recording.
It's good to see everyone here, good to have some visitors with us.
We're grateful that they're with us this morning.
Take your Bibles, if you will, and open them to 1 Timothy chapter 3.
So we will be continuing our study of the qualifications of elders that we have begun and continued in for a number of weeks now.
Let's begin with a word of prayer as we get started.
Our gracious Father in heaven, we come before you grateful for the day that you've blessed us with, grateful for the opportunity that we have to spend this time to study your word
to.
come to know your will, but also to have the energy and the ability to do so.
We're mindful of those who, because of illness, because of circumstances in life, are unable to be present with us this morning.
We pray that you give them strength.
Pray that you give them the desired health that they would have to be able to come and assemble together with us.
Lord, we pray that you be with those who are facing potential surgeries or upcoming procedures.
that you give them strength and comfort.
Lord, we are also mindful of those who deal with chronic illness and we know that they have battles that they face every single day.
We pray that you be with them and give them the strength and the comfort and the peace of mind that they need to deal with those daily battles.
Lord, we pray for the lectureship that will be happening this week at the Forest Hill congregation.
We pray that the
work there will continue, will grow and be blessed, but also that be faithful and sound in the truth each and every day moving forward.
Lord, we pray that you give safety to those who may be traveling in as they go throughout this week and give them safety on their return trips as well.
Lord, we pray for this nation, we pray for its leaders, we pray for those who lead in local arenas and those who lead in national arenas.
pray for those who are judges who sit and judge in matters concerning the law.
Pray that they might all look to your word for wisdom, for guidance, for knowledge on how to...
act in a way and how to make decisions in a way that are right and just and in accordance with your will.
Well, we pray above all that we might have doors of opportunity to preach the gospel, to reach the lost, knowing that the only thing that saves a soul is your word and your son.
And we pray that we might always live understanding and remembering that with boldness to preach the truth.
all this that we pray and ask in Jesus' name, amen.
This is a faithful saying, Paul writes, if a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.
A bishop then must be blameless.
the husband of one wife.
Now we were just about to make progress through verse two and we got a question last week about the husband of one wife.
So we're not going back to that.
If you had had a question about that, you should asked it last week.
If you still got a question about it, you can ask me outside of class, but we are gonna move forward this morning.
The next qualification that Paul offers is temperate.
What's the base word there, at least in the English, of temperate?
Temper?
Now, does that mean that an elder is supposed to be one with a hot temper?
Are we talking about temper in another means, another avenue?
All right, good behavior.
When you take metal and you temper it,
What are you doing to it?
You're strengthening it through what?
Usually heat.
This is an individual whose character has been tempered.
and strengthened through the struggles, the trials, the difficulties of life, and has come through that faithful to God and of moral and upright character.
This is not an untested individual.
When you
learn something about metal, especially, you know, growing up, Nathan and I, my middle brother here, I'm the youngest of three, by the way.
And we all liked knives growing up.
Of course, we were all usually broke because we always spent all of our money, and so we were always looking at the cheap knives.
The difference between a cheap knife and a good knife is the way the metal is formed.
A cheap knife is stamped metal.
Take a piece of metal and they literally just stamp it out.
There's your knife blade.
And while it may be sharp the moment you buy it, it will probably never be sharp after you cut the first piece of paper with it because it's stamped metal.
but a good knife blade.
is actually created through a process that causes it to be heated and cooled and heated and cooled and formed and tempered where it is strong, it is durable, and it holds an
edge.
And then it can be sharpened and resharpened and sharpened again, and it continues to hold an edge.
It continues to be quality for the lifetime of the metal.
Now.
The elder here is one who is in his character, in his behavior, one who is temperate.
He is one who's gone taking the analogy through the fire.
He is not untested, but rather tested.
He is not untried, but he is tried.
Turn over to James chapter 1.
In James chapter 1, James will write to the Christians.
By the way, James, the half-brother of Jesus, who writes the book of James, is a what in the church in Jerusalem?
He is an elder.
And James writes, verse 2, my brethren, count it all joys when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces what?
Patience.
The word in the original language there behind patience is a word that means to stand up under a load.
Peter, or sorry, James is saying to these brethren that when you face trials, you develop the character necessary to stand up under that load.
When you have children and they're young, you get home from the grocery store and they're three or four years old and they say, I want to help carry something.
Do you hand them the bag where they double bag two gallons of milk and hand that to the four-year-old, they're here.
Carry that in.
Let me pile the eggs on top of it.
It'll work out great, right?
Now, when the 14-year-old comes out, do you hand them the box of tissues and go, I know that's all you can carry, so just try and get it in without falling?
No.
Why?
They've grown, they've developed, they've strengthened.
They're not three and four anymore.
They ought to be able to carry the things that are heavy, not just the things that are light.
Because through time and strength and endurance and continuing in those things, they have developed the ability to handle a heavier load.
Now what about the Christian in this context, the Christian man, who's been a Christian for 30 years?
But his practice of Christianity is to show up on Sunday morning, sit in a pew, at the end of services get up and walk out, and that's all the time he really spends thinking or
doing anything related to being a Christian.
at the end of 30 years is he qualified in matters of temperance?
No.
Why not?
No effort, no experience, no endurance.
Does it take endurance to do nothing?
Now, I'm not talking about the soldier who's required to stand and literally not move.
That takes some endurance.
I'm talking about the person who lays on the couch and does nothing.
James says, but let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
James makes it clear you are only going to reach spiritual maturity through the endurance of trials.
through your faith being tested by those trials, which tells you...
that Christianity is not bound to be an easy life.
It is not bound to be something that you are involved in for decades and you never have difficulties and hardships to go through in order to maintain that Christianity.
This individual who is qualified to be an elder is one who has gone through the trials, they've gone through the difficulties, they've gone through the things of life, and they
have come out the other side proven and tested in their faithfulness and in their character.
Over in Genesis, when Isaac is born, Isaac is growing up.
We don't know exactly how old he is, but he's old enough to go with his father to worship.
And God tells Abraham, you take your son, your only son, and you go to this mountain, Mount Moriah, and you offer him as a sacrifice to me.
you go through that event when God, through that angel who he sends, stops Abraham from killing his son.
The statement is made.
Now I know.
that you would not withhold your son, your only son, from me.
Abraham shows us in life.
James tells us in message what it means to be a tried and tested and temperate Christian.
It means when God requires everything you care about in order to be faithful to Him, you're willing to give it.
You're not stingy with what you offer to the Lord.
You're not holding back and saying, know what, this is mine, the Lord can have this over here, but he better not ask for this thing because this is mine.
You're one who has gone through the experience of taking what is most precious and making sure that that is just as available to God as what is
least precious.
But furthermore, you have gone through the difficulties, you have gone through the trials, and you have not wavered.
Now does that mean you'll never have any doubts?
Did Abraham ever have any doubts?
Absolutely.
Were there occasions where Abraham questioned God about the scenario and the situation and the fulfillment of promises?
Absolutely.
It doesn't mean you're without any doubts, but notice what James says.
If any of you lack wisdom, verse 5,
Let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.
He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." So wait a minute, Aaron, I just, I thought you just said this could be a person who has had doubts, and yet James says you
can't doubt.
The person who's doubting here is doubting God's ability.
Did Abraham ever doubt God's ability to fulfill his promises?
No.
Abraham looked at himself and his wife who were advanced in age, who were beyond the point of fathering children, and he doubted their ability.
When Abraham was told to go offer Isaac, Abraham takes him up on that mountain and the Hebrew writer tells us that Abraham was convinced that if he went through that, God could
raise that son back from the dead.
And he was convinced of that because God had brought forth that son out of him who was dead in the ability to father children.
He was no longer capable of fathering children, yet God caused him to produce life.
He says if he could produce a child out of a body that's dead, then certainly he can bring back to life one who's died.
Abraham had no doubt concerning God's ability.
And that's what James is talking about.
If James is making the point, if you ask of the Lord, yet you doubt that the Lord is capable of fulfilling your request?
then you're not going to receive your request.
If your question is whether or not God will fulfill your request, that's a different story.
You might doubt as to whether or not it's God's will to fulfill your request.
That's a doubt concerning you, not him.
So James is making it clear, if you are going to be faithful to God, you ask and you leave it to him.
in full faith, in full confidence that he can deliver.
That is an individual who's gone through trials, who's gained wisdom, who's developed patience, and in this context is one who through moral character and endurance through
those difficulties has become one of character who is temperate.
But then consider.
He says, not just temperate, but sober-minded.
First, what does word sober mean?
clear.
It's one who's aware.
It's one who's awake and paying attention.
One opposite of this, not the only opposite, but one opposite is someone who's drowsy.
Okay?
Someone who's nodding off.
Someone who's asleep.
One of the contrasts that the Scriptures quite often make is between one who is sober-minded and one who is asleep.
The person who is asleep is not sober-minded.
They're not awake.
They're not alert.
They're not paying attention to the things that are going on.
In what way should an elder or must an elder be sober-minded in application?
What are some areas that the elder needs to be sober-minded about?
The gospel?
The congregation?
Go back to the idea of a shepherd.
What does a shepherd need to be awake and aware about as he's shepherding the sheep?
All right, dangers.
He needs to be aware of dangers.
He needs to be looking out for and watching for dangers.
Is he going to accomplish that real well while he's asleep?
No.
But what else?
Again, think of it from the shepherd perspective.
The health of the sheep.
All right, the health of the sheep.
This sober-minded individual, this shepherd is going to be paying attention to the condition and the needs of the sheep.
He's going to give time and attention to the needs of the flock.
He's gotta be paying attention to do that.
He's gotta be alert.
He's gotta be aware of what's going on.
He's got to be functioning in a way that he is attentive to the needs of the flock.
What else does a shepherd do as he observes the needs of the flock?
Again, thing in the physical perspective, what does a shepherd do in function of the flock?
direction.
He is aware of their scenario and of their surroundings and He leads them to, we use some Old Testament terminology, good pastures.
He is not only aware of their current scenario, He is aware of the space around them and how to bring them to something that benefits them instead of endangers them.
Does the good shepherd lead the sheep down, right down to the nice, roaring, tumultuous river?
Just lead them right up the edge because there's some really good grass right there next to that very flowing current with all the rocks and the rapids.
Isn't that the great place for sheep?
How does the psalmist writer describe what the good shepherd God does for us?
He leads us beside still waters.
As a sober-minded shepherd,
The elder is one who observes if we're going this direction we will be nourishing the flock.
We will be providing for the flock.
We will be aware of their condition.
They will grow strong and they will be good and healthy sheep.
And if we go over here, we're going to run out of food, and we're going to end up with people with flock that is sick.
We're going to end up with a flock that is in danger.
We're not going to go that way.
There are too many elderships in congregations that either because they're drowsy spiritually or because they are unaware of their surroundings guide their congregation
right down a path of wolves.
Turn over to Acts chapter 20.
We keep going back to this passage because it is so appropriate as we go through these qualifications that we see Paul's warning to the elders at Ephesus.
Absolutely.
So you've got, you have in this idea, as Eddie's pointing out, you have the ability to look forward, the ability to see beyond right now, the ability to anticipate and to know
which path to go.
If you turn to Acts chapter 20 and in verse 27 Paul says, "'For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.
Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock.'"
among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.
Therefore watch the term.
Therefore watch.
And remember,
that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.
Multiple times in this passage, Paul has given them the exemplification of sober-mindedness.
He begins with that they are to take heed to themselves first.
The sober-minded Christian man.
is one who does not first judge others.
He first judges himself, because in order to lead people in the direction they should go, he must first have been in the direction they should go.
the director of the school at Tri-Cities back when Eddie and I attended there, Brother Wesley Simons, who was an elder, who was also the director of the school, also the
preacher there.
He made a point that I have always remembered as visually, and he said, guys, when you get out into a congregation, you're going to be here, because you've just gone through two or
three years worth of Bible training, intense Bible training, week in and week out.
at a level that most people in a congregation have never been through.
Even if they've gone through that much training, they usually haven't gone through it in that intense condensed form.
He says, so here you are, and the congregation's down here.
Your job is not to beat on the congregation till they move from here to here.
So that's not your job.
Your job every year is to go from here to here and to get them to go from here to here.
And then next year from here to here and them from here to here.
What are you doing?
You're leading.
You're walking ahead of them.
You're knowing where they need to go before they're even ready to get there yet.
And that's what elderships do.
They ought to be those who are here.
They ought to be looking at how can we increase ourselves so that we can increase the congregation.
How can we improve ourselves so we can improve the congregation?
They ought to be taking heed to themselves first and then to the flock.
We used the illustration back when we first talked about this, the instructions you're always given on the airplane.
If the oxygen masks deploy, put your own on first because you can't help the person next to you if you can't breathe.
So you put your own on, then you help the person next to you because now you're equipped to do it.
Paul will tell them, take heed therefore to yourselves and all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd, to walk in front of, to lead the church
of God.
And then he says, for I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you.
Why is it that Paul says after...
My departure.
All right.
Maybe because nobody would be watching.
What's another reason?
Okay?
While Paul was present, he was the one they were being taught by.
He was the one that they were looking to and listening to.
But Paul didn't just teach them.
What did Paul do when there was someone who was teaching them wrongly?
corrected it, he pointed it out, he made sure that they had the correct doctrine, and he combated the false doctrine.
So why is it that it was going to be after his departure that the wolves were gonna come in?
Okay, so interestingly, you might remember that he's meeting with the elders from Ephesus.
He's writing to Timothy while Timothy is at Ephesus in 1 Timothy.
So Timothy is at the congregation where Paul's telling them about this and then Paul's also gonna tell Timothy about people who are already teaching wrong things that he needs
to correct.
and making sure that they know the right things, including the qualifications for elders.
Well, the point behind all of that is that when you have the aware and sober-minded individual who is shepherding the flock, teaching the flock, protecting the flock, the
wolves are not going to approach.
They're not going to be striving to get in, or if they are, they're going to be defeated.
But the moment that that shepherd's gone and someone else who has less concern for the flock, less concern for the wolves, less attentiveness to the dangers is now shepherding
the flock.
Now the wolves sense their opportunity.
And when Paul was gone,
and had departed and was in prison, the wolves would sense their opportunity to go in and ravage that congregation.
Now, Ephesus heeded Paul's instructions.
You go all the way over to the book of Revelation and Ephesus is one of those congregations that you read about that they were one who did not give in to the false
teaching.
Turn over Revelation chapter 2.
Revelation chapter 2 to the angel of the church at Ephesus write,
The congregation at Ephesus was one that did not assume because you walked through the door and said that you believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God that you were going
to teach the truth.
So what did they do according to this passage?
They tested them.
They tried them.
Notice what He says, You have persevered and have patience and have labored for My name's sake and have not become weary.
Quite often we get to Ephesus here in Revelation chapter 2 and we spend almost all of our time talking about the last half of the message where God says, need to renew your love
toward me.
And we perhaps failed to recognize and commend that they had done exactly what Paul told them to do.
because the false teachers had come in.
The false brethren had come in.
Those who claimed to be apostles and were not had come in.
And what did the congregation do?
They tested them and proved them to be liars, and they didn't follow them.
What an example.
But you know...
When someone's constantly fighting off a disease, what tends to happen to their health, their general health?
It declines from malnutrition because all the energy, all the nutrients are going to fight off the disease.
And Revelation 2 tells us that the church needed to restore back the focus on building up their love for God.
Because while they had been strong in these matters, they had left their first love.
They had lost the focus on God.
They needed to go back.
So as we consider the role of elders, as we consider those who are sober-minded, what are things that destroy sober-mindedness?
Worldliness, there's one.
If an elder does not first take heed to himself, but rather gives himself over to worldliness and lives in an immoral way, he will not be sober-minded.
He might be judgmental, but he won't be sober-minded.
He might be looking at everyone else and accusing them of faults, but he won't first have examined himself.
What else?
Paranoia, okay.
When someone is afraid of everything, therefore they do nothing.
They think everything is a threat.
We had a dog once back in Alabama.
Love that dog.
But that dog just was paranoid.
I'm serious.
There was one day I was looking out the backyard.
and a leaf had blown up and was standing upright.
It one of those big leaves, but it was standing upright and the dog was in the backyard barking incessantly at the leaf that was standing upright.
Growling and ferociously barking at the leaf that was standing upright, but would not go near it to knock the leaf down.
You have some elders that are that way.
They'll bark at everything.
They'll do nothing about it.
but their focus is on all the wrong things.
Their focus isn't on the real dangers.
Their focus is on everything that they're interested in, but not what God's interested in.
What else?
Complacency.
When you go back to the analogy of the soldier on duty, soldier on watch, one hour in, he's wide awake, aware of everything that's going on.
Two hours in, he's been staring at the same thing for two hours.
Ten hours in.
Stop being discerning about what's moving and what's not.
Why?
Because you've been staring at the same thing for 10 hours.
You start to become complacent about the thing that you see.
You start to see what you think you've always seen, whether that's there or not.
when when you're writing
probably all had this happen at some point, you write what you think you wrote and then you hand it someone else and they say, what do you mean by this?
And they read it back to you and that's not what you thought you wrote.
You thought you were doing one thing, but you were not being sober-minded enough to actually read what you wrote.
Placency distraction.
go down to some direct application.
Does alcohol destroy sober-mindedness?
Yeah, it's why the opposite of sober is drunk.
Like, we get it.
But what about?
a prescription drug that causes you to no longer be fully aware of what's going on.
Would that do it?
How about a non-prescription drug that causes you to no longer know what's going on?
Would that do it?
Absolutely.
All of those things are the exact opposite of sober-minded.
So Paul writes to Timothy and he says, this individual must be blameless.
He must be the husband of one wife.
He must be temperate.
He must be sober-minded.
He must be of good behavior.
When Paul envisions an elder, he does not envision someone who...
exerts no self-control over his own actions.
Who excuses his own actions.
Who behaves in a way as to bring shame and reproach upon the church and just decides, know what, that's just the way it is.
This is just who I am.
Anyone who desires this position is one who has already determined if he is qualified for this role that his behavior is going to be under his control and not somebody else's.
Now does this mean this person has no character flaws, is always 100 % perfectly in control of himself and never has any cross words, never has any ill-tempered moments?
Is that what this is meaning?
No.
It is, this is his course of life.
If you were to observe one of those moments that we just described, it would be so much the opposite of his character on a daily basis that you would stand out.
that you would think it was incredibly odd for that to have occurred.
Not someone who's constantly antagonistic towards others, who's constantly berating others, who's constantly in an attack mode, who's constantly angered, who's constantly
wrathful.
These are characteristics that Paul says you can't have these characteristics and be one who is of good behavior.
Parents, I get to do this because not only are my children here, my nieces are here and friends are here.
Parents look at their children as they're leaving and their children are staying somewhere and say, behave.
And you know what?
In general, they expect that that child knows what that means.
That they've gone through this upbringing period long enough that when someone says behave, they know what conditions are being laid down.
Usually it's the father who says behave, it's the mother who comes along and says don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, make sure you do this, make sure you do
this.
The list of all the qualifications.
What does behave mean?
Now, we found it to be true, and I know my parents always found it to be true, that our children tend to behave better when we're not around than when we are around.
You drop your kids off at somebody's house and you're just hoping, I hope they don't, I just hope they don't lose their minds like they do at home.
And you come back and you're told, your children are just perfect.
Whose children did you have?
Because those weren't mine.
My mother's statement was always, if you could behave like that when you're at their house, why can't you behave like that at home?
Uh-huh.
So, we're out of time.
Thank you for your attention, and we'll be dismissed.