So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.—1 Peter 5:1–4

Outline

1. Three Things About This Exhorter (1 Peter 5:1)
2. Three Dimensions of His Exhortation (1 Peter 5:2–3)
3. The Exhorter’s Great Expectation (1 Peter 5:4)

Introduction

What is an exhortation? I mention this because we have come this morning to the next-to-last of five specific groups of people that the apostle Peter has exhorted in this letter.  

I exhort you ...

1. servants (2:18) “be subject to your masters with all respect , not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust”
2. wives (3:1) “be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives”
3. husbands (3:7) “live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered”
4. elders (5:1) this morning’s text, which was just read
5. who are younger (5:4) “be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble”

What did Peter mean by all this “exhorting”? The Bible uses the same word (parakaleo) in a variety of ways with a range of meanings from “comforting, consoling, encouraging, cheering up” to “summoning, urging, imploring.” First Peter is a mixture of encouragement and of insistence, of gentle persuasion and authoritative requirement—mingling the measured tones of godly pastoral love from “This is going to be really good for you” to “I am only going to say this once!” And according to 1 Peter 5:12–13, the whole letter is a “brief exhortation”: “By Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.” 

Today’s exhortation is written to the elders, but there are several reasons for everyone to pay attention as I talk about the importance of your elders fulfilling their calling to “shepherd the flock of God that is among them.” 

1. Peter wouldn’t have included any of these exhortations if he didn’t want the whole congregation to read them, and especially this one summarizing the calling from Jesus on their leaders.
2. Three whole “pastoral letters” are in the New Testament (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) doing the same thing: telling the whole church what their leaders are to be and do. They are expansions of the short summary we have before us this morning from Peter.
3. Acts 20:18–35 is another place in the Bible packed with instruction to the elders, exhorting them to follow the example of the apostle Paul’s ministry in how “to oversee and care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood” (20:28).
4. Hebrews 13:7 and17 are another two-verse rationale for listening to me about what your “shepherds” ought to be doing to care for you. “Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. ... Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”
5. All of you are leaders, even the youngest and oldest of you. No one who can hear and understand my words is either too young and inexperienced or too old and obsolete. You’re leading right now in the sense that you are exercising an influence on someone and some group. I want this text and my words to help you be godly leaders, making that influence of yours more positive, even eternally life-changing.
6. And finally, a few of you people need an encounter with Peter’s exhortation to the elders because God means for you to become elders in this church. It is both a fearful and a wonderful thing to lead and to be a shepherd to the flock of God’s people. May God’s drawing power be on all of us—and on some of you to serve the Lord in this special office. So let’s pray for listening ears, fellow leaders.

1) Three Things About This Exhorter (1 Peter 5:1–4)

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

We know enough about Jesus’ original group of disciples to realize there aren’t many others who rank alongside or ahead of Peter as an insider and therefore as worth listening to. In the Gospel accounts, Peter was almost always listed as the first among the Twelve, and therefore as the leader. And even the first among the three nearest to Jesus. He began this letter very simply by introducing himself as “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” But now he returns to a fuller self-identification  here in 5:1, with three qualifications.

Each of the three is significant, and they ascend in order of importance, beginning with ...

1) I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder.

This was an incredibly modest thing for Peter to start off with, and what a hugely uplifting encouragement to those elders way back then ... and to us 11 elders of yours at this campus. Rightly called by God and elected by you members of this church, we are sympresbyteros (“fellow-elders”) with Peter. Really? Yes, really! That is fast company for us to be keeping with him, and incredibly humble and meek of him to be keeping company with us. It points to Peter’s personal sympathy with those who are leaders. He has learned first hand the measure of our responsibilities from Jesus, the Chief Shepherd, and as a disciple-maker, he had begun passing on what he learned, providing us here his four-verse summary. As his “fellow-elders,” we share in common with him the same functions of pastoral care and government that he first undertook and we are still carrying out. In stating his relationship to those first-century elders in this imitate way, he probably wanted them to remember when Peter himself had presided with them in the churches of Asia Minor and guided their decisions.

In the second place, Peter wrote ...

2) I exhort the elders among you as a witness of the sufferings of Christ.

Peter’s first-hand experience as an eyewitness was the essence of what qualified him to be an apostle. But usually the apostles highlighted that they had seen Jesus’ resurrection—they’d seen him come back alive from the dead (Luke 24:34, Acts 1:22). So why did Peter deviate here and instead point to Jesus’ “suffering,” shorthand for his crucifixion and death?

Because of the pastoral theme of the whole letter, the cross was most relevant to the hardships being endured by his readers, both then and down to this present day. From the letter’s first chapter to this last one, Peter never wandered from his main pastoral concern: Jesus’ suffering linked to our godly suffering. Week after week, Pastor Zuleger has been showing us this recurring burden of Peter’s letter, beginning with the introduction in 1:10–11, telling us what the Old Testament prophets searched and inquired about: “... Inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the suffering of Christ and the subsequent glories.” Then ...

Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.—1 Peter 2:19

For Christ also suffered once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but alive in the spirit.—1 Peter 3:18

But rejoice, insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.—1 Peter 4:13

And now here:

I am a witness of the suffering of Christ.—1 Peter 5:1

But the climax of Peter’s credentials—to be listened to by slaves, wives, husbands, and now the elders and all of us—was Peter’s third self-descriptor. It was not merely the modesty and meekness of the first of the apostles. It was not just that he’d seen our Savior’s suffering, from the Garden’s solitary, agonizing prayers to the brutality of a Roman cross and ultimately to his abandonment to the wrath of his heavenly Father in our place. Even more astonishingly, it was this: 

3) I exhort the elders among you ... as a partaker of the glory that is going to be revealed.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talked about having to “boast” to that misguided church and compare himself to the so-called super-apostles who were distorting the gospel. He did so by saying that he’d been “caught up to the third heaven ... to paradise” and seen things so amazing, of such surpassing greatness, that a “thorn in the flesh” was given him to keep him from becoming conceited (2 Corinthians 12:2f). Paul was taken up to heaven. Here in our text, however, Peter told the elders that heaven had come down to him.

“Yes, I saw Jesus’ suffering,” Peter had just told them, “but I also have already experienced the glory that is to be revealed!” Here is Peter’s match for what Paul told the Corinthian church. Here Peter told the elders, “Heaven came down to me. I saw a preview of our Savior in his glorified eternal state.” 

The two links between this text and the rest of the whole letter are (1) Christ’s suffering linked to our suffering, as we’ve already seen in every chapter; and (2) Christ’s glory linked to our future glory, which Peter introduces here and will come back to in verse 4.

“The glory that is going to be revealed” found expression in the first chapter:

• The grief of the Christian’s various trials that test and prove the genuineness of our faith will “be found to result in glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).
• “Therefore, [we are to] prepare our minds for action, and being sober-minded, set [our] hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13).

So “the glory that is to be revealed” is the glory everyone will see at “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” It’s coming in the future. But Peter told those elders and us that he had already seen, partaken of, that glory. What he was referring to was when Jesus took him up on a mountain, probably in northern Galilee, and was “transfigured” before him.

Yesterday as my son-in-law ended a devotional time with two of my grandchildren, he asked them, “Is it always easy to believe the stories in the Bible?” When they hesitated, he acknowledged that, no, it’s not. And this is one reason God had the eyewitnesses write down their accounts for us: So that we would be helped with a historically reliable record. John, one of the other eyewitnesses on the Mount of Transfiguration, wrote in his first epistle of that “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest , and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us” (1 John 1:2–3).

So also Peter gave the same kind of substantiating testimony, briefly, in his third explanation of his authority to exhort the elders. He provides more detail in 2 Peter:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the mountain.—2 Peter 1:16–18

There are three “ties to bind our hearts” to Peter’s, then. “First, he is our fellow elder, bound to us in sympathy through sharing our pastoral care. Second, he had the apostolic authority of being an eyewitness to our Savior’s suffering. Third, and even more exclusively, he was one of only three on the mountain during Christ’s life on earth to actually see what Jesus will look like when he comes back—to therefore partake of His ultimate glory” (p. 229, 1 Peter, Selwyn). 

2) Three Dimensions of His Exhortation (1 Peter 5:2–3)

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 

Simply stated, Peter’s exhortation is, “Elders ... shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight.” That’s the command. This metaphor is the Bible’s ruling one for defining the church and her leaders: the picture of God’s people as a flock and his leaders as shepherd-elders.

It’s not the only figure of speech, the only comparison in the Bible. Peter himself used several others in 1 Peter: The church is “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people for God’s own possession” (2:9); we’re “God’s people” (2:10), “servants of God” (2:16), and “the household of God” (4:17). But the primary way God wants us to see ourselves as his people is as a flock of sheep, and you are to see the elders as shepherd-leaders, watchfully overseeing ourselves and you.

A varied translation of verse 2 is, “be shepherds of the flock of God that has been entrusted to you.” I like that because it harkens back to two previous uses of the word entrusted, which is a banking term meaning “to deposit something for safekeeping.” 1 Peter 2:22–23 speaks of Jesus entrusting himself to God, and 4:19 speaks of us doing the same:

He committed no sin; neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return, when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.—1 Peter 2:22–23

Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will to entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.—1 Peter 4:19

So just as Jesus entrusted himself to his Father for safekeeping and we are to give back our souls to God for safekeeping—souls that he has created and loaned to us—so God entrusts your souls, which belong to him, to us, your elders. And we elders are responsible under Christ to keep you safe.

Peter now goes into threefold detail, describing three dimensions of “do’s” and “don’ts” for this divine kind of safekeeping: matching but opposed motivations that set us elders up either for judgment or for reward. On the one hand, we are warned against worshiping three worldly idols: grudging, greed, and oppressive shepherding; on the other hand, we are to delight in the Chief Shepherd’s three heavenly graces as his willing, eager, and exemplary under-shepherds.

The “what-to-avoid-at-all-cost” side of this portrait of shepherding ministry links this text to the threat of judgment we just looked at last week in chapter 4. Look at verses 17–18:

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

Judgment begins in the household of God—and more particularly, starting with the guilty verdict predictably to fall on those pastors and shepherds Peter describes as lazy and indifferent, mercenary and opportunistic, or oppressive and bullying.

The New Testament contains so much explicit biography of the apostle Peter, more than any other of Jesus’ first disciples, that I wonder if it’s possible to detect illustrations of these sinful and then saintly behaviors in Peter himself. Did he know what to point to for other elders to avoid, as well as to embody, simply by harkening back to his own checkered past? Well, maybe we can see some hints. Regardless, let’s look at one side and then the other of each of these glaring contracts, starting with ... 

1) Tending the flock, not under compulsion [grudgingly], but willingly [voluntarily] as God would have you [according to his will].

Peter’s first warning was against “compelled ministry”—in other words, laziness, a love of ease, comfort and leisure. There is a tremendous danger in the ministry of becoming slothful. What’s in view here is the difference between being externally compelled to do our duty compared to doing so willingly and gladly. And if the idols of comfort or control are in one’s heart, pastoring is a vocation I can easily see myself tailoring for coasting along, living for my hobbies and for puttering, reserving my best energy and effort for my days off and extended vacations, and playing it safe spiritually by keeping my distance from real honesty or accountability. 

But frankly, this doesn’t sound much like Peter either before or after he was saved by the filling of the Holy Spirit. If anything—by disposition or personality—it seems he would have naturally despised that kind of loafer and erred in the opposite direction. Peter was probably wired as a man of action, a performance-oriented perfectionist, a burn-the-midnight-oil workaholic. One unafraid to work all night at fishing, even if he didn’t catch anything.

But what if, instead, this is a warning against fear? In that case, Peter was a poster child for showing the elders and everyone how much he’d clearly learned from his past, before Jesus breathed on him. He was the disciple who famously told Jesus the safe way to glory—namely, by avoiding suffering and the cross (Matthew 16:22–23)—and later infamously cowering before a servant girl two out of three times while denying he even knew Jesus. And the “fear-of-man factor” persisted even late in his life when Peter played the hypocrite at Antioch, when Paul caught him withdrawing from Gentile Christians—worried at possible disapproval when influential Jewish believers arrived from Jerusalem to inspect what was going on (Galatians 2:7–8,11).

Yet Peter also became “willingness personified” as a regenerate disciple, rescued by Jesus from his own denials and from Satan’s siftings, saved because Jesus prayed for him and sent him forward from defeat to strengthen his brothers. Who can doubt the voluntary boldness of Peter to rally the disciples, to preach at Pentecost, to defy the Jewish High Council by boldly declaring to them that “there is no other name by which we must be saved” (4:12) and that “we must obey God rather than men” (5:29)—and, after a bit of divine prompting to be sure, to courageously play what is arguably the most heroic, pivotal role in missions history of taking the gospel out of its exclusively Jewish starting place into Cornelius’ house, and by extension, introducing it to the whole rest of the Gentile world.

2) Tending the flock ... not for shameful gain, but eagerly

Here is the money-lover, the hireling and mercenary, whom Jesus denounced in John 10:12–13: “He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them, He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.”

In the fiery ordeal that’s coming on the earth and beginning in the church, woe to the elders (especially those who make their living from their pastoral labors) who are in it for a paycheck or are expectant and even demanding of a “Jesus discount” from everybody they do business with.  

Again, there may be a hint of this impulse in Peter when he stood listening to Jesus telling a rich young man, “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me,” to which Peter replied, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matthew 19:21, 28). 

“A hundredfold ... with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first,” was Jesus’ answer (Mark 10:30–31). However, that the apostles weren’t into a first-century “prosperity gospel” of getting rich was clear when Peter said to the lame beggar at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6).

His dealings with Ananias and Sapphira went even further to the point of warning the church about loving money and trying to merchandize favor with God. And there was Peter’s denunciation of a magician who wanted to buy the power of the Holy Spirit: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! … I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity” (Acts 8:20, 23).

Second Peter contains an extended condemnation of false prophets and teachers who, among other things, 

Entice unsteady souls ... have hearts trained in greed ... Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.—2 Peter 2:14–16

But the bottom line in this dimension of pastoral warning may very well have been for Peter to see its consequences in the life of his fellow disciple Judas, the lover of money (and perhaps what money could buy), who sold out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And the shuddering closeness by which Peter knew his own sin reflected his experience with the lust that killed the keeper of the purse.

3) Tend the flock ... not domineering [lording it over] those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 

Finally, Peter knew to warn his fellow elders then (and now) about the specter of pride. The love of power and prestige, the failure to recognize that we can’t do anything without Jesus, the spiritual treason of feeling self-reliant or indispensable. And certainly, we can see this “power idol” because it ran so consistently through the early stages of Peter’s New Testament biography, as in when he ...

• told Jesus he must never go to the cross
• resisted letting Jesus wash his feet
• boasted that, though all the others might fall away, he never would
• wielded a sword at Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, cutting off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest.

But on the exemplary side of Peter’s life are his breakthroughs of faith and repentance:

• Astonished at the first miraculous catch of fish, “he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,’” to which Jesus replied, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men” (Luke 5:8, 10).
• When asked by Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” it was Peter who answered, “The Christ of God” (Luke 9:20).
• When many followers were deserting Jesus, he asked the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68).
• And his preaching in the book of Acts: at Pentecost (2:14–39), in Solomon’s porch after healing the lame man (3:12–26), twice before the Jewish Council (4:8–12, 5:29–32), to Cornelius and his family (10:34–43), in his defense of the gospel against the circumcision party (11:5–17), and before the Jerusalem Council (15:7–11).

The final part of Peter’s exhortation to the elders is ...

3) The Exhorter’s Great Expectation (1 Peter 5:4)

And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, Isaiah the prophet was shown what was coming, and Jesus said that Isaiah saw “My own coming ... my own day.” Here’s a part of that prophesy:

Behold, the LORD God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.—Isaiah 40:10–11

Well, Jesus came and he was “the chief Shepherd,” laying down his life for the sheep and taking it up again. The last thing he asked Peter shortly before ascending into heaven was essentially one question, three times: “Do you love me ... do you love me ... do you love me?” “Yes ... yes ... yes,” was Peter’s answer, followed by the chief Shepherd’s threefold calling: “Feed my lambs ... tend my sheep ... feed my sheep,” and finally, “Follow me” (John 21:15–19).

Dear members of this flock, let us help you—it is the need of our calling. Jesus has been shown to us so that our lives and our words might show him to you. Let us show the chief Shepherd to you as shepherds who faithfully ...

• Feed you by our preaching and teaching the truths of Scripture as we preach to our own souls
• Lead you in constant, fervent prayer, especially as those prayers seek success for the preaching of the Word
• Administer the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s supper
• Labor to increase the flock by the sound conversion of souls—here, near, and everywhere
• Guide you into a small group of other sheep where mutual care, accountability, and outreach can happen
• Provide special care for those are sick, poor, and suffering
• Lead godly lives as you become shepherds to one another.

Now, here near the end of this letter and probably near the end of Peter’s life, the apostle was telling his fellow elders, “Jesus is coming back, both to judge and to reward. Keep your eyes on the prize, the glory that’s coming. In Jesus’ hand will be crowns, marks of victorious achievement.”

• “Crowns of life” promised to those who remain steadfast under trial and who love God (James 1:12)
• “Imperishable wreaths” for those who run to win and to receive the prize (1 Corinthians 9:25)
• “Crowns of righteousness” that the righteous Judge will award on that Day to all who have loved his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).
• “Unfading crowns of glory” for willing, eager, exemplary shepherd-leaders (1 Peter 5:4)

Peter is closing with the other theme running lengthwise through the epistle: Glory! It runs alongside suffering, to be sure, but how the glory outweighs and will outlast even a human lifetime of every trial and all its troubles. Glory, eternal glory! Yes, there will be suffering and judgment. But there is hope, hope so big and certain and worthwhile—remember, Peter was there on the mountain and saw it! You need it and so do your elders. So we need to help each other. You can help us win our crowns of glory, and we can help you win yours.

There is a great work to do. A great fiery battle to be fought. And a great reward beyond all measure.