"The Parenting Pastor" 2 Corinthians 12:14 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Tonight I want to look at one verse, Second Corinthians chapter twelve, verse fourteen.

Paul says, Here, for the third time I'm ready to come to you, and I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours, but you.

For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

A couple years ago, I in the before times, before COVID, I read a article on uh ar arguing against people having children.

It was an argument at you know slatefeed.com or one of those kind of uh websites that argues the argument was that people have child too many children, children are bad for the environment because they do things like eat and uh and die and their bodies decompose.

And it's just all it's all bad.

Like everything about people is bad was the bottom line.

I'm summarizing the argument.

Bottom line, people bad.

And so it was appealing.

It was saying like we recognize there's something innate in people that they're gonna keep having kids even when we tell them how bad it is for the world.

So it was a new approach, and it was trying to calculate how much it actually costs you to have a kid.

Everything from the hospital visit, I see some nodding out there.

Perhaps you have either done this math yourself or you saw the same article.

Everything from the first hospital visit, you know, prenatal visits, the birth all the way to the food, like baby formula and diapers and school and all the way to college, and they had some figure, and I was looking for the story this afternoon, and I I crossed the threshold from the amount of time that is appropriate for me to spend looking for that story.

So I don't remember the dollar figure.

And none of you, put your phones away right now.

Don't find it for me right now.

Uh but they had a dollar figure, and it was an appeal to you based on the finances of the thing.

Don't have kids because it will cost you too much money.

And the reason that's an ineffectual argument is because I don't know of anybody who has kids because it's a good financial endeavor.

I imagine there's some element in society that might think, I want a kid to care for me in my my old age or something, it'll be you know important for me to have uh, you know, somebody to to pay the bills for the nursing home, I guess.

There could be that kind of logic, but that's not fully a compelling reason to have have children.

And I don't think anybody has a kid because of the financial investment of it.

And then I came across this verse, verse 14.

Children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.

There's a lot in that verse, and it kind of comes out of nowhere.

If you're reading 2 Corinthians, uh it jumps onto the page.

Paul is scolding the Corinthians, like a parent might do if you look at verse 11.

I've been a fool, you forced me into it.

Uh, you know, I wasn't at all inferior to the super apostles as you guys like, even though I'm nothing.

This is like the passive aggressive parent right here, like, oh, it's my bad for loving you too much, kind of speech from your from your parents here.

And that's what Paul is giving, and it's uh almost as if he's aware of that.

And so in verse 14, he says, children are not obligated to save up for the parents of parents for their children.

To really understand what Paul's doing with this verse, you do have to look down into it and uh draw out what the argument actually is.

I'll give it to you on the screen for an outline tonight, two obligations of a parent, two things a parent is obligated to do.

There's obviously more than this in the Bible on parenting.

This is not a comprehensive parenting sermon at all, by any stretch of the imagination.

It's just two basic points that Paul is almost taking as axiomatic here.

Paul doesn't develop them, he doesn't quote Proverbs here, he doesn't quote uh Philo.

Philo has whole uh sections in his writing on this topic.

Paul's apparently aware of them, but he doesn't quote them.

Instead, he just throws it out there.

Children are not obligated to save for their parents, but parents for their children.

Before I give you these two obligations, the Paul just takes as obvious, self-evident, axiomatic.

Uh the word that he uses there, obligation, is an odd word.

Um, it's not a very common biblical word.

It's used maybe five or six times in the Bible.

Uh one of them, Matthew 23, 16, where Jesus uses it for someone who takes an oath in the sanctuary.

You go into the sanctuary and you take an oath, and the Jews said, if you took an oath in the sanctuary, you're bound to it, but if you took an oath by the gold of the sanctuary, you weren't you weren't bound to it.

That's that speech.

That's the word that's translated oath there.

It's used here.

It's the same word.

So Paul's using this word that means that you're vouching for something.

Like you've stood up before God and you said, I'm going to do this.

John 19, verse 7.

John 19:7

It's another very uh unusual.

It's not even translated into English there.

It comes across in English as the word claims in John 19, verse 7, where uh it says, Whoever claims to be the son of God must be put to death.

John 19:7

It's the Jews uh justifying the crucifixion of Jesus.

And they say, you know, he said to be, he would be son of God.

Whoever claimed to be son of God is uh destined to die, to be put to death.

Somebody takes an oath.

And obviously Jesus was the son of God and hence he was put to death.

That's the word that Paul uses here.

It stands for like an oath-making kind of thing.

So he's saying that when a parent brings a child into this world, they're taking an oath, and it's not even implied here to God.

It's just an oath just by the way nature works.

By you bringing a child into the world, you are compelled to do these two things.

It's an obligation you have.

The first obligation: parents are obligated to meet the daily needs of their children.

Parents are obliged to care for their children, meeting their daily needs.

And this is from the moment of birth until they're able to grow and stand on their own and thrive.

Parents are supposed to provide everything in the child's life, from milk to Paul's language in Hebrews, the the you as an infant you have milk, and then as you mature, you're able to take solid food.

There, Paul uses that analogy for Christian living: that a newborn believer just needs the milk of the word, the pure milk of the word, but as they mature, they're able to handle meatier doctrines.

This is the concept of a parent is obligated to provide for their children, you know, food at all stages of life.

Parents have oversight of their child's education from learning to talk to going to school.

Parents provide for their kids their food, you know, on a daily basis.

It's amazing.

You know, the kids want to eat every day.

Every day in our house.

You know, what's what's for breakfast?

Every day.

Never one day they're like, you know what?

Let's skip.

Even on Mother's Day, there is no let's just skip breakfast.

There's food every day.

School.

Parents send their kids to school, or they homeschool and they provide the education in the home, or they send them to school, they at least arrange for it.

Your first car.

Getting a job.

You know, you get your first car, it's like this catch 22.

You need the car to get the job, you need the job to pay for the car.

And so, how does that work out?

Well, parents, every family does it differently.

Parents either give the kid a car or they, you know, loan them the car until they can make enough money to pay for the car.

And I remember one of uh one of my first cars.

I say one of my first cars because my first car met an unfortunate demise, which will be a different illustration later.

But, you know, my dad sold me my second car for like$500 or something, sold me.

It was a gift.

We'll call that a gift because I use the car to make money to pay for the car.

That's a parent's, in a sense, obligation.

Help getting a job.

And if you think back to your first jobs, so many of them might have been set up by your parents.

Um, one of my kids asked me recently why uh so many last names have the word soon at the end of it, like Johnson.

You know, what is the word S-O-N doing at the end of so many names?

And you know, a little Googling and research later, you find out the most common form of last names uh in European history was named after your parents' occupation, named after who your dad was, and or other or who what his job was, you know, a baker or a smith or a smithson or blacksmith, I all kinds of different names that are labeled on to what you were, what your parents' occupation was.

And that's just the way you you know, 150 years ago you'd ask somebody, what are you gonna do when you grew up?

And their answer was what their parents did when they grew up.

It wasn't that you had like all these career choices, you didn't get to go to college and choose your favorite major.

There's no job you can get with university studies, by the way.

Or with sociology, that's first hand evidence right there.

You would do whatever your parents did.

And by the way, this is not culturally specific.

This is not an American Americanized uh capitalistic thing where parents advise for their children.

This is this is globally.

You see those African New Life videos that African New Life puts it all the time, and it's you know, it's they get your tears because you see the parents who are like, you know, we have four kids and we're choosing which one we can send to school.

But we feel obligated to send one for school and the other kids are making sacrifices so that one kid goes to school.

It's just the way the culture is.

The parents there have this understanding they have to send one of their kids to school.

They're meeting the daily needs of their children.

Can you imagine a better transaction from the child's perspective?

Everything in life is given to them from food to school and education, cars, jobs, etc.

And this is not reversal.

It's not reversible.

There's no expectation that children provide everything for their parents.

In the Roman world, some parents would have children to sell them into slavery to pay their debt.

So that happened in the Roman world.

But it was bad.

That's not good.

There is nobody, even in the Roman world, that argued that that was good for the kids or good for the parents.

It was actually a sign of disgrace.

Even the Jews who had a very low view of children, I've talked about that before, but in the Jewish world, the children were at the bottom of the totem pole.

Again, not the Americanized, you know, if the kid wants the better seat on the bush, you give it to him, kind of thing.

Oh no, not in the Jewish world.

Kids were an inconvenience in the Jewish world, they were a distraction.

This is what's behind Peter, who is trying to let the rich young ruler come in, a synagogue ruler, that guy's powerful, let him in, but the kids shoo them away.

And Jesus is there playing with the kids and you know, telling the rich young ruler, you know, let the dead bear their own dead.

You get out of here, kind of kind of speech to him and has the kids, and that just drove the Pharisees crazy.

Even in that culture, the kids were designed to receive the inheritance.

They were supposed to receive from their parents.

Sons are heirs to the fathers.

Fathers are not heirs to the son.

Now there are some cultures in the world where this is a little bit backwards.

Christopher Yuan is a teachers at Moody Bible College, he has his biography called Out of a Far Country, which is just an incredible, incredible story, uh, if you are interested in that.

It's called Out of a Far Country, a really gripping biography.

And it contrasts his homosexual lifestyle, which he was saved out of, with the Chinese perfectionistic lifestyle, which he was also saved out of.

And every chapter alternates and shows how corrosive that perfectionistic lifestyle was.

But one of the main factors in that Chinese culture that just led to an erosion of marriage and high divorce and um so much strife in families was this idea that a parent's status is determined by how much money their kids give them.

And it was competitive, and you advertise to your friends how much money your kids were giving you, uh, because that was showed you showed your worth.

And some of your parents might think, that's it's a good deal right there.

But you can see how corrosive that would be in a family and in a society, and he writes about that in that book.

But he so even cultures that are an exception to this rule are largely dysfunctional because of that because of that uh variation from God's design that children would be the recipients of their parents' generosity.

So, first obligation, parents should beat the daily needs of their children.

Second obligation, parents are obligated to store for the future of their children.

So not just the daily needs of their children, but the future of their children.

Parents have an obligation to set them up to succeed in life.

Now, here a little footnote.

We're obviously talking about wealthier families here, families with means, families that are just, you know, barely getting by.

There's no, you know, there's there's no biblical mandate that they pass down wealth to their children.

If you don't have wealth to pass down, you don't have to pass down wealth to your children.

Do you follow?

But if you do have wealth to pass down, this is Paul's point in verse 14 that parents are obligated, and this I get this from the word um save up here.

The word save up has this in the in the Roman world, this connotation of an inheritance to it.

Parents have an obligation to store and to set aside for their children to set them up in this world.

Now, this isn't the only biblical teaching on this.

Ecclesiastes and Proverbs both have a lot to say about the folly of passing down all your wealth to your children.

Like if you're wealthy and you give all your wealth to your children, let me tell you what your children are going to do, I can tell you right now what your children will do with it.

Lose it.

Um, the Bible makes that very, very clear.

The rich person, the powerful person hands it to their kids.

Their kids will squander it because they didn't work for it, they didn't earn it, and it will be gone.

But the Bible also makes clear that the other extreme is invalid as well, that you withhold everything from your children so they learn to make it on their own.

That's not what the scripture teaches.

In fact, here in our verse today, it says children are expected to receive.

Parents are saving up for the future of their children.

This is a very common New Testament theme.

Children are heirs to their parents.

And Paul leverages that theme to make gospel points about it.

Romans 8.17 says, if we're children of God, we are heirs of God.

If your child, in other words, notice the logic.

If you are a child of God, you're not only a child of God, you're also an heir.

That's where Paul goes in Romans 8.

You're not just a slave or servant, you're not just a friend, you're a son and daughter.

And if you are a son and daughter, you are also an heir, because that's what would be expected of a rich and powerful parent.

They would have as children as an heir.

Galatians 3.18.

Our inheritance from God comes not by the law, because then it would be wages, but it comes by promise.

God gave it to Abraham in the form of a promise.

So, in other words, through faith, you're adopted into God's family.

You have your status in God's family not by works, but by faith you receive the promise given.

So you're an heir, because you're a child of God, you're an heir of God, and you have that status not by work or by labor, but as a gift of God.

Galatians 3.29.

If you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, so you are heirs according to the promise.

It's Galatians 3.29.

If you are in Christ, you receive the promise given to Abraham.

You've inherited it.

Now, you inherit it by faith, of course, and this is true of a child standing in the family.

A child has a standing in the family not by virtue of his works, not by virtue of his merit, but by virtue of his existence, by virtue of his or her lineage.

When it comes time for breakfast, you don't ask your kids, did you earn it?

Now there might be, at certain ages, there might be chores a child does to learn and to grow and to be part of the functioning household.

But I mean, it goes all the way down to the little age here.

You know, are you going to tell the baby what did you do for me lately?

Before you get your formula?

No, there's this idea that you have your status as a child by grace, just by being a child of God.

But that doesn't mean it can't be lost.

Of course a child can forfeit his inheritance.

Of course, a child can abandon his family through his action and his conduct.

And the same is true, by the way, with your relationship with God.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 9.

1 Corinthians 6:9

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5, verse 20.

Galatians 5:20

Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissension, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, all the things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, Paul says, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So inheritance can be, in that sense, forfeited.

It's not an absolute right.

It's not earned by works, but it certainly can be forfeited by works.

And the same is true on a human level.

A child doesn't earn his way into your family, but he can certainly reject the family and spurn the inheritance.

You see, of course, just the story of the prodigal son would be an example of that.

That dude cashed out earlier, right?

He said, I give you my inheritance now, liquidate what you got, give me half of it, and I'm out of here.

So first.

Parents are obligated to meet the daily needs of their children.

Secondly, they're obligated to store for the future of their children.

Now, children are not obligated to do this in reverse.

None of this works in reverse.

However, children are obligated in the scripture to honor their parents.

Amen.

Amen.

I heard that.

Galatians 4, verse 1.

Galatians 4:1

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything.

That's a child's least favorite verse right there.

An heir, a child is no different than a slave.

A child is no different than a slave.

Until he's no longer a child.

That's Galatians 4.1.

Until he's the owner of everything.

It's a good reminder to parents.

You are gonna die one day.

You are gonna die.

You will get old, and your child will care for you, and then he's gonna get all your stuff.

Treat him accordingly.

Proverbs 23, verse 22.

Proverbs 23:22

Listen to your father who gave you life.

Do not despise your mother when she's old.

Mark 7.

Jesus uses an analogy in Mark 7.

That the Jews would sometimes say that their material or their possessions were Corbin.

Do you remember this?

Where the Jews would say, you know, their parents are getting old, and so it would be a normal thing for children to take care of their parents in their old age.

And a Jew would say, No, all of my things are Corbin.

That means it's all given to the church, it's given to the temple, it all belongs to the priests, and Corbin was the category that the Jew, you can see why the Pharisees would develop this category.

If you made an oath to the in the temple that your stuff belonged to the priests, the priest would let you keep it the rest of your life.

They just get it when you die.

It was a way of leveraging estates.

And if you made that oath, you wouldn't pass it on to your kids.

But people started making that oath so they didn't have to give it to their older parents.

They said, Oh, mom, dad, I'd love to help you in your old age, but I'm so religious, everything I have belongs to God.

Sorry.

And Jesus tells them, he rebukes them.

You by doing that, he says?

You're violating what Moses said.

You're claiming to care about the commandments to not lie by saying, I made an oath, I can't get out of it, but you're violating the fifth commandment.

Paul picks up on that in Ephesians 6, verse 2, honor your father and your mother.

Ephesians 6:2

It's the fifth commandment, right?

You can remember that, the fifth commandment this way.

The fifth commandment?

Honor your father and your mother.

But it is the first commandment with a promise.

There's an implied promise in the fourth commandment.

If you keep it, God won't kill you.

But the fifth commandment is the first commandment with an express promise.

Honor your father and your mother, and it will go well with you.

It'll go long life.

Now, this is not a uh, you know, it's not a magic spell that if you honor your father and your mother, things will magically go well with you.

This is causal.

This is the way God's moral law often works in the world.

As a child, if you listen to your parents and you receive from your parents, you're gonna grow up understanding how to fit in in this world in a way that's not gonna hurt you.

Your parents say, don't cross the street without looking both ways.

It's not magic that you look both ways so God sends his angels to protect you.

No, it's that if you break that rule, you will get hit by a car.

So the kind of kid that grows up learning to honor his father and his mother is the kind of kid who's not going to get hit by a car.

Now you get that extrapolates out to every area of life.

When you listen to your parents, things go well with you.

So your parents, even in your honoring of them, even in your giving to them, it's actually a form of receiving their wisdom and receiving their protection.

God's plan for the family is that parents would provide the daily needs for their children, and parents would provide for the long, if they're able, the long-term success for their children.

And that is beyond finances, by the way.

That is teaching kids work ethics, it's teaching kids obedience, it's teaching kids compliance with the law, it's teaching kids doctrine and theology and a love for Christ, and it's molding them into the kind of person that will be successful in the world.

It's not just your inheritance.

You don't set your child up well for life by just saying when I die, I'll give you stuff.

You set them up for life by teaching them a work ethic so that they can get a job and provide for their family, etc.

That's the implication.

So when Paul says in verse Verse 14, children are not obligated to do that for their parents.

Children don't need to teach their parents how to have a successful future.

Parents teach their children that.

And when children listen to that, things go well with them in this world.

That is the parent's obligation.

Not every parent does that.

Some parents neglect the raising of their children.

They let their children go their own way.

They don't provide for them the education, the wisdom, and the knowledge that are necessary to have a healthy and fruitful and productive life.

Paul says parents are obligated to do that.

Now, how does this fit into 2 Corinthians?

Paul's leveraging that truth to make a statement, and this is the great rhetorical switch here in this verse.

Paul's leveraging that truth to make a statement about what it means to be an elder, specifically a lay elder in the church, what it means to be a spiritual Christian leader in the church.

And his argument here hinges on the fact that he is not paid by the Corinthians.

So we in the English language have a word for that.

It's a lay elder.

Paul's talking here about being a lay elder in a church.

So in our lingo, in our church lingo, elders are pastors, pastors are elders, but the title pastor is somebody who gets paid by the church.

A lay elder is not paid by the church.

That's the only distinction.

They meet the same qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and in Titus 1, elders and pastors have this, they're synonymous.

But the only distinction comes from 1 Timothy 5, 1 Corinthians 9, that pastors are those that labor in the regular preaching and teaching of God's Word.

They're paid for it.

You know, musley ox, so the one who the per the elder who's preaching regularly should be paid for his work so he can devote his time to studying the word of God.

But that is not every elder, Paul says.

The majority of elders in a church are going to be lay elders.

They're not paid by the congregation.

This is Paul's argument in 2 Corinthians 12.

Now, the whole book of 2 Corinthians, if you remember, Paul is telling the Corinthians, I want to come see you, but you guys are being obstinate.

They're rejecting Paul's leadership.

Paul loves the Corinthians and they are rejecting his leadership.

He planted their church.

He is their father in the faith.

He tells them that in 1 Corinthians.

They could have a thousand tutors, Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

You guys could have a thousand tutors.

You could have Bible studies and discipleship groups for a million people.

None of that matters.

I'm your father in the faith.

You only have one father.

So Paul acts towards them as a father in the faith.

They are rebellious.

They're in their teenage years right now.

They're rebellious towards him.

So Paul pleads with them.

He writes them 1 Corinthians to get their house in order.

They do not respond to 1 Corinthians.

Paul goes and visits them and pleads with them and they reject him.

So he goes away and he writes 2 Corinthians.

And in 2 Corinthians he says, I want to come back to you.

You're like my wayward child.

I want to come back to you.

Why won't you receive me?

That's why he says in verse 14, it starts with, here for the third time I'm ready to come to you.

The third time, the first he planted the church, the second was after 1 Corinthians.

They rejected him.

He says, I want to come to you a third time.

This goes back to the beginning of 2 Corinthians, where he says, I told you I'd come to you.

Last time he was there, he said, I'm coming back to you, and now I'm not coming to you.

And then at the beginning of 2 Corinthians, he says, it's my yes-no and my no-yes.

Am I wavering on this?

And he says, I'm not wavering.

I just can't bear to have my heart broken.

I can't bear to see you living in your sin.

I can't bear to see what's happened to the church.

And their response to this, by the way, is to say, Paul's just in it for the money.

Paul's in it for the power.

That's what the false apostles were there.

Remember that we looked at this last week.

The Corinthian church had all these people that were doing all these fake spiritual gifts and speaking in fake languages and saying it was tongues and, you know, doing these fake miracles, fake healings, the whole thing.

And it was all fake and it was fraudulent and it was just immoral.

And there, those people who are doing that are opposed to Paul.

Paul's calling them out and saying, that's not real, that's not legit.

And they're saying he's just in it for the money.

Look how weak he looks.

And you say, oh yeah, his letters are bold.

Yeah, he's so argumentative when he writes his letters.

His letters sound great.

Have you seen him?

The guy's a pushover.

The guy's nothing.

You can imagine how hurtful that would be to Paul.

This is the church he planted and the church he loves.

Now they're saying, hey, he's just in it for the money.

Now, Paul has a great defense for this.

He does it in 1 Corinthians 9.

He tells them 1 Corinthians 9, even if I was in it for the money, you still should have paid me.

Because I preached the word to you.

But he said, I didn't take money from you.

I didn't even take your money.

How can he be in it for the money when he's not getting any money out of it?

Reminds me of the guy who applied for a job, and then when they told him he went through the interview process and they were going to hire him, they told him the salary, and he laughed.

And he's like, That's ridiculous.

Why didn't you tell me that before I wasted all this time applying?

And the boss said, Oh, we don't tell the salary to people because we don't want anybody to do the job for the money.

And the guy says, What money?

That's Paul's response to the Corinthians.

He earned it for the money, and Paul says, What money?

When did you pay me?

He's never been paid by them anyway.

He took money from the Philippians, took money from the Thessalonians.

Those were churches he liked.

I'm sure he took money from the Ephesians.

He got along great with them.

Maybe even the Romans gave him some money, but not the Corinthians.

This is a whole part of 2 Corinthians for probably a chapter and a half in 2 Corinthians.

He says, You can give money to Titus for the poor.

I don't want to touch it.

I don't want you to say, I have my hands on any of your money.

You want to help the poor?

Great.

Give it to Titus, not me.

So that's the background of where he goes in verse 11.

I've been a fool.

You forced me to it.

I ought to have been commended by you.

He's rebuking them as a parent.

You should have honored me as children are supposed to honor their parents.

Even though I was not at all inferior to those super apostles.

This is dripping with sarcasm.

Even though I'm nothing of those super apostles, they can do so many fake signs.

I can't do any of their fake signs.

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with the utmost patience, signs, wonders, mighty works.

We looked at that verse last week.

In what were you less favored than the rest of the churches?

Except that I myself didn't burden you.

Do you see what he's saying?

You think you're cheated?

I didn't take any money from you.

Forgive me for not charging you.

Forgive me for not cashing your check.

Forgive me for not putting my PayPal on the bulletin after I preached.

Here for the third time, I want to come to you, and I will not be a burden.

So he's back at the end of this book.

He's saying, I do want to come to you.

I won't burden you.

He says, I don't seek what is yours, but look at this phrase.

I seek you.

That's what he tells him.

I don't want your cash.

I want your heart.

I don't want your money.

I don't want your offerings.

I just want a seat at your table.

I want to be received into your church.

That's what he says.

Now, do you notice?

This is my main point tonight.

It's not even about parenting, it's about this.

Do you notice the powerful influence of a lay elder in a church?

A pastor cannot say this.

But a lay elder can say this.

A lay elder stands, and Paul doesn't use the language of lay elder here, but he it's what he is to the Corinthians.

A lay elder stands as authenticating the truth of the church.

A lay elder can authenticate the veracity, the truth of the message that is preached.

A lay elder can show the love of the church and the priorities of the church in a way a pastor can't.

Because a lay elder, why do you think lay elders are doing what they're doing in the church?

They're not doing it for the money.

They're not doing it for the free coffee in the atrium.

Man, sometimes that coffee yikes.

It is not enough to get nobody in an elder interview says, I'm in it for the coffee.

I'm in it for the privileged parking spots.

Guess what?

They park in Egypt.

Why would a lay elder do the work of a ministry?

Because they validate and authenticate the church.

Paul's argument hinges on that.

The integrity of his argument hinges on the fact that he is not paid.

Because he is not paid, he's not their employee.

Because he's not paid, he's their parent.

That's the analogy he uses.

Listen, if you paid me, you'd be my boss.

And he says, you don't pay me.

Earlier he says, I birthed you.

I brought you into this world.

Then he says, I betrothed you.

I betrothed you.

That's the role of a father right there is to betroth his daughter to be wed.

He said, I betrothed you.

And he tells the Corinthians, you were a virgin when I betrothed you.

I gave you in purity to the Lord.

He's acting as their parent.

Now, why would he do all this?

He says earlier in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 24.

2 Corinthians 1:24

And Ron, I was thinking earlier, this is the verse I preached at your 2 Corinthians 1 24, your ordination as an elder.

Not that we lord it over your faith, Paul says, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.

Paul says, lay elders do this for one reason.

They do it for the joy of the congregation.

That's the only thing they're after, is that the congregation would have a joy.

That's why in Hebrews, Paul tells the Hebrews, don't be difficult church members.

Don't make the lay elders' lives miserable.

What benefit is that to you if the elders don't like being elders?

Nothing.

They're not in it for the money.

They're in it for your joy and specifically your joy in the Lord.

2 Corinthians 1.24, we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.

The lay elders' job in that sense, or their privilege, their duty, their obligation is to help you grow in your faith.

So back to the slide.

A parent's obligation is to meet the daily needs of their children and to store up for the future of the children.

The lay elders' obligation, this is Paul's argument here, the lay elders' obligation is to meet the daily needs of the saints.

That phrase, the daily needs of the saints, is from Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

He tells that to the Corinthians.

He says, I'm consumed with the daily needs of the church.

And then you're supposed to store up for the future health.

You're supposed to set the church up to grow and to stand on their own.

The parent is jealous of their child.

It's 2 Corinthians 11, verse 2, by the way, chapter 11, just on the other page, where he says, I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:2

Paul says, I saved up for you, I raised you, and I was supposed to marry you off.

For your joy.

God loves his people and he will work through his chosen leaders to take care of them.

And that's the responsibility that God has given lay elders to care for the needs of the church.

Elders should have a heart to shepherd the congregation.

That would be another metaphor, though, shepherding.

Paul uses that as well, of course.

But here he uses the metaphor of parenting.

And the parent does not leverage his position for his own benefit.

Parent doesn't lord over the fact that he's a parent to his child.

Instead, a parent labors for the child's growth.

Another verse where Paul describes this is Ephesians 4, verse 11.

Ephesians 4:11

He gave the pastors and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves.

Notice again that analogy.

The lay elders are working with the congregation to grow them up so that the congregation is no longer children.

That's their goal.

Elders don't want to have a congregation that's perpetually childlike.

They want to deliver them to maturity.

A congregation is immature when they're captured by every wind of doctrine or human cunning or every new strategy.

You know, a new book on church growth?

You'd expect some people in the congregation to fall for that.

You would not expect lay elders to fall for that.

Lay elders want people to grow up and not be caught by any form of human cunning or ever the new fad is in churches.

The elders' job is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

And that's a pretty basic command that flows from parenting to help the child grow up.

And a parent's goal is not to micromanage, but to equip the child to do the task the right way.

And then beyond that, to give the child the work ethic to come up with their own tasks to do.

And there's a specific way I want the grass mowed.

The lines are important to me.

They might not be important to you, but they are important to me.

I'm not just gonna turn my kids loose in the grass, and my goal is not to be walking behind them holding the lawnmower for the next four years either.

My goal is to give basic instruction so that they can learn it.

And my goal is for them not to be mowing my grass the whole the rest of their lives.

My goal is for them to have their own grass mowing company if they want, or at least their own yard to mow.

This is the role of the parent, to teach the child and then send them out.

That's what Paul is trying to do for the Corinthians.

To give them the desire to follow Christ's mature children.

You really see Paul's emotions here in this passage because he was rebuking them as earlier, oh, I've been a fool, oh, forgive me for not charging you, and now he's just burdened with them.

I don't want your money.

He's very sarcastic in verse 13.

He's been like this before in the book too, 2 Corinthians 6, verse 13.

2 Corinthians 6:13

He says, I speak to you as children, open up your heart.

He says, My heart is open to you, why isn't your heart open to me?

And then he says, I'm speaking to you as if you are a child.

Why don't you love me?

In chapter 11, verse 2, I gave you that verse a second ago.

He said he betrothed them.

Back in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, he says, I'm your father in the faith.

1 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

And he lets them know, because I'm your father, because I betrothed you, because I'm laboring with you, because you're children, the only thing I want from you is your hearts.

I want to have a relationship with you and see you growing in the Lord.

Paul at this point has given up thinking what other people think about him.

The only thing he cares about is the Corinthians.

Do they love him?

Because he loves them and he wants to see the Lord in their life.

So understand, being a lay elder, it's not about power in the church, but it's about people.

It's not about having a position of authority in the church, but it's about the people of the church.

It's not about the programs of the church, but about the people in the church.

A lay elder's position is not to guard a program, but to foster people.

It's not to have a badge with a title on it, but to foster people.

It's not even about the elder meetings.

But it's about having stewardship over the people in the church so they grow up in godliness.

This is why lay elders go to early morning prayer.

This is why they do discipleship.

This is why they meet people for coffee and for lunch.

This is why they have people over in their homes.

This is why they teach Sunday school.

This is why they get up early and stay up late to study and prepare their lessons for Sunday school, which they're not paid to do.

That's why they go to elder meetings.

It's about a willingness to spend and be spent.

And again, why would anybody do that?

And the answer is because they love the church.

They're the parents and grandparents of the church.

And they do this all for the joy of the flock.

What do they want in return?

To be loved by the church.

Paul says, verse 15, I'll gladly spend and be spent for your souls.

It's not a burden to him.

You see this?

Paul says, I'd gladly give my life for you.

I don't mind pouring out everything.

Paul's reoriented his life around the Corinthians.

I mean, this would be a big deal today if a pastor said, I visited that church three times now in the last year to help them.

I came and visited him three times.

That would be a big deal today in a world with Southwest Airlines.

That'd be a big deal.

Paul's not in a world with Southwest Airlines.

Paul's getting on a boat and is getting shipwrecked and attacked by snakes and captured by pirates and the whole thing.

He says, I'm going to visit you three times.

I mean, this is a massive sacrifice.

You would think, why would somebody do that?

Because he views them as their parent.

His goal is to see the faith pass down into them, see spiritual children grow up and to see spiritual grandchildren come behind them.

This is why he loved Timothy so much.

You know, Timothy was his child in the faith and pastored the church, grew up pastoring the church, and was passing it along to other people.

What a contrast of the Corinthians.

Paul's goal is to see the next generation value the things of the Lord.

And he viewed it as his obligation.

As parents are supposed to save up for their children.

He says in verse 15, if I loved you more, am I to be loved less?

He's poured himself out.

My challenge for you, oh, I know many of our lay elders are here tonight, is to embrace the work of the ministry, knowing you do it for the love of the congregation.

And for our congregation and for our paid pastors who are here, I would encourage you to esteem the lay elders, recognize their sacrifice in the Lord, the hours they put in to life in the church.

Because they love it, because they love their own growth and godliness, but more than that, because they love you and they love seeing you grow in the Lord.

God, we're thankful for the men that you've placed in leadership in this church.

We know every member of Emmanuel Bible should uh my manual Bible church is a stewardship that you've given us.

Each soul that is part of our congregation is a gift from you, a brick built into the building that you are building.

You are the architect.

Christ, of course, is the temple, but the church is the body of Christ, the temple of the living God being built together.

We're all members one to another, Paul tells the Corinthians, being built into the spiritual building.

We're thankful for the lay elders that you have given this congregation to labor over our souls, to rebuke us when we are in sin, to disciple us and shepherd us and to watch over our souls, and they do it all for our joy.

Keep us from grumbling about them, knowing it's no benefit to us if they grumble in in return.

Help this be a church marked by joy.

We know any church absent joy is absent Christ.

And so we know there are churches that have no Christ in them.

We read about them in Revelation.

We pray that you would guard our church from such an end, and we know that joy is the warning sign.

When joy goes, Christ leaving is not far behind.

So Lord, guard the joy of this church, the vibrancy of this church, the life of this church, and we know you do that first and foremost through the lay elders.

They mark the integrity of our congregation, and we're thankful for them.

We give you thanks for them 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.