"Unqualified: When Christian Leaders Fall" Sunday Evening Worship Service

After every New York City marathon ends, Jonathan Cain sits at his laptop and begins looking for cheaters.

His story is described in the New York Times magazine that describes Jonathan Cain as a professional endurance coach hired by athletes who want to run in the New York City Marathon in order to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

That's their goal.

And so he's hired to get his athletes to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

And he knows what to look for after the New York City Marathon ends.

He has cameras stationed throughout the race.

He pulls up his laptop, he pulls out pictures, and he is on the hunt for cheaters.

He has been doing this for 15 years.

The professional endurance coach has turned his passion for long-distance running into his role of race vigilante.

He says, in this magazine article I'm quoting, quote, I view this as a means of protecting my athletes.

If one of my runners is affected directly, I'll report it to the race organizers.

Cain says in the years that he has been doing this that he catches, on average, dozens of cheaters every year.

The most common way of cheating is switching bibs with a runner mid-marathon.

Some people unintentionally cheat.

They take the wrong bib and figure it out and sort it out during the race.

Other people will pay faster runners than they are to run their race wearing their bib so they then qualify for the Boston Marathon.

The most he ever caught was in 2014 when he caught 50 people cheating.

Of course, the most famous cheater in the New York City Marathon is Rosie Ruiz.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with her story.

In the 1980 New York City Marathon, she won the female race with a time that was incredible.

She came out of nowhere, and that qualified her for the Boston City Marathon, which she uh set a record-setting pace there as well.

It was discovered in Boston that she cheated first.

She had been injured towards the start of the race and was taken to the first aid tent, which was at the end of the race, and then as the runners started to approach, she went over and presented herself as the finisher and almost got away with it.

That launched an investigation into her New York City running, and lo and behold, they found a photographer who was shooting the race that saw the runners ride by and got onto the subway to go towards the end of the race and rode with her across New York City.

In retrospect, some of the race officials said they should have been suspicious because as she was, you know, being crowned the champion of the New York City Marathon in 1980, they noted that she smelled like cigarette smoke and was not very sweaty.

It was the 80s, you know.

When a Christian leader falls morally, it is a version of cheating.

That's the language Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 9, that we discipline our bodies so that having preached the gospel to others, we wouldn't find ourselves disqualified.

That's the word that's used for cheating.

Every athlete, Paul says, competes according to the rules.

And then he goes on to say, you're only crowned if you compete according to the rules.

If you step outside of the rules, you forfeit the prize, you forfeit the crown.

When a Christian leader disqualifies themselves, it is a stunning blow to the church, and it is a stunning blow to those that follow them.

And of course, there's no shortage of so-called Christian leaders that fall morally.

I'm not talking about the Jimmy Swaggerts that fall, of course.

You know, there's enough false teachers around that fall.

I mean, why wouldn't they fall?

But I'm talking about when leaders who are in your circle, who have preached in your pulpit, who have been in uh your churches, who you've read their books, when they fall, it has an effect on your heart.

And that doesn't happen often.

It's not a yearly occurrence.

You know, it happens a handful of times in your life, probably.

But when it happens, it impacts your heart.

And that's because there's a unique bond formed between the person who's preaching to you and your own hearts.

That's what Paul describes in Galatians 6, 6, where he says, One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches.

There's a reciprocal affection that's there.

Paul had that even with the Corinthians, who were like his frenemies.

You know, the Corinthians were his favorite church one day a week and his least favorite church the other six days of the week.

And he tells them, My heart stands open to you, Corinthians.

That's 2 Corinthians 7.

My heart stands open to you.

Like I want you to move into my heart, he's telling him.

And that's while they're vilifying him, while they're slandering him, while they're saying things that aren't true about him.

Paul says, I still love you, and ultimately you know that they love him.

Some of them were even having disputes, saying, I am of Paul.

There's certainly a love for him in the church.

There's an element of that love that can be healthy, and there's an element that is unhealthy, and when it causes divisions in the church, which was happening in Corinth, it was an unhealthy love.

Nevertheless, Paul rebuked him for it and said, I want you in my heart.

That's what he means in Galatians 6.6.

The one who's taught the word shares all good things with the one who teaches.

That's not just talking about giving money so your church pays their pastors.

That's talking about the shared life you have together.

That's a unique new covenant bond.

The Levites didn't have that with the Israelites in the old covenant.

They were glorified butchers.

They weren't guides, so to speak.

They weren't preachers, certainly.

You know, the gospel is the most precious news in the world.

The person who shares the gospel with you has a bond forged in your heart.

And as that person, especially as it takes place over time, week in and week out, is sharing the word of God with you.

It convicts you of sin and directs you to the light.

Now you understand that it's the Lord who's doing that through his word.

I think every Christian gets that.

It's the Lord who's directing your heart through his word.

That's obvious.

But the Lord uses people to do that.

He uses pastors and prophets, by which I mean preachers and evangelists to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

And so it's natural and godly and good to have that kind of significant relationship with people who teach you the word of God.

Be they elders in your Sunday school, be them awana leaders, small group awana leaders, or pastors in your church.

And so when those leaders fall, it's taken personally, like it rends your heart.

You feel betrayed, you feel duped, you feel lied to in a particularly grievous way.

So when I say when a leader falls, what do I mean?

And that's why I want you to look at 1 Timothy 3.

First Timothy 3 gives you the qualifications for an elder.

In order for someone to be an elder recognized as kind of an ongoing teacher of the Word of God in your church, they have to meet certain qualifications.

First of all, they have to want to do it.

That's the first qualification.

And that qualification can wax and wane over time.

You know, this is if a person gets to the point where they say, I'm no longer physically strong enough to keep preaching the word of God.

They kind of retire as a preacher.

They're no longer qualified in the sense they don't have the desire, the physical desire and capacity to keep doing it, and so they they retire.

That's not disqualified, that's having run your course.

But then you get into the kind of the active, ongoing qualifications of week in and week out ministry, verse two.

An overseer must be above reproach.

Meaning that nobody can reasonably bring an accusation against him.

He lives his life in such a way that you can't reasonably accuse him of breaking any of these other qualifications.

That's the idea.

And the very first one after that heading is the husband of one wife.

The Greek just basically reads, a one-woman man.

It means that a husband is devoted faithfully to his wife.

It doesn't mean that he's only married to one woman.

That's like a very low bar right there.

Although in some of the polygamous cultures in the world, it would certainly eliminate much of the people in those polygamous cultures from being an elder.

But it's more than that.

It's having devotion and affection to one person, to one woman.

That being the reputation that's around you, it's more than just being married.

And of course, single people can be an elder, which lets you know that it's not talking just so narrowly about all elders must be married and only to one person.

It means that particularly for those that are married, you obviously only have one spouse, but more than that, you're devoted to that spouse.

Now, the other qualifications I'm sure you're familiar with: self-controlled, you're in control of your own body.

You you boss your body around, your body doesn't boss you around.

You're respectable, you lead your life in such a way people respect you.

Your home is open to people.

You invite people into your home, you have people from your church in your house, fellowshipping with you.

You're generous with your food and your money and your resources.

You're able to teach at the end of verse 2.

You're not a drunkard, you're not violent, you're not a bully, you don't argue with people, you manage your money well, your children are obedient, submissive is language here, faithful is language in Timothy.

There's another word that's tacked on there in the qualifications for deacons, down in verses eight, down through verse 13, and that's the word blameless.

They're in the middle of the deacon qualifications.

A deacon must be blameless.

And so you take that whole package together, and what you get is the elders have those qualifications, but then I like the heading blameless over all that.

It doesn't mean sinless, it just means that an elder, a pastor, a Christian leader is leading their life in such a way that they have integrity, that their home matches their outside profession, they're devoted to their wife, their kids are in order, and they have a love for Christ that's exhibiting in all of the areas of their life.

That's what it means to be qualified.

Now, not everybody who's qualified is an elder, of course.

There's a sense in which all godly men aspire to this.

There's a sense in which these descriptions define godliness.

There's a sense, it's not an exhaustive list.

You know, you can look at the fruit of the spirit, like we read earlier in Galatians.

There's all kinds of ways to define godliness, but particularly for men, these qualifications give you a trajectory or something to shoot for.

Not every man is going to be able to teach, of course not, but every elder would.

And so the idea is that as people are desiring to be an elder, not everyone who meets these qualifications is an elder, but every elder should meet these qualifications.

The church examines them, and it happens at the local church level.

Publishers don't do this before they publish an author's book.

They don't, you know, see, oh, does this before we publish the author's book, does he have people in his home?

They don't do that.

They're not the ones that validate somebody's ministry.

It's a local church.

It's the people that the person is with week in and week out.

They look at their life.

Do they have people in their home?

Are they able to teach?

Do they have a good reputation?

You look at those kind of qualifications.

And the church says, yes, this person is qualified.

And so the church might make them an elder.

And then after a period of time, years, decades in some cases, what happens when that person disqualifies himself?

And that's the language Paul uses, disqualified.

It's taking the qualifications of an elder and saying the person has acted in a way that nullifies those in his life.

It's been exposed that their life does not, in fact, meet the qualifications.

It doesn't mean that they're walking in a pattern of ongoing sin, although that's probably more than likely.

It just means that things in their life have come, have been revealed that declare they are not qualified to be an elder.

Even though at one point they were deemed as an elder and they've been functioning as one for a period of time.

Now, upon further examination and new things have come to light, they are not in fact qualified.

That's what failing means.

That's what it means to fail in pastoral ministry, to no longer be qualified.

Now there's a whole breadth of ways people can fail in pastoral ministry and can become unqualified.

You know, the worst-case scenario kind of thing is that they're exposed as being a fraud.

They were never a believer.

That they were not just hypocrites, but fooling everybody and deliberately so.

They were pretending the whole time.

They'd figured out how to get a job in a church, they'd figured out they like the respect of people in the church.

And this category of people always mystifies me because I feel like somebody who's that clever and that good with people could get a higher-paying job somewhere else.

But there's always people like that, it seems.

The Elmer Gantries of the world.

They're pretending the whole time.

That's the worst case scenario.

They weren't converted, but they weren't through the mo they went through the motions deceiving people while accumulating wealth and influence.

Nobody likes to be deceived.

Nobody likes to be betrayed by that, and so there's a lashing out that happens at those people when they're exposed.

That's the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario is that this person who is an elder and functioning as such was following the Lord and their ministry is fruitful.

And yet they gave in a temptation at a few points.

And I'm not talking about, you know, they were tempted at one point and asked for accountability from a friend.

That's normal Christian living, even for elders and pastors.

To tell a friend, listen, I'm tempted in this area.

Can you encourage me?

You confess your sins to your friends and they encourage you and you hold each other accountable.

That is normal Christian living, even for pastors.

But I'm talking about somebody who's giving in to temptation on some kind of pattern, like even small temptations, looking at things they shouldn't look at, not being, you know, a good manager of their household well because they're spending money on frivolous things and those kind of sins.

And there's a pattern in their life, and they're going to their friends for help, and it reaches the point where their friends are like, dude, you keep living like this, you're not qualified.

And so they step down.

That's the best case scenario there.

That's a guy who's operating more or less with integrity, and things came to light because of his own desire for accountability, and to the wisdom of those around him, they're like, this guy's probably shouldn't be an elder.

The truth is that most elders that disqualify themselves are not that worst-case scenario, and they're not the best case scenario.

Most elders who disqualify themselves are not going to friends for accountability, but are leading their Christian life, and then they find themselves in tempting situations and they give in to that temptation, and they do not go to their friends for help.

They cover it up and then they excuse it in their mind.

They think of the temptation that led them there the first time.

They justify it to themselves and they go back to it again.

And before long, that creates a cycle in their life.

A cycle of trying to follow the Lord, but giving in in a continual way to their own compromises.

And of course, those compromises grow.

It's like the weed that you water the weed.

You know, you can pull the weed from the top part and the root still is there.

It grows back.

That's not the way sin works.

It's not pulling it at the top.

The way sin works is watering the weed, and it grows bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so over time, those compromises grow in their life.

They're excusing them and excusing them so they can continue in their ministry and keep their conscience quiet while feeding their flesh.

And if you think about it, that trajectory in anybody's life is just not sustainable.

You can't sustain that.

It's hard enough for somebody to go to church every Sunday with a few Christian friends while regularly giving in to those kind of compromises outside of church and justifying them in their own conscience and still getting themselves back to church on Sunday and maintaining those relationships.

That's hard enough for a lay Christian, somebody who's not an elder.

But for the elder, that difficulty gets magnified because his relationships are deeper.

They're generally with theologically astute and discerning people.

And so you have to be more mischievous to cover up your compromises and your sins.

And you're probably in your conscience, you recognize I don't, I recognize these things are sinful and I shouldn't actually be doing them.

I'm holding on to this excuse to justify myself doing them, and I can't let other Christians know about this because we all know it really is wrong, if we're being honest.

But we're not being honest, we're making excuses right now.

And that's not sustainable long term.

And so those things get uncovered and the person flames out.

They eventually get caught, the stuff bubbles over into other areas of their life, their lies catch up with them, and they can't do it any longer.

And they're declared to be disqualified.

When that happens, you see what I mean.

That's not the worst case scenario I described earlier.

That's not the best case scenario, but that is probably the normal scenario of when somebody disqualifies themselves, the most likely scenario.

And there's a few questions when that happens.

The main question you hear from people is could that person be restored to ministry?

That's a very common question.

Because remember how I started this, I said somebody loves that person very much.

The people in the congregation love that person.

They don't want to see him disqualified.

And they only know him as the pastor, they only know him as the preacher.

And they have a verse like Galatians 6.

If anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual, restore him.

And so they're stuck on that language.

They think, oh, restore means putting him back in the pulpit.

Restore means getting him back to where he was yesterday before the rug was pulled out under all of us.

But when somebody is disqualified in what I just described as the normal way, that's not a temporary disqualification.

That's not a sabbatical to quote work on your marriage.

That's a permanent disqualification.

That's where somebody has crossed the line.

They were recognized as an elder in the church, then they were covering up things in their lives that were disqualifying.

Remember, I'm not talking about the person who went to his friends for help.

I'm talking about the person who didn't go to his friends for help because he was covering it up to get away with it, and it eventually bubbled over until he was exposed.

How can you distinguish between that and the worst-case scenario?

It's impossible.

You don't know how much of what you're being told is true.

You don't know how much of what, not just what is true, but you don't know how much of repentance is genuine.

If you don't know if they've confessed all their sins, you can't possibly know if their repentance is genuine, and you're not supposed to be able to judge that kind of thing in another person anyway.

The fact of the matter is, whatever sin they were disqualified for, they're no longer qualified as an elder.

For lots of reasons, probably.

Most likely they're no longer a one-woman man.

They weren't living with the their with complete devotion to their wife, which means they're no longer blameless, which means they're no longer above reproach.

And so all of those things mark them as disqualified.

As I said earlier, not everybody who's qualified is an elder, even.

So having been disqualified, the goal is not restoration, to get them back into a pulpit sometime.

Restoration always speaks of your relationship with Christ, your relationship with the church.

To be able to worship in church and be able to pray in groups as we did earlier tonight with other believers, that's restoration.

To have fellowship with one another, to be part of Bible studies with one another, that's restoration.

To bear each other's burdens in the language of Galatians 6, which is where you get the restoration language from, to bear one another's burdens.

That's the goal there.

But not to put the person back in the pulpit because having been exposed as unqualified while they were covering it up, it violates that bond of trust in a permanent way.

The first question I get from people often is what would it take to get that person back in the pulpit?

It's a big world.

There's lots of things to do.

The second question I get, and this is one I mentioned earlier, I think I said this morning that I've gotten so much in the last few days, is why would God allow a Christian leader to fall?

Why would God allow a Christian leader to fall?

Especially somebody with an outsized influence in the church.

Why would God allow that kind of person to fall?

Well, there's several reasons, and so for the rest of our time tonight, I want to walk you through four of those reasons.

And you could add to this list yourself.

I'm sure you could come up with other things if you thought about it longer than I have.

I mentioned I've been working on this for a few days now, and this is just the list I have, but you could make your list longer or combine these.

First, God allows Christian leaders to fall in order to purify the church.

You understand, I'm sure, that the integrity of the gospel and the integrity of the church is validated by the lives of the people in the church.

That was the problem with the church at Corinth.

They were leading a life that was immoral, which undercut the truth of the gospel on the inside.

There was deception.

It was hypocrisy.

And once that hypocrisy gets out, you realize the gospel has not transformed the end of inside of their heart.

You understand the gospel changes people from the inside out.

The gospel is not behavior modification, it is not just painting the building.

It's not just whitewashing the tombs.

The gospel is resurrecting the bones on the inside of the tombs.

The gospel has the fruit of the spirit, as we read in Galatians 5 tonight.

The fruit of the Spirit comes from the inside out.

The gospel changes you.

A person apart from Christ is spiritually dead.

Through their faith in Christ, they are brought into a relationship with Christ.

The indwelling of the Spirit conforms their hearts to the image of Christ.

That's from the inside out.

And so, when a person is going through what I called earlier the most likely scenario, the covering up of things in their life in order to justify their ongoing exercise of pastoral ministry, it is contradicting that.

It's showing a lack of transformation on the inside of their heart.

It's showing that they are not effectively availing themselves of the means of grace.

They're not effectively letting the preaching of the word transform them.

In many cases, they are the ones doing the preaching, so they're not being washed by the water of the word, to use Paul's language to Titus.

They're not being conformed into the image of Christ.

That is nullifying the effects of the gospel.

It's like if you remember during COVID, somebody told me that they had an appointment to get the COVID vaccination and it got canceled because the nurse giving it got COVID.

You start to have some questions about the efficacy of it.

That's the nature of a Christian leader who's spinning his wheels in sin.

You're going to him for help in your marriage, and you realize his marriage is falling off a cliff.

You go to him for help for having the fruit of the spirit cultivated in your life, and you realize, oh no, he's not cultivating the fruit of the spirit in his life.

It is, to use Jesus' expression, the blind leading the blind.

And what happens?

Just a pile of blind people in a pit.

And so when that leader falls, when he fails, when he's exposed as being disqualified, it actually ultimately has a sanctifying effect on the church.

It has the effect of purifying the church.

That compromise was leavened inside of the church that works its way through the church body, diluting the whole thing.

When a person is exposed, it purifies the body.

It purifies the body.

1 Timothy 3 2, as I mentioned, an overseer must be above reproach.

The language above reproach is going to be the heading for everything else.

Because if the leader is above reproach, it's validating the gospel.

It's the integrity of the gospel validated all the way down.

God exposing Christian leaders who fall removes dead wood from the church.

It removes a branch that's infected.

I cut down a tree in my backyard recently.

It was a tree that split and one side was dying, and so I cut down the dying part, and I didn't like how it was kind of at an angle now, so I cut down the whole thing.

And I look in the half that I cut down that looked healthy, but it was rotting out from the inside too.

On the outside, it looked healthy, but it was rotted from the inside.

Eventually it would have fallen and I don't know, hit a kid or a trampoline or something expensive.

But you wouldn't know until you cut it down.

That's the way those kind of leaders are in the church.

On the outside, they may look the part, they may speak the part, they may write the part, but on the inside they're dead wood.

God allows them to fall in a way that exposes the rot on the inside with the effect of purifying the overall church.

I often tell Ryan and JJ in youth ministry the best way to keep the high school group in order is to throw a kid out of the high school group.

It has a purifying effect on the group.

You have kind of a punk kid in the group, give him the heap home, man.

The best way to keep people in line is to throw a person out of line.

It has the effect of not only getting rid of the branches that are going astray, but of getting the rest of the branches to tighten up.

And that's not just like a leadership principle, that's an actual Bible verse.

That's Acts chapter 5.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

You don't need to turn there, I'll read it to you.

This is where Priscilla and Aquila were struck at.

I mean, sorry, Ananias and Sapphira.

Priscilla and Aquila live in glory forever and ever.

Ananias and Sapphira and their dupliciteness in giving, their lying to the Holy Spirit, if you remember, they were confronted by the Holy Spirit.

God used Peter to expose their hypocrisy and their duplicit nature.

Ananias and Sapphira both struck dead, their bodies were carried out.

The whole city knew about it.

Acts 5, verse 6, they were wrapped up in basically like a rug and carried out of the church.

Acts 5:6

Imagine seeing that.

You know, Jerusalem, it's densely populated, and there's the Christians meeting, those weird wacko Christians, and out they're carrying two bodies.

What happened to them?

Oh, they lied to God about how much they gave to the church, and God killed them.

Our services are 8, 9, 30, and 11 if you'd like to join.

But that's exactly what happened.

Acts chapter 5, verse 12.

Acts 5:12

Many signs and wonders were done regularly among the people by the hands of the apostles as they were gathered together in Solomon's Portico, which is again a very public place.

Verse 13 has this contradiction.

It's one of my favorite contradictions in the Bible.

You know, atheists always try to point out contradictions in the Bible.

Their contradictions are terrible.

Here's a good one.

No one dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem, and more than ever, believers were added to the Lord.

No one would dare go there.

God kills people there.

Also, massive numbers of people were joining the church.

What does that mean?

Well, nobody would just mess around.

You wouldn't go there to check it out.

Nevertheless, because of the compelling power of their testimony, God's elect were being drawn there by the Holy Spirit.

More than ever, believers were added to the Lord.

Multitudes, it says, of both men and women.

So God purifies the church to grow the church.

Pruning produces growth.

Rookie gardeners will prune by taking like an inch or two off of something.

That's rookie.

A real gardener goes after the tree, goes after the bushes.

Man, who.

And then what happens after you prune that thing down?

It shoots out.

It's not a coincidence that some extreme periods of growth often happen after that kind of pruning.

Those that are left in the church have shared convictions that are attractive to each other, attractive to the world.

I met a pastor at our men's conference.

The church just went through a massive split this year.

They disciplined one of their associate pastors out.

Part of the church didn't think that it was a loving thing to do.

It was a hot mess.

And half of the church left and went and started a new church down the street.

And the pastor told me, you know, it is actually an encouraging time right now.

It's sad because it was at, you know, they were getting, they started a new school and all kinds of stuff was happening.

It's sad.

But those that are left, we are so like-minded.

Like there used to be this cloud in our church and this tension in our church, and the wind has blown that away.

And those that are left, I mean, they are dialed in.

They're so like-minded and eager to see what the Lord's going to do.

So the first reason the Lord does this is to purify the church, which often leads to growth.

Not always, but often.

Secondly, to provoke self-examination.

When you hear a leader fall, the first thing you should do is turn inward.

You should have the attitude of, there but for the grace of God go I.

You should have some self-examination.

And pray, Lord, examine me.

If that guy can fall, if that guy who's preaching all the time and writing all the time, if he can fall, could I fall?

And there's a healthiness to that.

Now there's a there could be a morbid side of introspection.

There's always the people that are overly introspective and they can't walk in obedience.

They can't have the joy of the Lord because they're always doubting and they're always crippled by their own self-examination and never know if they can pass it enough, kind of.

So, you know, there's always a balance in this.

But certainly when a leader falls, one of the immediate responses you should have is to examine yourself.

Paul says this in 1 Timothy 5.

In fact, you might still be there.

1 Timothy 5, verse 19.

1 Timothy 5:19

He says, Don't permit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or even three witnesses.

That's the Old Testament standard.

The idea is that you're not going to disqualify a guy because of how extreme it is.

You're not going to disqualify a guy because one person said something.

You know, you're going to want a couple people to bring evidence of what happened.

It's the normal standard.

It's not a special standard just for pastors.

It's the normal Matthew 18 standard.

You confront them and you bring a witness and all that.

Here it's dialed in with the uh the witnesses of his uh sin, which might be a little bit more specific than Matthew 18.

But the point is, Paul says, Don't receive an accusation against an elder unless it's brought to you by more than the one person, by two or three witnesses.

And then he says, for those who persist in sin.

And that word persist is interesting.

It's not in the Greek.

It's for those who, it's present tense in the Greek, for those who are sinning.

So, in other words, accusations have been brought.

It said this person is disqualified, the person apparently denies it.

You bring the witnesses in, you hear the case, so to speak, and the elders determine this person is present tense in sin.

The charges were true.

You rebuke that person, it says, in the presence of everyone, so that all may stand in fear.

You want the sin exposed to provoke self-examination.

You want the congregation to hear about the sin, not the details of the sin, but to hear about the pastor or elder who is no longer qualified.

You want the congregation to hear that so that they tremble.

They stand in fear, they examine their own lives.

Proverbs 30, verse 7 is a verse that's always going to be now inextricably linked to this topic in my mind, because if half pastor H.B.

Proverbs 30:7

Charles preached it a few nights ago.

Proverbs 30, verse 7, a prayer where the king's praise, Lord, remove far from me my falsehood and lying.

Proverbs 30:7

Remove falsehood and lying far away from me.

Get it out of here, Lord.

That should be your response to hearing a Christian leader fall.

You should pray that prayer.

Lord, get falsehood away from me.

If there's things in my life that are false, if there's things in my life that are leading me into temptation, maybe things in my life that hadn't quite reached the level that I was going to confess to a friend yet.

I wasn't going to ask for help on this yesterday, but now I hear that this guy fell, and I'm looking at this, it's almost like you're asking yourself the question: what one thing should I go to a friend for help in that I'm not?

And you hear a pastor fall, and it brings you to that thing.

Lord, get rid of that stuff from me, is the prayer.

And that's what Paul's talking about in 2 Corinthians.

You can flip over there to 2 Corinthians 13.

2 Corinthians 13.

This is Paul's final appeal to the Corinthian church here.

And he says in verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 13, examine yourselves.

That's just not a verse tucked in anywhere in his two letters to the Corinthians.

It's the concluding appeal to them.

After all, and there's a third letter, the severe letter he wrote them.

After all of that, he's appealing to them.

You have to look at your hearts, Corinthians.

See whether you're in the faith.

Test yourselves.

Or do you not realize this about yourselves?

That Jesus Christ is in you.

Unless you fail your test.

People always want to ask you, Do you think that person's saved or not?

How can you tell?

You can't tell if somebody's saved or not.

That's what Paul's telling the Corinthians.

After all the letters he wrote them, he ends with this you should test yourself to see if you're even saved.

And I'm sure you're saved because Jesus Christ is in you.

Unless he's not.

Test yourselves.

If you fail it though, I hope, verse six, you will find out that we have not failed the test.

Paul says, I hope you I hope I'm validated here.

I passed my test.

And Paul doesn't think because he passes his own test that he's all, you know, gold star or anything.

He knows that the Lord is the judge, not himself, but he says, I want you to know that I passed my test.

Verse 7, we pray that we wouldn't do any wrong to you.

Not that we might appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we might seem to have failed.

So they say Paul tells him, even if you think I failed, I hope you come out through my failure of having passed the test.

Paul, by the way, is not disqualified.

He's just speaking to them because he's, in a sense, exasperated with them.

He says, I want you to test yourselves, and you can even throw me in there.

I passed my test, but if you fail me, I hope that works to encourage you to follow Christ even more.

That's Paul's attitude.

Fine, disqualify me, and maybe that will sanctify you.

He says in verse 9, I'm glad that if I'm weak and you're strong, your restoration is what we pray for.

Notice that when the here when Paul uses the word restoration, he's not talking about a failed pastor being restored to ministry.

He's talking about people in the congregation who are burned by false teachers to be restored to their relationship with Christ.

You want to pray for restoration after a pastor falls, don't pray for the pastor's restoration.

Pray for his congregation's restoration to trust in Christ.

That's who you pray for.

It can be a massive blessing to a church to have a pastor exposed.

Because if your first instinct is to say, Oh Lord, examine my heart.

Let me deal with this sin over here.

Oh, there's that, there's that lady at work that I've been flirting with, and I, of course, I would never actually do anything with her.

Oh no, never, never, never.

But, you know, I like riding in the elevator with her, and we, you know, sit next to, we would never make a lunch table, but we sit next to each other for lunch, and you know, she laughs and my jokes.

I would never do anything with her, of course.

I don't even need to let my wife know.

It's just something that's happening at work, and that's just, you know, it's 2024.

You can sit next to a woman for lunch.

Come on.

And you have that in your heart and your mind.

And then you hear that some pastor fell, and then it wakes you up big time, doesn't it?

Throws cold water in your face.

Like, what am I doing?

And so you cut that off.

The pastor who falls is a congregation of a thousand people.

How many marriages do you think might be saved through his failure?

Five?

Ten?

How many sins will be confessed because that pastor fell?

People might even have their own marriages saved because his sin was exposed.

In his failure, he might do more to sanctify than he did in his own sanctification.

That's that's my summary of 1 Corinthians 13, 5 through 10.

Thirdly.

To remind us whose church it is.

To remind us whose church it is.

God allows pastors to fail to remind us that it is not their church.

A couple of years ago I read the Cornell Law School Beginner's Guide to Finance Law.

Don't even ask why.

They had a cool definition sheet in there.

And a term that they defined, I didn't know was an official term.

I thought it was just a slogan, but they had a definition for the term too big to fail.

Apparently it's codified in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which is abbreviated as TARP.

And that is like classic government work right there because TARP, none of the letters in TARP are in Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, abbreviated as TARP.

However, that act passed by Congress signed into law in 2008, gives a definition of too big to fail.

A business or business sector so ingrained in a financial system or economy that its failure would be disastrous for the country as a whole.

The government will consider bailing out such a corporate entity or market sector.

Examples, e.g., Wall Street banks or U.S.

car makers, close parentheses, in order to prevent aforementioned economic disaster.

Could you track with all that?

It doesn't say what standards you're supposed to use, but you look at some sector or some bank, Lehman Brothers or whatever, and like that's too big to fail.

Meaning if the government lets it go bankrupt, it'll have a massive effect on the rest of the economy, and we cannot allow that.

And so we're gonna give them billions of dollars to keep them afloat for the broader effect.

You have to trust us that we know they're too big to fail.

Now, I do don't know.

I just confess to having read The Beginner's Guide to Economics.

So I am not passing judgment on the wisdom of that at all.

But I am saying that thinking makes its way into the church.

Where people think, oh, that pastor is too important to fail.

That pastor is too big to die.

That pastor is too significant to disqualify.

God would never let that guy disqualify himself because that would be just a colossal shockwave through the church.

We couldn't survive it.

He wouldn't articulate it quite like that, but I have certainly experienced people who say that.

Sometimes God allows those pastors to fail as a reminder to us that it is Jesus' church.

It doesn't belong to any itinerant minister, it doesn't belong to any conference speaker, it doesn't belong to any author, it doesn't even belong to any pastor.

The church belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 4.11, the Lord gives the church pastors, prophets, and evangelists to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

There are many builders, but there is only one architect.

The Lord gives these people to equip the saints, but he is the one building the church.

In other words, we are all replaceable.

We are all replaceable.

I saw at a soccer game recently, the other team, the coach moved a player back to a different position, and the guy said, No, I'm not playing there.

And the coach said, All right, you're coming out.

And he said, You can't sub me out, I'm our best player.

He got subbed out.

The coach just looked at him and said, Dude, this is not gonna work this year.

Not gonna work.

We have that attitude sometimes towards pastors, like that guy is too big and too important.

He can't be subbed out.

Guess what?

He can be subbed out.

He's gonna die, he's gonna be buried, and the church is still gonna go on.

We are all replaceable.

God uses people to build the church, but he uses them is the key part of that phrase.

Matthew 16, Jesus says, You're Peter, the most glorious confession ever made that you are the Christ, the first one to articulately make it right to Jesus' face, you are the Christ.

Jesus tells Peter, You are right.

That is a supernatural revelation, and upon that confession, I'm going to build my church.

And the gates of hell won't destroy it.

And you, Peter, you get the keys to it.

That doesn't mean Peter is the church.

Peter's got the keys to it.

So Peter thinks he owns the place.

Oh no.

No, no, you can lose your keys, believe me.

At church, your car, your key can be deactivated.

A few keystrokes, and your key is deactivated.

But having a key to the church doesn't mean anything.

It's the Lord's church.

It belongs to him.

We're all replaceable.

Finally, number four.

To direct our trust to him.

There's a basic principle in life that Jesus never fails.

Leaders fail.

Peter denies Jesus.

David abdicated the throne, murder, adultery, etc.

Solomon compromised in a thousand ways.

Paul and Peter fight with each other.

Leaders sin.

Leaders die.

Leaders sin, then they die.

Even a leader who runs his race with integrity and finishes his race and goes to glory, he doesn't outlive his love for Christ.

He finishes strong and with integrity all the way across the finish line without a blemish on his record.

Even that leader dies.

Elijah, caught up in the taken to heaven.

You remember what everybody said?

Remember what Elisha said?

My Lord, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen, where's the power now?

The good guys are gone.

There's always power from heaven.

There's always the church that is going forward.

The gates of hell will not conquer it.

Even the sanctified pastors are replaceable.

Even the good ones who cast a shadow over church history are replaceable.

I love John Calvin's preaching in his ministry for so many ways, but one of my favorite parts of his biography is that he insisted on being buried in an unmarked grave.

In the paupers field.

He didn't want anybody to think he was anything.

Other pastors, John Knox, Cedar Beza, they would come next, and Calvin would fade.

He thought he would fade from the pages of church history without even he would be offended of me quoting him right now.

Those are the good pastors.

The same thing is true with the bad pastors.

You can, in closing tonight, flip over to Hebrews chapter 13.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

Hebrews 13 is a key text to think about this.

Beginning in verse 6, we confidently say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear.

What can man do to me?

We confidently say that.

Therefore, therefore it's implied, remember your leaders.

Those who spoke to you the word of God.

Remember, I talked about that special connection with them through their faithful ministry?

Remember them.

Remember them.

Why should you remember them?

Because the Lord is your helper.

And how is the Lord helping you?

He's helping you through those leaders.

So look at them, even the ones who have died, look at them and consider how their faith turned out.

And then emulate that.

Do that stuff.

Imitate their faith.

The good ones, of course.

Imitate their faith.

But then, verse 8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So remember your leaders.

That's great.

They died.

Learn lessons from their life.

Jesus didn't die.

It's almost easier to follow leaders that are at the end of their life than it is those at the beginning of their life, because the ones at the end of their life have this whole lifetime of faithfulness that you can draw from.

And then when they die, it's like sealed.

Calvin's never going to write another word, so what he has written is written, and you can learn from it and examine it and study it without concern about what's going to happen tomorrow.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

There's no worries with him.

He crossed the finish line.

That's the language of Hebrews 11.

He crossed the finish line, our Hebrews 12.

He ran the race in front of us.

We're supposed to run it too.

He marked out the course.

He's done, and he did it without changing.

Yesterday, today, and forever.

When you take all of this together, it should not come as a surprise to you that the Lord causes his churches to grow and prosper, oftentimes after a leader is exposed.

There's always the temptation to try to cover that kind of thing up, but when it is exposed, it leads to periods of growth and faithfulness and like-mindedness.

Certainly, Emmanuel Bible Church is celebrating its 60th year.

And I know for those of you that have been here a long time, you perhaps remember in the early 1980s when the teaching pastor here disqualified himself.

And the church decided not to cover it up, but to read his name from the pulpit and tell everybody what happened.

And of course, there were tears, and there were people who left the church because they didn't like how it was handled, and people who wanted him restored, and all of the other things.

But what emerged from the other side was a like-mindedness and a confidence in a church that says we're going to do what the word of God says.

And when it says to rebuke the guy publicly, we're going to do that.

When it says to make people fear, we're going to do that.

And then you sit back and you watch the Lord work through that and cause growth in the church.

Our own church has a legacy.

As I mentioned, it was you're not eager to believe somebody's repentance.

That takes time.

The Puritan Thomas Brooks said on this topic: quote, take no truth upon trust, but take every truth upon trial.

Time and truth will go hand in hand.

I had somebody tell me after a pastor fell recently, I don't know if I'm going to be able to trust a pastor again.

Can you trust a marathon runner?

When the one guy cheated, the one girl cheated, does anybody win a marathon?

And you recognize, yeah, when you think about it, you know, they catch 24 cheaters, thousands of them run.

By and large, most pastors and elders are faithful.

They're running the race.

They're not going to disqualify themselves tomorrow.

They are, in fact, actually faithful running the race.

But don't take my word for it.

Look at the leaders who led you throughout your life.

Consider the outcome of their faith.

By and large, you're going to see faithful dudes.

And if that doesn't work, then I borrow Paul's language from 2 Corinthians 13.

Even if they fail the test, the Lord Jesus doesn't.

If they fail, grow closer to Christ.

And that makes it all worth it.

Lord, we're grateful that you are working in our hearts, preparing us for the eternal weight of glory that surpasses all understanding.

We long for that day where we will see you face to face.

We pray that you would come quickly.

We do pray for comfort for people who have been hurt by pastors and their moral failures.

We pray that their faith in you would be unshaken.

Sinners wreck the world, Lord.

You redeem the world.

There's an ocean of difference between the two.

So help us grow closer to you as the savior of the world, even though men may fail us.

I think even now as I'm praying of Jonathan Edwards' dying words to his daughter, he prayed that his death would help her trust her heavenly father that would never fail her.

That's our prayer as well, Lord.

Use the disappointments, the failures, the sins against us in our life to cause us to trust you, our Heavenly Father, who will never fail.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.