this kind of wisdom making possible this kind of counsel. And I tell you frankly, I made some serious mistakes early on in my ministry, giving advice and counsel or giving it in a way that was not right or helpful. And I have learned what a tremendous benefit it is to have a group of godly men hammer out the proper counsel to give in a particular situation.

The elders of this church will tell you without hesitation that we have learned from our mistakes. That there have been times when we have realized that the counsel we gave was not as wise, as biblical, as searching as it should have been. But, if you had faced yourself some of the situations we have faced, if you had had to decide what must be said, what must be asked of a person, even of a person going through terrible trials; if you had had to decide in certain of these cases what you would require a person to change, on the one hand, perhaps something very difficult to change, and, on the other, what you would tell a person he or she must accept as impossible to change, you would appreciate how vexing and how humbling this responsibility is to give counsel to the Lord's people.

It is a favored people who have elders who can give true counsel. Who can tell them what is right and wrong, who can give them an accurate evaluation of their own faith and life, who can confront them wisely and well when they are living in disobedience, and who know how to recover Christian people to godliness who have wandered from the way. It is a favored people whose elders are so committed to the teaching of the Word of God that they would never permit the church to embrace any doctrine or idea that was contradicted by or out of harmony with Holy Scripture and will always insist that the church is forever conforming itself - in life, fellowship, ministry, charity, witness, worship, and discipleship - to the standard of God's Word. It is a favored congregation whose elders are men of faith, who love the Lord Jesus, and who can both tell and show others why and how they may love him too.

I have had plenty of opportunity to observe churches whose elders were much less than that. They were not such men as Paul described in 1 Timothy 3. Their own experience of walking with God was so haphazard if not entirely non-existent that they had nothing to share of wisdom or experience or virtue or faith with others. I remember years ago, thankfully I do not think this would be true anywhere in our Presbytery today, a minister of one of our churches whose judgment I respected highly, telling me that he was not sure how many of the elders on his church session were actually Christian men. There are a great many churches around the world of which that might be said. What counsel can a person receive from a man who does not know God himself, does not revere his Holy Word, and has no true understanding of life?

But, through the years there have also been many godly men who have served in this post, men whose lives and whose ministries have forever ennobled the office of elder. I remember Alexander Whyte recollecting as an old minister, that one of the first, if not the first, pastoral call he made, just after coming to Free St. George's in Edinburgh as Robert Candlish's assistant - he would remain as the pastor of Free St. George's for almost 50 years - was to one of Dr. Candlish's elders. They used to say that no one had elders like Robert Candlish at Free St. George's. They were men of profound biblical learning, men of spiritual experience and substance, men of great and godly authority. Well, he found this elder on his deathbed and open on the pillow beside his head was the Westminster Confession of Faith opened to the chapter on justification by faith. "I am dying on that gospel chapter," he told the young minister. And no sooner had young Alexander Whyte read that chapter to him than the old elder breathed his last. There is the kind of man who could give me counsel!

Alexander McColl, a Highland pastor, once asked his congregation in a sermon: "What kind of minister would you like as your minister?" And he answered his own question. "For myself, I would like a minister who had been scorched by the law, melted by the gospel, and much sifted by the temptations of Satan." Well, I would like to receive counsel from an elder who was the same sort of man and who had had the same sort of spiritual experience. He could tell out of his own personal experience what the Lord means by what he says in his Word, how best to resist temptation and the Devil, how to trust in the Lord and his Word, how to make my way through a difficult set of circumstances. Life is simply too complicated and I am simply too weak to make it through myself without the counsel of others, their correction, their advice, their encouragement. But I need wise and godly counsel, and who can give that to me except a man who, as Paul says, holds to the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.

Listen to Thomas Boston describe one of the elders of the church he pastored in Ettrick.

"[William Biggar] died in hopes of eternal life through Jesus Christ. Among his last words were, 'Farewell, sun, moon, and stars; farewell, dear minister; -- and farewell the Bible;' which last words especially made a great impression on me. [No wonder, I might add. For a man who thinks to say farewell to the Bible when he is about to die is obviously a man to whom the Bible was a close friend, a man in whose life the Bible played a prominent role, a man who knew and loved the Bible as the lamp for his feet and the light for his path.] He blessed God, that ever he had seen my face; which was no small comfort to me…

Though he was a poor man, yet he had always a brow for a good cause [that is an old use of "brow" meaning, he always looked favorably upon a good cause], and was a faithful, useful elder; and as he was very ready to reprove sin, so he had a singular dexterity in the matter of admonition and reproof, to speak a word upon the wheels, so as to convince with a certain sweetness, that it was hard to take his reproofs ill." [Memoirs, 212]

Or I think of the record of the pastoral work of the ministers and elders of the church in Geneva in Calvin's day. All sorts of the same problems we face - disintegrating marriages, fornication among the young, adultery among the married, people who are not responsible with their money, folk who have had a falling out with other Christians, and on and on. And, sometimes, even having seen other situations of the same type, you scratch your head and wonder what in the world ought we to say to this person, what ought we to demand of that person. What is the proper balance of severity and mercy? What can we fairly demand? What must simply be born and endured? How can we encourage without minimizing the sin, or confront the sin without casting a tender soul into despair?

How wise those Genevan men were. How firm. They so often in their day took on the men of the church, men who were permitted by the culture to be harsh and unfaithful to their wives, that Geneva came to be called "le paradis des femmes", the paradise of women. But they were also tender and understanding of the frailties of the flesh. And they were patient, often correcting the same situation time after time.

I have met men like that many times in my life. Men of prayer, of spiritual experience, men who are always speaking to others about Christ; men who love God and who love walking with God; men who are wise in the ways of this world and wise in ways of God with the soul. Men of deep and godly affections and emotions. Men who are humble and yet men who know how to exercise authority at the same time. This congregation has such men in its eldership. And we believe we are adding to the number of such men with these new elders whom you have elected.

Now, there is the challenge for these men and for your present elders: to be such men as can give wise and godly counsel to the saints, counsel they can safely follow in the confidence that it is the way of Christian faith and obedience, that it is the right way and the safe way for them to go. That is no simple calling and responsibility. And when we hear that elders are men who must give an account, that they will be required to account for the counsel that they gave to God's people and for the way in which their own lives either recommended that counsel or detracted from it, they know for a certainty that while he who desires the office of an elder desires a good thing, he also desires something that will demand everything that he is and has as a Christian and large measures of God's grace to him.

But here is the challenge for you. Ezekiel says that it will be a catastrophe for the people of God to be without the counsel of the elders. It will be the evidence of a silent heaven. Do you think that way? Do you prize the counsel of the elders to that extent that its absence to you would be a mark of God's withdrawal from you?

I suspect that in our individualistic day there are few evangelical Christians who think that way, even if they may appreciate the fact that there are wise counselors leading their church. We have not been taught to see our lives as so intertwined with the life of the church, the house of God, as the Bible does. We have been inclined to think that everyone's Christian life is pretty much of his or her own making. Not so the Bible.

And you know in your heart it is not so. You would never think that about your children. You would never leave it to them to find their way through the world. You would consider a parent derelict who did not teach and advise and lead his or her children into the ways of righteousness and faith. Well, so the children of God in the church of God. Indeed elders are like parents. That is why they have to have shown themselves effective parents in their own home before they can be given responsibility for the household of faith.

And in Deuteronomy we read:

"Remember the days of old, consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will explain to you." [32:7]

In that text fathers and elders are in parallel. They occupy a similar place in the life of God's people, indeed, after a fashion, the elders take the baton from the parents when a child becomes an adult.

Some of us don't want any more parents after we have left the home and are on our own. But that is foolish and juvenile thinking, not mature and wise. Just as we must obey our parents, that we might live a long and prosperous life upon the earth, as Paul says, so we read in Hebrews:

"Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you."

We never cease needing to have someone over us in the Lord. What matters, what matters for time and for eternity, is that that someone who is over us is wise and godly and experienced in the ways of God and man, whose counsel we can count on to be the voice of God himself.