Peter Barnes | Acts 20:28
SERMON NOTES
OVERSEERS IN GOD’S CHURCH (Acts 20:28)
Ezekiel 34:1-16; Acts 20:17-38
– Richard Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor (1656) was based on this.
1. We must guard our own souls first.
– 20:28; see 1 Tim.4:16
– Richard Baxter: ‘many a preacher is now in hell, who hath a hundred times called upon his hearers to use the utmost care and diligence to escape it.’ Calvin on preachers: ‘It would be better for him to break his neck going up into the pulpit, if he does not take pains to be the first to follow God.’
– we are to be Christians before we are anything else.
2. The Spirit gives overseers to shepherd God’s church.
– 20:28; see Isa.40:11; Ezek.34:12; also John 21:15-17 and 1 Peter 5:1-3.
– Baxter: ‘We must let them see that nothing pleaseth us but what profiteth them; and that what doeth them good doth us good; and that nothing troubleth us more than their hurt.’
3. The church is redeemed by divine blood.
– ‘blood of His own’ (F. F. Bruce) or ‘His own blood’?; Christ became man to die (Luke 22:19-20).