Elder Qualifications - Part 2

Turn your Bible to 1st Timothy 3, we'll continue where we left off last week. 1st Timothy 3, starting in verse 1. It is a trustworthy saying, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good work. An overseer then must be above reproach. The husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but considerate, peaceable, free from the love of money, leading his own household well, having his children in submission with all dignity.

But if a man does not know how to lead his own household, how will he take care of the church of God and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation of the devil? and he must have a good reputation with those outside the church so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. So that's the holy word of God. May God add his blessing to the reading of his word as well as the preaching of his word. so last week I told you that I pulled five main points out of this text of course now I have six so I'm growing as well I'm hopefully a little smarter than I was a week ago but the sixth point that I bring out was part of one of the other ones I just think it deserves special attention and that was that line, free from the love of money.

But remember last week I told you a couple things I want you to think about. One is that this is a present tense description of a person. If we were to apply these qualifications to everyone and apply them to every moment of everyone's life, especially prior to their conversion, there would be very few people that would ever be able to be seen as qualified for this office. so as a general rule people who were dastardly guys before they got saved and it's possible they can become an elder and i don't just say that because i was a dastardly guy i've known a lot of men who became pastors who uh they like john macarthur is an example of a guy who as a little kid the worst thing he ever did was steal a pack of bubble gum once got saved that night you know you know he's been a stellar man ever since in every way that we can see outwardly and people who know him inwardly as well as they can testify to that then there's other people who spend decades lost in sin and and doing things that are really wicked and then they get saved there's a radical transformation and they end up being able to be good pastors as well the point is is that when god calls a man his present life circumstances will show these qualifications I would even argue that in some cases a person could be a Christian for a little while and not necessarily meet these qualifications, and then later they do.

And in fact, we would expect that. We would expect that a person, when he got saved, would probably not have all this down yet, especially if the person hadn't read these things. Similarly, Paul's speaking of men here. I know in this church we already agree about these kinds of things, but I think it's worth repeating that the offices of pastor and, I believe, deacon are reserved for men.

There's people who are good people who think deacons can be women. I don't agree. So we're not going to call any church that has a female deacon a false church or something like that. But I think it's a mistake. It's important to note that the qualifications for pastor, one of them being that you're a man, has nothing to do with men being superior to women or anything of that sort.

In Christ, we're all equal. We're all equally sinful and need forgiveness. And in Christ, we're all equal. And there are some things about being a pastor that maybe a man will be a little bit more inclined to do and do well. There are some things that pastors have to do that require, we'll say maybe a little manhood. At the same time, there's some things about being, we'll just say a mom, and taking care of your children and disciplining them and raising them where you're functioning in almost the same capacity.

All right, you're preaching at them. Hopefully you're exhorting them with the word of God regularly. And you're teaching them the Bible. And you're disciplining them. And you're going to hold most of these qualities as well. So it's important to notate when you go out in the public square in the United States where we happen to live.

And you want to confront people and say, I don't think women should be pastors. And I don't think women should be preaching. it's important that you understand that you're not from a tradition that thinks women are subordinate in any way. You're from a tradition that believes that's how God appointed these gender roles to occur Interestingly enough we live in a culture where we told there no such thing as gender and yet at the same time women should be able to do anything even though they I don even want to get into it You guys all know what I talking about So, selecting elders is the responsibility of the church.

It's the responsibility of the church that means to understand what this text says. We have a book that may be here still, may be not, called Biblical Elders and Deacons, written by Nehemiah Cox, one of the foundational authors of our confession, as well as one of the historically best people from a Baptist perspective of explaining Baptist covenant theology. It's a great book.

There's other people who've done teachings on what elders are. There's people in traditions we wouldn't agree with that have done good teachings on it. So as much as it's also vital that we do a good job in selecting elders, because a bad elder is going to really, that could be a big problem for you. It's also important to understand that you're selecting a man, or men, ultimately, but each individual time.

And this is going to be a person who he himself will be at various stages of development in his own Christian life. And he will make mistakes, he will sin, and there will be times that those things can be dealt with. So the first point I gave you last week is that the elder must want to do it willingly. This is a good work he desires. One of the problems in our day, we'll see this in Crete here in a minute, is that people don't want to work at all.

And some of the biggest culprits out there of not working are men who found out that being a pastor can actually be a rather profitable position where you can be pretty lazy at a lot of churches. There are some churches that are just happy to have a guy that shows up on Sunday and says stuff. And maybe he's got to do a few home visits. And you know what?

That can be pretty profitable for a young man that doesn't want to get a real job, we'll say. And he can download sermons from the Internet. And he can memorize them even and just read them on Sunday or recite them. And he can do it with theatrics. And he can make people think he's a good guy. Not all false teachers teach falsely.

Just so you understand. Some false teachers will actually get up and they'll say all the right things. It's their motivation that's the biggest problem. So he must want to do it willingly. He needs somebody that wants to do it. Number two, he has to have certain character traits that shows that he's above reproach.

And we read those last week and we went through them and briefly talked about what they mean. And I'll just remind you that he will embody none of these perfectly. in fact there may be a couple that he's stellar at a couple that he struggles with and maybe they're the ones you're really good at it could be tough to submit to an authority in your life to listen to a person pontificate about the word of god when there's at least maybe what you'd call one glaring issue from your perspective that you actually have a good handle on. That can be very difficult, yet we're called to submit to our elders and obey them so that they may do their job joyfully.

And so you must be able to contemplate these things and have a reasonability factor about each one of them and pray. There was a guy at my old church that, he said it almost sarcastically sometimes, but I think he was right. He said he would teach Sunday school and he was just a mediocre teacher and he used to say if you think I'm not such a good teacher would you pray for me more and it was kind of like yeah you know that's a good point you know I'm sitting here it was kind of obvious he was in a very early stage of growing as a teacher now he's actually pretty good over the years he got better and I thought yeah you know if somebody's doing something that you want to see improvement in God can do that okay so pray for people as well, especially elders.

Now, the third point I brought out last week, so we're getting down here to verse 3. He's not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but considerate, peaceable, and free from the love of money. So separating those out a little. Not being addicted to wine or pugnacious, considerate, peaceable. I put that under the heading of what is his response to challenges and difficulty so I think it's pretty obvious for any one of us in here that you don't want a drunkard for a pastor in fact if there was a drunkard in our church we would be working with that person to repent or ultimately we would have to excommunicate somebody who persisted in that sin I'm going to lump along with drunkenness I'm going to lump in drug.

I'm going to say drug addiction. I don't like the word addiction. I think you all know what I mean when I say it. People who are doing things to themselves that are anesthetizing. They're doing things like drugs or drinking. Things that the sole purpose of are to escape reality ultimately.

Or forms of debauchery and dissipation. and so we can take that individually as something we don't want in an elder and that can be true but if you look at the context of where not addicted to much wine appears it says he's not addicted to much wine or pugnacious it's kind of in its own little phrase there separated out and so let's look at those together so what does it mean to be pugnacious Does anybody know? Any of you homeschool kids? Did you get to that word yet?

So to be pugnacious means to basically have a tendency to want to fight So back in the day boxers were called pugilists because pugilism means fighting It comes from the same root word So the idea is that this man is not the kind of man whose first response to difficulty, confrontation, conflict, is to throw a punch. You don't want that kind of person as your leader in almost any context. One of the problems we've had in the last few years in the United States with a government that is often acting unjustly is some of the most popular people are the ones that are most anti-government now.

The ones that are ready to just storm a revolution tomorrow. Now, a revolution could be necessary, and the men who did the American Revolution, I don't think they were pugnacious men. I think these were people who, after much time and effort and prayer and attempts to be peaceable and considerate, finally thought, when in the course of human events, there's no other way that we could resolve our conflict, now revolution becomes necessary.

And that's the preamble to the Constitution, right? Or is that the Declaration of Independence? No, that's the Constitution. Anyway, you guys can figure that one out after. I've got the Constitution in my bag if anybody wants to see it. But the idea here is that you don't want a person who he's really known for fighting.

That that's the one thing that he does. Because that will come out in every area then of his ministry. And so does that mean that this person would never fight? I think we need to be careful of going in the other ditch on the other side of the road of this. a pastor who's unwilling to go to battle an elder who's unwilling to stand up for truth or for his church or against evil he will be worthless to you as well so you don't want somebody whose first response is let's throw a punch, let's fight, let's have conflict and you also don't want somebody who is so avoiding of conflict that you don't know how he'd ever defend you.

I take comfort in the fact that if somebody came into this building and wanted to do harm to people in this room, there are people in this room prepared to do harm to that person first. I take great comfort in that. I take comfort in thinking my children and the other children in this room have a veil of protection from the evil that really exists in our society.

At the same time, I also know that the people prepared to do that aren't walking around threatening people all the time with weaponry. So the opposite of being pugnacious follows. You see the word but? He's not pugnacious. He doesn't just want to fight when things don't go his way. He's considerate.

He's peaceable. To be considerate means thoughtful. There's other translations. These words in this section must have a semantic range that's beyond my understanding in a sense. If you are using an ESV or a KJV or with me the LSB, there are several different words used in this passage that have a lot of different meanings. And I think studying what all those different words are could be good.

So I'm not going to tell you that it just means one thing. But the idea of being considerate and peaceful is that they're thoughtful. If you're inconsiderate, which is a sin, by the way, it's unloving to be inconsiderate. If you're inconsiderate, what it really means is you don't think about others. You just kind of react based on how you feel or how you think.

And you're not actually thinking, well, why did the other person say the thing that offended me? why did the other person do the thing that I decided I didn't like instead we're just quick to judge we just decide well we already know we don't even have to really think about it we don't have to ask them we just decide so a good elder is going to be someone who considers things there's going to be times again look if you this is the accusation you see a movie gets advertised online and somebody, you find out the movie has nudity. And you say, it's trash. And someone says, oh, well, you haven't even watched it.

I don't have to watch it to know certain things are trash. There's certain ways we can be a bit prejudicial, I'll say. But there's other ways we need to be more thoughtful. And a man who's snapped judgment to everything is, it's wrong, I'm right, do it this way, that could be a problem. In fact, I wouldn't be confessional today if that was my attitude.

Because for years I wasn't. Before I heard of the 1689, I thought differently and I needed to be considerate. Peaceable has the idea of trying to make peace with others. What is the biggest need of every person in the world? Peace with God. When Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, he wasn't talking about police officers.

He said, blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, for they shall be called sons of God. Who's called sons of God? Those who make peace with God. And so if you're a peacemaker, you're an ambassador for Christ, and you're actually out trying to evangelize people that they might be reconciled to God. But as well, as an imitator of your Father in Heaven, you're making peace with others.

I understand we live in a difficult world. There's going to be times when you're not at peace. Romans says, be at peace with all men, so far as it relies on you, though. So if you have a lack of peace with an individual, especially if it becomes known in such a way that outward people would even know well how can this guy be your pastor He always fighting with this other guy whatever it is right It doesn matter the details Hopefully you can show the efforts you've made for peace.

This, interestingly enough, has very little to do with pastors from a pastor-only perspective. Do you think there's a Christian in this room who doesn't have to be peaceable? this is why I challenged the men several years ago. I can say that now almost. I guess not several. Our church isn't even two years old. But I challenged the men in this room over a year ago in particular.

You should be striving for the same virtues listed here as a man that legitimately wants to be an elder. The only difference becomes your role. You women, you don't have an excuse just because you can't be a pastor. Just because I'm never going to hand you a microphone and have you preach on the street, that doesn't mean that you're exempt. In fact, if you read chapter 2 of Timothy and you do one of those word studies where you look at the Greek words and the English words, most of the things God tells women to do in chapter 2, other than preach, are the same things He's saying men need to do.

You've got to be modest, self-respectable, considerate, sensible. and so these are qualifications of Christians so in a sense an elder is selected by God and ordained in a special way through the local church but other than the willingness and maybe the aptness to teach where you really want that person preaching the word these are the same qualifications each one of us should strive for on a regular basis but I do hope God will provide more elders and deacons in this room. So being addicted to wine is bad. We all kind of understand that.

Some commentators grouped it with the pugnacity, though, the pugnaciousness. So it was the idea that what do you do when difficulty happens? Is your response to throw a punch? Is your response to run away and go get drunk? is your response to consider what's going on, seek peace with all men, but be willing to do battle if needed. Jude said that we are to contend for the faith.

It's that same word, that pugnaciousness. In Mark 11, if you want to turn there, you can look at it. In Mark chapter 11, it says then they came to Jerusalem and he, that's Jesus, entered the temple I like the LSB, it capitalizes he so if you're not if you didn't read everything right before it helps you a little and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.

And he was not permitting anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. And he began to teach and say to them, Is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a robber's den. I don't think that in the book of Timothy, Paul wanted you to hear that a man should not be pugnacious and think, well, Jesus is now disqualified.

So what you have to be able to do is look at Jesus in his humanity, look at the actual words that have been given to you about our Lord, and you have to understand that at every moment he would have been perfectly sinless and I have no doubt in my mind that he would have been pastorally qualified. If you disagree with that, I think we have a little disagreement on how the Bible works and how Jesus is. So if a man can walk into the temple and physically have to throw people out of it, But he didn't just go in and whisper, hey, I want you guys to go.

Try that sometime. Go down to where people are doing something that you don't want them to do and just kind of gently tell them, yeah, why don't you guys just stop? It doesn't work. He had to throw people out. He had to get physical. In the other passage, he made a cord of whips or a whip of cords. and he didn't just smack it like Indiana Jones to make the noise, you know, when it breaks the sound barrier.

He had to drive people out. He wouldn't let anyone carry merchandise in. He was a very physical man. He did what needed to be done to show that the glory of God was more important than whatever it is they were doing. And some of these guys probably had some big animals that had to be driven out. He turned over their tables. so Jesus who embodied perfect meekness perfect gentleness and perfect self control really did what we read about in Mark 11 you have to be able to consider those things and understand what that means for us now does that mean that we turn over tables I don't know maybe in some context you will find you have to sometime but there will be people who will tell you and me but especially men in this room there will be people that will tell you, you're coming across too strong.

You sound harsh. You know what's going to sound harsh to sinners is God's judgment on Judgment Day. That's what's going to be harsh. And I've said it many times, people are going to be begging for the mean-sounding preacher at Ohio State when they're standing before a holy God in their sin. And so you go out and you do that. what God's called you to do, and sometimes it means doing hard things that I'm going to say are just a little bit manly.

And sometimes it's a little bit of a different thing than what we consider the normal gentleness that we have to use on a regular basis when we're trying to make peace with people. So I want you to remember that you contend for the faith while not being known for being pugnacious. You shouldn't be known that way. you should be free from the love of money this should be true of each and every one of you as well a pastor in particular has more temptation I was a thief before I got saved I could probably figure it out if you haven't but the point is you shouldn't have a love of money temptation is going to abound but as a pastor there's going to be a love of money that will destroy the whole church Satan's aware that if he can make one church member get a little wonky that there's actually a procedure for kind of getting that guy out if you need to right if Satan can cause the leadership of a church to fall that has destroyed whole churches.

Now some of those churches have really bad ecclesiology. And a single pastor church by design will be more susceptible to that kind of difficulty as well. A single pastor church circumstantially is providential and we trust God's will in that matter. But so being free from the love of money is one of the calls. So back to 1 Peter 5.2 I'll remind you what it says there.

Shepherd the flock of God among you, overseeing, not under compulsion, but willingly, according to God. He says, and not for dishonest gain, but with eagerness. One of the difficulties we have as Christians is that we have to have money. Your pastor has to have money. If you think your pastor wakes up every day and he just studies the word and prays and he just fasts and that his whole family fasts, and his wife doesn't wear clothing, and they never go anywhere, and he shows up Sunday and magically is able to preach, then you don't understand the way the world works.

He has to have money. The temptation for a person who can start to make money one way or another will be to make more. And so you want to find a person who's free from the love of money. We just went through the 10th commandment. We have some practical ideas for how we can look at our own lives to see if we have the love of money. Again, no one will be perfect, but some of the worst people in the whole world are the people who you can go home.

I don't know if people do TV anymore. I don't know how this stuff works even, but you can turn on your TV and you can see Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland. And you can see Paula White. Paula White's a good pastor. Paula White's a bad pastor. You can see Beth Moore.

Beth Moore has made millions and millions of dollars and you know what Beth Moore did a lot of Beth Moore did a lot of preaching good truth too there's a reason why people bought her books and it wasn't because she came right out and said I'm a modalist now of course T.D. Jakes could be a modalist and he's a rich man too there are pastors on much smaller scales out there that are just raking in money hand over fist right now much smaller scales than billionaires and people that are on TV and are really out there that are fleecing a flock. People who are downloading sermons from the internet and they're either reading them or they're memorizing.

They may even put in the effort to memorize it and preach it really well. But it's fleecing people and it's all for greed. so in the Bible when greed is talked about it's always talked about in a negative way you don't have to turn there but in Corinthians when Paul talks about kicking the guy out of the fellowship of the church because of his sexual immorality he says do not even eat with such a one he said either if he's a swindler idolater or greedy greediness is enough to actually get kicked out of the church it's this egregious sin that shows that you don't trust God and that you want to serve mammon and not God and so you're looking for someone who doesn't love money there's a lot of ways you can figure that out maybe some of it you might have to figure out as you go but as we head into what I'll say are tougher times in the United States there's going to be more of a need for people to have money does anyone in here notice you can't buy as many groceries for the same amount as you could three years ago? Have you figured that out?

Even if you got a raise, things are more expensive now. Things are changing in the United States. You have to be able to be compassionate with someone and help work with them on these things. You can't just assume because a guy wants money so he can feed his family and clothe them and stuff that he's a bad guy that loves money. It's not like you can just say, hey, no money. but you have to try to work these things out with people.

So that's part of being above reproach. That's part of how you respond to challenges and difficulty in your life. Where does the man find his trust? If you turn to Titus 1, another passage about pastors. I want to read a little bit in there. So he says in verse 7 and the overseer must be beyond reproach The same concept as God steward So he the steward of what God owns Right?

Which means the gospel, all the money he has, and the people. Right? You're a Christian today, you're God's. You're God's child. And any pastor or elder that's going to oversee you is actually taking care of God's child. But listen, he says, He's not self-willed.

He's not quick-tempered. We already talked about that's pugnacious, the opposite. Not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of dishonest gain. So it's all the same qualifications. It's not like the people on Crete had some new way of figuring out elders and the people in Ephesus had some different way. God's word is consistent.

He says he's going to be hospitable. Hard to be hospitable if you have no money. Our confession takes care of that. He has to love what is good. He has to be sensible, righteous, holy, and self-controlled. Holding fast a faithful word.

Which is in accordance with the teaching. So he's got to have good doctrine. That's part of being apt to teach, right? Look, if you want to come up here after the sermon, you want to ask me about some random verse in a minor prophet, and say, hey, what does this mean? And expect me to answer you off the top of my head. We could play that game if you really wanted.

But for the most part, the guy ought to be able to teach doctrine without having to go back to his study for a while. If we're at the fellowship and you want me to explain something that's utterly confessional in our 1689, I should be able to give you some response to it. You should be able to quiz me on it before you affirm me as an elder. But listen to this.

He says, so he'll be able to both exhort and sound doctrine and reprove those who contradict. but now listen this is a neat way he follows this up he says for there are many rebellious men empty talkers and deceivers especially those of the circumcision so there's people teaching false doctrine even Jews he says who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families teaching things they should not teach why? for the sake of dishonest gain again there's people just trying to get rich off this stuff and maybe they're not trying to get rich it's easy to point to Joel Osteen and say well that's unnecessary but look he says one of them selves now he's talking about Cretans he says one of themselves a prophet of their own said Cretans are always liars evil beasts lazy gluttons and then he says this testimony is true so they had a they had a prophet of their own in Crete that said this and he says that's true well he says they're always liars evil beasts and lazy gluttons I just wanted to go to the lazy glutton part you don't have to be rich to have a love of money you can have a guy that just wants to be a lazy glutton and I don't want to turn this away from being a sermon but I've heard of examples of men who were hired at churches to do a job. It might not even be pastoral. They were given a role at a church.

The people bring their tithes or whatever you want to call it in the New Testament to the church. They give their offering to God in the box at the church or in the plate. And then the people put all the money together and the treasurer adds it all up. And they end up writing a check to a guy to do something. And all he does all week is sit around and play on Facebook and Twitter and whatever else there is.

Laziness is a sin. You don't want someone who's lazy that you call your leader. Because they'll be lazy when you need them. It's also not good for that person either. Alright, number four. Can he do on a small scale what he is expected to do on a large scale?

So go back to verse four. Leading his own household well, having his children in submission with all dignity. And then he says, But if a man does not know how to lead his own household, how will he take care of the church of God? So the question is, can this person, have they shown that they can do, on a maybe smaller scale, what you're hoping they could do with the church, right?

So what this, I was going to say something opposite. It sounded too sarcastic in my head. what this can't mean is this man has a perfect family. And it's always perfect. And you've never seen any of them do anything wrong. In fact, that perception that some people have created, actually, of a pastor's family, I believe has caused many pastors to keep silent when things get tough.

Could you imagine being the elder of a church where the people expected your kids to basically never sin? Who would you talk to when you had a difficulty that you wanted some help with? Right? Who would your wife call? So there's a few things you have to consider. One is, do the children have to all be saved?

Now if you're Presbyterian, that's easy because they just declare them all saved when they're born or when they're sprinkled. However they do it. There's probably as many different Presbyterian views and Baptist views. Your children don't have to be saved for you to be a pastor. That's not what the qualification says. It says do you lead your household well?

And do you have your children in submission with all dignity? I think that the all dignity means, not necessarily the children, I think it's that you have dignity in how you deal with them. So your children or in submission to you but you know you can get people in submission to you in undignified ways You understand what I saying That there people who have gotten people to be submissive and subordinate to them and they've done it through unnecessary threatenings.

They've done it through violence even, or abuse. A lot of children that may appear to be submissive just because they're quiet, that they're actually just afraid to do anything because of the wrath of their father. Alright? So the question is, how do you keep your children in submission with all dignity, right? So you have to be able to evaluate, does this man discipline?

When he disciplines, is it too harsh? How do you even know unless you live with him? There's got to be some investigation. There's got to be some talking to people and seeing how a wife thinks of the man. A man whose wife doesn't think he's elder qualified, I'll just tell you he's not elder qualified, okay? I think that that's part of it.

Do you have to have children is another question you have to ask yourself. If a man has no children, is he just not pastor material? Does he have to find a wife and have kids to be a pastor? There are people who believe that. And some of the explanations in the commentaries for these qualifications are that it helps a man to understand other people better if he's had some of those shared experiences.

And although I agree, I think that the Word of God is sufficient for a pastor to counsel people and teach them. And a young man who has yet to even find a wife can be a good pastor. Charles Spurgeon was a pastor before he found his wife. And actually, if he did what he did to her then, today, they'd call it spiritual abuse. Because he tried to court a girl that was going to the church and listening to him preach, right?

And I don't think you have to have children, but I think that a man that has children, that has a wife, there should be some testimony that his leadership in that small unit is going to be reflective of what you're going to maybe be hoped to see in a church. So do you see growth? Not perfection, but do you see growth? Do you see that he handles the difficulties well?

Another thing is, what if one of the kids goes bonkers? So you've got your little kids, and they're doing okay, and the guy seems to be doing great, and then somewhere in the teenagers, one of the kids goes a little bonkers, starts being bad. I've known men who resigned immediately. And I think some of that's the product of a church culture where the level of perfection necessary to remain a pastor was so high that that was enough to make them quit.

I've also known people that said, I've got to walk away because I've got to take care of something. Not that they were disqualified, but they thought they had to take care of it. I think we have to be very reasonable when we think about these things. And a lot of this stuff, I'm not just trying to tell you the answer. I want you thinking about it. If you had a guy that you thought was a really good man, good husband, good father, and he said, I want to adopt a child.

We'd all agree that's a very virtuous thing to do, right? And he adopted a child that already had some problems and some trauma. and then that child was extremely difficult and in fact maybe a little sinful would we just say well boom now you're unqualified because that's his child in his home so I try to think through some of the different scenarios where a real black and white reading without any thoughtfulness of some of these things could really make things a little confusing now at the same time it's still a qualification and we need to take it seriously. So, leading his own household well helps us see, can he do on a small scale what he's expected to do on a larger scale?

And the next one goes in a little bit of the same concept. I'm just going to skip a little and then we'll go back, where it says in verse 7, he must have a good reputation with those outside the church. well I think that a man who has a good reputation outside the church is showing you he can do some things on a different scale so if you got a guy who thinks he's a pastor material because he just can't cut it at work he's not pastor material a guy who all he does at work is fight with people because well they're always wrong and they're all bad people or they're all pagans. Whatever his excuse is, this guy's not pastor material.

Some of the best men that have become pastors were very successful people in another endeavor. And they either left that or they somehow were able to do a little bit of both. And so a man who's unqualified to show up at Lowe's and be a manager there is unqualified to be a manager in the church of God. You understand? so I think it's more than just your household that can be in view here alright so finally verse 6 I put this under the heading of ready for battle it says and he's not a new convert so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation of the devil that just got real serious real fast we've read that verse before we read it last week I read it today you've all read it yourself and I think sometimes we need to keep in mind that like you know that meme where the guys like boy that escalated quickly like because you know on Facebook you you know you say hey you know I kind of disagree with this one thing someone said Next thing you know you lost 10 friends or you know right That escalated quickly going from you have all these qualifications and oh by the way I would say even if you think you have the rest of these and other people affirm them in your life, if you can rightfully be considered a new convert, you're more susceptible to falling into the condemnation of the devil. that's intense.

Judas fell into the condemnation of the devil. You see what he did, right? That was devilish. That's why I like that the Roberts call them doubled eggs. I don't even like calling them deviled eggs, right? Because they're so good, we should call them angelic eggs, if anything.

They're so good, right? But that's an example of our culture. We think if something's good, it was from the devil. that's why it gets those kinds of names devil's food oh it's so good it's from the devil it's poisonous and it'll kill you and he hates you and a new convert has not established enough time in walking with the Lord to show you that he's ready to deal with all the difficulties that will come so it doesn't mean he can't and it doesn't mean he'll never be elder qualified Do you realize every elder at one point was a new convert?

Right? So it's okay to not be qualified. But the idea is this, is you need some time and experience under your belt actually fighting with the devil. You need some time actually going through difficulties in church and dealing with the different personalities that you have to deal with and maybe even hopefully being led by another man who's passing faithful things on to you, there's some time that's needed so that you're actually ready for the battles that will come.

You can't be the kind of person who tomorrow, like, can you imagine if I said, yeah, I want to be your elder, and then in six months I decided I was Westminster Confession of Faith instead of LBCF? you better hope I have some confidence in the confession that I believe in right now that I'll stick with it and that would be true of any elder because the teaching will start to slip in subtly when it's bad just use myself as an example I'm never going to come up here and rip off my shirt and have a shirt underneath that says Presbyterian now or heretic now. It'll come in very slowly and subtly and it'll sound real good. That's how false teachers work.

And so we don't want a new convert who's tossed about to and fro too much by the winds of doctrine. I'm glad I didn't become a pastor six years ago before I was confessional. I might still be stuck. I might be so committed to that I wouldn't have changed. Secondly, new converts are more susceptible to becoming conceited and egotistical. There's only a couple gifts in the New Testament that are described over in Corinth where people were fighting over them.

Nobody was saying, I wanted the gift of generosity, but he got it. Could somebody please ask me to give more? Nobody was arguing that. What people wanted was the gifts that gave them a position of prominence or authority in front of people. They wanted to be the one that was standing behind the podium, speaking where people were supposedly listening. That's what people want.

And you know what? Evil people want that. They wanted to be the person that people would listen to and start to trust so they could sneak into their homes and they could either take their stuff or they could take something else that's inappropriate. and so when somebody is going to be considered an elder of a church there is a susceptibility there to conceitedness and ego and it's part of it's because you're literally telling people you're teaching people are saying oh what you said really helped me this week and changed me and the wrong heart will take that and take it personally and think to themselves, oh, I'm such a good guy.

And you'll fall into the condemnation of the devil. At the same time, the opposite problem could be true where a pastor can suffer from so little encouragement that it functions as just being constantly discouraged. And pastors are men too. They need to know that their work is good. they need to be affirmed in those things. And so that's where the difficulty lies.

Is you may encourage a guy because he's really helping you and you may do it with the right heart and you may encourage a guy right on the path of egotisticalness, right? It's possible. I don't think just bludgeoning the guy all the time and telling him what a bad job he's doing is helpful to his... That may crush his ego a little, but if a guy's really egotistical, that won't matter anyway. so you encourage your pastor one of the greatest ways you encourage a man of God is the way that the people in 3rd John encouraged John which was he had no greater joy than to see that his children were walking in the truth so believing that the word that was preached hopefully by me but by the power of the Holy Spirit through me believing that he took those ancient words and that he's using them to change me and change you, that is actually what is the most encouraging thing.

And then in some cases, maybe you have a pastor that needs a gift. Maybe you have a pastor that needs a pat on the back. Maybe he needs you to go help him with something. I don't know. Hopefully one day we'll have so many elders that we have to split to make two churches. and then two more. Like, that's the goal here.

That's the hope, right? We want Reformed Baptist churches all over. I don't care if they're all within 20 miles or all within 2,000. That's the goal. But we're not going to get that by taking new converts who have hardly been tested and handing them the, you know, the pulpit. At the same time, we're going to bring people up here to read, to teach a little bit, to talk about the confession, the order of worship, to pray.

And we're going to hopefully raise up a generation of people like that. So, when you're considering elders, it's super important. I can't say the word super enough. It's hyper important. It's more important than most of us probably realize. And some of us, I think, really realize it.

It's very important. And treating them well, especially if you do, get to the point where you think, hey, the guy's qualified, that's a treasure. I was thinking earlier of saying something like a pastor that you really think is qualified, he's worked his weight in gold, and he's worked way more than that. We could make enough money to buy my weight in gold.

So you want to take care of your pastor. At the same time, we want to be serious about what these qualifications mean. We want to take it seriously as we evaluate not only me as the current candidate but anybody else that we would ever evaluate as you self evaluate like literally I'll tell you this before I walked up here and said I'm ready these have been gone over many many times okay I took it that seriously I not trying to brag to me that what you should do if you ever say yeah I thinking of being an elder I hope you already looked at these before you tell me If you haven't, that's okay.

I'll forgive you and I'll help you. But this is serious stuff. We planted this church and we didn't plant it just to have fun for a little while. We didn't plant it because, well, there were no churches open because by the time we planted it all the other churches in Ohio were open. So nobody can say well you're just a COVID church. No.

We could have gone to any church. We didn't plant it because there was no Reformed Baptist church anywhere near us. There are some. They're not necessarily as close as we all want but there are some. We planted the church because we believed that God wanted to plant a church. That's why it started.

Those of you who joined after, you bought into that same idea. Because there's lots of other churches you could go to. And if God wants to have a church, which you say you believe, then God wants to have officers for that church. And God wants that church to function in all the ways that he has commanded his church to function. And so we need to do some of the work to make sure that we're functioning that way and doing the best we can with it.

So let me pray. Father, thank you for your word. Your word is always true. And even in our difficulty at times in understanding it because of our own limitations, we trust that you have a plan for everything, that you have reasons why you've written what you've written, and we ask that you, by your Holy Spirit's power, would help us to obey it. Help us to understand it, trust it, and obey it.

Amen.