Tag Archives: Pastoring

The Torah on the Conduct of Those in the Ministry

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Leviticus 21

This chapter contains the regulations for the conduct of priests. YHVH’s standards are high, and a priest could easily be disqualified from service for failing to measure up. YHVH demands higher standards of righteousness, obedience and holiness for those in leadership over his people. 

The higher up in leadership one desires to go, the more one’s walk must characterize service, sacrifice, self-deprecation and holiness (see 1 Tim 3:1–13; Tit 1:5–9). The standards of holiness rise as one seeks to attain a deeper and more intimate relationship with YHVH, for as he entrusts a person with greater spiritual responsibility he gives a greater level of anointing commensurate with the responsibilities of the ministerial office. Spiritual responsibility and divine anointing aren’t things to be trifled with or taken for granted.

Yeshua condemned the religious leaders of his day for not practicing what they preached (i.e. hypocrisy), for living lives of pretense and show (he called such ones “whited sepulchers full of dead man’s bones”), and for greediness and pride. 

Check your walk in these areas. Do you want to “go places” with YHVH in service to him and his people? Are you willing to pay the price of self-sacrifice and self-deprecation? The sacrifices necessary to be Yeshua’s bondservant comes at a high price (especially for the flesh), but the spiritual rewards are priceless!

Leviticus 10:17–23, Physical defects on the priests.The priests who ministered before YHVH Elohim in the tabernacle were to be completely without physical defect. Why? Because they were a prophetic foreshadow of Yeshua the Messiah who is our perfect and Great High Priest.

 

On Violent Elders Vs. Forceful and Righteous Leadership

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1 Timothy 3:3, Violent. This passage (vv. 3–7) lists the qualifications of an elder or leader of a congregation. One of the of character traits that he is not to possess is that of being a brawler (KJV),violent (NKJV) or pugnacious (NAS). What do the words brawler, violent or pugnacious mean here? When an elder preaches, rebukes, exhorts his congregation, as Paul instructed Timothy and Titus do to (2 Tim 4:2; Tit 1:13; 2:15), or “warns his congregation (Col 1:28), is this being “violent,” as Paul warns against in his first letter to Timothy (1 Tim 3:3)? We will discuss these issue below and what the biblical definition of violent is.

The word violent as found in 1 Tim 3:3 is the Greek word amachos meaning one who is by nature “a fighter, brawler, contentious, quarrelsome, one who causes strife, or one who is combative.” In modern terms, he’s a bully. Perhaps you remember the neighborhood bully from your years as a school child. By contrast, an elder, overseer or shepherd of a congregation is not to be such a person. This is what Paul had in mind when he gave these instructions concerning the qualifications of an elder.

So let’s now explore this issue a little further. Is there ever a time when spiritual leaders may need to resort to forceful words or even to forceful actions to protect YHVH’s spiritual sheep? What, for example, did David mean when he asks the following question in Psalm 94:16?

Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?

Let’s answer this question by asking another question? What did Yeshua mean when describing a good shepherd versus an evil hireling shepherd, and when he said that unlike the evil shepherd, a good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep and protects them from those who come to kill, steal and destroy the sheep? He goes on to say that the good shepherd defends the sheep, while the evil shepherd is a coward who runs away in the time of danger and fails to protect the sheep (John 10:7–15). Another example of an evil shepherd is found in Ezekiel 34 where such a shepherd fails to protect the sheep from the beasts of the field (Ezek 34:7–10). 

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