1 Timothy chapter 3
We are 11 lessons into this chapter and we're all the way down to verse four.
So we're making good progress.
Let's begin with a word of prayer and then we'll get into our study.
Gracious Father in heaven, we...
come before your throne grateful for your blessings, grateful for your tender mercies and your love, your care, and your kindness.
We thank you for the rain that you send on the just and on the unjust.
We are grateful for the sunshine as well.
Lord, we are mindful of all of the blessings that we have in this country, in this world of abundance, and we pray that you will continue to bless this nation, but also to bless
this area.
We pray that you be with us as we strive to serve you and to uh be faithful to you, to remain sound in doctrine, but also to remain faithful in heart.
We pray that we will be diligent in these matters, but also we pray
for your grace that we might stand before you justified, sanctified, and holy.
Lord, we thank you for your Son who came and died on the cross for our sins.
Through His salvation and through His blood is our atonement.
and without Him there is no remission of sins.
Lord, we pray that we might always remember the debt that He paid that we could not pay.
Lord, we pray for the world around us.
We know that difficult situations arise daily throughout this world.
We pray that Your uh will will be done in all of those matters.
All this we ask and pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Paul writes concerning elders, this is a faithful saying, 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, temperate,
sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to whine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome.
What does it mean to be quarrelsome?
Argumentative.
that mean that an elder who is the type of elder that they should be
will never get in an argument.
No.
He will never insist on establishing the truth of Scripture and standing up against those who would argue for false doctrine.
No.
Does it mean that he does not insist on winning every verbal conflict?
Yes it does.
This man is a man who realizes that there are some battles that should never be fought.
He is not ready at the drop of any moment in any hat to make sure that he wins a verbal confrontation.
And therefore as a result of desiring to win them, generates them.
You see,
When an individual is quarrelsome, it's not just that they will occasionally at some moment in their life end up in an argument.
It is that they are always looking for an argument.
If they say hello to you as you walk into the building, they're looking for a reason to have an argument.
If they say, Why,
Isn't this beautiful weather today?
They're looking for an argument.
Their personality is one that is argumentative and they have chosen not to control it.
They have developed a character trait of quarreling whether the subject is worth the argument or not.
Yeah.
So there's a movie scene that comes to mind whenever I read this term.
uh There is a movie years ago about the Vietnam conflict called We Were Soldiers.
And it deals with the helicopter uh squadrons and people that were involved in the Vietnam conflict.
uh Sam Elliott, who most of you probably would recognize that name, deep voice, know, very guttural uh tone of voice, is greeted.
The first time you see him, he's walking across one of the training complexes on the grass back in the U.S.
He's walking across the yard and a private is walking by him and says, good morning, sir.
And he says, what's good about it?
That's kind of the personality type.
This person has nothing good that they can focus on.
They have only negative.
And when you're led by someone who only sees the negative, how are things going to turn out?
Needless to say, there's not gonna be a lot of hope in the leadership, okay?
And certainly not a lot of trust.
When someone is of a mindset and of a disposition to always win no matter what.
Are they going to have a lot of trust that they build with those who are weak and unlearned and unknowledgeable?
No, as a matter fact, they're going to destroy them.
Turn over to Romans chapter 14.
Romans chapter 14, we can see this borne out in Paul's discussion about the eating of meats.
If you go back to 14 verse 1, you read, receive one who is weak in the faith, but not, watch this, not to disputes over doubtful things.
What are disputes?
Arguments.
He says, for one believes he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables.
Okay?
Somebody tell me the background of this.
What's in view, what two groups of people?
Jew and Gentile, okay?
Why would the Jews have a problem with eating?
All right?
What did the Old Testament law forbid them from doing?
eating certain foods that were considered unclean under the law.
So if a type of animal had a certain type of hoof, they weren't allowed to eat it.
If a certain type of animal was involved in a certain type of thing, they weren't allowed to eat it.
All right, they had a number of laws and ordinances that involved things they could eat and things they could not.
Go back and read the book of Leviticus, you'll read all of them, okay?
But...
Were they still under that law?
No.
But had their conscience been trained up under that law?
Yes.
So Peter, in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 10, is dwelling in Joppa in a city
and someone has been told to send messengers to him so that Peter will come and teach that individual in his family the gospel.
Who was it that was told to send for Peter?
Cornelius.
Is Cornelius a Jew or a Gentile?
He's a Gentile.
He's a Roman centurion.
He's not a Jew.
So, Cornelius is being told by God
through an angel to go and send to Peter in Joppa and bring him so he might learn what he ought to do in order to be obedient to God.
While the messengers are on the way, Peter is up on the rooftop of the place where he is staying and he sees a vision.
What does he see in the vision?
All types of animals, specifically unclean animals.
And what does God tell him in the vision to do?
Rise, kill, and eat.
What is Peter's reply?
I've never eaten anything unclean.
In other words, Peter is saying my whole life until now, I have never broken the law and the covenant and the ordinances concerning clean and unclean meats in his entire life.
And yet God is telling him to do what?
rise, kill, and eat.
So he sees it once, he sees it twice, sees it a third time.
Is God really concerned about Peter's diet?
No, he's not.
He's not worried that Peter's starting to lose a little bit too much weight being around the Gentiles.
He needs to go find some more Jewish houses to spend.
No, it's not what God's concerned about.
After that third time, the messengers from Cornelius arrive.
Peter realizes what God has been talking about all the time is the Gentiles hearing the gospel and being obedient to it.
That what God declares clean, no man has a right to declare unclean.
According to the Jewish traditions, and especially the Jewish religious leaders, if they walked into the marketplace where the Gentiles were and they shopped in the marketplace,
they had to ceremonially cleanse themselves before they could even eat dinner.
because if they didn't, they were unclean because of their proximity to the Gentiles.
They didn't have to have touched anything unclean, just be in the marketplace with Gentiles.
And they considered that enough to make themselves ceremonially unclean, okay?
Which by the way, was not something the law taught at all.
Now, Paul says, let him who eats, let not, verse two, verse three rather, I'll get it right here.
Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat.
And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has received him." Here's Jew number one.
Jew number one has been a Christian for 15 years.
He's learned the restriction of the old law.
He grew up under it.
but he now has been a student of Christ and a disciple of Christ for fifteen years.
He knows what the Holy Spirit has taught by Revelation.
He knows the example that has been set by the Apostles.
He knows that the Gentiles have received the Gospel, that they are part of the body of Christ and they are accepted just like He is.
And he knows that the food restrictions of the Old Testament no longer apply to him.
They're no longer binding.
By the way, before you get to Romans 14, Paul wrote about Romans chapter 7.
Go back there real quick because I want us to see this.
I want us to the clarity with which Paul has already dealt with this to make it very clear what laws do not apply.
Or do you not know, brethren, for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives.
For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives, but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.
So then if while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress, but if her husband dies, she is free from the law so that she's no adulteress,
though she's married to another man.
Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead.
to the law through the body of Christ that you may be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.
Paul just said in Romans chapter 7 verse 4, you Jews who are now Christians are free from the law.
You are as equally free from all the ordinances of the law as a wife
who was married to a husband who is now dead.
She is entirely, not partially, she is completely free from her attachment to that husband and her binding to that husband.
Why?
He's dead.
Okay?
Now, chapter 14 verse 4, who are you to judge another's servant?
To his own master, he stands or falls.
Who's the master in this scenario in this statement?
Who?
God!
Paul is addressing a Jew over here who's been a Christian for 15 years and knows I don't have to eat according to the Old Testament restrictions anymore.
And he's looking as a 15 year old Christian at a one year old Christian who's only just now learned the gospel and has spent the last 70 years, because he's 71 years old in the
scenario, he's spent the last 70 years keeping the ordinances about food.
How quickly can you change a 13-year-old?
quick.
How quickly can you change a 70-year-old?
Not so quick.
So here's a 70-year-old, he's been a Christian for one year, and he sits down at a meal with good Christian Gentiles, and they put a plate of pork in front of him.
and his conscience is killing him.
And this well-meaning 15-year-old Christian over here starts badgering him, why, you should know better.
You should just eat it.
It's fine.
You're free from the law.
Stop that, all that worrying about.
Is that Christian helping this Christian?
Is that Christian judging this Christian?
All right, go forward.
Verse 14, I know, verse 14 of Romans 14, I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself.
But to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love.
Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died.
If you have an elder who is quarrelsome, will he destroy with his accurate arguments the weak Christian for whom Christ died?
Yes, he will.
Because he will not give them time to grow.
He will not give them time to learn.
He will not give them time to come to an understanding and
to deal with their conscience on matters of indifference.
Now, what is this not teaching?
This is not teaching that an elder who knows the truth and knows the difference between the truth and error will not ever, because he's not quarrelsome, he will not ever
vehemently
stand up against false teachers.
That's not what this is teaching.
Far to the opposite.
But he will only do so in a way to protect the flock, not to win points in an argument.
And there's a difference.
Sadly, too many times in what we would call structured debates,
The truth wins the argument, loses the audience.
which means they lost the debate.
Not because they presented the truth, but because of how the person argued the presentation of the truth.
In being quarrelsome, in being derogatory, in being critical on a personal level instead of arguing the truth.
Eddie.
Mm-hmm.
their self control.
that is considering the whole of the situation and not just his thoughts or feelings on.
Very good point.
I wanna add something to that, because we've had a lot of discussion in this explanation about new Christians.
There's a reason why a lot of this has been framed in the discussion of new Christians, and there's a time in which an elder or an apostle needs to be very confrontational.
with those who should be mature Christians, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
1 Corinthians chapter 2, writes,
Paul is describing the scenario in which he was in their presence, the things he went through when he taught them, the things that they observed in him now go to chapter 3.
He says, I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ.
Paul says, I want to write to you to talk to you about spiritual things.
to write to you about spiritual things, to encourage you and explain to you spiritual things, but I can't teach you like spiritual people.
I'm having to teach you like those who are fleshly people.
I'm having to teach you like those who are not spiritually minded, because you're not spiritually minded, he says to the church at Corinth.
You have given yourself over to continuing to think the way the world thinks." He says, while I want to talk to you as spiritual people, I'm having to talk to you like babies.
Notice he says, I fed you with milk and not with solid food for until now you were not able to receive it and even now you are still not able.
I wanted to give you some real food, some real meat that you could sink your teeth into and really grow from it.
You put a 14-year-old on a milk-only diet, what's going to happen?
Well, he's got all that protein in it, right?
It ought to be fine.
Not going to work out all that well.
They're going to be malnourished.
Why?
They need more substance than liquid.
Now, he says, for you are still carnal.
What's his definition of carnal?
What's his definition of fleshly minded?
What is his definition of babes in this?
He says, where there is envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
Like only the flesh matters?
He says, "'For when one says, am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not carnal?
Who then is Paul?
Who is Apollos?
But ministers through whom you believed as the Lord gave to each one.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.' So then neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase." He's saying, if you can't
move past following men to following God,
you're always going to be babes.
You're always going to be those who are unable to consume the meat of the word.
So, when Paul criticizes them and calls them carnal and unspiritual and babes, the fact that he's using terms that might hurt someone's feelings when they read it and go, what?
What does he mean we're babes?
I've been a Christian for 10 years.
What does he mean I'm a babe in Christ?
I'm no babe in Christ.
Is Paul being quarrelsome?
Is Paul unqualified in his leadership because he's using terminology that is intended to sink in and connect to the true scenario?
You sometimes people who are weak,
carnal and not spiritually minded, will accuse an elder who is not quarrelsome of being quarrelsome because he made an argument that hit home with the reality of the matter.
Or a preacher made an argument, made a statement about someone's spiritual scenario and they didn't think he made it the right way.
He wasn't loving enough when he said it.
He didn't say it in the right tone of voice.
That's not what this passage is talking about.
That's not disqualifying for an elder.
That's not disqualifying for a minister.
That is someone who is recognizing a situation and is addressing it, and the person who hears it has a responsibility to examine themselves and see whether or not it's true.
not to argue against it.
Now, you might find that the person who hears the argument and refuses to listen is quarrelsome.
and they are willing to fight instead of listen to the Word of God.
Now, he says, not quarrelsome, not covetous.
He's already said not greedy for money.
What's the point here of saying not covetous?
Is covetousness always about money?
No, no it is not.
Matter of fact, when you go back into the Old Testament, you look there at those 10 commandments in Exodus chapter 20, the covetousness that is described there is not
specifically about money, but what?
someone's home, someone's wife, the things that they have that do not belong to you but belong to them.
And so there's a monetary aspect, money for some people is a problem, somebody's wife for somebody else is a problem, and it may not have anything to with money.
But that can't be an elder.
That individual is not qualified to be an elder if they are covetous of that which belongs to another.
Now is it?
covetousness for someone to look uh at a great husband and wife and to see the relationship they've built and go, you know, I really wish I had that.
I would love to have that one day.
I sure hope when I get married our relationship turns out like that.
Is that covetousness?
But wait a minute, you want what you don't have.
How is it not covetousness?
Absolutely, right.
Covetousness is built into it, the desire to take what someone else has.
And the willingness to take it for your own fulfillment of your own desires.
Not the looking at what someone has and setting a goal for yourself to achieve what they have achieved, okay?
When someone looks at someone who can run the 40 meter dash faster than them and sets a goal, do they have to break the legs of the other guy in order to meet the goal?
No.
They have to do what?
They have to train.
They have to do it the right way.
So Paul will describe one who competes according to the rules.
Okay?
Someone who says, I think that the ideal scenario for me in my life is to reach a point where I have freedom of time to teach the lost the gospel.
And their goal is to achieve that by building uh some
assets that have cash flow that are passive income so that they can focus their time and energy on reaching the lost.
Is it inherently wrong that they built those assets in order to do that?
No.
But by the way, just so we're clear, sometimes God will get you to the same position in a way you didn't plan on getting there.
Because some people have the mindset, I'm going to become wealthy so I have time.
And God can sometimes take the same person who intended to be wealthy so they'd have time and make them unemployed so they have time.
God can get his goals achieved either way.
Sometimes God can take an individual who was at home and at ease and put them in an uncomfortable situation in order to let them grow into making a right choice.
Now it's not wrong for the person to have assets, it's not wrong for them to have cash flow and to use that to have time.
I'm just pointing out that if we determine how we think it's going to work out and the only way we're going to spend the time on the spiritual things that matter is if our plans
work out.
Careful, because God doesn't respect your plans a lot.
So when you say God, what I desire is to be useful for your kingdom.
That's kind of like asking for wisdom.
My mother made a statement many times in life.
She said, I've only ever prayed for wisdom once.
I got three children.
I haven't prayed for it again since.
Sometimes what you ask for is not going to come to you the way you planned on it.
When Jesus came to those disciples who were mending their father's nets and said, come, follow me, which one of them said, can you wait until my business is self-sustaining?
None of them.
When the individual who desired to be his disciple came to him and said, Master, I will follow you, Jesus said, the foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son
of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Jesus knew about that individual that there was a problem that they were going to face that they weren't prepared to deal with.
And that was the insecurity of being a minister of the gospel.
The insecurity of being a disciple of Christ.
The insecurity of traveling from place to place to place and never having a home.
Because the only place Jesus had to rest was in someone else's home.
Raise your hand if you love living in hotels.
Raise your hand even more so if you can't afford to live in hotels and you have to stay in someone else's house 365 days a year.
Most of us in America are not comfortable with that.
Now, give me a choice between a hotel and somebody else's house, I'll take somebody else's house any day of the week because I'll take hospitality over hotels any day.
Those, that's not real hospitality by the way.
If they get paid to do it, it's not hospitality, all right?
So, he says,
Not covetous.
One who rules his own house well.
I thought that marriage was a partnership where people had mutual respect for one another and everybody was always on the same level in agreement and they always made decisions
together and therefore there's cooperative decision making in marriage and in parenting.
and therefore, what do you mean the husband has to be one who rules his own house well?
What does this mean?
I'm gonna let y'all answer it so I don't get in trouble.
What does this mean?
So I'm going to take from that that what this means is that the husband and the father makes all the decisions and every important decision must be run by them every single
time.
if anyone makes a decision without their input, they're going to get an earful.
Okay, I might have taken it the wrong direction.
This is about responsibility, direction, and authority.
Responsibility, direction, and authority don't mean that someone has to micromanage everything under their rule.
Imagine a king sits on his throne and from sitting on his throne he sends out a directive.
All seeds will be planted exactly one inch deep.
All seeds will be planted within one week of this calendar year.
and all seeds will be harvested and produce 100 % yield.
You think the fact that he sent out the directive means it's going to work out that way?
No, maybe he's not fulfilling his role as king by issuing all of these decrees.
Okay?
Because someone has authority doesn't mean they can't delegate authority.
Because someone has the authority and the responsibility does not mean that they can't entrust someone else with making decisions and enacting the right.
decisions.
Are elders supposed to do everything themselves?
No.
They are those who have, as bishops, what's the term?
Oversight.
Oversight is not the same as micromanage.
Elders have to instill in others the ability, the confidence, and the responsibility to take action on their own.
So if the elder does it all himself, he's not ruling his own house well, is he?
If an elder believes that in his house he must make every decision and every decision must ultimately pass through him, is he ruling his own house well?
No.
Matter of fact, he will be quite destructive to his own house.
because he doesn't trust anyone.
And if he rules his house that way, he certainly will rule the church that way.
How's that going to come when he's got another elder he's got to agree with?
Or four more elders he's got to agree with.
Is there going to be a problem?
Yeah, because every decision is not coming through him.
See, the personality that is described here is not one who is controlling and must have charge of every decision.
It is one who sits, observes, and makes sure that the direction of his house is pointed towards heaven and knows he will be held accountable for it.
When Joshua said, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
He did not say that by means of saying, I will wrench down the controls on everyone in my house until I verify that no one ever makes a wrong decision and everybody always is
obedient to God.
Rather, he was describing the leadership and the direction that he would lead his house because he would keep himself under control.
One who rules his own house well is not going to rule as an overbearing individual.
Turn to 1 Peter.
1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 1, the elders who are among you I exhort.
I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed shepherd the flock of God which is among you serving as
overseers not by compulsion but willingly not for dishonest gain but eagerly
nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock."
If you have an elder or a man considering the office of an elder whose life is not a pattern that his family could follow and be obedient to God, he can't be an elder.
But if you have an elder who is so afraid of confrontation and is so unwilling to stand up for the truth that he won't stand up for it in his own house, he has no business being an
elder.
If you have a man who will not tell his children that what they're doing is wrong and they need to correct their lives because their lives are not in accordance with God, because he
doesn't want to upset the content house that he has, that man is not qualified to be an Elf.
If he can't rule his own house well, he is not qualified to be an elder.
Does that mean he needs to pick every battle to fight and fight every battle until everyone knows he's right?
No, that's quarrelsome.
but he does need to set a direction and he does need to be willing to correct the course in his own house.
Did Abraham always choose the right direction?
Did Abraham always make the right choice?
Did Abraham correct the direction when he realized he had done it wrong?
Yes.
What about Isaac?
Did Isaac always make the right choice?
Did Isaac always choose the right direction?
No.
Did Isaac correct the things that he had done wrong to remain faithful to God?
Well, Jacob, you know, he was the perfect one, right?
That's why they called him supplanter.
He always chose the right path.
He never made any wrong choices.
He didn't, no.
You see, when you look at the biblical examples of those who rule their own house well, you find some really good examples.
Name one of those three that maybe couldn't be considered one who ruled his own house well.
Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob?
Jacob.
Who was the biggest problem and the biggest disruptor in the household of Jacob?
Jacob was.
Why did the brothers hate Joseph?
because he was his father's favorite.
Why did, why was there so much strife among the wives and the concubines of Jacob outside the fact that he had more than one?
because he had favorites.
The biggest disrupter in the household was Jacob.
Now, was he faithful to God?
Yes.
Did he rule his own house well?
No.
So could Jacob have been a faithful child of God?
Yes.
Could Jacob have been qualified to be an elder?
No.
Because of the example that he set in his own house that shows the leadership problems that existed in the life of Jacob.
All right?
So there's just an example we can dwell on.
And you may disagree with me.
You say, Aaron, I think Jacob would have been, fine.
I mean, we're making a judgment based upon what scripture tells us, but I can look at the text and I can see a lot of problems that didn't originate with the people around his
house.
They originated with him.
By the way, what problem existed when Jacob left Laban?
Why did Laban chase him down according to Laban?
because Jacob's wives, Laban's daughters, had stolen his household gods.
Now, if Jacob's ruling his house well, why would Leah and Rachel be taking household gods with them to Israel?
Okay?
Yes.
Correct.
So the term rule there is defined by well.
Someone who rules as an authoritarian does not rule well.
He rules, but he doesn't rule well.
So yes, but the term manage is there.
But it's important to realize that the term must be clear to be understood as authoritative.
Some managers manage well, they have no authority, okay?
But those who rule have authority and their authority is derived by God.
So it's important to keep that in view as we look at the text is it demands a position of authority because it also demands a position of responsibility and accountability, all
right?
So a manager may not be accountable for what those under him do.
but one who rules is.
Okay, thank you for your attention.
We'll be dismissed.