So this is lesson 43 in our series on Christian ethics. This is the Troy Palomalu of Christian Ethics Lessons. That's for my daughter Jamie. Move on from that as quickly as possible. Okay. So the Fifth Commandment introduced into our study of Christian ethics the idea of submission to authority, to human authority. and the duty of those in authority to exercise that authority within scriptural parameters. So we know what the fifth commandment is, and it narrowly commands honoring parents. But we also see that the Bible talks a lot about how parents, the duties that parents have to their children. We looked at those. So I'm kind of using that as an introduction to everything ethical about submission to human authority. So we see often that we're to be in submission to certain human authority in certain relationships, and we also see that God tells the person in authority to behave in a certain way that he approves. Now my plan was to move from parents and children to husbands and wives and then to employers and employees. I had to be gone for a couple Sundays, so Michael stole my thunder on employers. You remember that? And then I haven't heard the recording yet. I think it didn't go right or something. But I know what Rob was going to teach on, which had to do with husbands and wives. So I may pull a couple of topics still from that and do it in kind of a cleanup lesson at the end of the fifth commandment. But I decided today to move forward to another area where there is authority and submission, and that is in the church. So we're going to look at a church polity, the biblical structure, the roles of local church leaders, our responsibility as church members, our duties toward those church leaders. Okay, so we'll do that for the next few Sundays church leaders and church members, our duties, our ethical obligations of the New Covenant. So what are church leaders? First of all, the New Testament provides for two ongoing offices in the local church, that is, elder and deacon. And we're going to start with elders. And I think we can learn a lot about the duties of elders by looking at the terms that the Bible uses for the people and men that hold that office and also the qualifications that are required for men that hold that office. So one of the distinctives, if you're new to Kootenay Church, really is that, and it's not that we're the only church that does it, but it's unusual that a church has a biblical church government. So I want to get this clear. Now, one of the students in the class already has been criticizing me this morning and saying, well, this isn't ethics. He's been really mad and aggressive about it. Not really. But there's two senses in which this is ethics. There are ethical obligations in the way that we are to qualify and organize ourselves. Qualify the leaders and organize ourselves as a church. But the lists of qualifications are also lists of virtues. And so there are lists of virtues that are qualifications for elders, but that apply to all of us, most of them. So we want to kind of look through those and see. My hope is that you'll get in your mind that you can go back and look at the list of qualifications and kind of consider them lists of virtues for yourself to emulate, knowing which ones are virtues for you and which ones wouldn't be ethical obligations for you. That'll be clear as we go through. Okay, so there are three New Testament words that refer to the office of elder. And they're translated as elder, overseer, and shepherd. Those are the three words. They all refer to the same office, and I'll show you that, can you cheat you that today? The word translated elder is presbruteros, presbuteros. It can be used as a noun or as an adjective. As an adjective, it really just means the older, the older one, the elder. Kind of the way we use that in our normal language. You know, you have your elder, your elder brother or whatever. It's used as the older son in the parable of the prodigal, for example. But in New Testament usage, it's mostly used in the plural. And that plural usage is to refer to a council of elders, a group of men who are known as elders. Either Jewish elders or leaders in the Christian church. We'll see those differences. It's used in various forms 66 times in the New Testament, 61 of those.

Are plural usage. So it heavily refers to this group of men referred to as elders. In the Gospels, it refers exclusively to leaders of the Jewish synagogue. So these would be lay leaders of the various families that form part of the leadership of the local Jewish congregation, along with a Sanhedrin. It's usually used with chief priests and scribes and elders. That's kind of how it's used. This is typical usage, Matthew 16:21. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day. So that's the usage in the gospel of the word presbuteroi there, plural. Now in Acts, Acts is mixed. In the first six chapters of Acts, it refers exclusively to this same group of Jewish leaders. Acts 6:12 is typical there, and they stirred up that this is actually not the last reference to Jewish group of Jewish elders, but it marks a gap. After Acts 6, it refers to Christian leaders until you get to the end of Acts when Paul's on trial and talking about the Jewish elders that kind of put him there. So Acts 6:12, you see that they stirred up to people, the elders and the scribes. They came up to him, dragged him away, and brought him to the Sanhedrin. So from there, the usage is mixed in Acts. But in the rest of the New Testament, once you get past Acts, it always refers to leaders in the Christian churches. Always. The term itself conveys some important truth regarding the type of men who are to be qualified and appointed as elders. This is from Alexandrsk. And before I go into his quote, if you want to understand what the Bible has to say about elders and deacons, leadership of the local church, Alexandrz is your guy. He has devoted his life to this topic and others. But this is the book. So if you really want to understand that, get that book. So this is from that book. Although the strict sense of advanced age is eliminated from the meaning of elder when referring to community leader, so normally that word means older. He's saying that is eliminated from the meaning when referring to a community leader. Certain connotations such as maturity, experience, dignity, authority, and honor are retained. Thus the term elder conveys positive concepts of maturity, respect, and wisdom. So already it gives you some idea of the character and the role of the person. They have to be somebody who has some wisdom, who has some experience behind them. A second word for the same office is episcopas. It means one who is charged with making sure that others do what they've been charged to do. We would call it a supervisor or an overseer. It's not used anywhere near as often as elder, but it is used very directly in the passages that qualify these men. So you see them, 1 Timothy 3:1 and 2. 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. So it lists out the qualifications for the elder, for the overseer. And in Titus 1:7, for the overseer must be beyond reproach, as God's spirit, again in that list of qualifications, refers to these men as overseers. So overseers are, what you would think, responsible for the overall supervision, protection, management, and care of the flock of God. See that from Strzok. The third word, the last of the three words referred to the office, is the word poiman. And poiman means shepherd. It means shepherd. Typical usage, the usage, say in Luke when they're talking about the announcement of Christ's birth, it's just shepherds. It means people who tend livestock. Wow, you learned a lot of valuable information here today. That is what a shepherd means, okay? But in a metaphorical sense, it refers to people who shepherd other people, people who, within a local church congregation, have the responsibility of shepherding that church, of caring for them, protecting them, doing everything for them that a shepherd does for sheep. And this again from Strzok on that third word. If we want to understand Christian elders and their work, we must understand the biblical imagery of shepherding. As keepers of sheep, New Testament elders are to protect, feed, lead, and care for the flock's many practical needs. It's really important that we keep that word shepherd in our vocabulary when we refer to this office and these men. They are elders, they are overseers, and they are shepherds. What about pastor?

If you've known me very long, I don't like that word. It's an unfortunate thing that happened. So the word pastor is Latin for the word shepherd. It's a translation of the word poimane from Greek into Latin, pastor. By the time English translations of the Bible were happening, that Latin term pastor, for shepherd, was being used. And so when talking about the office, they chose to translate poimane as pastor rather than as its meaning shepherd. So if you use a King James or those in the King James family, you'll see that word pastor in Jeremiah, where Jeremiah is using a Hebrew word for shepherd. And for the same reason, it ended up there. But in virtually all modern English translations, the word pastor appears once, in the plural pastors, once. And that's in Ephesians 4.11. So let's look at that for a second. So I've got LSB up there. And he himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers. You can see the rest of it. You see that pet word pastors there in verse 11. I put the ESV up there because they didn't do that. They translated the word consistently as shepherds. Now the ESV has a text note saying or pastors, but the word there is poimmain. It's the plural of poimane. So it just means shepherds. So it's unfortunate. Why? Why do I care about this? It doesn't seem to present any big problems. I think it presents, let's say this, there are two dangers associated with it. The first is if you think of the office holder as pastor instead of shepherd, you automatically miss out on much of the vivid imagery that is associated with the men who hold the role. They are shepherds. Pastor, now here's the other danger. Pastor, the term pastor brings in a pre-understanding of the role from what we have in American church culture. The pastor, right? That's a term that isn't used in the Bible. So when we talk about the pastor, when we bring in all these ideas about what is a pastor, that's adding meaning to what is the word is shepherd. So these are shepherds. So I think we get extra-biblical ideas because of the way that this is translated. And we'll look at more of that later when we look at organizational structures, probably next week. So what we refer to often as a pastor then is shepherd, overseer, elder. Those three words, those three biblical words, all apply to the same group. The pastor is the one who must shepherd or oversee, act as an elder for the flock of God over which they have accountability. But if you like the word pastor and you want to keep it and you want to include it, then you can. That's a fourth English word, but you've got to remember there is no fourth Greek word. So you're using shepherd and pastor. You're using two translations of the same word. And while we're doing that, let's add in the other one. There is a transliteration of the word episkopos, which became piscop, which became bishop. And so the word bishop. And when someone refers to themselves as a bishop, that is a weird translation, transliteration of the same word that is translated overseer. There is no difference. There can be no difference, biblically speaking, between a bishop and an overseer who is an elder who is a shepherd. So if you have some sort of denominational structure where a bishop is different than an overseer, elder, shepherd, pastor, you have an unbiblical organization. Sorry, where does minister fit in In a couple weeks. So yeah. No, that's a good question. Minister. A minister translates what we sometimes transliterate, often transliterate deacon. So that's where that should fit. Otherwise, it doesn't fit anywhere biblically. Okay. So let's go to slide nine then. So we have three terms to describe one office. Again, if you want to put the extra English words in there, you can. So you got five.

English words, but you still have three Greek words. And that's what you got to remember. The Bible speaks in terms of these three descriptive terms. And they all refer to the same office holders, show you that now. The elder, the overseer, the shepherd, they all are the same in the New Testament. This is from Acts, Acts 20, 17. Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. This is Paul Callie for the elders of the church. Elders is by far the most often used word for these men. Called themselves, called the elders. And here's what he told those elders: Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which you purchased with his own blood. So for Paul, elders, overseers, shepherds, the same. And in Titus, for this reason I left you in Crete that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you. Namely, if any man is beyond reproach, the husband of one wife, having faithful children who are not accused of dissipation or rebellious, for the overseer must be beyond reproach as God's steward. Elder, overseer, the same. And in Peter, 1 Peter 5:1 through 3: Therefore I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, overseeing not under compulsion, but willingly. You elders, you are to shepherd and you're to oversee. Okay? So three terms, one office. Does that make sense? Do you have any questions about that? Yes, Luke. Uh-oh. This was the guy that was causing the trouble before. Yeah. So the question is, the only place where it appears is a noun we translate it here, that is where it's translated pastors. When we try to show that shepherds are also overseers and elders, it's in the verb form, which is true. I don't have a problem with that. Liars lie, pagans peg, and shepherds shepherd. So someone who shepherds is a shepherd. I don't have an issue with that. Someone who oversees, same with overseer sometimes. Someone who oversees is an overseer. Okay. Yes, sir, Paul. It's a dangerous question. I'll postpone you a little bit to next week because we are going to talk about that. It doesn't. Question was: where does senior pastor, youth pastor, associate pastor, fifth pastor for visitation for the elderly who live in. None of those terms are found anywhere in scripture. Okay? So we have to at least say that they are non-biblical terms. Now then we have to figure out are they actually contrary to biblical principles? So next week, that's a really good question. It's exactly how we ought to be thinking about this. What does the Bible say? Paul uses the term minister first Jesus. Servant and minister may be where some of that term came from. I would always hesitate to use of the rest of us apostolic sort of designations, like apostles. Wouldn't use that, but there's technical reasons for that. So yeah, it could be so the next point I want to show to you, and this is beyond a shadow of a doubt. Pervasive plurality. Everywhere in every church, always in the New Testament, there are multiple elders. There is never a single elder. The word elder does appear in the singular occasionally, referring to one of the body of elders, or John the Apostle refers to himself as the elder. I think that has more to do with his age and his uniqueness at the time, the last living apostle. But everywhere, the pattern for us is a plurality of elders. I'm not going to read you all of these. I'll just show you so you can kind of start to see the pattern. We saw Titus 1:5. I left you in Crete, so you would appoint in every city. Elders in every city. Philippians. In the greeting. To all the saints with the overseers and deacons. 1 Timothy 5, the elders who lead well.

This is the pattern everywhere, over and over. This is the model. Now, nowhere is there a command other than the command given to Titus, but nowhere is there command to us saying, you must have more than one elder. You must have a plurality of elders. However, the pervasive, ubiquitous pattern throughout all of the New Testament is a plurality of elders. So I take that as having the force of a command. I don't think we're free to just go our own way. I don't think we're free to just organize ourselves however we see fit. The church is the most important thing on this earth to God. So we ought to be very careful to do it as closely as we can to how the Bible would indicate. So that's the model. It's not a CEO model. And I always hear, well, there has to be, there has to be the guy in charge. No. No. Thank you, American person. But there actually doesn't. And I'll show you how this works, probably not today. But we don't need to have that kind of model. We don't need to have a model where there's a spiritual leader and then there's a bunch of people who lead on administrative matters, who kind of are in charge of the spiritual leader and can hire and fire. We don't need that. What we need is the biblical model, a body of elders who lead the church. So you can rightly curious, we get this a lot in church membership classes. How does this work? How does it work? You have a committee? How does that, like you vote? No, we never did any of that stuff. And the only way I can really answer that question is after we talk about qualifications. That's what really matters. So that's what I want to do next. I want to begin to describe the biblical qualifications for elders. We have two passages that are those lists. Very similar, but not exactly the same. I'm going to read these both to you, and then we'll start, we'll kind of talk about them a little bit and then work through them. 1 Timothy 3, 1-7. It's 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. And then Titus 1, 5 through 9, For this reason I left you in Crete that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you. Namely, if any man is beyond reproach, the husband of one wife, having faithful children who are not accused of disobation, dissipation, or rebellious, for the overseer must be beyond reproach as God's steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of dishonest gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he'll be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to reprove those who contradict. Good lists. So I want to work through these qualifications. And for us, I want to understand this on a couple levels. Again, you're part of a church. You have a responsibility, an ethical obligation, a duty as a Christian in a church to understand these qualifications and make sure that the men who lead this church, the men who are the elders of this church, meet those qualifications. That is your responsibility. So when the church brings forward a man and says we're considering him for eldership, and the elders do that, and they say we need you to examine the man, you should do it. You have a responsibility to do that. And if you know something, you should tell somebody. So there is an ethical obligation involved in these for all of us. But these also serve as an interesting list of virtues. When we started, oh, that did not come out the way it was supposed to. Oh, it's got all this stuff. Who knew? Maybe I should have. It's on your handout as well. But this is an old slide.

That we did when we first started looking at ethics, and we had our defining question, which is up there. What does the whole Bible teach us about which acts, attitudes, and attributes receive God's approval? That's how we're deciding what's ethical, what acts, attitudes, and attributes receive God's approval. And then we looked at different branches of ethics. Not really Christian ethics. Deontological ethics, which is just a focus on rules, the act itself. We looked at teleological ethics, focused on the telos, the purpose, the attitude motivation behind it. We also looked at virtue ethics, which is focused on the moral character of the actor themselves, the person who's doing the moral act, those attributes, those virtues. And we saw that in Christian ethics, it's all of the above. God is concerned about all of it at once. We're to do the right things according to what He has said. We're to do them with the right attitude according to what He has said. And we're to cultivate in ourselves the right character according to what He has said. So the passage related to qualification of elders, it's going to give us an opportunity to look at a couple of lists of God-approved virtues. It's a good opportunity to examine our own hearts, so not just to see the list as qualifications, yes, but not just as qualifications of elders, but also as virtues for us all to cultivate. Okay, so we're just going to start here with a list of qualifications. We will not get through all these today, and we'll pick it up. We'll pick up some of them next week. That's my list of 20. That's a really attractive slide. So let's just go through them one by one. It's a trustworthy saying: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good work. So the first qualification for elder is an aspiration for the office, a desire for the work. You have to want to do the job. You have to want the role, you have to want to do the job. Oftentimes, especially the sons of elders kind of get pointed in that direction, and they kind of sometimes feel like they're doing it under obligation. That ought not to be. No one can serve in this way under obligation. They can't do this job well if they don't desire it. And if we view this aspiration, this desire as a qualification, and I obviously do, I listed it there, then if someone doesn't desire the office, they shouldn't have the role. They actually can't have the role. They should step down if they don't desire the office. Now, is this a virtue? Is this a Christian virtue that we all are obligated? No. This is not that. This is a qualification for eldership. It is not something that anyone is morally obligated to possess. So this one isn't a general Christian virtue. How about the next one? An overseer must be above reproach or blameless. And this is a broad term. This is an umbrella term at the beginning. It literally means not kind of not arrestable, not chargeable, that there's no charge against them that they could be held over for. So it's a general term saying there's nothing that would disqualify the man morally from leadership, being in this office, or being an example to follow. Now, it doesn't mean that the elder has to be perfect and sinless. We wouldn't have a lot going on in many churches. No, it can't mean that. And it doesn't mean that. It just means that there isn't anything in his life that would damage the credibility of the teaching of the word. There's nothing in his life that is out there that people understand and that would make him incredible. So why is this important? He has to be above reproach because the Bible has to be preached. The Bible has to be taught. And for that to happen, the teacher has to have some degree of credibility. I'm not an elder in the church anymore, but I am a teacher. If you knew that I fought with my wife all the time, had a terrible marriage, and I went to the Jehovah's Kingdom Hall whenever they meet, I don't know. And I just was kind of doing both. If I had some reproach, if you knew Cornell was driving down there in Kerrywood 108 miles an hour on the dirt road you don't do that no okay if you knew there was something going on like that and Cornell's in an interesting

Place because his life is quite public. So if there was some reproach generated there, it would damage his credibility as an elder. So what about this? Is this a virtue that all Christians should cultivate? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is kind of the essence of what it means to be moral, have a life that is above reproach. Okay. The next one. This always gets a lot of interest. Husband of one wife or one woman man. It's a three-word phrase in Greek. The first means of one. The second word means wife or woman, depending on context. The third word means husband or man, depending on context. So it's literally a one-woman man or a one-wife husband. So what does it mean in terms of qualification? It refers to sexual purity, marital fidelity, but the language also does imply. So I'm going to do two dimensions of this. That, marital fidelity, but it also implies that the man has to be a man. It tells us clearly that he has to be male. And I'll show you both of those aspects of this. There's been more ink written on this particular qualification by far than any of the others. Sean? See, why does everyone always want to ask that question? I should have known. If it wasn't going to come from Luke, it was going to come from Sean. What about a man who is divorced? I'm going to tell you, I'm going to give you today, because this is what time we have, two quotes about how to interpret this. Certainly, now the man couldn't be a polygamist. He couldn't be a serial divorcee. He couldn't be a fornicator or pornographer. But Strzok lists many different interpretations, including that they can't have been divorced. It goes to all that, and he says, a final interpretation, the one favorite here is the simplest and least problem-creating. It continues with the phrase, the husband of one wife, is meant to be a positive statement that expresses a faithful, monogamous marriage. In English, we would say faithful and true to one woman or a one-woman man. And from John MacArthur, one woman man is a man devoted in his heart and mind to the woman who is his wife. He loves, desires, and thinks only of her. He maintains sexual purity in both his thought life and his conduct. So that's where I would leave it, because that's where the Bible leaves it. We try to add specifics to it that I'm afraid sometimes are going beyond what is written. So, Amy? Great question. Is marriage a requirement of being an elder? I don't think that it is, but if the man is married, then his marital life has to, and even if he isn't, then his sexual life has to fit into this pattern. Okay. Good questions. Now I'm going to try to move off as quickly as I can. Because there's something else very important about it. It also proves that elder has to be male. So again, there are these three words. Those are the three words that describe one woman man or one wife husband. The words can mean either. Woman, wife. The other word can mean man or husband. Remember, this is a qualification for elders. That third word is Andra. And Andra is never of indeterminate gender. It is never female. Andra is male. So if you take your Bible seriously, you believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture. The elder has to be a man. It's plain. He has to be a one-woman man. He has to be a man. Cannot be a woman. Now, I'm very familiar with arguments about this. It doesn't mean what it seems to mean. It's just a moral qualification. It has nothing to do with gender. It could just as easily be the other way around. I just don't buy it. I can read. And it says what it says. If you need to, you could appeal to 1 Timothy 2. If you need to, you could appeal to the, he manages his own household well. Do we take that women also are to lead in there? But you don't have to do that. This simple three-word phrase does it. Elders have to be male. At the risk of not wanting to do this. Questions, Peter? Is the reason

why this specific qualification doesn't have to be a very interesting thing? The reason there's been so much ink spilled about it is because people want to deny the clear truth of 1 Timothy 2 and 3 and Titus 1, that elders are to be male. The male leadership is a biblical pattern. That's the reason. Nobody denies that this means man. Nobody. They will say, well, they'll back up and say, yes, the words mean what they mean. But the intent is to just imply a certain moral qualification and really has nothing to do with gender. And then go on to say, well, in Ephesus, there were problems with some females, and so it was all about Ephesus, which Paul does not at all use anything about Ephesus as his justification for what he teaches about roles of men and women in the church. He uses creation order, which has nothing to do with Ephesus or any other. It's not a social cultural rule. Okay. Anything else on that? Or should I move on? You guys are awesome. Okay. Temperate. Temperate, translate as vigilant in the King James. This is an interesting word. It literally means wineless. Wineless. We had, our English word temperance means that, means no drinking alcohol. There were temperance unions in like the 20s where they were against drinking alcohol. The word means sober. It means clear-minded, alert, aware, watchful. It would be the opposite of the doled condition that one might get from alcohol. But does it mean that an elder should not drink any alcohol at all? It's the word is wineless. I've had people tell me, well, the word is wineless. So you've got to be wineless. Well, I underlined a qualification coming up that says not addicted to wine. And we also have this in the same narrative. 1 Timothy 5:23, no longer drink water only, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. So Paul is telling Timothy in this very passage, this very book: hey, take a little wine. So it doesn't mean that you can't have any wine at all or any alcohol at all. It really doesn't have anything to do with alcohol in this particular qualification. It just means as if you are free from its effects, you are somebody who is vigilant, aware, alert. Why would that be important for an elder? If you don't know what's going on, you don't know what's going on. He's going to be doing 109 miles an hour. That's right. Elder has to be aware. But this is a desirable attribute for everybody, isn't it? We ought to be attentive to the things that are our duties. We ought to be attentive to the people around us, the people in our lives. So that one is a virtue. Look at the next one: sensible, sensible, sometimes translated prudent or sober or self-controlled. It really means to be sane, means to be of sound mind, to be kind of moderate and even keeled. Again, similar to temperate, it's emphasizing kind of an evenness, a calmness. So what would violate that? An elder who has a bad temper, who flies off the hand, though, who's uncontrolled, or someone who's whimsical, moody, kind of unpredictable. You can't have that in a leader, any sort of leader, but in particular, church leader. But again, this is a desirable virtue for all Christians, isn't it? To have yourself sort of solid and stable. The next one is respectable. Respectable or of good behavior. This is an interesting word to me. It could be translated as well-ordered, orderly, decorous, proper. This is outward. This is the kind of outward life of the person who is temperate and self-controlled. And elders have to be respectable. They can't be out there doing things inappropriate, undignified. They can't be crazy and unpredictable and wild. Again, another Christian virtue, right? We all want to be fitting and appropriate to the moment. Hospitable. The word is phyloxanas. I think I finally learned how to say that, phylloxanas. Maybe I didn't. You've heard of.

You've heard of philos, the word philosoph. It serves as a prefix for some of our English words like philosophy, love of wisdom. So it's sort of love of, Sophia wisdom, or Philadelphia or our city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, philadelphi. So it means friend, and when it's used as a prefix like this, it means friendly toward, having a fondness towards. And then xenos, you may have heard our word xenophobia, which is a fear of strangers or fear of foreigners. So xenos is a stranger or foreigner. So this means literally a fondness for strangers or a love of strangers. So hospitality has changed over the ages, because of just the way life is today. We have hotels and things like that. Things have changed, restaurants. But it's still a qualification for elders that they be hospitable. The question is, what exactly does it mean and how do you apply it when it comes to elders? However, you would apply it when it comes to elders, what exactly it means, it at least means that they have to be somebody who loves strangers, who is open to people that they don't know and is willing to help them. I don't think it has, and here's where I get in a little trouble with this. I don't think it has anything to do with inviting someone over that you've known for 20 years. That's love and that's good, but that's not love of strangers. That's not what this means. This means people that you're not familiar with that you don't know. Now, is this a virtue for all Christians? Yep, it's a command, actually. It's a qualification for elders. It's also a command for all believers. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. Without grumbling. So this is a virtue. It's a command. It's an activity. It's an attitude. And it's an attribute. It's all of those things. And it's to be cultivated in all of us. The next one is able to teach this looks like the last one to be able to do today. Able to teach. A spiritual giftedness toward teaching is required. It's qualification for elders. You have to be able to teach. You ever thought about this, though? How do they know? How do you know if you have this qualification? Yeah, Peter? Because you're already teaching. Yeah? Would it be possible to have this and not. I suppose it's possible to have. But not to be qualified, you have to show that you have the qualification. So you have to be teaching. And yes, sir. Whatever situation you wind up teaching somebody something. I think that's a good way of thinking about it. If you have a gift of teaching, you have to teach. It's a thing. And you may not even know you have it. You may be forced to do it for some reason. And then find that you love it and that you're good at it. And one good test is if you do it and people say, hey, you did that well, and elders ask you to do more of it, that's a good indication that you may have that gift. Now, of course, it's a qualification for elders. It has to be because it's the primary part of the role. To be an elder in a local church is a teaching role. It's actually pretty easy to qualify people on this one, I think. If you aren't good at it, then you're not qualified. If you're unwilling to do it, you're not qualified. So that one's, I think, fairly easy. But let's ask the question. Let's ask just a couple questions about this since it's the last one we have. Do all elders have to be teachers of the word? Yes. The Bible is very clear on that. You cannot have someone who holds the office of elder, overseer, shepherd, pastor, bishop who isn't able to teach, who doesn't teach. They're not qualified. So all elders have to be able to teach. Do all teachers have to be elders? Do the only people that... Is it okay for the elders to have somebody come up on a Sunday morning and preach who isn't an elder? Yeah, sure. But the elders are still responsible for what happens out of that pulpit. Now, is this a virtue, a Christian virtue? Is every Christian responsible to teach? I'm getting yes and no, right? Should be able to teach, not necessarily constantly teaching.

In what sense should every Christian be able to teach? Sharing the gospel. Sharing the gospel. Thank you, Eric. I think you probably preempted Peter, Peter. Discipleship as well. Discipleship as well. Discipleship with children. Yeah, with children. If you're in a leadership role in particular, in your family, in anywhere, being able to teach is a virtue that you should have. It doesn't mean everybody has to teach in the local church. It doesn't mean that. You're not obligated to be able to teach in that sense. So that one's a little bit in between. Okay, so what was that? What was number eight? Okay, so we'll pick up with number nine, which is not addicted to wine, next time. And then I want to look at the role of the elder. What are their duties towards the congregation? And then back to what are our responsibilities toward elders in the local church. And I'll also look at deacons and the mysterious women, which isn't up there, but 1 Timothy 3:11. All right, let's pray together. Father, we're grateful for your word. Grateful that you have given just crystal clear qualifications to protect your bride, your church. And I pray that this church would continue to uphold those, to be very careful, to make sure that the men who would have this accountability, this ability to harm your church, your body, your bride, we pray that we would be vigilant about that ourselves. And Lord, as we go to worship, we pray that we'd be focused on you, that we'd think about who you are and all the great things that you've done, your wonderful power and your infinite goodness toward us. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.