"Qualified" 1 Timothy 3:1-7 Sunday Evening Worship Service

So I want to look tonight at 1 Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 through 7, which is the New Testament's description of what it means to be an elder.

1 Timothy 3:1–7

Emmanuel Bible Church is an elder-led church, which means that Christ is the Lord of the church, but he has raised up elders who lead the church.

Not every church is like this.

The very first church I worked at was not an elder-led church.

It was a pastor-led church, what they called the Mosaic model of leadership.

As God raised up Moses in the wilderness, so God had raised up our pastor.

And just as if anybody crossed Moses in the wilderness, they were swallowed by a hole.

Well, you can reason out the rest of that.

And I would hazard to say that it was not the most healthy church environment for that exact reason.

And I remember even talking to that pastor once about the idea behind Mosaic leadership versus elder leadership.

And we looked at 1 Timothy 3, and his response to 1 Timothy 3 was really, I don't know, it was interesting to me.

He's like, you know, there's different ways.

There's freedom in Christ, there's different ways to lead a church.

Some churches go down the elder road and have elders, and some churches go down the Moses road, and we choose the Moses road.

And basically, if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere.

And so, long story short, here I am.

But 1 Timothy 3 is not optional.

Paul designs the New Testament church to work in one way, and that way is to have elders.

He, through the work of the Holy Spirit, raises up men in the church who will lead the church.

And this is a pattern throughout the Bible, by the way.

It's not confined to the New Testament.

Every movement of God, really through world history, God has orchestrated that movement through a man.

He has called Noah to build the ark and usher in the era of government on the world.

He called Abraham to usher in the Abrahamic covenant through his people.

He called Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery.

He called David to be a model of what the Savior would be from Jerusalem.

And where, of course, David is inadequate, it points to Christ.

He raised up prophet after prophet.

He refers to Ezekiel and Jeremiah as men who would stand in the gap for his people.

But the difference between the church and all of these different movements of God through time is the presence and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Israel was not indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Believers in the Old Testament were not sealed by the Holy Spirit.

Israel, in that sense, was not a spiritual enterprise.

Although they should have been about spiritual truth, and although the Holy Spirit set aside men at different times to work according to his will and help build the nation, sometimes women as well to help build the nation, those were not normative.

They were exceptions.

What a contrast with the New Testament.

This is the very point, by the way, where the church excels over Israel.

This is why Paul in the book of Hebrews refers to the Old Covenant as obsolete.

And brothers and sisters, I pray you see this is a huge distinction between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

In the New Covenant, the every individual, no matter how immature of a believer, is sealed with the Holy Spirit and put into a spiritual body, the church.

This is not true of the old covenant.

The old covenant was often a covenant of failure.

It was a covenant of law which showed how they ought to live.

And then really one story after another of their failure to do just that.

Because it was not a congregation built by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

It was not a place where God raised up elders to be spiritual shepherds for the people.

In fact, the shepherds in the Old Testament were more like wolves than shepherds because they did not have the Holy Spirit.

This is why Jesus can tell the disciples that it is better for him to go away and send the Holy Spirit than it would be for him to stay.

If you do not see that difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, you really are at a loss to understand why Jesus said it was better for him to go away.

The church is just fundamentally different from the Old Testament, the Old Covenant.

And it is because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Now, one of the practical manifestations of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and there are many, by the way, many, many, many.

From your own personal sanctification, your prayer life to your time in the Word and how you grow in the Lord, scores, dozens upon dozens of practical applications of how the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant makes the church superior to the old covenant.

One of those ways, so not the biggest way, one of those ways, is how the Holy Spirit raises up elders to lead the church.

He does not leave us as orphans, but God sends his Spirit who dwells in each believer and then unites us into a corporate body.

And the corporate bodies are represented in individual congregations with their own elders.

There is a huge difference between the invisible church and the visible church.

There are lots of believers around the world that are not part of Emmanuel Bible Church.

Right?

I mean, that's obvious.

But Emmanuel Bible Church is the manifestation, the corporate gathering of us, our believers, who are knit together around our church's mission, around our church's identity, what we're doing here.

And one of the things that knits us together is the elders that lead the church.

And this should be true of every new covenant church.

And this is why Paul, in the middle of this letter, which is written to tell us how the church should behave, how the church should act until Jesus comes.

In fact, he says that in chapter 3, verse 15.

I'm writing these things so that you know how you ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the buttress of the truth.

Great indeed is the mystery of godliness, Paul says.

In other words, the mystery of godliness is great, so to be stewards of us, to guard us, he's given us the church and these instructions.

And these instructions get to the nitty-gritty here in chapter three when it starts talking about elders.

It's introduced to the phrase, chapter three, verse one, this saying is trustworthy.

That's an expression that is used five times in the pastoral epistles.

Five times Paul ascribes a saying as trustworthy, so we should listen to it.

And it is remarkable.

I went through this afternoon and chased down those five times.

It's remarkable to think of the theology behind how Paul says something is a trustworthy saying.

First Timothy 1, verse 15.

1 Timothy 1:15

He says it's a trustworthy saying that Christ came into the world to save sinners.

That's a good saying, right?

Christ came to save us and we are sinners.

1 Timothy 4.10.

It's a trustworthy saying that God is the savior of all people, but especially the savior of those who believe.

That God is a savior for believers differently than he is for the world.

2 Timothy 2.11.

This saying is trustworthy.

If we have died with him, so we will live with him.

The necessity of repentance.

Titus 3, verse 5.

Titus 3:5

This saying is trustworthy that he saved us not because of works done in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing and regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

If you just take those four verses together, you can you have a Trinitarian theology.

One of those sayings is about the Holy Spirit, one is about Christ, and one is about the Father.

You have basically all the teachings about that Paul lists in Hebrews as the elementary doctrines of the necessity of repentance, of laying on of hands, which we see in 1 Timothy 3, verse 1.

1 Timothy 3:1

He builds out these elementary doctrines by saying these are trustworthy statements.

And the one he uses here corresponds to the passage in Hebrews with the laying on of hands, the idea of setting aside some for pastoral and elder ministry.

So this saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to the office of an overseer, he desires a noble task.

The office of overseer is that of an elder or a pastor or a shepherd.

These are all interchangeable words.

Presbyteros, which is just the idea of an elder, someone who is a leader in the church.

It's used synonymously in the New Testament with pastor, elder, bishop, you can translate it any which way.

They're all the same office.

And here it is called an office.

It is a function that somebody has in the church.

It's their title, so to speak.

It's what they do in the church.

And the first qualification he gives to being an elder is that you want to be one.

You have to want to be an elder.

It's the very first qualification.

I've had people say, I don't I feel like the Lord's calling me to be a pastor, but I don't want to.

Hey, let me let me help you here.

He's not calling you to be a pastor.

The first qualification is that you want to do it.

That you want to be an elder.

And notice aspiration here is a good thing.

It's good to aspire to this.

Sometimes I think in English the word ambition has a negative connotation.

Somebody has ambition.

They want to climb the ladder.

They want prestige.

That's not what Paul is esteeming here.

He's not esteeming ambition in the church.

He's not esteeming ladder climbing in the church.

Paul here is talking about aspiration, that somebody has a goal.

They set a goal, they aspire to it, they work towards it, they labor towards it.

That's good.

That is different than ambition, which has a selfish tinge to it.

But the Greek word here is epithymea, which is a strong desire.

It's a word that's used sometimes positively.

We long for the return of Christ, is one use of it.

Sometimes it's used negatively about the lust of the flesh.

Here, Paul uses it to describe the desire of somebody to have the office of an elder or a pastor.

But it's not just the office they're aspiring to.

Notice if you look carefully, they are actually desiring not the office, but the work.

They want the job of it, they want the labor of it.

And in chapter five, he's gonna make a distinction between pastors who are paid and elders who are not paid.

That distinction is coming up.

But right now he has not made it yet.

So this is inclusive.

He's describing the work even as of a lay elder as a work.

It doesn't mean they're being paid for it.

He's gonna make that clear as I said in chapter five.

Not all elders are paid for their ministry.

Nevertheless, it is work for all elders.

Even those that don't get a W-2 at the end of the year are still working as elders.

Because they're not working by punching in on a time card, they're laboring among the flock.

And that's what you aspire to.

You know, through out the 1700s, pastoral ministry was often a place for lazy people to land.

It was a place for people to, I don't know, feed their indulgences because they had a set salary.

I mean, this comes from this hangover of Catholicism that had made its way into the Anglican Church.

And in Catholicism, if you got if you became a priest, there's no way to fire a priest.

You know, it's one of the sacraments.

You can't get rid of him.

And so you're kind of stuck with him.

So if you could make it in as a priest, then you were set for life.

And that kind of hung over into Protestant Christianity and into Anglicanism for a while, where there was a reputation, especially in 1700s, England, for people to go into pastoral ministry because they couldn't do anything else.

There was a way to get fed and to have some kind of prestige.

And a lot of people pursued science.

They wanted to be a scientist, but they couldn't cut it in the academy, and so they became a pastor, and that gave them a lot of free time to look at the stars.

Paul forbids that here.

Pastoral ministry is not a fallback position.

It's always dangerous when somebody says, uh, you know, I want to go to seminary because I've tried this job and it's not working out.

Got fired from this job, got fired from that job.

Doesn't look like I can do anything, so I'm gonna give seminary a try.

Yikes.

And this is not a fallback position.

This is a place, pastoral ministry or being an elder, it's a place for people who excel at life, who have a reputation for excellence, and who have the desire to use their abilities in the church.

It's a noble task, Paul says.

It's something that's exalted.

It's good to want this.

And I say this because Christianity has humility baked into it.

We're supposed to be humble people.

We're supposed to be humble people.

We laugh at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses writes that Moses was the most humble person ever.

It makes us chuckle.

You know, in our worldview, that we want to be humble, we know it's good, but we don't want to say we're humble.

You know, people say, you know, if you say you're humble, you just lost it.

You proved you're not.

And just a whole catch 22 kind of thing here.

We understand that that's just that Christian dimension that we're deferring, we're deferential.

We understand the parable that you walk into a room, you don't sit at the head of the table, you sit at the foot of the table and let somebody invite you forward.

That's just in the nature of the church.

And so it'd be very easy for people to be sitting around in a room and who wants to be a pastor?

And you want to be a pastor, you want to be an elder, but you don't want to say that, because that would be, you know, moving yourself up at the table, so to speak.

And so Paul says, look, it's okay.

It's good if you want to do the work.

So much better than the alternative.

I took my kids on an Amish buggy ride last year, a couple years ago, and we asked the Amish, you know, the guy riding, driving the horses there, said, Do you guys have any questions about the Amish?

And we had lots of questions about the Amish that he was not too keen to answer.

We wanted to know about their church.

We wanted to know how somebody became a pastor.

Did they go to seminary or whatever?

So we found out, he tells us, it's not the same everywhere, but in his little enclave there, in his little village, that once a family got too big, you know, ten families, so to speak, ten husbands that are married and their kids were too big, you know, they'd have once they hit 20, they'd split it in half and take 10, and they'd go build a new house and start out a new place, and they would have a new pastor.

And how did you choose which one would be the pastor?

They would, all the ten husbands would write their name on a piece of paper, put it in a hat, and have the old pastor draw the name out, and that guy was the pastor.

Yeah, nobody wanted it.

And he said actually that his brother had recently been drafted through the whole hat thing to be the new pastor, and that everybody in the extended family sent him a sympathy card.

Like, oh, I'm so sorry.

It's like the worst thing that could happen to you, because it's not under rotation.

You don't turn out of that, you get drafted in it.

That's the rest of your life.

You know, they they only have church gatherings two or three Sundays a month, and that guy doesn't preach, but he coordinates all of it.

It's likely gonna be in his house.

It's kind of a a big deal that he doesn't want.

What a contrast with 1 Timothy 3, verse 1.

1 Timothy 3:1

That you want this work.

You want it.

So that's the first qualification.

What's gonna follow is another seven positive qualifications and four negative qualifications.

So seven positives, four negatives, and we're gonna rattle through these at a warp speed tonight.

Therefore, verse two an overseer, again, elder, presbyteros, pastor, whatever you want to say, must be above reproach.

In fact, this Greek word here, it's the word for reproach with the alpha primitive in front of it, which just means not.

You know that.

You're gonna see that a few times in here.

So Gnostic, knowledge, agnostic, no knowledge, theist, God, atheist, no god.

Here's the word for reproach with the alpha in front of it.

So reproach, no reproach.

The first qualification after wanting it is that your life has no reproach in it.

In other words, I like the way it's translated, you're above reproach.

It's an American idiom, but it it makes perfect sense here.

Somebody is above reproach.

That means you can't reasonably bring an accusation against them.

That's what it means to be above reproach.

Not that nobody will bring an accusation against you.

People brought accusations against Jesus.

In fact, he bore reproach outside the city, Hebrews 13 says.

He himself had reproach.

Nevertheless, his life was above reproach, and that was evident at his trial.

Even though he bore reproach and people accused him of things, at his trial, the accusers couldn't get their story straight.

None of the two of them could agree on one thing.

What a picture of being above reproach.

This means that for somebody to be an elder, they lead their life in such a way that nobody can reasonably bring an accusation of immorality against them.

Their reputation is such that those accusations don't stick, they bounce off of them.

You know, and you see this in the very practical ways.

You know, pastors often have windows in their door for if they're counseling a single woman or whatever.

The woman can't leave and say, Oh, something funny happened behind the door.

No, there's a window in the door, and the secretary or another pastor is right outside.

You that accusation won't stick.

That's this is a very basic level of what it means to be above approach.

You live your life in such a way that those kind of accusations don't stick.

When those who know you hear an accusation, they say you must have the wrong guy.

That kind of thing.

Did you hear so-and-so did this or so-and-so stole money from his work, and you hear that and you say, I know so-and-so, that doesn't seem reasonable.

That's his reputation.

It is such that he seems above reproach.

Now, as we go through all of these, these are basically, they're both yes-no and sliding scale kind of things.

So all these are yes-no kind of things.

They're all principles you apply in selecting elders, and it's possible for people to fail these tests.

It's possible for Christians to not be elder qualified.

I mean, I think that's somewhat of an obvious point.

These are generally, not all of them, but they're things that generally people should aspire to.

So it's generally good for you to aspire to have a life that's above reproach.

But it is the first qualification for being an elder.

And what I mean by there on a sliding scale is this will look different in different congregations.

It looks different in Crete than it does in Ephesus.

The elders in Crete are more immature than the elders in Ephesus.

The elders at a church like Emmanuel that has been around for 50 years, is gonna be different than a church plant down the street with a bunch of, you know, 20, 25-year-olds in the church.

They're gonna have elders, but they're gonna be different than the elders at a church that is more historic.

That's the idea.

That's what I mean by sliding scale.

Nevertheless, your life should be above reproach.

And I use the example of the window, but there's other things too, about how you handle your money.

You know, you don't have a secret bank account from your spouse, because that's not above reproach.

You don't have a secret life.

Your life is such that it's out in the open.

People know who you are.

It doesn't mean that you're sinless, but it means that serious accusations don't stick because of how you conduct your life.

That's the first qualification.

So when you're examining yourself for this, or where you're looking at your elders, you should see this is true as the elders of an Emmanuel Bible Church.

When you know the elders of the church, you should say, you know what, that guy is above reproach.

He generally does lead his life in such a way that accusations against him can't stick.

And when you ask yourself that, you might ask yourself, what areas of my life are open to serious accusations I wouldn't be able to defend myself against?

Not meaning that you're like afraid of, you know, people lying about you and how you cover yourself against lies.

You know, we're not called to be servants of fear, but how you just reasonably lead your life with the kind of integrity that develops that reputation.

Second, an elder must be the husband of one wife.

That means he has one wife.

It doesn't mean he has to be married.

It means literally, literally, Greek is that he's a one-woman man.

That he is associated with one woman.

He's not associated with two women or seven women, but one woman.

That his reputation is that of being devoted to his wife.

It is possible to be married to only one wife and not be a one-woman man.

It's possible that you are married to a wife, but that when people think of you, they think of someone who's kind of flirtatious.

They think of somebody who is not devoted to their wife.

Maybe it's not even flirtatious as, you know, you're flirting with other women, but maybe it's you're devoted to work, you're devoted to your hobbies, you're devoted to play, you're devoted to your study or to books or whatever it is you're devoted to, you're not devoted to your wife.

This idea of being a one-woman man speaks to somebody's reputation as being so inherently hooked to their wife that he is that, he belongs with her.

You know, you say their their names together, they almost roll off the tip of your tongue together.

Nigel and Beth are in the front row, so I'm just gonna keep using Nigel all night long.

Nigel and Beth, it just goes together.

That's the idea that you're devoted to your wife such that you're connected to each other.

It means that you're obviously married to only one woman.

This this rules out polygamy.

We rolled our eyes at that as Americans.

You're like, oh, why do you need a rule against polygamy?

Hey, visit Africa one time.

This is a big deal in African churches.

Where sometimes the most affluent and best leaders in the church are polygamists.

They've demonstrated leadership and they're wealthy and they own a lot of businesses and they own property and they have three or four wives.

And Paul says they cannot be an elder of the church.

It doesn't matter how gifted he is in the world, he can't be an elder of the church because he's got more than one wife.

And when you think of somebody who's divorced, and this speaks to that quite.

That somebody would have to be married to a person for such a period of time that their divorce, it doesn't say they could have never been divorced, but it says their reputation is such that over the long period of time they're so connected with this wife that that that other marriage is a thing of the past.

It's gone.

You don't even think about it.

It's not connected to their reputation anymore.

That's how devoted they are to their wife.

Again, it doesn't mean you can't be single.

Paul was single.

He makes that clear in 1 Corinthians.

He was probably a widower, actually.

His wife had probably died and he hadn't remarried.

Jesus obviously was single.

You don't want to define the elder qualifications in a way that Jesus wouldn't, you know, qualify at your church.

It is funny though when you look at churches and they're uh what they're looking for in a pastor.

The first one is almost always married, like universally married.

Try being a single seminary student, trying to find a church to pastor.

Good luck.

Just you and Jesus out there at Starbucks for your quiet time.

The husband of one wife.

So your reputation is so connected with one woman.

You're sober-minded.

And that's again an American idiom that just works so well.

Sober means you think clearly.

You think clearly.

It's the opposite of drunkenness.

And here, Paul connects it to your mind.

Sometimes the the old King James translates this expression as girding up the loins of your mind.

And it's a funny expression.

We don't, it's not in the ESV or the NAS, but it's this idea that before a personation near East would run, they would pull up their gown so they could run faster.

And what Paul's saying is that your mind is like that.

Your mind has the garments gathered so you can think clearly and quickly and concisely about things.

You're sober-minded.

You think clearly.

And this is a very good test, you know, as if a potential elder, you might want to ask them certain counseling situations.

How do you think about this scenario?

Because life is complicated.

You know, not all life is black and white.

Most of life is complicated.

Most marriage counseling or most divorce situations are complicated.

It's hardly ever.

In fact, I can't think of almost any examples in my time in pastoral ministry where a marriage counseling situation has been as simple as one guy sinned and left, the wife is innocent, the husband is guilty, or flip it around.

It's almost always a complicated scenario.

And so the test for an elder qualification is is this person sober-minded?

Can they hear a complicated scenario and think clearly about it?

Do they think seriously about things?

Do they think strategically?

Do they think in an in-depth way?

There's lots of Christians who are not sober-minded.

They don't think seriously about the world.

And I'm sure you know these kind of people.

And oftentimes they're fun to be around.

They're jovial, they bring joy and energy to life, and that's great.

I'm glad that God has blessed the church with those kind of carefree and jovial people.

I'm friends with many of them.

But that's different than being sober-minded.

It's an elder qualification that you are marked as a kind of person that thinks seriously about life, seriously about the gospel, seriously about theology, seriously about the word of God, seriously about the church.

Sober-minded.

The next qualification an elder is self-controlled.

Self-controlled.

This is the image of an elder whose body works for him.

He doesn't work for his body.

His passions work for him.

He doesn't work for his passions.

And you know what I mean by that.

That uh an elder is in charge of his affections.

He tells his body what to do.

His body doesn't tell him what to do.

That's literally what self-controlled means, that you are in control of your body.

This is the lack of self-control is often seen in gluttony, it's often seen in eating, but it's seen in other areas as well.

All of the passions in the Greek mind, all the emotions, you know, in terms of grief, in terms of sexuality, in terms of food, in terms of sleep.

Those are all things where a lack of self-control manifests itself in laziness, in gluttony, in lust.

An elder is in control of his own body.

He's in control of what he eats.

He's in control of when he works, he's in control of when he sleeps.

He's not ruled by sleep or food or lust.

He bosses his body around, not the other way around.

And this is something for younger believers to aspire to, to desire to have that kind of self-control.

But it is an elder qualification.

Again, with all of these, I want to reiterate often throughout tonight that Paul's not saying you're not a Christian if you fail these tests.

He's not saying that unless you're elder qualified, you're not saved.

This is a different world.

He's not talking about salvation here.

He's talking about a church that wants to be godly, find these kind of people to be the elders.

Do they rule their own body?

Are they respectable?

Next qualification, respectable.

In other words, do people look up to them?

Do people look up to them?

And this is a tricky thing to navigate because every culture is different.

What's respectable in one culture is not respectable in another culture.

I mean, basic example.

I was in Rwanda a couple weeks ago for church, and the guy who's driving me to church, I wanted to walk to church because it was right across the street from where I was saying, but I was informed, no, that's not respectable, and that's not allowed.

I am not allowed to walk to church.

It's more respectable for the guy to pick me up and drive me to church.

All right, fine.

Church starts at 8.

So he'll pick me up at 8:30.

Okay.

And so I asked some questions about this.

Like, does it really start?

Are we talking about Africa time starts at 8?

And you're like, oh no, it really does start at 8.

The music will start at 8.

The congregation will be there at 8.

Some trickle in, like in American church, but no, it actually starts at 8.

But it's not respectable for the pastor to be there at 8.

Um, it makes people nervous.

It looks weird.

It looks like you're anxious.

It just looks, knock it off, okay?

Let them start church.

You're there for a couple.

I mean, by the way, a church is the one service.

That thing lasts three and a half hours, so go ahead and chill out.

You'll get your singing in, don't worry.

This service had this service was an hour and a half long.

It had three services.

So I I roll in right at the end of singing and we'll just walk up on stage.

I'm introduced as I get there.

And it's making me so nervous.

Like, if you wanted to sing, sing second hour.

So I sung around and hung sung second hour.

There you go.

Like, man, it just makes you people nervous if you show up on time there.

So I thought, David.

No, I'm not gonna show up at 8:30 anymore.

Just drag out the offering prayer.

That would not be respectable here.

It's a silly illustration, but I'm trying to underscore the cultural identity of this.

This is what's so brilliant about the New Testament ethics, where Paul doesn't give a list of things like, hey, wear a suit.

He doesn't tell him to wear a suit.

But in some cultures, it's respectable to wear a suit.

In some cultures, it's not.

In some cultures, it's acceptable to have your shirt tucked in.

In some cultures, it's not.

You adjust to the culture.

But the idea is that you're respectable in that culture, that people there respect you.

That they seek your opinion out on things, they care what you think.

That's an elder qualification.

If somebody's going through difficulty, do they respect you enough to come ask you what you think?

So move beyond dress, move beyond starting time, and get to the heart of the issue.

Do people actually look up to you?

How would you know?

Do they ask for your help?

Do they ask for you to pray about things?

Do they ask, do they come to you when they're discouraged?

Do they come to you when they need encouragement?

Do they come to you when they need help?

That's a sign of respect.

And that's an elder qualification.

When I was candidating here, Mark Zigzmi drug me into the gym, or Neil Dillard, I forget, maybe both of them, and asked me to play dodgeball with the uh Awana kids.

Uh the high school Awana kids on a Sunday night.

Asked me to play dodgeball when I was candidating.

And I tried to hide behind the respectable card.

I told them, no, it wouldn't be respectable for me to play dodgeball as a potential pastor in the gym.

And they explained to me that no, for the high school kids to respect you, you need to play dodgeball.

Ryan tried that same line on me when he made me get in the dunk tank one night, too.

Respectable.

Okay.

Ask yourself this.

Do you lead your life in such a way that when people need help, they come to you?

That's I think one of the best indicators of respect.

Not when they need a favor.

I mean, that's the definition of available.

If people come to you and they need a favor, that means you're available.

That's not respect.

When they need spiritual help, that's an indication of respect.

Hospitable.

I preached on this a couple months ago, but uh worth repeating.

Hospitable here means it's twofold, that your life is an open book and that you use your resources towards advancing the gospel.

And those seem disconnected in our American culture.

Hospitable in the American culture means you like, you know, hold the door for visitors kind of thing.

That's not what it was in the Greek culture.

In the Greek culture, hospitable was twofold.

It meant that you used your resources for the advancement of the gospel.

That's the way the word is often used in the New Testament.

That missionaries are visiting, they stay in your house, you feed them, that kind of thing.

You're using your resources for the advancement of the gospel.

It's the way you care for the least of these, to use Jesus' language.

That when poor brothers and sisters in Christ are in need, you use your resources to alleviate their needs.

That's hospitable.

The second side of that is that your life is an open book.

Your home is an open book.

And again, in our American culture, those things are disconnected.

We don't see how they relate.

But in a world where you don't have checking accounts and banking accounts, they're very much connected.

For you to be hospitable in that gospel-advancing way, you're going to have people in your house.

This is a basic component of being an elder, that you have people in your house.

That your house is open.

You have friends over, you have people from church over.

They know what your house is like.

They know what your life is like, they know what your family is like in its strengths and in its weaknesses.

That's the concept of hospitable.

That you're not closed off, but you're open to others.

Hospitable.

So ask yourself that.

Is your life open?

Do people know you?

Do they know what's going on?

Have people been in your home?

Do people see your family in action?

That's an indication of if you are hospitable.

Do you hold on to your money and your resources or do you use them to advance the gospel?

That's the concept of hospitable.

Next, able to teach.

Simply means that you're good at teaching, or apt is the way it's often translated, that you're skilled at teaching.

And it is the word here, Didasco for teaching, which is not the same word, caruso for preaching.

There is a New Testament word for preaching, which is, you know, the proclamation of God's word from the pulpit.

That's not what every elder does.

But every elder is called to be a teacher, the instruction of the faith.

And if you don't know the difference between preaching and teaching, I'll weep because that means you've never heard preaching.

There is a difference between the two.

But teaching is what elders are called to be good at.

They're called to be skilled at.

How do you know if you're good at teaching?

Because your mom tells you that you are.

No, there's better ways to know if you're good at teaching.

Namely, people say you're good at teaching.

They invite you to teach.

And then you're respected, respectable goes into this, and they respond to your teaching.

Over time, you see people grow because of your teaching.

In a place like Emmanuel, this is so evident in our ABF ministries.

So you have people who are regularly teaching in ABFs, and you're able over the course of the years to watch spiritual growth as a result of that teaching.

That's what it means to be elder qualified.

Again, one of the great strengths of Emmanuel is exactly in that category.

The teaching is in our ABFs, even down to our children's ministry.

We have such quality teaching at this church.

It's so encouraging.

The other week I walked around, uh, I think it was the week that Ryan was preaching or something.

It was Sunday morning, I walked around and visited every single Sunday school room that morning.

And it floored me, no matter how little the kids were.

Not the nursery, but once they're like two, all the way up through high school, there was actual Bible teaching going on in every room.

It was incredible.

Like good teaching, where I didn't want to leave.

I was in there for like a minute or two, and I didn't want to, I didn't want to leave, I wanted to stay and keep taking notes, kind of thing.

Our church is so blessed by this.

Well, this is what it means to be an elder that you're skilled at teaching.

More than your mom agree with that.

You're skilled at teaching.

And now we get to the four negatives.

Not a drunkard.

Some translations might say not addicted to much wine.

Remember, these are all about a person's reputation.

Your reputation is not so closely connected with alcohol.

That when people think of you, they don't think alcohol.

They don't think drunkard.

It doesn't say that an elder can't drink alcohol.

It doesn't say that an elder must be a teetotaler.

Rather, it says an elder's reputation must be guarded from those kind of things.

He must not be associated with drunkenness.

Drunkenness is a sin.

And if a person's reputation is connected to that, then they're not qualified to be an elder.

This would go straight to hanging around with drunkards.

Now, the quick answer didn't Jesus hang around with drunkards?

And the answer is yes, but Jesus hung around them in such a way that his reputation was not connected to them.

And we've seen this throughout his ministry.

He hung around with lepers and lepers got cleansed.

Hung around with paralytics, Jesus did not catch their paralysis, they walked.

He hung around with drunkards who ceased to be drunkards.

They turned from their sin.

That's the implication.

Anyway, an elder is not connected with drunkenness.

He's not violent or given to fisticuffs.

He's not a striker, is what the King James says.

Means he doesn't get his own way by bullying people.

He doesn't push people around.

Now, here I do think Paul is talking about idiomatically.

I do think we can safely rule out somebody who punches somebody to get their way at church.

Like, you were supposed to bring the coffee today, where's the coffee?

Not an elder.

So we can move beyond the obvious.

There have been some pastors' meetings, Steve, though, where we won't talk about those.

Moving beyond the obvious, you get to the idea that an elder, and especially how it's paired with gentle, not a striker, but gentle, an elder leads by example.

He leads by persuasion.

He leads by his voice and people follow, not by coercion, not by force.

He's not a bully, in other words.

An elder, of course, has to be a clear communicator.

He has to be a clear teacher.

He has to tell people what he's expecting and what he desires.

A shepherd wouldn't be a good shepherd if the sheep wouldn't know where he was going, of course.

But a shepherd would be a horrible shepherd if he beat his sheep to go there.

Rather, a shepherd isn't violent, he's not pushy, he's not a bully, he's not arrogant.

And then perhaps you've known pastors, perhaps you've been unfortunate enough to know pastors that are like that or elders that are like that.

They're just a boss people around.

They're so obnoxious.

That's not a real elder.

He may have the title, he may have the real job, but he is he's an imposter.

Because a real elder is not a bully.

He's gentle.

And gentle is not it's not a feminine term here.

Gentle is the concept of meekness, it's strength under control.

It's the persuasion of an example, it's kindness.

And you get another negative here.

Not quarrelsome, not given to arguments, not generally known as being aggravated, not the kind of person who disagrees with everything they hear.

Everything becomes an argument.

You know, you read the saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to be in the office of an office of an overseer, he desires a noble task, and somebody says, Oh, I don't know if I agree with that.

Good, you're not an elder.

That kind of cantankerous attitude.

I remember once at a uh Taco Cabana, a southwestern Mexican restaurant in Albuquerque where I was with some friends after church, and we were having some silly argument about Deborah and the role of judges, and I don't even remember who was on what side.

It was such a silly argument.

And most of the people in church were, or in Taco Cabana were people from our church, and so it was, you know, it was a big church just down the street, and so we felt like we were kind of safe.

But after a while it got embarrassing.

And it was one of those arguments where you forgot who was on what side and what the disagreement even actually was.

And you just noticed that people around the restaurant are kind of looking at us, going like, you guys work at our church, you know that it was so embarrassing.

Not elder qualified.

An elder doesn't find himself thrown down into constant quarrels.

He's gonna say this differently to Titus, talking about arguments over genealogies.

That's what he means by that.

Yes, the genealogies are important.

Matthew begins with one.

They are important to know and to understand.

Don't argue about them.

Move on.

There's more important things, in other words, to understand.

You don't get to caught, don't get stuck in every doctrinal rabbit hole.

And then last negative, not a lover of money.

His heart isn't for money.

Jesus says you can't love money and him.

You can't serve both.

You can't serve both masters.

A person who loves money is not going to be hospitable.

A person who loves money is not going to be a good steward of the church's resources.

He's going to want to hold on to things, not spend things.

And in the context of the church, you want to be using God's resources.

You want to be deploying them.

So don't be a lover of money.

It corrupts your motives.

I tell seminary students this when I'm teaching pastoral ministries in seminary class, if you love money, you're going to make very foolish decisions about what kind of ministry to go into.

You're called to this church or that church.

Well, what's the pay structure at each one?

You think God's leading you to be a missionary.

Well, how are you going to afford it?

How are you going to make ends meet there?

It's just not, it does not make for clear thinking if you love money.

Repent from the love of money because it will destroy your soul.

An elder should not be in love with money.

Verse 4, he must manage his own household well.

This word household equinas, it's just as the concept of, it's sometimes translated dispensations in the New Testament.

In Ephesians, the word is translated dispensation of his grace.

It means the way that you have your resources deployed.

An elder is in control of his house.

He's in control of his budget.

He's in, in this sense, control of his family, his wife, and his children.

Not in control in a domineering way, of course not.

It means that he's in control almost in an administrative function.

He knows what's happening in his house and he's using the resources in his house to advance the gospel.

His household is managed well.

He's not in debt because he can't manage his finances.

He's not in debt because he couldn't figure out what mortgage to take or which car to get.

Not that a mortgage or a car payment would be wrong.

They can be good.

If they're leveraged to advance the wealth that you have, they can be very good.

And that becomes the distinction.

Do you know the difference between good debt and bad debt?

How to manage a mortgage and how not to.

Are you good at managing your household?

Are you constantly behind in things?

I made a joke with the elder meeting once about, you know, an elder has his grass mode.

He can keep up with the yard work.

His house is under control.

And for the next few weeks, I got texted a bunch of pictures of guys with their grass mode.

And at first I didn't get the joke.

I didn't know why I was getting these pictures.

I'd forgotten what I said, but now I have a collection of the yards of IBC elders on my phone.

I stand by the principle, though, that an elder is in control of his house and of his property, of his life.

He's not behind in things.

He's an example of a leader.

Even in the listen, if he can't manage his household, what do you think the church is going to be like?

If he can't manage a mortgage, how is he going to handle income from the church?

If he can't stay on top of what his family members are doing in life, if he can't lead a household, how is he going to lead the church?

And I know this is an affront in our modern world, but listen, marriage, there is a leader in the family.

The husband is the leader of the family.

That is the way God designed marriage to work.

And an elder has to understand that.

A church has to understand that, or you're not going to have qualified men as elders.

The elder leads.

A husband leads.

The husband is in charge of, in that sense, of his household.

Now, of course, a husband uses his leadership for good of his wife and is a blessing of his children.

A husband who abuses that leadership is, again, no real husband at all, but a fake and a fraud.

That doesn't mean though, that because there are those that abuse the leadership in a family, that leadership doesn't exist.

Any more than the existence of counterfeit money means that there's no such thing as real money.

The New Testament makes it clear, in fact, Paul makes it clear in 1 Timothy 2, right before this, that husbands are to be the leaders in the family and men are to be the leaders of the church.

And a qualification here is that a husband has to manage his own household well if he's going to demonstrate the ability to care for God's church, because a church is bigger and more complex than a household.

If you can't figure out your own marriage, you're not going to do a good job helping other people with theirs.

That's the idea.

This is a task that requires big men, not little aristocrats, not little puny leaders who lord it over their family would make terrible and abusive elders.

Again, let me say that again.

This is a task that requires big men, not little aristocrats.

An example of this.

He manages his household with dignity.

It's not yelling at his wife.

He has dignity.

And he's keeping his children submissive.

His children listen to him.

His children generally do what they say.

They're submissive.

His family's under control.

And this at a little kid's level comes basically down to discipline.

And you know this, if you're a parent, you have to get over that discipline tangle at the beginning of parenting because it's not going to get easier later.

You have to be okay spanking your kids when they're young so that you grow out of spanking them when they're older.

It's a basic parenting principle.

A person who says, I can't discipline my kids.

I don't want to, you know, stifle their will.

You're not going to be able to do church discipline in the church.

If you can't bring yourself to spank your little kids, what are you going to be like as an elder in the church?

Not somebody with convictions, but somebody who caves all the time.

And you do this with dignity, of course, with dignity.

That's the key word here.

And of course, you know, your kids age out of spanking when they're little kids.

You know, for touching the outlet, you spank the hand kind of thing.

They age out of that as they grow up.

As they get older, they're still demonstrating a submissiveness.

When they're in your house, they're submissive to you.

You've demonstrated your capacity as a leader.

The kids in your house are honoring you.

And Titus is going to pick up what happens when they're out of the house.

But Paul, here in 1 Timothy 3, is talking about parenting with these kids.

He's on the second generation believers, is the difference between this and Titus, by the way, if you're wondering.

And so second generation believers here, he's talking about how they're raising their kids.

Their kids should be submissive, they should generally be in line, not out of control.

Because, and he just makes this obvious point, if you can't manage your own household, how will you care for the church?

What a great question.

Somebody who can't manage his household, what's the church going to be like under their watch?

Verse 6.

He must not be a recent convert.

For obvious reasons.

You wouldn't be able to see all these other things if he was a recent convert.

He has to demonstrate these things.

But more than that, Paul says, if he's a recent convert, he'll be puffed up with conceit and will fall into the condemnation of the devil.

And I have seen this happen despite this very clear instruction, you must not be a recent convert.

I have seen this happen more times than I can count.

Where somebody's a new believer and they have a crazy testimony, a high-speed police chase and everything, you know?

And they get radically saved.

You know, maybe they were a homosexual activist and they get radically saved, or maybe they were a leader of some, you know, something that was public, or maybe they're a movie star or something and they get radically saved.

And you think, oh man, how cool it is.

Let's bring that person to church.

And they speak, and their story is so compelling, you think you should speak to larger groups and larger groups and larger groups.

And what happens to that person's ego?

You know, and there's something in the Christian culture, the kind of the cheesy side of the evangelical culture, that loves that kind of thing, that loves the newest thing and the newest speaker and the newest story.

That Christians become prey for hoaxes, Christians become prey for people that are not godly, they get an attitude, get an audience in the church, and probably an honorarium, too.

And so Paul says they can't be a recent convert.

Because what happens is that kind of person?

You know, he's a big deal in the world, and then he gets saved, and he steps into the church, and guess what?

He becomes a big deal in the church.

And in his mind, the church isn't that much different than the world.

There's no humility there, there's no brokenness there.

He gets puffed up, he gets arrogant, which is exactly what happened to the devil.

The devil thought I can rule the earth better than God can.

I want what Adam's got.

Adam out of the garden, me in the garden.

That's what the devil wanted.

To be a little God on this earth.

He was so conceited, and because of that, he was condemned.

And this shouldn't be replicated in the church.

Always makes me nervous when I see somebody in the waters of baptism one week and behind a pulpit the next.

Verse 7.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace.

I had a friend in seminary who applied to the LAPD.

And uh two cop cars roll up to our house one day, a roommate in seminary, and lived with me, and two cop cars roll up to our house, and these two guys, plain clothes, but guns visible, badges visible, get out of their cars, and they don't walk up to our house.

They walk to all of our neighbors' houses and knock on their doors and they have a conversation with them.

And they get in the car and drive away.

And so we go and ask our neighbors, what was that about?

And our neighbors tell us that they all were asked the same question.

These two officers ask the neighbors, you know, Brent has applied to the LAPD.

How would it make you feel if you knew that he was given a firearm and was authorized to use lethal force to uphold the laws of the great state of California kind of speech?

How would that make you feel?

And neighbors, some of them are like, I don't even know Brent.

And some are like, Brent, yeah, the guy that rides the motorcycle, right?

Or should I not say that kind of conversation?

That's an example, I think.

I think churches could protect themselves from some bad elders if more conversations like that happened.

I mean, how would your co-workers know?

How would they think if they knew you were an elder?

If they heard that so-and-so was an elder at their church, would they say, oh, typical Christian hypocrisy?

Or would they say, yeah, that makes sense.

You know, that guy is gifted at work.

He's gifted, you know, he's he's loving others.

He always wants what's best for other people.

He's he's kind, he works with integrity.

That makes sense that he'd be an elder at church.

Or do they roll their eyes and go, Christians, Christians, Christians?

They must be well thought of by outsiders.

What an interesting qualification, isn't it?

You wouldn't expect that to be in the list.

Ask a couple non-believers that know the guy if they think he should be an elder.

That's what the qualification is.

So that he won't fall into disgrace, by the way.

Because sometimes non-believers see through things in a way that Christians don't.

They can see that kind of hypocrisy.

So he doesn't fall into disgrace into the snare of the devil.

Those are the elder qualifications.

Now, let me tell you practically how this plays out.

Again, it's a sliding scale.

You look at somebody, if a church is in need of more elders, they look for people that meet these qualifications.

And this is, of course, a yes or no thing.

If you're not qualified in some of these areas, then you're not qualified to be an elder.

On the other hand, just because all the answers are yes does not make you an elder.

The church has to recognize somebody as an elder because they're serving in that way.

So not every elder qualified person is an elder.

Of course not.

But generally speaking, when somebody is functioning as an elder and meets these qualifications, they would be recognized as an elder.

And it works the reverse way.

If somebody's recognized as an elder, there is such a thing as disqualifying sin.

Paul says that I discipline my body, I beat myself into submission so that less having preached to others, I myself would not become disqualified.

People can be qualified to be an elder and then become disqualified through sin or even something that's not their own fault.

Understand that these qualifications are given to protect the church, to guard the church.

Somebody who's no longer qualified to be an elder, it's not a punishment against them, like, oh, you messed up, so you're no longer an elder.

It's protection to the church.

It's not saying because you did this, you're no longer an elder, moha-ha-ha-ha.

It's saying we care about the reputation of the church.

And so, churches, look for those people who are leading, who are teaching, who are shepherding, who are serving in these ways, who've demonstrated themselves as having these qualifications to recognize them as elders.

I would pray that every person here would aspire to these qualifications.

And it would look different between men and women.

Of course, the way these play out would look different in practical senses.

Not every believer is called to be a good teacher.

Of course not.

So not all of these are for every person, but generally speaking, this is a list of things to aspire to.

This is a list of what mature believers in the church look like.

And praise God at Emmanuel Bible Church that he has gifted our church with such people.

We're a church that has been blessed by godly leadership through the years long before I came here.

This is something going back generations, where the people who started this church had a passion in their mind for godliness and created a culture that generates and grows up mature and godly people and that attracts godly people, even from the outside, to come to the church.

This is a mature and beautiful church in the eyes of the Lord because of these kind of qualifications.

Lord, we're grateful that you have given us elders that lead this church by your grace and for your glory.

I'm thankful that we serve at a church with 35 elders that don't lord it over others, that don't walk around as if they're exalted, but walk around as servants.

Think of the sign on Pastor Tom's door, Got Basin, Got Bull.

What an example.

The elders of the church are marked by serving other people, by demonstrating leadership by being servants.

We're thankful for the maturity that you have caused to grow in this church.

Lord, we know that people are fallible, that people have sinned, that these are not a command for perfection, but rather this is a description of what it means to be mature in the faith.

We're thankful, Lord, that you have given us such people.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.