Irreproachability (1 Timothy 3:1-2; Titus 1:5-7) | Pastor Rod Gomez

Speaker 3: I subscribe to the, uh, Dallas Morning News because,

uh, I want to know my community.

I want to see what's happening.

I want to be informed about what our neighborhoods and what our

cities collectively think about the news and about one another.

And I can't help but notice, especially last year, that one

of the most frequent reports that I saw were pastoral downfalls.

Our local community is influenced by a lot of megachurches, and it's unfortunate that

one of the qualif one of the qualities of our area, at least right now, is

that you begin to read about countless pastors, many of them notable and high

ranking, who have repeatedly fallen down.

And so you'll see headlines.

It's littered all throughout our local media about these high profile

pastors who lose their ministries, lose their families, lose their

credibility because of repeated offenses in one way, shape, or form.

So you have here, Grapevine Police, former substitute teacher, associate pastor.

That stood out to me.

That's my role.

Faces child porn charge.

That's something you don't want to see of a pastor.

It carries on.

There's lots of them.

Gateway Church, you know, about this one, uh, this one.

Not only the senior pastor, but also some of the other pastors that

understood and knew what was going on behind the scenes were also accused of

wrongdoing because they covered it up.

They didn't blow the whistle.

They weren't aware, uh, not that they weren't aware, they were,

they were aware and consequently they should have acted and did not.

Senior pastor at Fort Worth Area Church removed.

His lawyer confirms this.

Another key.

Pastor, I mean, some of these guys whose names you know, I

don't even have to bring up.

You know them, and you've heard about their ministries for many years.

They have long, tenured, faithful ministries for some of them,

not all of them, of course.

Why is this important?

Well, you can easily see that when stuff like this hits the news, and it

makes its way onto our Facebook pages, or to other news platforms, where

there's a lot more user engagement, people have a lot of feelings about

these things, as you might imagine.

It's And one of the things that I like to subject myself to is what

people say about these things.

I want to read how people are responding.

These are your neighbors and mine.

These are our friends.

These are people that you go to work with.

And so I want to know what's going on behind the scenes.

What are they thinking?

And of course, some of them seem like they have their head on straight and

yet for others, you'll see things like this, where people are saying,

well, yet again, here they go.

Here we go.

Family values.

These guys preach.

And yet hypocrite of hypocrite.

Carolyn Wing.

And we should be shocked.

In other words, we're not shocked.

This happens so regularly and so frequently that none of us is,

you know, knock me over with a feather, she could have said.

Adam Henley.

My shocked face.

I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm not shocked.

Uh, Reedy Bezek.

Not even surprised.

Um, Lauren Christie.

Hashtag not a drag queen.

In other words, your pastors are the ones who are the threat.

Not our drag queens at story hour.

It's you guys.

And this is not, this is not me organizing my timeline.

This is me just screenshotting a section of it.

There were some above and below that were more even handed, I'll confess.

But this is several comments all in the same, the same timeline here

where they're responding in ways that are frustrating to say the least.

Again, we've seen men rise to the platforms that they have and God has

blessed them for different reasons.

But one of the things I want to talk about today is why.

Your being above reproach matters not only to your families and to

your communities, but to your church and most importantly to your Christ.

Men like this who receive platforms are blessed with enormous

responsibility and lots of pressure and privileges that go with that.

But I don't want you to excuse yourself and think, well, that's those guys.

My platform is much smaller and therefore less consequential.

You might think that.

You might think that.

But I want you to feel the weight of these things and realize that all of us have.

a platform.

All of us have a place of influence and a place of privilege that God expects

you to steward and to steward well.

We're going to talk about irreproachability, being above

reproach, and I want to help you see why it's important that you

possess this quality of life and why you should also pursue it doggedly.

Because there's so much on the line here.

There's so much at stake.

And one of the things that I want you to avoid is you being a headline and

people saying, Hey, not even surprised.

Hashtag not a drag queen out there.

It's you guys.

It's your, it's your problem.

And certainly the church has her errors and her faults, but we want to do all

that we can to make sure that we don't fall into some of the same traps.

In fact, I couldn't help but read these stories and think about

first Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Paul encourages us to look back toward history and Israelite history and

to say, man, those guys fell poorly.

They did badly.

But he says, lest you start to think down upon them and say,

well, man, I could never do that.

He says, Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall.

Which is to say, of course, look at your own self in the mirror and realize

that you can make the same mistakes that these men make, maybe in varying degrees.

But none of these guys woke up one morning and said, I want to commit adultery.

I want to give away my marriage.

I want to lose the privilege that I have in my family.

I want to lose my job, or at least simply, uh, create a reputation for myself that

nobody wants to work with me anymore.

He says, No temptation has overtaken you.

That's not common to man.

That is, all of us experience the same kinds of temptations to varying degrees.

They're all, they're all common.

We all know what that's like.

But God is faithful.

He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

But with that temptation, He'll also give you the way of escape so

that you may be able to endure it.

Which is to say, the temptations are gonna happen.

They're coming for you.

The devil knows your weaknesses.

His minions that do his bidding, of course, know the

areas where you're weakest.

And so you should not, you should not be surprised when you experience

the fiery trial, Peter says.

But you ought to be aware of it, ready for it, and ready to stand firm.

What's going to hold you there?

Pastor PJ and I are concerned about our church having strong men.

We want a church of strong men, which is why we're doing this series Qualified.

We're talking about the qualifications of an elder.

Elder is another term for a pastor, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

But we're telling you this because we want a church of qualified men.

We want a church that represents what it is to be a strong and godly man.

In fact, if you're paying attention, you'll notice this

is a recurring theme for us.

We're spending a lot of time.

There's a Friday morning breakfast that Pastor PJ leads about, guess what?

Godly manhood.

Our last series, Godly Manhood, the Fruit of the Spirit and How That

Manifests Itself in Godly Manhood.

This series, Qualified, all about the qualifications of an elder.

Again, godly manhood.

Last year we talked about, at our men's retreat, we talked

about a band of brothers.

Why do you need that band of brothers?

So you could have godly manhood.

This year, we're going to talk about Integrity.

Well, we're calling it uncompromised.

And of course that's going to be about godly manhood.

We're trying to reinforce this idea because we want to cultivate this for you.

You might think, well, not a pastor.

I don't desire to be a pastor.

And therefore some of these things, yeah, that's good.

I should, I should go for that, but I'm not called to be a pastor.

And that might be the case.

Out of this whole room, many of you are not pastors.

But remember that God gives us these pastoral roles to be shepherds and to

be examples to the flock, which is to say that the qualified men of the church

who possess irreproachability above reproach are those things so that we can

be those things together corporately.

They're to be models for the body of Christ.

In this particular series, we're going to spend a lot of time looking

at a lot of these qualifications.

But the one that cascades down to the rest is above reproach.

We're going to look at two texts primarily, and we're going to do a

lot of page flipping to kind of get a fuller sense of what these things mean.

But really what you're going to see is that God installs leaders

who know how to lead themselves.

That's who God puts in leadership positions.

It starts with leading yourself first.

Effective leaders lead themselves first.

Let's just make that a little mindset here.

That's going to carry us through this whole first sermon.

Effective leaders lead themselves first.

It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

A man shouldn't be entrusted with greater responsibility if he doesn't know how

to be responsible for his own self.

In fact, Paul's going to say later on in our text, the man has to demonstrate an

ability to lead his own household well.

If you can't lead your household, how can you be entrusted

to lead the family of God?

Can't take care of your own kids, how are you going to take care of God's kids?

If you can't lead your own wife, how will you lead the bride of Christ?

The logic is simple.

Effective leaders, therefore, lead themselves first.

And a church of spirit of the weak leaders will produce weak

men, which is why Pastor P.

J.

First and foremost, and then myself and any other pastor we add to our

staff, has to be the kind of man that we can say, yes, he fits the

qualification of being above reproach.

He looks like what God wants us to look like.

Not perfectly.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

But if you have strong leaders, they'll produce strong men and strong

men who lead their families will produce strong families and strong

families will have strong communities resulting in strong honor for Christ.

And consequently, the opposite is also true.

If you have weak, unhealthy pastors, you're going to have weak, unhealthy

men who follow those weak and unhealthy pastors, which is going to result in

weak and unhealthy families, which will result in weak and unhealthy communities.

And on and on the cascade goes all the way to, and most importantly, for

the glory of Christ being Diminished.

What gets me so angry about these Facebook posts, and maybe you feel

this too, is I feel like Christ is just being dragged through the mud.

His bride is being thrown down on the floor and kicked and said, see,

we told you, fakes and phonies, all hypocrites, every single man that

goes to church, hypocrite and a phony.

In fact, the stats are in their favor.

The stats showcase that the same amount of men who are professedly

non Christians are engaging in online pornography and far worse than those

who call themselves Christians.

If you look at some of the latest stats for pastors, you would think, well,

surely our pastors are leading the flock with, with godliness and purity.

And men, I, I, I hate to admit to you, the stats do not look good for us.

It's discouraging.

It's discouraging.

And Pastor PG and myself, because we think the Word of God makes us evident are

really strong minded, strong hearted that we cultivate a church of godly men who

love the Lord, not perfect by any stretch, but genuinely possess irreproachability.

There's so much more to say about this, but let's open up the text here.

Effective leaders lead themselves first.

Let's learn what that looks like in this first text.

First Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 and 2 in Titus 5, 1 through

1 Timothy 3:1

7, Titus 1, 5 through 7.

Let's take a look first at Timothy, and let's first define our terms.

I think this is important given that we're not, we're not a high

church, we're not Presbyterians, we're not Episcopalians, but some

of those terms are important for us.

Let's first start with the term overseer.

First Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 and 2, he says this, the saying is trustworthy.

1 Timothy 3:1

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

Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, a husband of one

wife, sober minded, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

So in our first text here, we have the term overseer.

This is a term that we'll, we'll have to unpack here because it's

a term we don't typically use.

Even though Pastor PJ is an overseer, we don't call him overseer PJ, Pastor PJ.

But take a look at Titus.

Titus 1:5–7

Chapter 1, verses 5 through 7.

Keep your finger in 1 Timothy 3.

We'll be back there in a moment, but I want you to see something in Titus 1.

Notice Titus chapter 1 is, so both letters are to Paul's protégés.

Titus 1 · chapter mention

Timothy is obviously one of, uh, Pastor, Pastor Paul's protégés.

It's one of his disciples, someone that was led to the faith under his leadership.

And Titus is also another pastor under Paul's tutelage.

And here's what he says to Titus.

He says, this is why I left you in Crete, as an island off the Mediterranean.

He said, I left you in Crete that you might put what remained into order.

Order, ordering the Church of God, that is.

He's to organize her and to create systems in place in order to help her be led well.

And part of that system, he says here, is to appoint elders in

every town as I directed you.

Now, that's important.

Elders, that's plural.

Every town, that means every, every church was governed by more than one pastor.

Elders is plural.

Verse six, if anyone is above reproach, there's our term, it's the

husband of one wife, children are believers, not open to the charge

of debauchery or insubordination.

He says for an overseer.

As God's steward, must be above reproach.

And of course, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that Titus,

as Paul writes to Titus, he uses two terms to describe the same office.

He uses them synonymously.

In verse 5, he says, appoint elders.

In verse 7, he says, for an overseer.

So, here you have this idea being developed in the mind of

Paul for you and I to observe.

Overseers and elders, at least in Paul's mind, are equivalent offices,

if not the same office entirely.

And I would suggest to you that these are, in fact, the same offices.

Let me show you really quickly here.

Overseer's the word episkopos.

You might hear the word episcopalian in there.

That's where the term comes from, episkopos.

You'll find these terms in our text here.

3 1 Titus 1 7.

You'll see both of those terms there.

But you'll also see the word presbyteros, Titus 1 5.

Presbyteros sounds like the word presbyterian.

That's where we get our term elder from.

They're, it speaks to their leadership, the way that they're led.

And we see that term used in Titus 1 5.

There's another term, and this is the one that we like, it's the one that we

privilege and favor here in our church, in many churches, is the one called shepherd.

Shepherd is a poyman.

So you have presbyteros, episkopos, and poyman.

You're going to see a poyman, at least the idea of poyman, all over

the scripture when it talks about the church as the flock of God.

Of course, flock referring to us as sheep, therefore sheep need a shepherd.

You have a poyman, a shepherd, who leads the flock of God.

And of course, Jesus himself says, I am the great shepherd.

Uh, Peter calls him the shepherd and overseer of our souls, the poyman

and the episkopos over our souls.

So Jesus fulfills all of these categories.

Each of these terms, episkopos, uh, presbyteros, and poyman, they're each used

to define the leadership of the church.

What's interesting, though, is that the leadership is often kind of all

mixed together and used as one idea.

In fact, this is not on my notes, but really quickly, let

me just show you Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

Let me show you how Paul uses this.

Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

He's talking to the Ephesians and he's saying, look, I'm going away.

Uh, but I, I want you to know what's coming.

And part of what he says here, part of what he says is important for us

because I want you to see that the church leadership that we choose is well founded.

We're going to contend to you that an episkopos is a presbyteros is a poimen.

They're all the same office, even though they're referenced by different terms.

Look at verse 17 of Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

It says this, now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the, you

see that word there, the elders, the presbyteros, called the presbyteros to me.

I want to talk to them, Paul says.

And so then he starts to talk to them and said, look, you know how I lived

among you and I did this and I did that.

Um, go to verse 28.

Verse 28.

Paul is talking to the Ephesian elders.

Verse 28 says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock.

All the sheep.

Again, he's, he's talking to them as though they're shepherds, sheep herders.

Uh, shepherds.

He says, pay attention to, uh, to yourselves, watch your own life and all

the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you, here you go again, overseers.

There's our word again, episkopos.

Holy Spirit made you overseers to care for the church of God.

Now you can't see this, but let me just encourage you here, that word care.

In verse 28, to care is the word to shepherd, poymanin.

The word is poymanin.

You might hear poymanin.

Poymanin is poyman applied.

He says the Holy Spirit has made you episkopos and he's called

you to poymanin the flock of God, to shepherd, to care for them.

And so in this one passage, you have all three terms being

applied to one group of people.

Now, we're going to tell you, we're going to encourage you, this is how God intends

for us to understand the role of pastor.

Pastor is an elder, is an overseer.

A bishop is a shepherd, is a pastor, is an overseer.

And so even though there's different terminology applied to it, we're going

to tell you they're all the same office.

Paul is talking to one group of people.

Now that's important for you to understand because if you go to different churches,

they're going to have an elder board, and they're going to have the pastors,

and they're going to have the deacons.

We use different terminology to talk about different functions in the church.

And each church can do really what she wants within the bounds of scripture.

I don't want you to think that we're any more or less than the church down

the block or that they're any more or less because we do it differently.

You'll notice that in the text that we read, there's nothing about a

lay elder board or a staff pastor.

There's, there's There's overseers, there's elders, and there's shepherds.

And we believe they're the same office and they all work together.

They define different aspects of one office that we would

call the leader, the overseer.

Okay.

That said then, um, again, here's another text.

Let me just point this one out to you.

You can go back to first Timothy three, as I point out to you.

First Peter chapter five.

Okay.

Peter uses all terms synonymously as well.

Here's another text, one Peter five, one through three.

I exhort the elders, the pres buto among you as a fellow pres, buto,

and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the

glory that's going to be revealed ano.

That's the verb, to pointman shepherd the flock of God that is

among you, exercising, exercising, EPIs, ex exercising, oversight.

Not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you.

He says not for shameful gain, eagerly, not domineering, but

being examples to the flock.

And that's my point here.

Examples to the flock.

An overseer is an elder, is a.

Pastor, and his job is to be an example to the flock, which

is why we get to our text.

First Timothy three, one, our example to you should be what it

looks like to be above reproach.

Now, again, this is not perfection, but this is the idea of direction.

Here's what Paul says.

Let's look at it again.

Here.

The saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to the office of overseer desires a noble task, I want to

start with something that's, that's kind of small and you could quickly go past it.

It's the idea of aspiration, um, not breathing, but to aspire to do something.

To have the desire.

In fact, that's how Hebrews 11 16 uses it to have a desire for a better country.

That's how he describes the hall of faith.

All these godly men and women who are looking forward to the future

weren't just ambivalent about heaven.

They weren't just like, Oh, that would be nice to do someday.

They were desirous.

They aspire to heaven.

They're looking forward to it.

There is a, there's a real hunger and a longing for the future.

That's why he says here.

They desire a better country.

That word for desire is the same one that Paul uses to talk about the

aspiration to the higher office of pastor.

1st Timothy 6, I like the way he describes it here.

It's a negative use case, but he talks about people that crave,

crave money, crave wealth.

He says the love of money is is a root of all kinds of evils.

It is through this aspiration, this aspiring, this craving that some

have wandered away from the faith and pierce themselves at many pangs.

And so you see how the word here is used in a variety of ways, but it gives you

the sense that this ambition is strong.

It's not just a small ambition.

It's a, it's a good one.

It's a godly one.

And it's one that you should cultivate.

It's one that you should pursue.

Not necessarily mean that you need to be But I do think point number one,

you should cultivate godly desires.

If the pastoral office is meant to be an example to the flock, and part of

the example is to, is what it looks like to be above reproach, well, I think

being above reproach starts with having the godly desire to be above reproach.

To be the kind of man that people could look at and say, that man, the closer I

get to him, the more I see authenticity, the more I see integrity, the more I look

at his finances, the more I look at his marriage, the more I look at his, his

browsing history, the more I respect him.

That's the kind of person that you should aspire to become.

And what that's going to mean for you practically is that

you cultivate godly desires.

Cultivate.

That's an intentional word.

I, I bought a plant from a plant shop famous in Oregon.

This synaptus, syndaptus, something or other.

I don't know what the plant's name is, but it's a really cool plant.

They, they have videos online that teach you how to take care of the plant.

And so I, I went online, I started looking up stuff, and by the way,

I'm not losing my mind here about this, I'm not turning into a woman,

I just happen to like the plant.

They need the right amount of sun, they need the right amount of

time, they need regular pruning.

I, I'm learning as I'm taking care of this plant, and it's doing well.

I, I almost put a picture in here to show you how it looked when I first

got it versus how I got it today.

It's doing pretty good.

I'm, I'm, I'm impressed.

But, but

as I'm learning, huh?

No, no, that's, uh, that's at the, that's the office, that's the office.

Mine does not have NADs.

I'm learning though that there's a, it takes deliberate effort and it takes, it

takes energy and it takes thoughtfulness to do a good job with those things.

That's not, that's not a mind blowing idea.

I know that you know that.

But there is a, there is a gratification in that.

When I see a healthy thing grow, I think, that's good, I feel good about that.

I feel like I'm doing, I'm doing the right thing.

And it gives me a little bit of joy as it sits next to my,

my computer monitors at home.

It's not very different when we think about cultivating our own selves.

You shouldn't expect you to grow if you're not taking deliberate

effort to do that thing.

And your questions, I have a question for you you to think about.

And as to what degree can you actually cultivate liking

or enjoyment of something?

How much can you influence yourself to enjoy something that maybe right

now you don't find that enjoyable?

I think it's possible for you to do this.

And this is where I talk about leading yourself first.

Effective leaders lead themselves to cultivate godly desires.

It's not very different from, it's very different in some

ways, but not very different from learning to like vegetables.

You're trying to be healthy.

You're going to have to eat vegetables, try to be healthy.

You have to eat certain kinds of meat, leaner cuts.

Maybe it takes effort to make your palate enjoy that.

In fact, maybe the first time that you had a coffee, maybe

like me, you didn't like it.

But you persisted.

You kept doing it.

You kept on forcing yourself to drink coffee, and soon enough, you

graduated from the Frappuccinos, and now you're just drinking it black.

The tarrier, the better, you say.

The blacker it is, the more you enjoy it.

You didn't develop that taste overnight.

It, for some of you, took years to develop a cultivation for

the taste of a good coffee.

And it's very similar when it comes to how we cultivate godly desires.

It takes you putting effort to say, I want to be this man, and

I have to do something about it.

Of course, it's going to take knowledge on your part.

Knowledge is one of the things that we as a church particularly prize.

We're talking about, uh, a transform conference, or maybe we want to

do on this, this coming fall.

We're thinking about ideas about how best to encourage

you to grow in your knowledge.

Danger of that course is that you can read your Bible and have a lot of knowledge

without developing godly desires, right?

That's the danger.

We can become Pharisees and have all the biblical knowledge in the

world, but not none, any of the, the, the productive fruit from it.

But you cannot develop godly desires without the Bible.

Amen.

Amen.

You can read your Bible without developing godly desires, but you can't develop

godly desires without reading the Bible.

You need that.

Now, of course, Philippians chapter 2, Paul tells us to

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

work out your own salvation.

The work, the work there, the word there for working out your

own salvation, uh, is, is a word that, it's more than the word work.

In fact, the word for work, most of the time, is ergon.

Ergon, okay, E R G O N, if I was going to make it an English word, ergon.

But the word there that Paul uses is like the next word up.

So it's not just work, it's like pursue this work with diligence.

So work out your own salvation, Paul says, put in the effort to see

that Christ is formed in you is a word that means take it to the next

level, put it in the next gear.

It's not just the normal word for work, it's the word up.

So he says you need, you need knowledge, you need efforts,

and of course you need patience.

I started writing this sermon the week that we got all that snow.

And this was my first time experiencing the snow.

Maybe for some of you it was the same.

But I looked out my window.

I had my blinds open with my plant right there next to me, looking out the window.

And I started noticing when the, when the snow first started

falling, I, oh, this is exciting.

Me and the kids went outside.

Of course, we held our hands out and did all the fun things that you do.

And then after a few minutes, we went back in the house and I went back to

preparing my sermon because it was that Saturday that we were going to meet.

So I started writing my sermon.

I saw, I saw a little bit of the snow come down and then,

and then it just kept on coming.

And what ended up being just a few small flakes on the ground

ended up being feet of snow in different places, inches at least.

And I thought that's an interesting concept because one little snowflake

doesn't make much of a difference.

But one little snowflake along with all of his friends for multiple hours

makes a ton of a difference, right?

It was a huge difference based on the amount of time.

And that's a lot like our godly and disciplined habits.

One Bible reading session may not do a lot for you.

One time in prayer, one 10 minute slot in prayer may not do a lot.

But it does over the course of a long tenured life of faithfulness.

And that's what I want to encourage you to do.

That's how you cultivate godly desires.

It takes knowledge, it takes efforts, and it takes patience.

It takes patience.

I remember starting my Bible reading years ago.

I read through the Bible and I, like most of you, you get to Leviticus,

things start slowing down a little bit.

It's a struggle.

I remember reading through books in the New Testament saying,

what on earth does this mean?

And I mean, I, I remember, I remember how hard it was to read through the Bible.

I remember.

And even today, as I read it with a lot more knowledge, it's still challenging.

And many times I read the Bible and I walked away saying, I have

no idea what most of that meant.

But I let the pieces be put in place and I kept on persisting.

And eventually God, through the course of years and persistence, He's

beginning to give Him, to give Him me knowledge enough to say, okay, I get it.

I get it.

Not perfectly, but I get it.

Cultivate godly desires.

It will pay off.

It does work if you allow it.

Cultivate godly desires.

Aspire to the office.

Aspire to godliness.

Cultivate godly desires.

Effective leaders lead themselves first.

And first and foremost, they effectively cultivate godly desires.

Let's go back to our text here.

1st Timothy chapter 3.

He says that the saying is trustworthy.

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

I connected this with the beginning of our next verse here.

He says, it's a noble task, therefore, therefore, because it's a noble task,

an overseer has to be above reproach.

He has to be above reproach because it's a noble task.

If you think about what, actually, let me, let me also take you to

first Titus one, five through seven.

So keep your finger in first Timothy three, Titus one, five through seven.

Here's what, here's what Paul says to Titus about this same thing.

He says this is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what

remained in an order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

If anyone is above reproach, there you see he starts the thought there.

He begins a thought, he fills it in with a lot of in between

stuff, and then he concludes the thought with for an overseer.

The reason he has to be above reproach is that he's God's steward.

Verse 7, for an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach.

And so in 1 Timothy 3, You have it saying, because it's a, it's a noble

task, it's a good work, because it's good, he has to be above reproach.

Titus says, because he's God's steward, he has to be above reproach.

In both of these, we have the idea of the, of the, the role and the

work of a pastor as good, noble work.

He's not working for himself.

He's not looking for glory and honor and money.

He's working as God's steward.

He is God's slave.

It's God's household manager.

You ought to think of yourself in a very similar way.

You're not just your own person.

You belong to Christ.

You were bought with a price, 1 Corinthians chapter 9 says.

1 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

You don't belong to you.

You are God's steward.

You're in a different role, to be sure, but you're still God's steward.

Maybe less clear to someone else than someone who calls themselves a

pastor, but you're still God's steward.

The work that God has called you to is not that different from a pastor.

It's different in role, yes, and perhaps scope, but your role as men is pastor ish.

It is pastor like, in that you are called to shepherd and love your wives.

You lead them, Ephesians chapter 5, right?

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

Your call is to wash her with the water of the word, so that

she might reflect Christ's glory.

Your job is to lead your family.

You're to raise them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

You're not to exasperate your children.

Colossians 3, Ephesians chapter 5 as well.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

Uh, 4?

No, 6.

Thank you, 6.

You have a lot of roles that look pastor esque.

And so even though you don't have the title of pastor, your job is still

to esteem what God has assigned here.

Esteem the role.

Think of one of the things that our culture is going to struggle with

is really her respect for authority.

And there's a good reason why.

And their highest offices, we have people that we could say, okay, maybe

not the best character, but has, has good laws, things that we can agree with.

Even, again, as I, as I pointed out earlier, people look at pastors

and they say, well, they're, they're hypocrites as well.

They look at the stats and say, well, they're looking at porn

just as much as the next guy, so what difference does it make?

They look at the church and say, well, clearly doesn't matter.

And so they despise authority.

They reject the authority of the church.

They, they look down upon it because they see no distinction between

their leaders and our leaders.

And brothers, this ought not to be.

This ought not to be.

One of the things I'd like for you to think about is not only the

role of pastor as God's steward.

His job is to steward God's word and God's work.

His, his job is to, his job is a good job.

In fact, let me go back to, to, to 1st Timothy for a second here.

The word for noble, Noble is often translated good or goodness.

Other places the word noble means honorable or beautiful.

It modifies the word ergon, the work, the task.

And the idea here is that whoever desires the task of pastor, whoever

wants that and aspires to that, man, that's, they're desiring a good thing.

It'd be like if we're using modern day ideas here, whoever desires to be a

first responder desires a noble task.

Few people go into that profession thinking I'm going to make a

million dollars a year, right?

You go in there thinking I want to help people.

And so when you revive a person and you're supporting them, you're giving them

first care attention before they get to their, the hospital, that's a noble job.

In fact, we rightly esteemed and held up the first responders during, during 2020.

You know, they got discounts at restaurants and, you

know, we saluted them.

We put flags up, we put their names on banners over, over our bridges and things

like that because the work is noble.

We ought to see the work of shepherding as noble.

We ought to see God's leadership as something that we, uh,

we hold in high esteem.

Comes with high standards, but let's put it like this.

Point number two.

I want you to highly esteem the pastoral office.

I, I could have put this esteem, God's leadership esteem, the

leadership that God puts in place.

Uh, someone once said, to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower.

You ought to esteem the leadership that God puts in your life to hold it highly,

to respect it, to highly regard it.

This is what makes Christians different than the world, because even though we

might find a scoundrel in the pulpit.

We're still gonna say we have such a regard for God's leadership that

we'll still esteem the office.

And because we esteem the office, we esteem the people in the office.

And all you have to do is take the trickle down effect, right?

If, if your kids see you have barbecued pastor after the service,

like, Oh man, if I were Pastor PJ, I wouldn't have said that.

Man, can you believe he said, what was he saying about that?

What was he even talking about with that, you know, the illustration?

And he's always talking about the, the big Texas sky again.

Why would he,

yeah, barbecued pasture after the service, your kids are going to see

something that maybe you don't intend for them to understand, but they're

going to say, Oh, It's okay to despise leadership as long as it's in private.

It's okay to talk poorly about them as long as it's done

where, where he can't hear you.

Our job as pastors is to do the work of the Lord.

We, we, we feel that.

Your job as men of the church, leaders in your families, and in your homes,

and in your businesses, is to reflect the kind of respect and deference that

God wants you to have for his leaders.

Because they do a noble work.

They're God's stewards.

They're God's stewards.

It wouldn't be too different from Supposing Kamala won, all right?

I don't know, awful thought, but supposing Kamala won, and let's say she heard good

things about our church and she's going to make a stop at our church next Sunday.

Her and, uh, and her, her VP at that point, forget his name

already, thank God, right?

Waltz, thank you.

They want to stop by our church, whatever reason, and let's just say Pastor Pete

is like, yeah, thumbs up, come on over.

They come to our church and they come with a pomp and

circumstance or playing the song.

What's your response to an administration that you likely despise?

For whatever your reasons may be.

I think, probably for most of us, we'll pay respect to the office.

Not because of the person.

We may very much and strongly disagree with the person, rightly so.

But we're still going to stand and offer our respect to the leadership.

Not because we agree with her, but because we respect the office.

The office deserves our respect.

Not very different from how we think about the pastoral office.

It deserves our respect.

And the reason why is because you're teaching yourself, you're

leading yourself to say, I want to esteem the things that God puts in

my life, particularly her leaders.

And when you think that way, think about how that's going to

affect your leadership at home.

I want to lead my wife to respect the leadership of God's, of God's church.

Which means she's going to learn to respect your leadership.

Which means when your kids see you do the same thing, they're going to say,

oh, we respect leadership in our family.

We respect mom's leadership.

We respect dad's leadership.

You're creating a context wherein you think highly of leadership, not because

the leadership is always perfect, but because of who the leadership represents.

That's an important thing for us.

What does that look like in a local church?

Well, Paul has lots of texts here that I think speak to this,

to this principle pretty well.

Let me just give it to you as you're making your notes here.

1st Timothy 5 17.

Paul says, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of

double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

What does it look like to highly esteem the pastoral office?

Well, you paid them well.

Yeah.

So Paul says here, 1st Timothy 5.

17, you take care of them.

You take care of them.

That's awkward for me to preach, I know, but here, that's what it says.

1st Timothy 5.

19, here's another one for you.

What does it look like to highly esteem the pastoral office?

He says this, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the

evidence of two or three witnesses.

You give the leaders the benefit of the doubt.

It's not impossible for someone to level a charge against Pastor PJ and myself.

They say, well, you know, this person, you know, they looked at my wife a funny way,

or, you know, they're embezzling money.

Being above reproach doesn't mean people won't be unhappy with you.

It does mean that when people throw a charge against you, it shouldn't stick.

And because you care about your pastors, and you hopefully know them, and you know

your own leaders, you can say, oh, that doesn't fit with the person that I know.

Not a, not a, not a, not a perfect rule of thumb, we know.

But certainly want to give our leaders the benefit of the doubt.

That's what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5, 19.

To the point where you don't want to admit a charge unless

there's at least two witnesses.

You're probably going to apply a similar principle at your home.

One kid says, well, this person did this to me.

Okay.

Did anyone see it?

How do you, how do we know?

Are we sure that's what happened?

Multiple layers of accountability there.

Third, 1st Timothy 5.

20, and let's do Titus 3.

10.

Let's put those together.

Here's what 1st Timothy 5.

20 says.

As for those who persist in sin, he's talking about elders, rebuke them in

the presence of all so that the rest, that is the church, may stand in fear.

As for elders who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the

rest, the church, may stand in fear.

You should expect accountability.

We highly esteem the office, but we expect accountability from the office as well.

1 Timothy 5 says that that's what should happen.

A church that's practicing church discipline will be able to say, look, we

have high expectations of our pastors.

Therefore, we want high estimation of our pastors because we expect them to be held

accountable for the work that they do.

Titus 3.

10, you might think, okay, that's good for the pastor.

What about the church?

Here's how, here's how Paul tells Pastor Titus to deal with the church.

Titus 3.

10.

As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice

have nothing more to do with him.

That's, that's.

Church discipline.

There's accountability.

Because we highly esteem the pastoral office, which his job is

to oversee the church, to protect the church, to keep her pure, his

job is to also hold you accountable.

Which might mean, if a pastor loves you, he's going to confront you.

If a pastor cares about you, he's going to do the uncomfortable work of looking

you in the eye and say, Hey, we haven't been making it to church a lot lately.

What's going on?

Or, if you see some other sin tendency, he's gonna come to you and say,

Look, I care about you, and this is awkward, I don't want to talk about

this, but I need to ask you, are you looking at online pornography?

Are you doing that with some regularity?

I have reason to believe that, for whatever reason.

Let's just say that's the situation here.

How are you handling your money?

I mean, these are conversations that nobody wants to talk about.

What are the rules of social conversation, right?

Don't talk about politics, don't talk about religion.

Your pastor, if he cares about you, is gonna get into your kitchen,

and it's gonna end up talking about a lot of those things.

Now, again, this is our modeling of leadership, because this

is what we want you to do.

Good leadership is willing to lean into confrontation for the good

of the person that they're loving.

That means your wife, young men, when you marry someday, that means

you're going to lean into your wife and have conversations with her.

And you're going to let her do the same for you because you care about her.

Means you're going to do it with your kids.

Means you're going to do it with your brothers.

Because we respect and admire, we respect and esteem rather, the leadership,

not only of the pastoral office, but obviously of the great pastor, the great

shepherd and overseer of our souls.

Last, one, one more here, Titus 215, highly esteeming the pastoral office

will mean respecting their authority.

Respecting authority.

Again, this is the idea here.

We're respecting authority.

We're expecting to, um, to demonstrate that with our lives.

Paul says to Titus, declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority.

Let no one disregard you.

Paul doesn't want Titus to equivocate in his leadership.

Well guys, we should, we should love our enemies, uh, but, you know,

maybe there's times they hate them.

Paul doesn't want them to be a double tongued man.

Declare these things, speak them strongly, exhort and rebuke with all authority.

That is, he's calling you up to, to rise to the occasion and he's also

calling you out when he needs to.

And again, he's modeling for you what your job is as well on a smaller scale.

Let no one disregard you, Paul says to Titus.

In other words, you're not a carpet, you're not a rug, let

no one just walk over you.

Your job is to lead the church.

Okay, we highly esteem the pastoral office.

We lead ourselves first, and part of how we lead ourselves is we respect authority.

We highly esteem that.

We lead ourselves to cultivate godly desires, and of course, uh, as we talk

now about irreproachability, let's look at how we lead ourselves in this particular

area, which is of great concern and of waning, um, and it's waning in the church.

Here's what he says, 1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, the saying is trustworthy

1 Timothy 3:1

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

Because it's a noble task, because he's got a steward, therefore.

An overseer must be above reproach.

Oh, that's such a good word, irreproachability.

Titus, again, here's how he says it.

He says, This is why I left you in Crete, to appoint elders in every town.

Verse 6, If anyone is above reproach.

And then he kind of talks a little bit about what that is.

Above reproach, here in Titus chapter 1, is the husband of one wife.

Titus 1 · chapter mention

Children are believers, not open to the charge of debauchery and subordination.

An overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach.

You see the principle at work here.

The leader leads himself, and as a natural consequence, he's leading his family.

And if he can demonstrate leadership of his family, well then, he's now qualified

to be considered to lead the church.

It makes perfect sense.

He who is faithful in little is faithful in much, Jesus says.

Therefore, your job and mine is to make sure that when we think about

being above reproach, we're not thinking about something so far off

and so impossible to reach that we automatically dismiss ourselves.

He's saying, no, be faithful.

Effective leaders lead themselves first, and it starts with you leading

you, but then it naturally includes the people that you love, leading the

people that God has entrusted to you.

That's what it, a little bit of what it means to lead themselves first.

You see this word also used in Colossians chapter 1.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

This is important.

Paul says to the Colossian church, you who once alienated, hostile in mind,

doing evil deeds, Jesus has now reconciled in his body of flesh, by his death, in

order, that is for the purpose of, he died on the cross, In order to present

you holy and blameless, and here's our word, above reproach before him.

So now you notice that this is removed from the area of pastors and

now to the area of the parishioner.

It goes from the leaders to the body of Christ, which is you and me.

So this is one you can't escape.

This is the reason that he died for you.

The purpose of Jesus death was to make you holy, or as he puts it here,

holy, blameless, and above reproach.

Paul tells Timothy in his, in his, His letter here.

Here's something interesting.

He says, I charge you to keep the commandment unstained.

That is, to keep the Word of God, the things that you're preaching, to let

it be pure and free from reproach.

Same word underneath this, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is until Jesus comes back.

Your life, Timothy, your job is to preach the Word and to do it

in such a way that the preaching of it is not stained or sullied.

How do you do that, you might ask?

How does Timothy supposed to do that?

And I would argue that the way he does that is from the context.

Paul tells Titus, look, here's what I want you to do, man of God,

flee the things, sexual morality, sensualities, flee love for money.

Instead, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness,

fight the good fight of faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were

called and about which you have been made, about which you made the good confession

in the presence of many witnesses.

I charge you, keep the commandment unstained and free from approach.

I see here in this paragraph, this pericope of information, I see Paul

saying, look, the way that you keep it unstained and free from approach is that

your life demonstrates the qualities that the scripture testifies to.

If you're preaching qualities that your life does not display, then

I think you're doing it wrong.

Paul's saying, like, I charge you to keep the commandment

unstained, free from reproach.

By maintaining a life of blameless excellence, that's what it

means to be above reproach.

Does not mean perfection, but it does mean your life testifies to the glory

of God by the way that you live.

Point number three, let's fight not to sully the gospel

with the compromised life.

Above reproach, irreproachability means that I recognize My life has the

power to both testify and adorn the doctrine of God or it has the power to

undermine everything that we hold dear.

It's so important, Paul says, Colossians chapter 1, let me remind you as we

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

just looked at, that your reason for being saved is to be above reproach.

And therefore, I never want Jesus to get a black eye because of my life.

Now, brothers, I gotta tell you, I'm scared.

When I see people in public sin in such obvious and terrifying ways,

I think, man, I could do that.

Lord, keep me far away from areas where I know I can sin and dishonor Christ.

I look at them and I shudder because I know these men at one point were

doing Bible studies and they're sitting with other brothers and saying, man,

I love the Lord and I want to do the right thing and, and maybe they did.

Maybe for many years they did until one day they compromised just a little and

then a little more and then a little more and then suddenly it's not just their

name that's dragged through the mud.

It's their Savior.

Their Savior's dragged in the mud.

Jesus now looks less glorious because of my sin.

Jesus now looks like he's not worth the time because clearly sex or

money or power was better than Jesus.

He wasn't strong enough to hold the heart of that man such that that man stayed

true to Christ over and against everything else that he could possibly have.

That terrifies me.

I can't help but think of the song.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love.

Take this heart, Lord, and steal it.

Steal it to thy throne above.

I feel that.

I want that.

And I want you to feel that.

I want you not to think of yourself like, man, I could never fall.

I'm impervious to temptation.

I don't think any of us would think that.

But sometimes the way that we live gives that impression.

I don't want you to solely the gospel with the compromised life.

My family and I, before we left California, tried to hit up a

couple big locations that were on our docket of things to do.

One of those places was a Nixon library, Nixon museum.

So we went there and we had, we had a fun time.

Well, at least Kristen and I did probably not the kids.

Um, they made us wear masks.

Because that was the leadership at the time.

Uh, but one thing that I noticed is that one big part of the museum is

exactly what you'd expect it to be.

There was a whole section.

A large section.

And I think, if I remember right, it was near the front.

A large section called the Watergate Scandal.

Now, of course, many of you guys remember in the early 70s, Nixon hired

thugs to go into the Watergate Hotel, break into the Democratic National

Committee's offices, and try to set up bugs and cameras, but they called the

police on them at just the right time.

They were busted, and then over the course of months, it was come to,

they came to conclude that these guys were actually hired by Nixon.

Well, not directly, but by his administration.

You might remember also that Nixon made a TV appearance and said, I think the

American people deserve to know whether or not their president is a crook.

He says, well, I'm not a crook.

I'm not a crook.

I've never obstructed justice.

Everything I have, I earned.

And he stood there and looked the American people in the

eye and said, I'm not a crook.

And what is he remembered for?

Being the exact opposite.

He's, he was a crook.

And he was one of the presidents that, uh, stepped out, I think the only

president that stepped out of office voluntarily before he was impeached.

Uh, he is such a good example for us of how the truth eventually does come out.

And if there is sin in your life that to this point you've harbored

and thought that you've kept it secret, maybe today is a good day

to confess that and renounce that.

Because here's what Jesus says, he says, nothing is covered

up that will not be revealed.

Nothing is hidden that will not be known.

Ecclesiastes, the very last, the very last verse in Ecclesiastes says, God

will bring every deed in the judgment.

In fact, the verse before this, he says, fear God.

Fear God and keep the commandments.

Why for God.

It's gonna bring every deed and a judgment with every secret thing,

whether good or evil, your life will at some point be fla open and your heart

and your works will be made evidenced.

I tell my sons all the time, if God loves you, he will expose you.

And I know that from Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

God disciplines those whom he loves as a father, the son and whom delights

in the same way that we who are fathers know what it is to discipline

our sons and our daughters for doing something silly or foolish, sinful.

God does the same for us.

Hebrews, in fact says it this way.

He says, our father disciplined us, uh, the best They knew how

I'm using modern vernacular.

They dis, they disciplined us as it seemed best to them.

But our father disciplines us.

He says, um, that we may share in his holiness.

In other words, he disciplines us perfectly.

And one of the disciplines of his hand is that he might remove from

us the allowance to be covered.

There is a season where God will tolerate your sin and he'll let you have it, but.

Doesn't mean his patience is infinite.

Someday, he's gonna pull the cover off of you, and if you say, if you

continue to say, God, I'm just gonna keep doing this sin, someday he's just

gonna, okay, I'm gonna expose you.

Much like the men who participated in the Ashley Madison scandal.

They went to the website, they signed up for accounts,

they're looking for an affair.

Some of them high profile men.

They thought their secret was safe with Ashley Madison until someone

broke into the Ashley Madison archives and their databases and threatened to

expose them, which of course they did.

Men killed themselves.

Men left the ministry because they were exposed, and I think that

was a great mercy for those men.

It's a mercy.

It's a mercy.

As awful as that is, that was a mercy because they were given the opportunity

to repent before it was too late.

God loves you.

He will expose you.

Far better for you to expose yourself, though.

Because you don't want to compromise your life and give Christ a black eye.

I recently read something that shook me to the core.

I read it last year.

I reminded myself about it last year.

I have it in your notes and your questions here.

So just take a look with me and, and read.

Uh, D.

A.

Carson, one of my favorite scholars, uh, writes about King Hezekiah's fall.

And then here, here he says this.

He says, But I mean them.

I would rather die than end up unfaithful to my wife.

I would rather die than deny by a profligate life what

I have taught in my books.

I would rather die than deny or disown the gospel.

God knows there are many things in my past of which I am deeply ashamed.

I would not want such shame to multiply and bring dishonor

to Christ in years to come.

There are worse things than dying.

There are worse things than dying, man.

And that's got to be your mindset if you're going to live

a life of irreproachability.

I would rather die than deny Christ.

I would rather die than be unfaithful to my wife.

I think that's a wise and good posture for each of us to adopt.

Really quickly then, it's important you know this call to be above

reproach is not impossible.

Let me just give you several names.

Job was blameless and upright before God.

Feared God, walking in the commandments.

Noah was blameless in his generation.

God spoke about him specifically as blameless.

Daniel, his enemies couldn't find fault in the guy.

Think about that.

He never rode his camel above the speed limit.

He always kept his registration up to date.

I mean, the guy was just impeccable, right?

He was a good dude.

Such that his enemies, who were looking for skeletons in the

closet, couldn't identify anything except for the law of God.

So like, okay, let's just, let's just make a decree that he can't pray to God.

That'll get him.

Let's call evil good and good evil.

That'll get Daniel.

That's a pretty impressive thing to say about somebody.

Zechariah and Elizabeth.

This is interesting because they were called righteous

before God, walking blamelessly.

A husband and wife duo were, were honored by scriptures saying that they

were, uh, they, they walked righteous before God and they were blameless.

And what did God do for them?

Well, he gave them John the Baptist.

One of my friends, when I, when I, uh, I was celebrating one of my

anniversaries, he sent me this thing here.

And I never, I saved it.

I saved it.

It's, it's, uh, 40 consequences of adultery.

And, uh, maybe you could read this list at some point in time.

It's, it's worth it.

Uh, but it's a really sobering exercise of saying, man, if I, if I were unfaithful,

here are all the things that would happen.

All the thing, all the fallout, all, all of the, all the people

that would be bruised, beaten.

Uh, there's a saying, strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.

That's what Jesus says.

Imagine the fallout of your life as a shepherd, as a leader, as a man,

as a husband, as a grandfather, as a, as a whatever role you are.

Imagine the fallout of your sin, vivid and in detail.

I think that's what this blog does for me.

And then think about the men that God, God says, look, be blameless,

be upright, be that kind of man.

And think about the kind of legacy that could lead.

What kind of life would a church have if her men were above reproach?

What kind of influence would she be bestowed with?

What kind of benefit would God give to a church of men that loved the Lord their

God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength and lived above reproach?

I can only imagine that God will tremendously bless that

group of men and that church.

The wives would blossom.

The sons and daughters would grow to maturity, having many

examples of godly and mature men.

That's the kind of church that we want to be.

It's the kind of men that we want you to become.

So we want you to prayerfully pursue irreproachability.

We want you to be qualified, even if you never become a pastor.

Pastors are called to lead, and you're called to follow after the leadership.

And what God wants from all of us, not just the leaders who are in the

pulpit, but for all of us, He wants us to learn how to lead ourselves first.

Effective leaders lead themselves first.

That's what God's, that's what God's qualifications

ultimately say, in a nutshell.

We'll expand more on this in the coming months, but until then, let's

pray, and I'll dismiss you to your small groups to have a, hopefully,

a good conversation about this.

God, give us the grace to be the kind of men that we, that we read about.

We want to be like all the men that we listed previously, Job, and

Noah, and Daniel, Zechariah, and Elizabeth, and even the deacons.

The deacons are called to be blameless, and upright, and above reproach as well.

Help us to be the kind of men that can be called above reproach.

We know that none of us are perfect, Lord, and some of us feel

that more acutely than others.

Help us to deal with our tender conscience, but not to be discouraged,

but to doggedly pursue excellence of life.

Having our phones and our computers, if people were to look

at them, we wouldn't be ashamed.

Having our, our money, our bank accounts, if people looked at our bank accounts,

none of us would be embarrassed.

If people looked at the way that we talk to our wives or they had recorded

conversations or the way that we talk to our kids or the other people that

know us best, Lord, let us not be ashamed, but let, let it be that people

who know us best respect us the most.

Let that kind of life, that kind of integrity characterize all of us.

Lord, forgive us where we fall short.

We know none of us is perfect, but we aim to be that Lord.

We're aspiring to be that.

Help us to be the kind of men that you can entrust with great

leadership and great responsibility.

We ask all these things in Jesus name.

Amen.