Sam Emadi | ”Four Lessons on How to Prepare for Pastoral Ministry”

I would invite you to open your Bible

to 1 Timothy chapter 3

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

to 1 Timothy chapter 3 as you do that.

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

You know, I have I have some comments

here

thinking Dr. Mohler thanking the

faculty, but

you know, to just speak from the heart

for a second. Um,

you know, it's it's hard to

calculate you know, the debt of

gratitude

that I owe to all of the men here who

taught me to Dr. Mohler for building a

kind of institution like this so

genuinely. Brothers, thank you for your

investment in me. And for those of you

here, thank you for being here. I hope

this is helpful for you.

As I as I thought about how to encourage

you

this morning,

I couldn't help but reflect

on my own time at Southern,

my own time preparing for pastoral

ministry specifically

thinking about

lessons, messages

I wish I had heeded more carefully,

more closely during that season of my

life as

wisdom cries from the streets

as Proverbs says.

I was reflecting on that season of my

life and Paul's words in 1 Timothy

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3 is teaching on the

qualifications for elders

kept coming to mind.

There are a number of reasons for that,

but let me just give you one textually.

Look at how Paul begins

this section of his letter in 1 Timothy

1 Timothy 3:1

3 verse 1.

If [snorts] anyone

aspires

to the office

of overseer.

If anyone

aspires.

In other words, Paul has

a particular orientation, a particular

audience

in view in this passage. He has in his

gaze

the aspiring,

the not yet pastors. Current pastors

need this passage. I need this passage.

I need it again and again. It's not

exclusively for those who are aspiring,

but it is particularly for those who are

aspiring.

Which means

Paul has in his gaze

many of you.

He's speaking to you.

If Paul were preaching at a seminary

chapel,

this is at least one thing

we know he would say.

So, let's read this passage together.

I know it is

Easter week. Tomorrow's Good Friday.

Elder qualifications probably aren't the

most like calendar sensitive sermon to

preach on this day, but here we go. 1

Timothy 3.

This saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to the office of

overseer,

he desires a noble task.

Therefore, an overseer must be above

reproach,

the husband of one wife,

sober-minded,

self-controlled,

respectable,

hospitable,

able to teach,

not a drunkard,

not violent, but gentle,

not quarrelsome,

not a lover of money.

He must manage his own household well

with all dignity, keeping his children

submissive.

For if someone does not know how to

manage his own household,

how will he care for God's church?

He must not be a recent convert or he

may become puffed up with conceit and

fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by

outsiders so that he may not fall into

disgrace,

into a snare

of the devil.

This isn't going to be a traditional

exposition. We can't possibly talk about

everything in this passage in the time

that we have together. So, we're just

going to consider four lessons from this

paragraph on how to prepare for pastoral

ministry. Four lessons on how to prepare

for pastoral ministry. Before we do

that, let me give you one disclaimer

about this passage. Obviously, this

passage is for a certain kind of person.

It is for a brother who aspires to

ministry.

That may not be you.

I I I If you don't aspire

to pastoral ministry

or for the sisters in the room

for whom God has forbidden from holding

that office,

don't check out.

This passage has something for you. You

need this passage and let me tell you

why.

Give you at least two reasons. First,

because saints, you belong to a church.

You belong to a local church.

Do you love

your brothers and sisters

in that church? Do you care for them?

Then care for them enough that you want

them to have good pastors.

But saints, belonging to a church means

caring just as much about your fellow

members' spiritual health as you do your

own.

So, for your own sake

and as an act of love for your brothers

and sisters, you should be deeply

invested in appointing and supporting

and funding and encouraging elders like

this.

And second,

even if you have no intention of

becoming an elder or you cannot be an

elder, you should care about what God

says

about elders and about pastors in this

passage because this passage is in many

ways a blueprint of the Christian life.

I bet when we read the passage, a lot of

you thought,

"Well, that just kind of sounds like

what every Christian is supposed to be."

Exactly.

That's the point.

1 Peter 5:1, I exhort the elders among

1 Peter 5:1

you, "Shepherd the flock of God that is

among you, being examples to the flock,

examples." The Greek word tupoi, types.

Some of you like typology in the Bible?

You got typology going on in your church

every week

because by obeying 1 Timothy 3, elders

are modeling,

setting an an example of the normal

Christian life.

Saints, when God saved you,

he didn't just drop a Bible out of the

sky onto your head and say, "What Just

Just do your best."

No No, he saves you and he puts you into

a church with qualified men who model in

front of you what it is that you're

reading.

So So, if this passage doesn't describe

you directly,

don't check out.

There is plenty for you here.

All right, disclaimer over.

Brothers, those of you who see pastoral

ministry on the horizon, four lessons

from this passage on how to prepare for

ministry. First lesson,

aspire,

don't assume.

Aspire.

Do not

assume.

Here, I just want to recommend to

everyone

Bobby Jamieson's excellent book The Path

to Being a Pastor and the fingerprints

of which are all over this point of my

sermon. Look carefully at how Paul talks

about those preparing for ministry. He

says, "If anyone aspires."

"If anyone aspires

to the office of overseer."

Brothers, I want to encourage you

to think about yourself

primarily not in the category of someone

who is called,

but someone who aspires

to ministry.

I'm I'm not trying to be the vocabulary

police and I'm not trying to turn you

into the vocabulary police and I'm not

suggesting you can't ever use the word

called for called to ministry.

What I What I do want to do is attend to

the language of scripture on this point

and I'd suggest that of all people,

pastors and those preparing to be

pastors should imitate the idiom and the

patterns of speech of Jesus and his

apostles.

Brothers, consider carefully what you

mean if you use the phrase called to

ministry. I know some of you use that

term carefully. That's fine. You mean an

interior calling in terms of desire that

that's then confirmed later by an

external calling of a church. That's

fine. Not trying to police vocabulary.

But brothers, what I do want to do is

warn you against the idea that a calling

to ministry is some kind of private

infallible verdict over your life from

God that he wants you to be a pastor.

I want to warn you against identifying

yourself as someone entitled

to pastoral ministry

because you've been

quote called.

That way of thinking is nowhere in the

Bible.

The Bible does, however, give us a

better word

for thinking about the pursuit of

ministry. It's in this word aspiration.

It It gives us the idea

that

we are looking forward to, aspiring,

striving after the office of elder.

You see, discerning a call

directs your gaze inward at your

desires.

Aspiring directs your gaze outward

at qualifications.

Calling puts others in a place of having

to submit to something you're suggesting

comes from God.

Aspiration puts you in the place of

striving, growing, cultivating a life

that looks like 1 Timothy 3, which we

know comes from God.

So, brothers, if if there's a desire to

be a pastor rummaging around in your

heart,

I don't think the question to first ask

is, am I called? But instead, how can I

grow into the kind of man described in 1

Timothy 3?

Again, Bobby Jamieson writes, "Calling

asks you to picture yourself at the end

of the trail.

Aspiration points out the path

and tells you to take the first step."

So, brothers, aspire.

Aspire

well.

Don't view this season of your life as

the necessary hoop that you got to jump

through. Well, I know God has already

called me to be a pastor, so now I just

got to go through the motions.

No, brothers, aspire.

Aspire. You You hear the energy,

the enthusiasm in that word?

Right? Aspiration isn't a passive

resignation to a verdict you think God

has made over your life. It is an

active, intentional pursuit of the kind

of life that God demands of pastors. So,

brothers, do you aspire? If so, then

imprint these qualifications

in your heart. Lean your life against

them day by day. Let these

qualifications expose and uproot and

identify indwelling sin and then go to

war.

Employ them as preemptive strikes

against sin in your heart. Ruthlessly,

relentlessly target and eliminate

anything Satan might employ

to disqualify you from this

noble task.

Identify as one who aspires

and then aspire well.

Second lesson.

Prioritize

character.

Prioritize character.

Paul's list of qualifications just it it

never ceases to amaze me.

For all the things it doesn't say.

An elder must be high capacity,

highly intelligent, inspirational,

dynamic, a highly skilled administrator,

a capable people person, socially

intelligent.

He doesn't say any of that.

He says, "You guys need shepherds? You

need leaders? Okay.

Any really good dads in the room?

You got any guys that don't get drunk?

Got any of those guys?

Uh guys that love their wife?

Don't overspend. People really like him

at work. Get that guy."

We tend to be like Israel, right?

We want someone who's tall

and someone who looks strong, someone

with extraordinary gifts, and someone

who can preach the lights out, and

someone with a dynamic personality,

someone who's funny and charming and

magnetic.

God wants the dad who's really good at

teaching his 7-year-old how to have good

character when he loses a baseball game.

It's amazing.

Gentle,

hospitable,

doesn't get into fights,

not greedy, but generous.

All these

qualifications are utterly

ordinary.

And again, saints, that's the point.

Because the Christian life is not an

endless sequence of extraordinary

ministry activity. It is ordinary,

utterly ordinary, and pastors model for

the saints the ordinary Christian life.

And you want to know another reason why

the qualifications are also ordinary?

Because the hardest place to be godly

is in ordinary life.

You know, it's easy to be godly or at

least appear godly

in corporate worship.

It's much harder to be godly in the

corporate world.

It's easy to be godly or at least appear

godly on a short-term mission trip.

It's much harder to be godly at the

dinner table.

It's easy to be godly or at least

appear godly

when you're diagramming Ephesians 6 in

Greek.

But when your 12-year-old,

who knows nothing about the world,

rolls his eyes at you,

oh, let's see if you're gentle there.

Let's see if you're sober-minded and

self-controlled

there.

It's hard to be godly when you're

disciplining your kids.

And it's hard to be be godly when you're

in a conflict with your wife

and nobody's around to hear what you

say.

And Paul says

that pastors are the men who have

learned to be godly there.

There in the ordinary stuff of life.

It's It's those places where you show

whether you're gentle,

whether you trust God's sovereignty,

whether you're quarrelsome,

whether you can apply God's word to

people.

Brothers, notice Notice that this

ordinary godliness is the dominant

the dominant characteristic of the

elder.

Paul spills more ink on matters of

character than he does on gifting. One

qualification on gifting, able to teach.

Every other qualification, not about

gifting, but godliness.

If you are aspiring to be a pastor, does

your life and do your ambitions properly

weight what Paul weights in 1 Timothy 3?

Is the pursuit of godliness in all of

your ordinary life your dominant

concern?

Or is learning Greek?

Or writing a good paper?

Brothers, if if you can diagram Romans

in Greek by heart,

but you've never worked a day in your

life,

you don't provide for the people who

depend on you,

well, you might be able to teach God's

word, but you're not verse 2,

respectable.

Brothers, if you can explain

Bavinck's distinctive contributions to

theological anthropology,

but you are never sharing your home,

serving a meal,

being hospitable,

I don't know what you're doing, but it

is not preparing for pastoral ministry.

Brothers, listen. Pastoring is an

intensely theological task. You will not

do it faithfully if you do not know the

Bible.

But also, brothers, let's not lie to

ourselves and think we are preparing for

ministry rightly

simply because we're studying Greek and

Hebrew.

Able to teach is a distinctive

qualification of the elder. It is a

necessary qualification. It is not the

only qualification.

And our lives should represent the same

preoccupation with character that Paul

has in this text. Brothers,

some of you go through seminary like

those guys at the gym

who only work on chest and biceps.

Don't skip leg day.

Well, I got my nose in these books. I I

don't have time to have people over for

dinner.

So, you think being a bad church member

is the path to becoming a good pastor?

Brothers, able to teach matters, but

it's not the only thing that matters.

And many of you would be greatly helped

by considering whether you are applying

the same degree of of intentionality and

enthusiasm to growing in all the other

qualifications

as you may be in growing in becoming

able to teach.

Third lesson.

Develop

theologically.

Develop

theologically.

Now, for all the cautions just gave you

about exclusively fixating on able to

teach and ignoring the other

qualifications, this is the point where

I want to make plain.

Do not neglect that qualification.

Because it is special.

Able to teach.

This is the qualification that separates

pastors from deacons.

That this is the one gifting, the one

skill

necessary for the pastor office. It may

be mentioned only once here, but it is

the most frequently recurring commission

to pastors in the New Testament. Pastors

teach. They are able to teach. Not able

to entertain or attract a crowd, that's

not the idea. Paul explains what able to

teach means in other parts of 1 Timothy.

Able to teach means 1 Timothy 4, you are

someone who with your life and your

doctrine, your teaching, is able to save

those who hear you.

1 Timothy 1:5, your teaching cultivates

1 Timothy 1:5

love from a pure heart and a good

conscience and a sincere faith. In other

words, you can open the Bible in front

of people in a way that produces

spiritual fruit. You can think carefully

about and explain plainly God's word in

a way that cultivates faith and hope and

love.

And that work, brothers, that work in

the midst of ordinary life takes

extraordinary

labor

and diligence.

And And I just want to plead with you

to cultivate

that skill

aggressively

now.

Do not

just get a degree.

Learn.

Take all the hardest classes.

If it takes you 8 years to graduate,

fine.

Cultivate a happy obsession with the

Bible.

Cultivate a happy obsession with

learning how to clarify and communicate

the content of the Bible.

And that's not a sam-a-body idea, that's

a Apostle Paul idea. 1 Timothy 4:15,

1 Timothy 4:15

"Until I come, devote yourself to the

public reading of scripture, to

exhortation, to teaching. Practice these

things. Immerse Immerse, plunge, drown

yourself in them so that you all may so

that all may see your progress."

You know, you always see these books.

They have titles like

"Five ways seminary didn't prepare me

for ministry."

I hate those books.

Obviously, I get what they You know,

there's something to that. You can't

learn everything in seminary. You need a

local church, obviously, first and

foremost. You need pastors, mentors. You

need experience, opportunity. You can't

learn everything in a classroom. But

sometimes those books are all down on

seminary

because the authors don't like theology.

"Well, in seminary, all you learn is

Greek and Hebrew and systematics and

this stuff doesn't matter in ministry."

What planet are you living on?

I use Greek and Hebrew every day.

I need historical theology

every day. In every conceivable context,

it comes out.

I I would be lost,

utterly lost in pastoral ministry, in

working with deacons, in doing marriage

counseling, if Steve Wellum hadn't

taught me how to think about theological

method.

Everything in ministry is theological.

So, brothers, you must be

able to teach.

You know, an MDiv is no excuse

to ignore cultivating character.

But But cultivating character doesn't

mean becoming indifferent

to cultivating skill in the word.

Prioritizing character doesn't mean

tolerating theological sloppiness.

Of all the people God could have

appointed to lead the church, he didn't

appoint administrators or creatives or

people who can marshal volunteers, he

appointed teachers.

And that's because the success of the

church doesn't depend on creativity or

organizational ability or volunteer

marshaling. Pastors are teachers because

what God ultimately wants of his people

is for them to know him.

And that's what teachers do.

We uphold the gospel.

We explain that the Christian life is

not about what we accomplish for God,

it's about trusting what God has

accomplished for us. Let me teach you

about it.

So, by putting the leadership of the

church in the hands of teachers, God

keeps the focus of his people

exclusively on him and on his

achievements and not our pitiful to-do

list of ministry.

So, brothers, aspiring to ministry,

labor intensely

over the word. Labor to know the

character of God and the work of Christ

at every possible angle because at the

end of the day, teaching the gospel is

the only thing that changes hearts. It's

the only thing that rewires the human

heart from the inside out. Study the

work of God in the word of God so well

that you can surgically apply it in

every conceivable

situation.

Fourth lesson.

Prepare for war.

Prepare

for war.

I just want you to look one more time at

verses 6 and 7.

"He must not be a recent convert, or he

may become puffed up with conceit and

fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by

outsiders,

so that he may not fall into disgrace,

into a snare of the devil." You see

that?

Satan is mentioned twice.

Twice in the elder qualifications.

Why?

Because pastors are a strategic target

for demonic temptation because pastors

are public and visible and their

disqualifying failures shake the faith

of the weak and belittle the name of

Christ and very often destroy churches.

Brothers, aspiring to pastoral ministry,

pastoral ministry is war. Being an elder

is war.

You know, and it's not because deacon

boards can be ungodly

or because not meeting the budget is

stressful

or because

people are mean to your kids when you

say stuff in sermons that they don't

like and and all that's true and that

could be hard, it stinks.

No, pastoral ministry is hard

because all hell

is at war against your devotion to

Christ.

Years ago, I remember meeting with a

mentor of mine. He handed me a Bible. He

had me read 1 Timothy 3.

And then he asked me, "If Screwtape

were writing a letter to Wormwood

on how to disqualify you,

what qualification would he go after?"

That's not just a useful thought

exercise.

That's happening.

Satan is at work

against elders with disqualifying

snares.

Brothers, all the pastoral gifts and the

charisma and theological ability in the

world,

divorced from character,

will only destroy churches.

You know, no church will implode cuz you

preach a B- minus sermon.

But indifference to qualifications,

passivity in resisting Satan,

that will destroy a congregation.

So, finally,

the question is,

how do we get the spiritual resources

for this kind of life?

Obviously, no one can be these things

perfectly, but we can be these things

genuinely and truly. So, the question

is, how?

Because all of your best resolutions and

all of your best intentions and all the

little rules that we make for ourselves

and all the willpower in the world won't

make you this kind of person.

So, what will?

And the answer lies in considering one

glorious truth in this text.

That Christ designs his church

to reflect, even in its authority

structures, the very gospel we proclaim.

Embedded into the authority structures

of the church, into the office of elder,

is a reminder of the gospel itself. Why

does God require

these qualifications of pastors?

Why Why does he expect his shepherds to

look like this, to have this kind of

character, to be gentle and hospitable

and generous?

Because this is what the good shepherd

is like.

Everything that is good

and beautiful

and delightful in these qualifications

is just a dim reflection

of all that is good and beautiful and

delightful

in Jesus of Nazareth.

Elders must be these things. Even more,

brothers, elders

can be these things

because this kind of authority, this

good, self-giving, humble, seeking the

interest of others, gentle, hospitable

authority is how Jesus shepherds us.

He is never violent

or unhinged.

He doesn't scold the sheep.

He was gentle

and lowly.

He was not greedy

or a lover of money.

But he who is rich for our sake became

poor.

He was not conceited

but refused to count equality with God a

thing to be grasped.

And Satan's snares

had no purchase

in his heart.

Brothers, how do we become faithful,

gentle, hospitable, selfless, humble,

qualified pastors? Not by willpower, not

by better resolutions.

No, you will be gentle only when you

experience the gentleness of Christ

toward you.

You will be faithful to your wife only

when you see just how faithful Christ

has been toward faithless you.

You'll escape the tyranny

of the love of money only when you're

confident that the one who gave you his

own life surely

surely can be trusted with your

finances.

Saints, that's what rewires our hearts.

That's what changes all the motivation

structures inside of us.

Beloved,

behold

the extraordinary work of God

in this passage.

Elders, pastors

are sheep

who have been made into shepherds

because Jesus is the true shepherd

who became a sheep,

the lamb of God

who takes away our sins.

So, maybe this passage isn't as far from

Good Friday after all.

Brothers, we can become the kind of man

described in 1 Timothy 3, but only as we

behold with ever-increasing clarity how

Jesus was faithful and gentle and

hospitable and selfless and humble in

our place and as we see every good

quality in him shine most gloriously in

his self-sacrifice

at the cross.

There, supremely,

at the cross,

we find the pattern

of faithful shepherding.

And there,

trusting in the cross,

you find the power

for faithful shepherding.

Let's pray.

Our God, we pray

that you would increase our faith

in the goodness

of the great shepherd,

Jesus of Nazareth.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.