Matt Mason said he doesn’t remember a lot of the questions he was asked when he was interviewing to be the pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham. But he does remember the hardest.
“(A church member asked,) ‘What’s your biggest fear about stepping into the role of senior pastor here at Brook Hills?’ And I said, ‘I’m afraid I’ll lose my joy,’” he recalled.
Up until that point, Mason had served as a worship pastor — he’d been serving in that capacity at Brook Hills for the three years prior. He said even through the difficult times, God had kept his joy buoyant. But he knew the weight of the senior pastor role could be different.
“I don’t want to lose my joy, because the Book of Hebrews says a joyless pastor is no benefit to the church,” he said. “And I’ve seen a lot of joyless pastors.”
As Mason told that story at the Alabama Baptist Pastors Conference on Nov. 13, he said he imagined if all the pastors in the room talked long enough and got vulnerable enough, he was sure they would learn some of the things that made each other’s hearts heavy.
He pointed toward Psalm 2 as holding truths that could hold them all up in the storm and help them keep their joy. The vision of Jesus on the throne changes everything for a pastor, he said.
“Ministry offers us daily opportunities to choose the wrong refuge,” Mason said. “If we want to stay in it, brothers, we need to continually resituate our refuge. That’s what Psalm 2 does.”
He offered four ways to internalize the passage in their hearts and lives.
1. See the fall.
The first three verses remind pastors that it’s a hostile world, Mason said. “You work at the most dangerous intersection on the planet — where the truth of what God has revealed collides with what fallen man worships. Psalm 2 says to you, brothers, ‘Do you feel the resistance? Then you’re in the right place.’”
That’s where Kingdom work happens — where God begins working redemption, Mason said. “Psalm 2 says you’re not crazy if it’s hard. You’re right where you belong. This is where the assignment put you.”
This passage has been bringing hope in the context of ministry for centuries, he noted. In Acts 4, the New Testament church connected the resistance that they faced in the world with the words of Psalm 2.
“They saw the opposition to Christ’s rule as the fulfillment of this ancient psalm,” Mason said. “They connected endurance in gospel ministry amid pushback to this song about God’s rule over all nations written thousands of years earlier.”
As the apostles went from town to town, they preached that Jesus rules. Jesus told them that ministry was going to be hard because the world also hated Him, Mason said.
But the psalm doesn’t stop there.
2. See the throne.
“After the war room strategizing, we’re immediately made aware of the One enthroned in heaven,” Mason said. “Right after we hear that the kings of the earth take their stand, we’re told that the kings of the earth cannot succeed.”
When pastors get their eyes up and out where they belong, it motivates the day-to-day grind of ministry, he said.
“You can’t stop this thing — Jesus is behind it,” Mason said. “He’s at the Father’s right hand.”
The truth of God’s power and authority to direct history into His good purposes is the stuff of endurance, he said. “It’s the stuff of us being sustained in ministry.”
Pastors have to look to Jesus and point the devastated people in their congregations to look to Jesus too, Mason said. “We need a window, not a mirror. A window that lets us see the true story of how God is working and is taking world history.”
3. Hear the plan.
Psalm 2 shares God’s plans for His Son — that the nations will be His.
“The doctrine of Christ’s ascension is fuel for perseverance,” Mason said. “Psalm 2 says He who sits in the heavens laughs, and the New Testament comes along and says He who sits in the heavens has a name — Jesus Christ.”
This is the place where pastors should resituate their refuge, he said.
4. Bow the knee.
In verse 3, readers listened to earth’s kings, but in verse 10, they’re preaching to them, Mason said. “We say, ‘Hey, we see what you’re doing,’ but instead of plotting an overthrow that’s going to fail, do this — be wise, serve with awe, rejoice with trembling and pay homage to the Son.”
Heaven’s news in this psalm changes the way pastors see earth’s kings, Mason said. “We see the nations rage … but we also see this sovereign God who’s exalted to the throne and no one can stop Him, and so we rejoice.”
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