"What to Look For When Choosing a Church" 1 Timothy Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning I want us to look at the book of First Timothy and look at what goes through your mind when someone should be choosing a church.

Let me pray for us before we begin.

Lord, we are grateful for the song we just sang.

That uh it is not our own merit that brings us here this morning.

It's not our own merit that enables us to stand before you.

It is your merit, all yours.

Nothing of this is ours except the sin that had made it necessary.

All of our salvation is a free gift from you.

We receive it with open arms, a hungry heart.

So we pray this morning as we look into your word that your word would build us up and conform us into the image of Jesus Christ.

Only your Holy Spirit can do that through the ministry of the Word.

And so we pray that that would be accomplished this morning in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

One of the most common questions I get from people is hey, the government is moving me away to such and such a city.

Do you know of a good church in that city?

And you laugh because I'm sure you have heard that question as well.

Ministry at Emmanuel is a blessing, but it is also a little bit like hugging a parade that people are just coming through.

And we know we will have them here for a few years, and some of us stay on the platform and hug them as they walk by and then wave as they ride off into the sunset, knowing that they'll go somewhere else.

And it is our goal as a church, by the way, that if you're in the military and you end up getting stationed here at the Pentagon or FBI and you come to headquarters, and you know, you've usually been in about eight years or ten years, and that happens, that you love it so much at Emmanuel that you ask to extend your time here by another two years and get more orders and maybe a third time if they let you do that, but eventually they will ship you away to somewhere else.

That is the cost of freedom.

Um, but it's our goal that when you go away and you spend another 10 years after that in the military or 15 or whatever or in the FBI, that when you retire and you're finally able to move wherever in the world you want to move, you say, honey, let's go back to Emmanuel Bible Church.

And then you look at the cost of housing here and you have second thoughts, but you do it anyway.

But I know that when you leave here, you'll have several other stops along the way where you will be looking for a church.

This is true of college students.

They're going away to college and they they ask, how do I find a good church where I'm going?

My business is transferring me to somewhere else.

How do I find a good church while I'm there?

So I have a short answer to that question, and but I also have an hour-long sermon-length answer to that question, and that's what we're going to look at this morning.

The short answer, by the way, is find a church where the pastor wears a suit, they have an awana club and nice parking lot and acquired an orchestra and all that.

That's the short answer.

No, I jest, of course.

Uh the the answer is that you're looking for.

I love the word that's usually used in this question.

Do you know a good church?

I love that word, they're good.

And so let me look at what the Bible says about that.

I'm going to give you an outline this morning, six features of a good church.

I had a different outline in my mind, maybe nine marks of a of a good church, but I've decided against that one.

We're going with six features of a good church.

And you may be interested to know this that the Bible has an entire book written to answer this question.

That is the book of 1 Timothy.

It was written for this express purpose.

The church in Ephesus was a good church.

When you look at the seven churches in Asia Minor, the letters in Revelation were written to.

The church in Ephesus was obviously the top of those churches.

It was the best of those churches.

And it didn't just happen that way.

There was pastoral labor and effort that went into the ground there in Ephesus.

Paul himself had spent time there with him.

John, who wrote the book of Revelation, had been there as their pastor.

Timothy is there as their pastor.

And the book of 1 Timothy is written by Paul to Timothy to tell him what to do in this church.

So we know from the book of Revelation that the church in Ephesus was one of the most mature and thriving churches in the early church age.

And we know from the book of 1 Timothy how that came to be.

So we want to begin this morning in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 14, where Paul tells Timothy, I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing you these things so that if I delay, you may know how you ought to behave in the household of God.

1 Timothy 3:14

So Paul is telling Timothy, I'm giving you this letter, this book that we now have in our Bibles is 1 Timothy.

This book is given to us so that we know what the church is supposed to look like.

You want to know what a healthy church looks like?

Look at the church of Ephesus and now go behind the curtain, so to speak.

And this was the work of Paul in the life of the pastor Timothy to make that church into a healthy church.

This is how they're supposed to act.

And you might think, a household of God.

That can mean, you know, any Christian household.

Well, no, keep keep reading, which is the church of the living God, Paul says.

So this is the how-to book.

This book, 1 Timothy, is a how-to.

It's an instruction manual for what does it take to grow to get to find a good church.

He says here even that the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth.

The church is very unique in redemptive history.

There was no church before Pentecost.

The church has not always been on earth.

The church is something that was started by the ministry of the Holy Spirit when he came to earth to seal the hearts of those who put their faith in Christ, who saw the resurrected Christ and believed in him, and then who believed that report.

And as the gospel spread through the world, so the church spread with it.

The church in that sense begins in the book of Acts, and it has been left on this world to be a guardian, to have stewardship, to buttress, support the truth.

And so you need to find a good church.

You need to find a church that will feed your soul, that will guard your faith, that will give you some faith to pass on to your own children.

That's the importance of finding a good church.

And I chose the number six here, six features of a good church, because there are six chapters in First Timothy.

And you'll see as we go through this that each of these points kind of corresponds to the book of First Timothy.

It's my hope that this message is useful to you when you one day leave Emmanuel to go find a new job or a new location somewhere, a new order somewhere else, that you would be used this message to find a good church wherever you end up.

The college students would use these truths in here to find a good church when they go back to college.

But I also have a secondary goal.

I hope that by this message this morning you will get a new appreciation for the book of 1 Timothy, that you will get a new understanding of this book.

You'll feel like you understand it from start to finish.

It's a book that many believers kind of skip over because it is a pastoral epistle.

It's written to pastors, and so, you know, you're not a pastor, you don't really read it.

You know, keep keep on trucking.

Get me to Hebrews.

Come on.

Well, we'll slow down here and look at this whole book this morning.

And I hope that we'll encourage you as you think about what it means to be part of a good church.

The first mark of a good church is that it has right doctrine.

That it has right doctrine.

And back in chapter three, you know, Paul dwells on that a little bit.

He says, Great indeed is the mystery of godliness in verse 16, that Jesus was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit.

So he begins with this little hymn here, and these verses, verses 14 through 16 of chapter 3, this is kind of the hinge that the book of 1 Timothy swings on.

This is the focal point of the book.

Chapters 1, 2, and 3 lead up to it, and 4, 5, and 6 come out of it.

I mean, it's the centerpiece of the book here is that you need to have a church that guards the truth.

And what that looks like is the declaration that Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh.

That Jesus left heaven, came to earth, robed himself in human nature, took on human flesh, took on a human nature, and led a sinless life, ultimately vindicated by the Spirit.

Jesus died not for his own sin, but for ours, and that's attested to by the fact the Holy Spirit raised him from the grave.

That's what the word vindicated means.

Another translation might be justified or declared righteous by the Spirit.

Vindicated is the best translation here.

It means that Jesus was God in human flesh, led a sinless life, and you know that because the Holy Spirit resurrected him.

He was seen by angels, of course, who were at his resurrection.

He was proclaimed among the nations.

The gospel is going out in the world even before Jesus ascended into heaven.

The gospel had already started to jump the banks of Jerusalem and go out into the world.

He will be believed on in the world.

And then, of course, he was taken up in glory.

The ascension is part of this as well.

So that's a little nugget here of what the church is guarding.

You have in there the incarnation, the two natures of Jesus Christ, that he was God and He is man.

You have his superiority over angels.

You have the Trinity, that He is sent from the Father and proved and vindicated by the Spirit, and you have the urgency of evangelism.

It's a message that goes to the world.

But the importance of good doctrine is not confined to chapter 3, verse 15.

It's all over this book.

And so flip back to chapter 1, and we'll work our way somewhat slowly but deliberately through this book.

Paul begins in chapter 1, verse 3, by telling Timothy, I urged you when I was going to Macedonia to remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

Paul poured his heart out in this church.

You can read about this in the book of Acts, where Paul gathers the elders around and he weeps with them about how much he loves the church at Ephesus, but he's got to keep pressing on in ministry.

And he leaves Timothy there and says, Timothy, you stay here, you guard this church.

You watch out for false doctrine, you watch out with false teaching for false teaching.

And in verse 3, he says, you specifically guard their doctrine.

Don't let bad doctrine get into the church.

Because when that happens, you find in verse 4, people will devote themselves to myths, endless genealogies.

They promote speculations, not stewardships.

They begin hearing rumors and they begin going down rabbit holes of meaningless conversations that do not guard good theology, that are not supportive of the truth.

And when that happens, the church loses focus and bad doctrine gets into the church.

The goal of a healthy church is to stay away from that, to guard the truth, verse 5 says, with a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.

Now, false teachers come into a church the church in verse 7 and they talk about things they don't know about, and they make confident assertions about things, verse 7 says, when they don't even understand what they're speaking about.

They talk about theology, but they don't know it, and the church gets led astray.

Verse 8 is just a very profound, succinct theological verse.

We know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully.

Here he's talking about the Old Testament law to the Jews or the law of God written on the conscience of the Gentiles.

This was the big debate in the early church.

It sounds like just kind of a almost a short throwaway verse for us.

This is a huge verse.

The early church, their big debate in Acts 15, was on this issue.

How does the Old Testament law relate to the New Testament church?

How does the law of Moses impact the life of believers?

The church was almost divided over this very issue.

The first church council was held on this issue.

And this is what they decided.

Well, that sounds like a tautology.

I mean, what does that even mean?

And the answer is the law is given to break down sinners.

The law is given to expose sin and drive you to salvation.

This is not an antiquated theological debate either.

I would say one of the big issues that has really ravaged the American church is this exact issue, where you find churches that don't have a theology of repentance.

They don't have a theology of holy living.

They don't have it.

There's whole churches and whole church movements that have grown up around the idea that repentance is not necessary for salvation, that repentance is not a fruit of salvation, that you shouldn't preach repentance because that's a work.

For somebody to come to faith, you don't tell them to repent of their sins because that is laying a work on them, and salvation is by faith alone, not by works.

That is a very common teaching in the United States, and that just destroys churches.

If you find a church that believes that, I'll tell you this: run.

Run.

And it gets back to what Paul says here.

The law is good if you use it lawfully.

And so what does that mean?

You use it to expose sin in people's hearts.

He gives you some examples here in verse 9 that the law is for the disobedient.

It's for the ungodly and the sinners.

It's for the unholy and the profane.

It's for those.

And now he's going to rattle through the last five of the Ten Commandments here, and he's going to show you who the law is for.

It's for those who break the fifth commandment by striking their fathers and their mothers, or the sixth commandment by murdering, or the seventh commandment by being sexually immoral.

Men who practice homosexuality, he says, can have no part in this gospel unity in the church.

Enslavers, and that's a word for people that steal people to sell them into slavery.

Paul says that's not, that's the eighth commandment, by the way, if you're keeping track.

Don't steal.

Paul relates what we would call American slavery to the eighth commandment and says that if you participate in that, you can have no part of the church.

Liars, those who bear false witness or false testimony.

And everything else, notice he says at the end of verse 10, that is contrary to sound what?

Doctrine.

All of those errors, from the errors of American slavery to homosexuality, to sexual immorality to lying, those are affronts against God because they're sin, but they're an affront against the church because they're contrary to sound doctrine.

Now, does that mean that those people should just stay away from the church?

Well, the answer is no, because Paul's going to go on to say, such were all of you, until you repented of your sins.

Look at verse 15.

The statement is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I'm the foremost.

Paul was, look at verse 13.

I formerly was a blasphemer, a persecutor.

But the key word there is formerly, and that's how you use the law.

You use the law to confront people in their sin, drive them to repentance.

They received the gospel through faith, and now they're converted and they're part of the church.

If you mess up any part of that order, it brings ungodliness into the church, and the church is stripped, stripped of its power in the world.

And it's not like that's the only doctrine either, by the way.

The doctrine of repentance and of conversion, although it's a huge one.

He talks about the sovereignty of God in verse 17.

To the king of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen.

He gets to the point of creation.

Why did God create the world?

To bring honor and glory to his own name, to magnify his own glory.

This is theology proper that God alone is truly immortal.

Your soul will be eternal, but God's soul has no beginning or end.

He's invisible.

This is the concept of God is not having a physical body until he takes on the nature and the Son of God of mankind.

He is the only God.

Now, this is all doctrine.

Of course, there are other doctrines than this.

My point is that for a church to be a good church, it has to have good and mature doctrine.

Ephesians 4, verse 14.

Ephesians 4:14

So this is 1 Timothy Paul writing the pastor.

Paul also wrote a letter to the church of Ephesus, and he tells them in the middle of Ephesians, Ephesians 4, verse 14, that they should no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

Ephesians 4:14

The church wants to grow up, they need mature doctrine.

You want to become a mature follower of Jesus Christ, you need to have a mature understanding of doctrine.

Kind of the bare minimum to believe.

That's what their statement of faith is.

You look at their website, what's a statement of faith, you click on it, and it says the Apostles' Creed minus these two sentences.

You know, they couldn't even agree on all the apostles' creed.

But the goal is not to have a bare minimum statement of faith, because that's not going to produce mature followers of Jesus Christ.

Imagine a parenting analogy.

Maybe if you looked at your kids and you said, I'm only going to feed them the bare minimum necessary for their sustenance, for their life.

I'm just going to give them the least amount of food possible.

Just to keep them alive.

And then 10 years later, you're like, how come they're not growing up big and strong?

Well, you weren't feeding them.

And the same thing is true with the church, by the way.

The church that looks for unity based upon a superficial understanding of doctrine will be a very immature church.

A very immature church.

We understand this from even gardening during quarantine.

One of my daughters got bit by the gardening bug, and we decided we were going to grow potatoes at our house.

And so we have a little whiskey barrel in our backyard and we grew them like the science teachers in elementary school taught.

You know, you took the piece of potatoes and they grew weird things out of them and you planted them in the ground, and it actually works.

Who knew?

Other than the elementary school science teachers, they knew.

But this was astonishing to me.

It's actually when there's these potato vines growing all over, and they're in this little whiskey barrel, and they don't fit.

Our barrel, I think, is too small.

And the vines are going every which way, the potatoes are going to probably be too small because we didn't get a barrel that was big enough for them.

That's the way the church works.

If you want just a small, non-confrontational, non-controversial statement of faith, you're going to have small vines growing.

You want deep roots, you want big fruit, you need a big trellis.

That's Paul's point here to the Ephesians.

You want to find a good church?

Find a church with a robust statement of faith.

Read their statement of faith.

See if it says good things.

See if you believe it.

That'd be even better.

Although, while I'm taking this point, let me quickly say this.

I can understand scenarios where you go to some city, you look at different churches' statements of faith, and you find a Presbyterian church, like, you know, not the Presbyterian church with the rainbow flag, but the good Presbyterian churches.

You find one of those Presbyterian churches and you read their there's they have the Westminster Confession, the Westminster Standards.

It's complex, it's developed, and I would not agree with everything in there.

Like I would not baptize a baby.

I would be martyred before I'd baptize a baby.

But at the same time, I would rather go to a church like that.

I would rather go to a church that has a complex statement of faith that has worked through these issues and is clear about what they would believe.

I'd have no problem going to a church like that over a church that has one of those, like, you know, statement of faith.

We believe in Jesus and most of the Bible.

Come as you are.

Give me the Presbyterian church any day of the week over that.

So, first, you're looking for a church that has right doctrine.

A good church has good doctrine that focuses on the good news because that is what we are bringing into the world to go to war against the world.

By the way, real quick, this isn't just for a mature church like Ephesus.

Crete, the island Crete, was a very immature church.

I mean, could you imagine a church of Christians?

These guys are lazy, liars, and gluttonous.

Have you ever met a Cretan?

Come on.

But Paul tells Titus, you're gonna pastor a church there, you're gonna go there, and you need, when you go there, he says Titus 2 verse 1, speak the things that are fitting for sound doctrine.

Titus 2:1

In all things, Titus 2, verse 7, show yourself to be example of good deeds with purity of doctrine.

Titus 2:7

That's the point.

That this good doctrine is what you have that compels you into the world.

And just look real quick.

I have just so much I want to say, we'll run out of time.

But look at verse 18 of chapter 1.

Paul says, I'm giving you this, Timothy, my child.

I'm entrusting this to you.

This doctrine, I'm giving it to you so that you can wage the good warfare against the world.

That's who they're going after.

They're going after the world.

This is this language of urgency.

You have good doctrine, not so you can have meaningless debates about doctrinal things.

The reason good doctrine is important is because you're at war.

And you need to go to war in the world.

Now, who is our enemy in the war?

It's the world's systems.

It's the devil who's the prince of this world, who holds this world under his sway.

It's materialism, it's worldliness, it's the immorality, it's the sin that runs rampant in the world.

That's the enemy.

Non believers are not the enemy.

Non believers are held captive by the war.

We go to rescue them, and we rescue them with our evangelism.

Remember, it's good doctrine.

That focuses on the good news so that we can go rescue people who are captive to an evil master.

That's the point of good theology.

And if you lose sight of that, verse 19, you hold the faith with a good conscience, and if you reject that, you will make shipwreck of your faith, like Hymeneus and Alexander did.

A good church has a sense of urgency about their doctrine, a sense of urgency about the world.

They're not complicit with the world's systems.

They're not just sitting back and watching the world do its thing.

No, you recognize a good church has a sense of urgency in bringing the good news to the nations.

Imagine if an invading army came to your country and invaded your country, and some of you are gonna go fight against that army, but you've got other neighbors who are like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal.

What's gonna happen to those people that shrug their shoulders?

What's gonna happen to those people that don't realize they're at war?

Well, they will eventually end up captive.

That's what will happen.

And so, to keep the analogy here, if you just shrug your shoulders and don't realize there's a sense of urgency about the gospel and about your doctrine, you're going to end up, verse 20 says, hand it over to Satan.

Because he is the leader of the army that comes against that comes against our world.

And so a good church has a good doctrine which focuses on the good news and that motivates you to go to war, to rescue people from sin.

And the doctrine thing bleeds into chapter two here.

Paul says in verse five, there's one God, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

There is only one way to God.

There's only one road to God, and it is through Christ Jesus, and there's no other way.

There's no other mediator between God and man.

This rules out a Catholic church, by the way.

The only mediator you have for salvation is Jesus Christ.

And that's why Paul, verse seven, was made a preacher and an apostle.

So much more to say about this, but let's let's move on.

Right doctrine leads to right order.

Chapter two focuses on right order, how the church relates to the world around it.

Chapter one, our doctrine is our weapon in going to war.

But chapter two, you gotta think carefully about who you're going to war against.

You're going to war against worldliness and materialism and the devil and the world, the flesh, and the devil, basically.

You're not going to war against the government.

You're not going to war against nations.

Rather, he says in chapter two, verse one, you're praying for them.

Specifically, verse two, you're praying for kings and those who are in authority.

You're praying for government.

And you're praying for them, by the way, not to take over government, not to, you know, if we finally got some Christians in office, then we get something done right around here, kind of attitude.

That's not the attitude of the early church.

That's not the attitude to the Ephesians.

The goal of praying for government is not that you'd finally get Christians into government to take it over.

The goal of praying for the government, Paul says, is that they would leave you alone.

You want to just lead a peaceful, quiet life.

You want to be able to be evangelistic.

You want to evangelize everything that moves out there, and you want the government to let you do that.

And so you pray the government would leave you alone.

Just let you go evangelize.

Do your thing.

You want to lead a peaceful and quiet life, dignified in every way, because that's what's pleasing in the sight of God.

That you would love the kingdom of God more than the kingdoms of this world.

I'm thankful we have believers in politics and in government and that they can make a difference there.

They're light in a dark place, their salt that preserves common grace in the world.

I'm thankful for that.

But understands that the church's mission here is not to influence government.

The church's mission here is to change hearts, to rescue sinners under the sway of the evil one.

That's our mission.

We pray for our government.

I pray that everybody would be converted.

That's why Paul says, I want prayers for all kinds of people, including kings.

Pray for all kinds of people.

But understand our motivation.

We're not trying to overthrow the government.

We're trying to be left alone by them.

That doesn't mean we're passive, remember?

We are very militant towards the world, rescuing people from sin.

It's just not a political rescue.

So that's the second way, right order.

But right order isn't confined just to government.

Right order goes on and goes to understanding genders, understanding there's men and women, and God made them differently for different reasons.

That's another mark of a healthy church.

He says this here in verse 8.

I desire that men everywhere should pray without anger.

Men should be leading the church, and they should be praying for the church, and they should be doing so without anger.

God designed men to be leaders.

Men are particularly prone to the sin of anger.

And so Paul says, Your church needs to be led by men who aren't angry.

In contrast, he says, I don't want a woman, verse 12, to teach or exercise authority over a man.

Rather, she is to remain silent, in the implication here in the churches, that women should not be leading the church.

Women should not have a position of authority in the church.

If men are prone to anger, women could be prone to gossip or immodesty.

And that's what he says in verse 9.

Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, because that is what is proper for a woman who professes godliness.

And this goes back to the very created order, by the way.

God made Adam and he made Eve.

And Adam was called to subdue the earth to be fruitful and multiply.

Adam needed a helper.

He couldn't do this by himself.

He couldn't be fruitful and multiply by himself, obviously.

The idea is that he's overwhelmed by the world, and God gives him Eve to be the helper.

So the call came to Adam.

Eve is now designed to be the helper for Adam.

That was the initial creation design before sin entered the world.

Now sin enters the world, more on that in a second.

There's a consequence for sin, a curse in sin.

And the curse in sin is that men, it will be hard for them to work.

The ground bites back.

You sweat when you work.

It is difficult to work.

It is difficult to lead.

It's easier to not lead than it is to lead.

The pain and the curse for women is going to be in childbirth.

The childbirth will be painful.

It will be difficult.

And so the curse for women is different than the curse for men.

The curse for men is that work is going to be hard and it's easier to be apathetic.

The curse for women is that child raising is going to be hard and it would be easier to not do it.

And that, by the way, is exactly where the devil attacks, isn't it?

Back in the garden.

The devil's goal in the garden was not just to get Adam and Eve to eat the fruit.

He wasn't after the fruit.

The fruit was just a prop.

The devil in the garden was after getting Eve to step away from her husband's leadership, getting Adam to abdicate his leadership.

And in so doing, he overthrows the family order.

And that remains a curse in the world to this day.

When Adam became apathetic and let Eve make the decision for their family, and she ate, and sin entered the world.

And this is what Paul even says.

I'm not making this up.

Look at what he says in verse 14.

Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived.

She became the transgressor.

Verse 13, Adam was formed first and then Eve.

This is connected to leadership in the church.

This is why Paul says, a good church will have men leading, not the women.

And the converse of that is that a good church will esteem women who are raising their children.

Verse 15.

Yet she, women, will be safe, will be kept safe.

Some translations say saved there.

The word is sozo.

I think it's better translated, will be kept safe through childbearing.

Women are called to raise their children.

If, of course, they continue in faith and love and holiness, and raising children isn't virtuous in and of itself.

It has to have faith, love, and holiness.

Now, all the disclaimers, of course, should go with this that Paul's not saying that every man should be an elder at the church.

That's not the call.

He's not saying that every man should be a leader in the church.

He's not saying that every man should preach.

Don't bum rush me up here.

At the same time, he's not saying every woman to fulfill her life needs to have children.

Of course, that's not the case.

But he is saying, you want to find a good church?

Find a church where men are leading.

And you want to find a good church?

Find a church that esteems women who are raising their children.

Find a church who teaches in their women's ministry that that's the calling of women.

To raise godly families.

And that's a virtuous, it's a high calling.

I would say, very far away from a church that teaches for a woman to have a worthwhile and fulfilled life, she needs to take on her husband's life.

And I would say, very far away from a church that said for men to be truly kind and generous towards women, they need to abdicate their leadership to them.

Both are very dangerous, very dangerous.

And that's Paul's point here.

Find a you're looking for a good church, find a church with male leadership.

Find a church with a healthy, strong women's ministry that teaches the biblical view of womanhood, God's high calling for women.

I'm skipping pages of notes right here, but there's always another Sunday.

Third point, if the Lord tarries.

Right leadership in the church.

This gets you to chapter three.

Right leadership in the church.

Chapter three, of course, I just said that not all men are called to be leaders.

The Bible gives descriptions for who should be leading in the church, the qualifications they have.

A church needs to have qualified elders.

There's positions in the church that are both men and women, by the way.

That's the position of deacons, the work of functioning of deacons of serving in the church.

A good church is marked by servants, both men and women who are serving.

That's verses 8 through 13.

But before that, verses 1 through 7 of chapter 3 are about the criteria for male leadership.

A godly church, a good church, should have elders leading the church.

And there is just an epidemic of churches in our world that don't have elders, and it doesn't make any sense to me.

They treat this mandate for elders as if it's optional, or as if they're too busy to do it.

They don't have enough time to find elders, they don't have enough people to find elders.

Listen, if Titus, there's probably 40 cities in Crete, and they were all immature.

There weren't mature believers anywhere in Crete.

Now Titus had to go appoint elders in all those cities.

He had to raise up 80 people.

Certainly, a church can find elders.

The point is that elders should be the godly men of the church and they should be leading the church.

Find a plurality of godly men.

They're the leaders of the church.

Elders in Crete are not going to be able to be elders in Ephesus, by the way.

Crete, as I said, is a very immature church.

Ephesus, a very mature church.

They're on third generation believers in Ephesus.

Somebody's grandmother's saved in Timothy's case.

Third generation believers.

So you're going to have a higher standard for elders in Ephesus than you would in Crete.

But the point is, you want the godly men leading the church.

And this isn't optional.

Acts 14, 23 says that they appointed elders in every church they planted, the early church did.

Acts 11, verse 30, one of the first marks of the early church was that they appointed elders.

Acts 11:30

And the elders appointed missionaries and laid hands on the missionaries like we did last week.

Acts 15, it was the elders that got together to choose the missionaries and work through what how the church was supposed to relate to the law of Moses.

When Paul, as I mentioned earlier, left the Ephesians, he wept over their elders and said, guard the flock.

It's elders who pray for the church.

That's James 5, verse 14, who pray for the weak and the sick and the afflicted in the church.

James 5:14

It's elders who are caring, who are shepherding, is the language of Hebrews 13, shepherding the flock.

Peter says, the elders who are shepherding the flock of God among you.

It is elders who God is designed to have stewardship over the church and care for the souls that are in the church.

Elders are not concerned about themselves, they're concerned about the lives of the sheep in the congregation.

That is the mark of a good church.

So you're looking at a church, check their website.

Do they have elders?

That's a pretty basic criteria for a church.

They have the godly men leading the church, guarding them from false teaching.

That's chapter three.

Chapter four.

After right leadership comes right preaching.

Or back to the pulpit now.

Chapter 4, verse 1.

The Spirit expressly says in later times people will depart from the faith by giving themselves over to dangerous teaching, deceitful spirits.

They'll be liars.

He goes all the bad things that will happen to them.

They'll forbid marriage.

He'll say it's not right for godly people to marry.

They'll require abstinence from certain foods.

Look, come up with these new rules for everybody to follow.

How do you combat that?

How do you combat that kind of legalism from entering the church?

Well, Paul says you combat it, by the way, with the word of God in verse 5.

And in verse 6, you put these things before the brothers, Timothy.

Put them before the brothers.

Go up there and preach, Timothy.

Get behind the pulpit.

Look at the middle of verse 6.

Train them in the words of the faith and the good doctrine that you have followed.

The pastors guard the church from false doctrine and bad teaching and unholy living through the ministry of the pulpit, which is all about Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4, verse 5.

2 Corinthians 4:5

Paul says, I don't preach myself, I preach Christ crucified.

The preacher, a good church, is marked by a preacher and many preachers who let the word of God flow from their mouth to the congregation.

They don't get behind the pulpit with irreverent.

Look at verse 7, having nothing to do with irreverent and silly myths.

A good church doesn't have a preacher that talks about himself.

It doesn't have a preacher that gets put on tangents or politics or the silly things of the day.

A good church is marked by a sense of captivation with the urgency of bringing the message to the world, the importance of the doctrine, the importance of the pulpit.

A good church features good preaching.

It prioritizes preaching.

This is just drawn out over and over again.

In verses 11 through 16, look at this.

Command and teach these things, he says.

Command and teach these things.

Let no one despise you, Timothy, for your youth.

Timothy was obviously younger than people in the congregation, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in faith, in purity.

And he's not talking about in the quietness of his life being an example for people, although that is true.

He's supposed to guard his life and his doctrine.

He's talking about from behind the pulpit.

Set an example for everyone.

Verse 13, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.

And that word reading could, it's the word for preaching.

The public reading or exhortation, commanding of Scripture to exhortation.

It's another word for preaching and to teaching.

So all of this is a public ministry.

Paul's telling Timothy, you want the church in Ephesus to be a good church?

Get behind the pulpit and preach.

Exhort them.

Bring the word of God to them, not silly things about you, but profound things about the Lord.

Publicly doing this.

Verse 14, don't neglect the gift you have.

Speaking of his preaching gift, it was given to you by prophecy.

The council of elders laid hands on you.

Practice these things.

Keep watch over yourself and your teaching.

Persist in this, and you will save yourself and your hearers.

Do you see how this whole chapter is just sprinkled with language about preaching?

He refers even to the congregation there as hearers, hearers of the sermon.

This is the mark of a good church.

Jesus, when he began his ministry, Matthew 4, verse 17, was tempted after his temptation.

Matthew 4:17

He goes out preaching, it says.

Matthew 10, verse 7, he sends the 72 in the world.

Matthew 10:7

He says, Go out and preach.

He's run out of Nazareth, Jesus was.

And he says, That's okay, because I have to preach in other cities as well.

That's Luke 4, verse 43.

Luke 4:43

Jesus tells all disciples of Christ to go into all the nations, making disciples of people, teaching them, but he tells his apostles, go into all the nations, make disciples of them, preaching to them.

That's Mark 16, verse 15.

Mark 16:15

That's the verse, by the way, that Peter quotes to Cornelius when Cornelius says, What are we Gentiles supposed to do?

And Peter says, Jesus told me to come preach to all people.

Paul writes to Romans and says, I'm writing to you because I want to get to you.

Romans 1, verse 15, so I can preach to you.

Romans 1:15

I'm eager to preach to you.

Romans 15, 20, pray for me to get to Spain so I can preach there.

1 Corinthians 1 verse 17, Paul says, I didn't come here to baptize you.

1 Corinthians 1:17

I came here to preach to you.

Acts chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

I can go on and on, but Acts chapter 6, there's division in the church.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

There's what we would call a social justice issue in the church where the Gentile widows, the Hellenistic widows are being neglected, discriminated against in the church by the Jewish widows, and they rise up and go to the elders, and the elders say, we can't deal with this now.

We're going to send the deacons to deal with this.

It's not for the elders to deal with because we have to focus on preaching.

And so how sad it is, how sad it is to look at kind of a nation of churches in many regards that doesn't value preaching.

That views preaching almost as an impediment, something boring to get through.

I read a book recently called Why Johnny Can't Preach.

What a great title, by the way.

Why Johnny Can't Preach.

And in there, the author did an interview with all these churches that were looking for new pastors, and he found that most of these churches don't even listen to candidates' sermons before they hire them.

That when elders are being honest and elders are voting on a pastor or not a pastor, most of the elders had never even listened to his sermons.

They couldn't bring themselves to do it.

And the guy asked them why not, and most of the elders said the same thing.

We gave up on the idea that we would find good preaching.

We gave up on that.

So we're just looking for someone that is nice and will love people and has a nice wife, and then we can deal with the bad preaching after that.

Heavy sigh.

Heavy sigh.

I was at a New Year's Eve party a couple years ago with a lay elder from a church in a different city, and I asked him how his church was going, and he said, Oh, it's going so bad, we haven't need a pastor, and I don't think it's working out.

Oh, really?

He didn't know this guy didn't know I was a pastor.

And uh like, okay, why not?

And he said, Well, he's been here four months and he's been in the same book the whole four months.

Like, okay, and what book?

And the guy says, the book of Luke, and he's only on chapter 16.

Now I'm doing math in my mind.

I'm like, four times four is sixteen.

What is he preaching?

Luke is like one of the most complex books to preach in the whole Bible, and he's trucking through it at a chapter a week.

I mean, that's insane.

What does he give the prodigal son half of a sermon?

Come on.

I'm like, well, how long is the guy's sermon?

Certainly he's preaching like two hours or something, like like me, apparently, right now.

And uh and the guy says, no, he's preaching 20-minute sermons.

You can't even read Luke in that amount of time.

We call that a sermonette for Christianets who go outside and smoke a cigarette.

This is not what Paul told Timothy.

Paul told Timothy, 2 Timothy 4, verse 1, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who's to judge the living and his dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom.

2 Timothy 4:1

And if you keep track of those charges, I saw not just I tell you, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and Christ, Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and by his kingdom, that is nine charges right there.

And what's it leading up to?

Preach the word.

Don't ask your pastor to come share what's on his heart, ye gods.

So you're looking for a good church?

Do what perhaps the elders of the church didn't.

Listen to the guy's sermons.

See if the church features preaching.

Timothy is told, preach the word, because by you do that, you'll save the people listening to you.

Which leads to the fifth feature of a good church.

Number five here is a right love.

Chapter five is all about the relationships in the church.

Everybody's got to love on each other.

Chapter 5, verse 1, don't rebuke an older man, but encourage him, respect him, honor him.

Verse 2, treat women who as mothers.

Older women, treat them like they're your own mother.

Younger women, treat them like sisters.

A healthy church loves the women of the church, respects them, honors them, guards their purity, treats the older women like they're your very own mother.

Treats older men like fathers, like legitimately respecting them.

Honoring widows, it says in verse 3, who are truly widows.

And he's gonna go through this.

We don't have time to work through our way through the chapter, but he's telling you, treat the older women like your parents, treat the younger people with just love and purity.

And sometimes this love comes with a check.

Older women in the church should not be in concern for their life, the church should support them.

If they're widows, the church should support them.

And if they have family members, he's gonna say later on, if they have family members who are believers, the family members should support them.

So he's saying a good church has children that are financially supporting their parents if they need it.

A good church has parents who are financially supporting their children if they need it.

That's a big if on that one, by the way.

It's marked by love for each other.

And that keeps going all the way through the church.

They love their pastor.

They love the one preaching them.

Verse 17.

A good church is going to be ruled well by someone who's worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

He's talking about paying the pastor.

A good church pays its pastor.

Why would a church not pay a pastor?

Because they don't value preaching.

You know, they don't value what he's doing, they don't value shepherding.

So Paul says a good church is going to pay the one who's preaching.

You would if you'd feed an ox.

If an ox was treading out the grain, you would at least let the ox eat the food.

The laborer deserves his wages.

By the way, which is a quote of Jesus.

So the gospel of Luke had already been written when Paul wrote this.

Just a little side note there.

A good church not just pays the pastors, but also loves the elders by guarding their reputation.

You don't receive a charge against an elder except by two or three witnesses.

And those that do sin, you rebuke them in the presence of all.

I mean, so that's the full package here that you love everybody.

You guard and protect your elders.

You pay your pastors, you love the widows by making sure they're not in concern for their life.

You love families by encouraging them to care for each other.

You love older men, you love older women, you love everybody.

You can't discern this in a church on their website, right?

You have to actually go and visit and see if people in the church love each other, see if they know each other.

This is an argument against the church on a screen, by the way.

Don't power on the pastor and power off the pastor when he's done preaching.

That's not a church that knows each other.

You want people that are around each other and care for each other.

Jesus didn't just phone it in from heaven.

He came to earth, incarnational ministry.

And so we look for a church that is incarnational, where the people are together.

Coronavirus, footnote.

And then number six, finally, number six.

Right living.

All of chapter six is about love of the world versus the love of holiness.

Don't love the world.

A good church is not going to be one that loves the world, and there's a constant pull to love the world.

And people want to love the world, by the way, chapter six, verse three, because they have bad doctrine, he says.

They have bad doctrine.

He talks about slaves and masters in verses one and two.

I didn't just mean to skip over that, but basically what's behind that is slaves that would love the ease in the world more than working hard for their master.

And Roman slavery, very different than American slavery.

Don't confuse those two.

Very, very different.

Verse 3, different doctrine comes in and causes you to love the world.

That produces verse 4, envy and quarrels and arguing.

How do you fight against that?

Verse 6, godliness with contentment.

You didn't bring anything into the world, he says in verse 7.

So you're not going to take anything out of the world.

Just be content with what you have.

Find a church that does not teach the love of money.

Prosperity gospel churches right out.

That teaches you to be content with what you have.

And it's, of course, churches have money and they leverage their money for the advancement of the kingdom.

A strong church does that.

Emmanuel has been blessed with so many financial resources, and we try to use them to leverage the gospel for the world.

But there are those who love money and they will produce themselves, they'll pierce their souls, verse 10 says, with great pangs that lead to death.

This should not be true in the church.

As for you, verse 11 says, Man of God, flee those things.

Fight the fight, hold on to eternal life, hold on to the person of Jesus Christ.

Keep the commandment, verse 14, unstained and free from reproach until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And then there's more about doctrine there at the end, and you can read through that on your own.

All of this has been entrusted to us in verse 20.

Guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Do not love the world or the things in the world.

John says, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

This book ends in verses 15 to the end with a high view of God.

A good church has a high view of God and a low view of the world.

And they're connected, by the way.

They're connected.

If you have a low view of God, you want to make God fit in the world.

You want to bring God in heaven down to earth and dilute it so it fits in on the earth.

If you have a high view of God, you are brought up to heaven through singing.

You are brought up to heaven through preaching.

If you have a low view of God, you're diluting God to make him more comfortable on the earth.

You want to fight against worldliness, then hold on to good doctrine.

You want to hold on to good doctrine, then fight against worldliness.

Run away, run away fast from a church that stresses how much they're like the world.

A church that says, hey, we're happy here on the world.

You should be happy here in the world.

And they're even- they say it on their websites even.

They don't even try to hide it.

You want to find a church that is not comfortable with worldliness, that is not comfortable here on the earth, that lives like pilgrims and wants a better world that is to come.

So how do you practically do this, by the way?

You want to find a church that has good doctrine?

Go to their website and read it.

You want to find a church that believes that there are two genders and they have different callings, then look, do they have male leadership?

Do they have a women's ministry that actually teaches God's high calling for women?

You want to find a church that has elders?

Go on the website.

Look at them.

Read their bios.

You want to find a church that features preaching, not 20-minute homilies.

You want to find a church that loves each other.

You have to actually go to find that one out.

They don't say there's not on the website like check mark, verified, we love each other.

No, you gotta go.

And a church that loves God more than the world, go worship there and see if it draws you up to heaven.

This is what it takes to find a good church.

That's some work.

But it is worth it.

It is worth it because the church is what God has given to steward the faith while we're here on earth waiting for his return.

Lord, we're thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ, that God became a man, gave his life for ours so that we might live.

We're thankful for the church.

We're thankful for Emmanuel.

Like Ephesus, a church like this doesn't just happen.

It took labor and work over decades to produce it.

We're thankful for the generations that have gone before us here.

We're thankful for the men and women who have served our church so well, so sacrificially through the generations.

We're thankful for the older men and women that are here now.

Our connection to the history of Emmanuel, there's they're here.

We love them.

We care for them.

And we pray that we too would be found as faithful as they were.

I pray for people listening to the sermon as they go looking for a church for their families to worship at.

Give them grace.

Give them opportunity.

Give them direction.

Work through your spirit in their life.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.

It's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church, you can go to IBC.church.

Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.