Christian Ethics and the Old Testament - Lesson 46

Show Notes

Dave Rich delves into the duties of church members toward elders, focusing on the specific duty of submission. He also discusses the role of deacons, explaining that they are servants or ministers, not necessarily leaders. Rich examines the qualifications for deacons in 1 Timothy 3 and 1 Peter 5, highlighting the importance of male leadership. He argues that the biblical pattern for church leadership includes a group of elders who rule and a group of deacons who serve. Rich concludes by emphasizing the importance of following the biblical pattern for church government, including the role of elders and deacons, rather than creating new titles or roles that are not explicitly commanded in Scripture. He also provides a list of titles that include the word 'pastor' and suggests that these should be carefully considered in terms of biblical qualifications and roles.

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Dave Rich

Pastor-Teacher, Kootenai Community Church

What is Kootenai Church Sunday School?

The expository preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church by Pastors/Elders Jim Osman, Jess Whetsel, Dave Rich, and Cornel Rasor. This podcast feed contains the weekly sermons preached in the adult Sunday School class on Sunday mornings at Kootenai Church.

The Elders/Teachers of Kootenai Church exposit verse-by-verse through whole books of the Bible. These sermons can be found within their own podcast series by visiting the KCC Audio Archive.

Okay, this is lesson 46 in our series on Christian ethics. A reminder again, all the materials for each lesson are available for your use and abuse online. Last time we looked at the duties of elders, we began examining the duties of church members toward elders. We were looking at this list of six general duties. We got through the first five. The last one and the main one for the main duty or responsibility of each church member toward elders is the duty of submission, to be in submission to them. And we see that in a few verses in Scripture. Hebrews 13, 17, obey your leaders and submit to them. For they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they will do this with joy and not with groaning, for this would be unprofitable for you. And then 1 Peter 5, 5, you younger men, likewise be subject to your elders, and all of you. Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. For God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So the general command is for all of us to live in submission to the elders of our local church. So I want to start off with just a question. We see that. We see that in Scripture. We are to be in submission to our elders, to obey them and submit to them. What does that mean? How do you do that? What do you have to do? Jayden? Yeah, not get caught up in useless controversies. David Forsyth a couple weeks ago mentioned that. What were you going to say? I don't know what that means. I'm sure it's funny, but I don't know what it means. Vote for Cornell. Oh. Vote for Cornell Razor. Is that what that was? No. That may be good general advice for the tens and tens of people that listen to this. There's somebody in Australia. She can't vote for Coriel. She would if she could. Anybody in Chicago can't. Chicago, you can't. Yeah, vote early, vote often there in Chicago. Okay. That's a good, don't engage in activity that would undermine their authority, their reputation, the reputation of the church. It's a good way to live in submission. Yeah, Carol? Trust their wisdom. Trust their wisdom. There has to be some degree of being open to their arguments and their wisdom. Anything else? Yeah, Cornell? Submit like a Berea. Submit like a Berea. I think that's good. We saw that, and we'll look here explicitly at this in a second, but we saw how we saw that you can remove an elder from office. Elders have to be qualified. We saw how to deal with a sitting elder last week. So there's a limit to that responsibility. We'll think about that. Yeah, Jaden? Wear a T-shirt that honors you. Wear a T-shirt that honors you. Okay. If you say so. You and I may have a different idea of what honor means. So let me tell you one of the things that is the most, probably not one of, probably the thing that is most frustrating and discouraging for elders. It is somebody who is under their teaching for many years and then acts as if they were not. That has just been falling on deaf ears for years. We've had people who've been in our church for many years, and then they are surprised to find out that we're Calvinists. Where we John Jim did 305 lessons in the book of John, and you can't get through the book of John without very clearly addressing those issues over and over again. So those sorts of things. Yeah, so that's good. But again, there is a limit to that submission. There is a foundation and limit to all human authority. I use that term a lot in talking about human authority, foundational limit. It's not original to me. It's from a commentary by John Brown on 1 Peter. But he goes back to that over and over again. There's a foundation to human authority and there's a limit to it. The foundation is God has approved it. God has commanded us to be in submission to human authority. So because God has ordained that authority and put certain people in positions of authority, that's the foundation of their authority. But there's also a limit, and we know what that limit is. We submit only insofar as the submission is consistent with our greater submission, our ultimate submission to God himself. So we've seen that. We've seen that handle sitting elders. We've seen that that submission is therefore not unlimited. Now, today, I want to shift gears a little bit, a little bit of a hodgepodge lesson. And today I want to look at deacons for a minute.

If we have time, I want to look at the mysterious women of 1 Timothy 3.11. And then we'll look at church structures, things like that. Trying to get at the kind of ethical dimension of all this towards the end. So, first of all, I want to talk about deacons. What is a deacon? This is harder than you might think. It's a difficult word, the word deacon, because it is a word that is sometimes translated and often transliterated in the Bible. It's a common set of words, nouns and verbs, that are only rarely translated as deacon. And the word, the Greek noun is diakonos. You hear that it's a transliteration. It just means a servant or a minister. It means someone who executes the commands of another person. And it's most often translated in your Bible as servant or minister. But there are a few instances where the translators understand the word to refer to a particular office, the office of deacon, and so they translate it that way as deacon. In your Bible, you can check your concordance if you want. You don't have to. I have no power over you whatsoever. The English word deacon probably appears in your Bible five times, around five times. Four of them in 1 Timothy 3, where the qualifications for deacons are given, and probably once in Philippians, where Paul singles them out for a greeting at the beginning of that letter. But the Greek noun itself appears 29 times. So if your English translation has the word deacons in it only five times, but the word appears, the Greek word appears 29 times, obviously most of the time it's being translated in another way, servant or minister. And it does get complicated, so I made this amazing little great table. We're having a little bit. Okay, we're back to. This is this table that's on your handout. And I did this so you can, these are all of the appearances of the English word deacons or deacon or deacons in LSB. So when you see that, it's probably these five verses, but you can see that only three of these are actually nouns. So the noun diakonos is, or its forms, is used 29 times, but only three times in the Bible is it translated as deacons. The other two times you see deacons in LSB, it's included by the translators in a word that's a verb that means to serve. In context, they interpret it as serving as deacons. So you get those other two in 1 Timothy 3:10 and 3.13. Okay, so see, it does get complicated. The verb appears many times, rarely translated as deacon. The noun appears many times, rarely translated as deacon. If you have an NIV, you will see deacon in one other place. This is a bit of an editorial comment. I commend you to our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cancrea. But most translators choose to do what LSB does there. I commend to you, our sister Phoebe, who's a servant of the church. This is at Cincrea. You see that how you translate that depends on how you interpret what is a deacon and what are their qualifications. Now, there's a second noun form, occurs 34 times in the New Testament. It is a noun for the work of service, not for the person doing the service, but for the work of service, usually translated as preparations or ministry or service. So all that makes it very difficult. Some people will assert that anytime the verb, the diaconeo verb appears, that the person doing that could be interpreted as a deacon. Well, this is not true. It doesn't really make sense. It would be like saying every time the word to shepherd appears, that person has to be somebody who's an elder. Well, that's clearly not true. Sometimes they are people who herd sheep, right? So it's the same here. Sometimes people who are referred to as a servant are servants, and other times they have this office of servant that we refer to as deacon. So confusing. All of that said, deacon is our English word to refer to a particular office or role within the local church. So let's try to understand what is that role. And I'm going to start with a passage I'm going to assert is foundational to the role of deacon. And it's Acts 6. So we'll read Acts 6, 1 through 7 together and go from there. Acts 6, 1 through 7. Now in those days, while the disciples were multiplying in number, there was grumbling from the Hellenists against the Hebrews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.

The 12 summoned the congregation of the disciples and said, It is not pleasing to God for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this need. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word. And this word pleased the whole congregation, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, somebody else, another guy, I'll try it. Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmanus, and Nicholas. I said none of those right. I looked them up in how you say them in the Greek, and I'm not even going to try it. A proselyte from Antioch. And these they stood before the apostles, and after praying, they laid their hands on them. And the word of God kept on spreading, and the number of the disciples continued to multiply greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith. So, Acts. Jim preached through Acts some years ago. And who was here for Acts? Okay, a few of you. Acts took a long time. And when he started it, he told me, I'm going to preach through Acts. I'm like, there's not all that much meat there in Acts. I'm like, why don't you do Romans or whatever? And so he did Act. And it was, you know, it's a great book. And so it took a long time through it. But one of the lessons that you learn as you really study Acts is it is transitional in nature. It's moving from this Jewish focus to a Gentile focus. There's some transitional elements in it. And one of the transitions is from apostles to elders. So when you kind of read in Acts, the apostles are serving a role that they obviously don't serve anymore, a role that some of which has moved on to elders. So you see that transition throughout, really throughout Acts and then the epistles, where they're appointing elders to perform some of the roles that apostles were performing prior. Okay, so we go from apostles performing this role, then elders assigned to perform the role subject to the foundational teachings of the apostles and prophets. So in Acts 6, when we're in Acts 6, the apostles are kind of stand-ins for the function of elders later on. So all of that is to say that the role that the apostles want to protect for themselves in Acts 6 is the role that is assigned to elders later on. It's a shepherding role. So we can kind of see how it's defined. I'm going to kind of go backward to go forward. In verses 2 through 4, there, you see the role that the apostles want to protect for themselves. It is not pleasing to God for us to neglect the word of God in order to serve tables. We cannot do that because we need to do this. Therefore, brothers, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the spirit and of wisdom, who may put in charge of this need. But we will devote ourselves to prayer to the service of the word. So the work of the apostles there and now the work of the elders devote themselves and their time to the word of God, to prayer, to teaching and preaching the ministry of the word. They are to shepherd the church of God, those roles that we looked at before. Okay, wait a minute. We're not supposed to be talking about elders. We're supposed to be talking about deacons, right? So the point of that is there's a separation of role. The deacon and the elder are not the same role. These apostles were protecting a role for themselves and assigning a role to another group. What I'm asserting are prototype of deacons. Okay. So what is the role of deacons? Look at this passage. What was the conflict that they were dealing with? What was it about? It's about food. For widows. What did you say? The Greek widows were being overlooked. Why would they be overlooked? Jaden? Well, they weren't Jews? Well, they were, but they weren't as Jewish as the Hebrew Jews, right? They were dispersed, so they had Greek customs and kind of Greek culture. And so now they were back in Jerusalem for either for Pentecost or maybe after their conversion, they decided to move back there. We don't know. But it was a kind of a, we would think of it as kind of a racial element or an ethnic element there where they were worried about being discriminated against. Okay. It's a serious issue in what was then the church. This wasn't just a church. This is basically it. So it's an important issue that has arisen that could cause a big problem in the church, but it concerned food and widows. Something that we need to keep in mind. It was about a physical.

distribution of food of a physical necessity to people who needed help. Okay. I'm wrong page. Okay. So then the apostles and their wisdom, they said, well, this is a big problem. It needs tending to. It's going to need some time spent on it. We can't spend that time. It wouldn't be right for us to do that. We need to find people who can handle this better than we could. And then we can devote our time to what it is that we're to devote our time to. So the men were assigned then a job of taking care of the physical needs of people who needed help. I don't want to go beyond what is written. They're not called deacons here. It doesn't explicitly tell us, hey, these are the first deacons. So I don't want to make that case too strongly. But the words that are used for what they do are in that class. So Acts 6, 1, the daily serving, that serving is diaconia. And in verse 2, where it says to serve tables, that's diaconeo. It's those words. Again, it doesn't prove they're deacons. It just proves that they're servants. So in other words, the choosing of the seven is for a specific crisis at a specific time, right? I'm generalizing that because I think that's the point of it, is for us to understand that this is how this whole idea came about. We've separated the roles between those who are elders and those who are deacons. So you can disagree with that because the word doesn't tell us that explicitly. It just then goes out later, qualifies deacons without any explanation. So it seems like this would be that explanation. So it says that the church was to select men, men of certain qualifications. That word select is interesting. It usually is translated in your Bible as visit. It means to concern yourself with, to get involved with, and examine. Sorry, my throat's gone. So they were to somehow go in among one another and expect and inspect one another and figure out who might be qualified for this work. And we see their qualifications. Move forward here eventually. Guess what? Okay, we see their qualifications. They were to be men. Why is that? This is a women's ministry issue. The only people being served are women. I don't know. But just as with elders, God has expressed his will that people in this role be male. Uses the exact phrase later when we look at the qualifications for 1 Timothy 3, he's the exact same phrase that argued that only men could be elders. The same phrase applies to deacons. And this word men means a male person. It's not the general term for mankind. That's the first qualification. Second is they must be from among the congregation. So we're not looking to just hire a service, comes in and takes care of it. This is a sensitive issue. We need mature men, people that we know can handle this important task. Not just hirelings from outside. We need people who are devoted and love the people that they're serving and can do it the right way. How else, if they're not from among the congregation, how else do we know that they are men of good reputation? We have to know them. We have to know what their reputations are. They're being entrusted with a vital ministry of the church. They have to be full of the spirit. They have to be fully yielded to the control of the Holy Spirit. For us today, it would mean that they are obedient to the word of God. The word of God is given to us by the Holy Spirit and they're in full compliance with the Word of God. They're full of wisdom. They have biblical knowledge. They have common sense. They know how to apply that knowledge, biblical wisdom. They can act wisely in really hard situations. So that gives us a sense of the role, looking at those qualifications and the role. Acts 6 identified early on a need for a group of people within the church who could serve the physical needs of people in the church. That's I'm arguing this is something prototypical for deacons. Now this is the way Strzok defines his role. Through the deacons, the local church's charitable activities are effectively organized and centralized. The deacons are collectors of funds, distributors of relief, and agents of mercy. They help the poor, the jobless, the sick, the widowed, the elderly, the homeless, the shut in, the refugees, and the disabled. They relieve suffering. They comfort, protect, and encourage people and help to meet their needs.

Needs. That's a good definition. So other than what we see here in Acts 6, the qualifications for deacons are only given in one place in your Bible. It's 1 Timothy 3. So let's read that together. 1 Timothy 3, 8 through 13. Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not fond of dishonest gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And these men must also first be tested, then let them serve as deacons if they're beyond reproach. Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. Deacons must be husbands of only one wife, leading their children and their own households well, for those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. So note first that deacons are always plural. We don't have singular deacons in the sense of men who hold the office in a local church. And there are good reasons for that, but God doesn't give them to us. He doesn't tell us why. But I think we can reason through it. Why might it be wise to have more than one deacon serving in a role like this? Accountability, what do you mean by capital? Yeah, you're in charge of money and the funds and resources of the church. So accountability, being able to be accountable to one another, having that looking for audit trail type of thing is important. Oversight, yeah, it's the word. Yeah, determining who's in need. There has to be a way for that to happen. And the more men you have who are qualified in the role, the better you can do that. Yeah. The larger the body is, the more you'll need. It just makes sense. So we can see some wisdom in it, but it is a biblical pattern. Deacons, just as elders, are plural. So here's the entire list of qualifications from 1 Timothy 3. And there's only nine of them, not 20. And we've already gone through a lot of them. So I'm going to kind of zip through this with emphasis on those things that are different from what we saw with elders. So the first one there is dignified. It also translates sometimes as serious. It's good word. Very important for a deacon to be able to be serious when it's time to be serious. And you can see why. They're dealing with people in their worst moments. They're helping them in times of need. They can't be flip when they need to be serious. Not double-tongued. That's kind of a fun one. The word's only used here in the Bible. It's translated in different ways. Not double-tongue, not hypocritical, not insincere or sincere. Some people understand this as a person who can't stop talking. They talk so much they need two tongues. You know anybody like that? That would make sense. You don't want somebody who's just a blabber mouth in the role. Again, it's very sensitive. Sometimes you have to be careful about what you talk about. The other way of thinking of it is duplicitous. I think the not hypocritical, not insincere, two tongues saying different things. We use the term talking on both sides of your mouth. Don't we use that term? Yeah, okay. I thought we did. You couldn't have that either. You need somebody who's completely honest and straightforward. And then not indulging in much wine, very similar to what we saw for elders. The word much, the adjective much is added in there, which is a little bit interesting. It seems as if maybe the qualification is a little bit more relaxed for elders than for deacons. But you make of that what you will. Either way, we don't want somebody for whom alcohol is an issue to be in a role like this for obvious reasons. Not on a dishonest gain, very similar, I'd say identical to the qualification for elders free from the love of money. It's at least as important for deacons because deacons should be handling the money. Deacons should be accountable for that. If we say that is the role, then they ought to be responsible for that. It's very important. Then the last one is, well, it's not the last one, but it's not the last one, but in the actual passage, it's the last one, and then there's a step. But holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. Holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. This is a man who understands the faith and has a clear conscience toward what God commands in it. Not somebody who is harboring some secret sin.

Similar to words like devout and holy that we saw with respect to elders. Then it says tested or examined. In order to be qualified, he must be tested. We're not to appoint men who haven't been tested. Now, this would apply equally to elders because you can't have qualifications and not have testing. So it would apply to both. Beyond reproach, not exactly the same word used for elders, but this same word is used for elders in another place, so I don't make too much of that slight difference. Again, it's the idea that a man cannot be reasonably charged with some offense, that there's something known about this person that could stick to them. Then husband of only one wife, exactly the same three-word phrase. Leading their children, their own households well. Again, very similar to what we saw with elders. The same adverb kalos that I badly mispronounced last week and should have looked up, which means good externally and internally, fitting and proper. So the list is shorter, but very similar to the list for elders. But there are some differences. There's some differences. There's one particular qualification that really can't be interpreted as being there at all for deacons. One qualification for elders that isn't there for deacons. You see what it is? Able to teach, right? Why not? Why isn't it there? Yeah. It's not their role. Their whole focus is on doing service so the elders can do their role, which includes teaching. So does that mean that somebody who's able to teach cannot be a deacon? Of course not. Does that mean we couldn't have a deacon preach on a Sunday morning? No, they could do that. That's okay. You could have a deacon teach a class or that's all fine. It's just that the qualification isn't that and it isn't the role of the deacon to do that. Okay? Elders have their role and deacons have their role and deacons have to extend the love and mercy of Christ to those in the flock, people who have physical needs. So what do they do? They help, they serve, they organize, they react to things going on, they protect and support, they meet the physical needs of people who need those who have those needs. So then, let's turn that around for a minute. What are our duties toward deacons? What do we owe to them? Financial, right? They can't serve if we don't give them the means. That's part of our responsibility in the church. Anything else? Yeah, Peter? Yep. Holding them accountable, making sure they remain qualified and speaking up if they're not. Can't you? Yeah. Yeah, living in submission to what their decisions are. You can still be vigilant, but submitting to those if maybe you had another idea. If they decide to pave the parking lot and you think it would be more important to put in another set of toilets, we can all live with that. Yes, a single man could be deacon. Yes. Yes, right. That's right. Yes. This is this. This If a man is married, first of all, a man has to be a husband of one wife, meaning, or it could be a one-woman man, meaning faithful in their sexual marital relationships if they have them, and then leading their children well if they have them. There's no expectation that they, you know, we get we can sometimes get into this a little bit. Remember, Jesus wasn't married. Okay, Paul. There's a, you know, being married isn't something that is necessarily ethical, right? It's not unethical to be single. And that would apply here to elders and deacons as well. It's good. Yeah, the question: shouldn't this be for all of us? So just as we look through elders and we could see that as a list of virtues, the same is true for deacons. We can see it as a list of virtues, but we also must see it as a list of qualifications for deacons. These are things we all ought to have. These are things they must have or they can't serve in the role. Good. I think there's one other duty that we owe to our deacons that you haven't said yet. What? Prayer. Prayer? Yeah, that's not the one I was thinking of. That's actually right. They should be on your prayer list. Pray that they would be well organized and effective and encouraged. Yes, sir. Who's talking to me? Oh, Steve? Stephen, yes. What'd you say? Our time. Yeah. Yeah. So you all have, Stephen said, our time, our availability. You all have skills. They may call on you for skills they don't have.

And so that's a help to them. Mike, what were you going to say? Same thing, way to go. You guys can fight it out. Good job. That's the last one I was thinking. Make them aware of the situations, right? That is a help to them. Just as if an elder has been teaching you for 13 years on the book of John and you haven't heard any of it, it's very discouraging. So if someone says, well, I'm leaving this church because they just didn't take care of this problem that I had that none of us are aware of. So that's another duty that we owe to them. So now that's a fairly thorough examination of leadership, leadership structure of the New Testament church. And we'll come back and talk about some of the implications of that. But I feel like we have to look at verse 11. I don't want to. It would be easier not to, especially when my thing is acting up like this. 1 Timothy 3:11. So you know what 1 Timothy 3.11 says? Women likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful, and all things. I think I left out a word. No, it's there. Okay. 1 Timothy 3:1 through 13 is this big long passage that we've kind of been digging into. What I put in there in the red is qualifications of elders. And then we go to the blue, qualifications for deacons in verse 8, and then more qualifications for deacons in verse 12. And then there's verse 10 in the middle there, which we'll talk about. And then verse 11. So how should we understand 1 Timothy 3:11? I think it's important, first of all, let's see where it fits in the context. And there's three basic interpretations of this. Maybe three and a half. I'll say three. One is this is just a list of moral virtues for all women. And if you just read it plainly, it seems like it is. If you ignore the context, it just says, women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. Just a general list of virtues for women. This is what women must be. Okay? But we don't ignore context. It doesn't fit as a general thing. Like, what, what? Why would that be just stuck in the middle there? Right in the middle of qualifications for elders and deacons. So we got to pay attention to that. So one other interpretation is this deaconesses, female deacons. And this would seem to fit the context, the flow of the passage. It's talking about deacons' qualifications as deacons. This is all women. So women must be deacons. It's talking about them. But the problem is women can't be deacons. It's there. It says that they have to be one woman man or a husband of one wife. That means they have to be men. And we also saw it in Acts. So that doesn't work, and it also kind of doesn't fit the context. Why would you have... The only way to get around this, I think, would be to say, I'm going to interpret the qualifications for deacons as applying to male deacons. And then I'm going to interpret this as applying to female deacons. But that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would female deacons have a different set of qualifications than male deacons? And why would you start with male deacons, then qualify female, then go back to males? That doesn't fit a normal flow of thought. It also runs afoul of 1 Timothy 2. Women must learn in quietness and all submission, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. So if a deaconess were to serve in the general role of a deacon, she'd be exercising authority as a leader and local church over men. Okay, well, what about a deaconess that only serves women and children? She wouldn't have authority over men. That's getting kind of fanciful. It doesn't appear in the context. And when we saw the prototype in Acts 6, that was a women's issue. They were only serving women. And the apostles chose men to serve in the role. If women could serve as deacons, that would be the time to do it. That would have been the best time to do it. Widows are women. So, But my biggest issue with the idea of female deacons is the language itself. Paul uses the general term, I back up so you can see. This is the general term for women. It can also mean wives. But that's the word that he used.

He's not using, he could have said female deacons, deacons who are women. He could have said that. It's not impossible to say in Greek. But he didn't. He just says women or wives. So I don't get it. I don't see this as having anything to do with female deacons. So the other interpretation are: these are the wives of deacons or the wives of deacons and elders. And that's the kind of standard interpretation. It fits the context really well. It makes sense. Something Paul might think of, if you've read much of Paul and kind of tried to diagram sentences for Paul, you understand the way that he thinks sometimes. It's hard to keep up with sometimes, as Peter said. But if you just look through the flow, let's go a couple out here and do it. This is just a smaller section of this. He's beginning to think through how deacons should be qualified. In verse 12, he's thinking about what's coming to him in verse 12. So look how in verse 9 he talks about qualifications for deacons. And then in verse 10, he seems to wrap up the whole section. Okay, here's the qualifications for elders. Here's the qualification for deacons. And they have to be tested. Let them serve as deacons if they're beyond reproach. Women. Because he's thinking now about those familial qualifications that he hasn't addressed yet. And so in doing so, he thinks of, well, their wives ought to be something too. Their wives should have a certain list of qualifications. It makes sense to me. And I think it applies to elders just as well. And why do I say that? Well, first of all, it makes sense. But second of all, in the flow here, in verse 10, these men must also first be tested. Also. Also. Now that also could mean they have to not only be tested, but also something else. I don't know what something else is. But it could mean another group must be tested besides the deacons. Well, having just given an extensive list of qualifications for elders, it would make sense for him to say, just as you're going to have to test elders to determine these qualifications, so you must also do with the deacons. So I think verse 10 was Paul's initial wrap-up. And then he said, oh, by the way, the women must also be, and he gives qualifications. And then he finishes up thinking through the wives and now the families of the deacons. Now you can disagree with that. You can disagree with that to a certain extent. You're not a heretic if you believe that you can have deaconesses or female deacons. You're just really wrong. But I'll wait for Paul to tell you that himself. Yes, ma'am. You can't have an elder's wife or deacon's wife. Yeah. It is important that elders' wives and deacons' wives are of a certain character. And honestly, we would never qualify a man whose wives didn't meet these qualifications. And it would be unwise for anybody to do so. Come back to that in a second. Let's look at the qualifications themselves. There's just four of them. Dignified, same word we just saw. Serious, not silly. Able to be serious when it's appropriate to be serious. Not malicious gossips. Brought this one up earlier. I mentioned the Greek word for that. Anybody remember that? Yeah. It's almost always translated as devil. Here it's translated as malicious gossips. Means a backbiter, somebody who falsely accuses other people. And so clearly that's a sin. It's a sin prohibited by God. You don't want to be in the company of the devil. All right? Three is temperate. This is a term literally meaning wineless. We've seen that before with elders, but it doesn't figuratively mean wineless. It's not what it means here. It means alert, as if you've not been indulging in alcohol. Alert, not dull or insensitive. And you wouldn't want the wife of an elder or deacon to be insensitive, to kind of just blurt out things. Number four is faithful in all things. This one's a little bit harder to translate because the word faithful can mean full of faith, that is a Christian, or it can mean faithful, trustworthy. I think the fact that it says in all things probably means.

Leans more toward being trustworthy, somebody that you could depend on. So, if you put all these together, you get a picture of a mature, stable woman who's able to help their husbands who are involved in these important ministries in the local church. The opposite would really be insurmountable. If your wife didn't meet these qualifications, you really would have a very difficult time serving. I've known men, I have been very encouraged by them. Look up to them because they have stepped down from ministry because they recognize that their wives have made their position untenable. It does happen. Okay, so that's a very thorough look at elders and deacons, the two offices in the local church. I'm going to debate in my head for one second what to do next. I'm just going to whip through this really quick. I'm not going to even hardly talk about it. But everything that we've talked about has left us with an ethical point. The Bible tells us how his church, Jesus Christ, tells us how his church is to be organized and led. There's enough in scripture that gives us a pattern that ought to be followed. There's lots of ways that churches are organized out there. This is an Episcopalian form. I took this from the Episcopal Church itself. They have a general convention. They have a presiding bishop. They have diocesan bishops over geographic areas. And they have individual parishes that are led by a rector. Where's the biblical pattern in any of this? I don't know. It's not there. How about, let's look at a Christian church, the Presbyterian church. This is, but when I say a Christian church, you know, I'm not talking about PCUSA. I'm talking about PCA or others, but this particular one is PCA. Again, you get, they have a business meeting, they refer to as general assembly. They have, all the teaching elders can go to this. You can also send a number of ruling elders, which is a different office from teaching elder. That's where they decide things. They have a presbytery. It's a group of teaching elders over a region. And then they have their session. The session is the governing body of the church, which includes the teaching elder elders and ruling elders. Ruling elders have a term of service ordinarily. Teaching elders do not. They also will have the office of deacons. So, again, you ought not to have a human spiritual authority above a local church. It doesn't exist. It's just the teachings of the apostles and the prophets that we find in the word of God. That's what exists above the elders of a local church. Not a governing body above them. And the distinction between teaching elder and ruling elder is nowhere found in the Bible. Elders have to be able to teach. That is their role. Not just ruling and not just teaching, but both. It's their role. So to combine these that way or separate them, I should say, is to be unbiblical. Quickly. Other forms, there are all kinds of weird forms of single elder rule. These are intended to be three different ones. Maybe you have the pastor over a deacon board. Maybe you have a deacon board that includes the pastor. Maybe you have a deacon board that's over the pastor. You've seen all of these in your lifetime. Unless you were born in this church. You've seen all of these. They're all wrong. There's a biblical model, and it is to have a group of elders who rule the church, assisted by a group of deacons who serve the local church, serve the physical needs of the local church. That's the biblical model. Now, you can say, well, there's no commands. There's no commands that we have to do it this way. Yeah, it's the pattern that we see in the New Testament, but there are no commands, except maybe the one issued to Titus to go appoint elders in every church. But we're not Titus. You can make those kinds of arguments. I'm going to leave you with an extended quote from somebody that's going to be a big surprise to you. There it is. Wayne Grudem. I'm going to read you this and then I'll let you go. It seems inconsistent to argue that the New Testament falls short of giving a clear command that all churches should have a plurality of elders when the passages and qualifications of elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are used as scriptural requirements for church offices today. How can churches say that the qualifications for elders found in these verses are commanded for us today, but the system of plural elders found in these very same verses is not commanded, but was required only in that time and in that society? It's not done yet. Though it could be objected that these are commands written only to individual situations in Ephesus and Crete, much of the New Testament consists of the same.

Of apostolic commands written to individual churches on how they should conduct themselves. Yet we do not therefore say that we're free to disobey these instructions and other parts of the epistles. In fact, 1 Timothy and Titus give us a great deal of material on the conduct of the local church, material which all believing churches seek to follow. Moreover, it seems to be quite unwise to ignore a clear New Testament pattern which existed throughout all the churches for which we have evidence at the time the New Testament was written. Why should we adopt as the norm a pattern of church government which is nowhere found in the New Testament and reject a pattern everywhere found in the New Testament? Yeah, we don't reject something because even if it's a clear pattern, it seems to be an expectation because there's not an imperative verb. All right. Last thing. I asked Copilot to give me a list of titles out there that have the word pastor in it. This is a subset of those, 161, that it passed me. We're making it up as we go along. These are just titles with the word pastor in them. A kind of unbiblical word on its own. But if I include words like minister, elder, could you imagine? They get kind of silly. Second junior associate lead pastor for singles. What are you talking about? Now, some of them may be justified. You can look at those and say, well, that kind of makes sense. I understand people saying lay elder, meaning somebody who doesn't get paid. Okay, if you want to say it that way. But it's important that we understand: everybody who bears any of the titles, elder, overseer, shepherd of the local church, must be qualified and must serve in a certain role. That's the biblical pattern. We don't get to make stuff up and call them a pastor. That's to go beyond what is written. Okay, I went over, but you're glad I did because we won't come back to that next time. All right, let's pray.