Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome & Announcements

“SOUP”erbowl Watch Party on February 12, 2023.

We’re encouraging everyone to bring a homemade soup, we’ll vote on the best soup, and the winner wins a $50 gift card to Brown Dog Catering in Philipsburg.

Kickoff is at 6:30pm.

Please prepare for the Lord’s Supper on February 19th, 2023.

Josh Dickson will be preaching February 26th, 2023, during the Sunday AM Service; he will also be teaching Discipleship Groups on February 5th, 2023.

Pastor Daniel will be out of town February 28th – March 1st until the evening service.

In addition, Pastor Daniel and Natalie will be out of town March 8th – 11th.

In case of emergency, please contact a deacon.

Pastor Jordan Alturas of The Fellowship Church (State College, PA) will be preaching March 12th, 2023, during the Sunday AM Service.

Reminder of Giving

Prayer of Repentance and Adoration

Preaching of God’s Word (1 Tim 5:17-25)

Introduction

If you have your Bible this morning, please turn it to 1 Timothy 5:17-25.

As you’re turning there, let me just remind you of what’s going on in the text—Paul has written this letter to Timothy and in this letter, he’s reminding Timothy of certain key ideas that he needs to keep in mind as he, as a young pastor, pastors an established church in the city of Ephesus.

So, of course, there’s a large portion of 1 Timothy dedicated to this idea that Timothy needs to firmly stop any sort of false teaching from being taught within the church before we’re told of some qualifications that Timothy needs to look for in men that seek to serve as elders and deacons.

In between the section concerning qualifications and where we’re at now, we see some other concerns being dealt with—such as the mystery of the Gospel, the fact that many people will reject the Christian faith, but if Timothy wants to be a good servant of Jesus Christ, then he simply needs to teach the truth, live his life as an example to all, and keep the teaching in the church correct, accurate, and proper.

Last week, we started in on this section of the letter and this section has to do with interpersonal relationships within the church—in particular, since Timothy in a younger man, how should he act and react to men older than him or women older than him?

How should he act and react to men that are his age or younger and women who are his age or younger?

And because of that focus on interpersonal relationships, we see a section devoted to those who are genuinely widows—or in other words, how should the church act and respond to those who are older that need additional help?

This week’s section continues in speaking about interpersonal relationship within the church—in particular, now that you know what to look for in elders for your church, how should you treat your elders concerning three specific areas.

Keep this in mind as we read 1 Timothy 5:17-25 together:

As we study this passage, we’re going to look at the passage in three divisions: (1) the Compensation for Elders (17-18), (2) Accusations Against Elders (19-21), and (3) the Ordination of Elders (22-25).

All of this stems from our previous study in 1 Timothy 3 concerning the qualifications for elders—except this time, instead of just telling us what we’re to look for in our elders, Paul now tells us how we ought to act and react concerning our elders.

Meaning, when it comes to interpersonal relationships with elders within the church, how should we respond.

Now, note, that this is not comprehensive, just like his previous statements concerning how we act and react with others last week weren’t comprehensive, these are just a handful of statement concerning specific issues within the church at Ephesus.

In this evening’s passage, we’re looking at three specific issues—how ought we view compensation for our elders or in other words, should elders be paid?, we’re looking at what we’re supposed to do when someone accuses an elder of sin, and we’re reminded of the need to be slow and careful when we choose new elders for the church.

All issues that need to be considered just to make sure that we treat the elders of our church the way Scripture tells us to treat them.

Prayer for Illumination

Compensation for Elders (17-18)

Our text starts by speaking of compensation for the elders or the pastors within the church.

And honestly, it is my least favorite topic to talk about or preach about or teach about and the reasoning for that is simple—it seems awfully self-serving that the pastor of the church would talk about how the church that he pastors needs to pay him, but nonetheless, Scripture says what it says.

And in this case, the passage tells us that “the elders who rule well [should] be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.”

Based on the idea that these people are to rule well and labor in preaching and teaching, it shows us that this indeed speaks of those who are leading the church officially as pastors.

And really, in the way that this verse is worded, it informs us of certain details:

First, all elders are required to rule the church or really to lead the church.

The CSB translates this verse like this, “The elders who are good leaders are to be considered worthy of double honor.”

So, all elders are required to lead the church, but this implies that not all elders are actually good at leading the church, which reminds us of the need to select only biblically qualified and called men to be elders—you can’t just pick a random person to be an elder because not every person who wants to be an elder are called and not every person who desires the office can lead well.

Second, it tells us that though all elders are required to be able to teach according to 1 Timothy 3, not every elder is required to preach and teach all the time.

We see that laid out at the end of the verse that “those who labor in preaching and teaching” are especially worth this double honor.

Meaning, you can be an elder and only preach and teach occasionally.

Now, you might hear that idea of elders being worthy of double honor and you might wonder what exactly that means.

What is double honor?

And that idea actually stems from the culture of the Jewish people.

In the culture of the Jewish people, whenever you had a family of multiple siblings and parents that are older in years; and say, the parents pass and there’s an inheritance for the children—that’s normal.

In our modern culture, most inheritances are split pretty evening amongst all the children, but in the Ancient Near Eastern culture, the oldest son received a double portion of everything—what that would look like is this: if there were three children, the inheritance would actually be split into four, one for the middle child, one for the youngest, and two for the oldest son.

The reasoning for this is simple, part of the responsibility of being the oldest in that culture was perpetuating the family name—meaning, the oldest had the responsibility to lead the household and thus, is worth receiving extra from the inheritance because of his responsibility.

Likewise, elders within the church have the responsibility of directing and leading the church; and thus, because of the responsibility, they’re worth double honor.

The implication being they’re worth honor or respect, but the double concept is taken to mean financial renumeration or compensation—or in other words, elders who lead the church well ought to expect financial support from the church particularly the elders who work to teach and preach.

The idea being that because teaching and preaching takes a significant amount of time in preparation, because it is genuinely hard work according to the construction of the text, then those who spend a lot of their time preaching and teaching in the church ought to be cared for financially by the church.

And there’s multiple reasons for this—pastors need to survive as well as anyone else in the church; and we live in a world that requires money to survive.

Thus, Paul’s thinking is that it’s only right to provide for pastors within the church so they can focus on meeting the spiritual needs of the church instead of needing to get another job to provide for their families.

Or in other words, though most pastors in the US today are what we call bi-vocational (they’re pastoring and they’re working another job simultaneously), what Paul states here, is that those who are focused on preaching and teaching really ought to be taken care of so that there is no need for them to split their time between multiple jobs—they can just work to lead the church well and teach and preach.

Paul gives us an illustration in v. 18 to drive home that point, “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’”

The first illustration given is from Deuteronomy 25:4 and the idea is actually rather simple, but it might be missed in a culture like ours in which we don’t typically own oxen and we aren’t treading out our own grain.

The idea is that oxen were utilized to tread or to press out wheat—wheat has an inner and outer part to it, you don’t really want the outer part, but the only way to the inner part is by breaking through the outer part.

Farmers in the ancient near east realized that the easiest way to do this is by having really heavy animals step on it repeatedly.

Of course, if you’re an ox being forced to walk around stomping on wheat all day, you’re going to get hungry—so, the idea is, it’s better for you to let the ox eat some of the wheat as he’s working than to make him go hungry all day.

The second idea comes from multiple passages of Scripture:

We see that idea presented in Deuteronomy 24:15, Leviticus 19:13, Matthew 10:10, Luke 10:7, and 1 Corinthians 9:4-14.

And the idea is rather simple—if someone does the work, he deserves to be paid for his work—throughout the Bible, that’s primarily speaking about the employer and employee relationship, that if you hire someone to do something you should pay him or if you were hired to do something, you ought to be paid.

In this instance, the idea is that those who lead the church are doing a hard job; and those who regularly preach and teach are doing an even harder job, they ought to be paid.

That’s Paul’s first statement concerning treatment of elders/pastors within the local church of Jesus Christ—elders do a hard job, thus, they ought to be compensated for it.

And then he continues and it almost seems like he’s completely going a different direction, but let me get you to think of it a certain way before we re-read those verses.

Local churches can sometimes have interpersonal strife because, let’s be abundantly clear, even as Christian people, we still sin and we still struggle with our sinful desires.

That interpersonal strife sometimes becomes explosive and if the people don’t deal with their sin properly, they start making accusations against other people within the church.

Occasionally, that explosive interpersonal strife gets directed at whoever is leading the church and these people will start lobbing accusations at the church’s leadership—they’ll accuse the pastors of being unloving or liars, they’re attempt to paint the leadership in a very negative light.

Now, don’t get me wrong, if there’s sin within the leadership of the church, then it needs to be dealt with, but what Paul’s referring to here, isn’t sin within the leadership, but sinful accusations being thrown at the leadership.

And the reason why people do this is because they’re hoping that people will believe them so that they can oust whoever is in leadership because remember, elders are to be above reproach.

So, what Paul’s teaching in vv.

19-21 is rather simple—elders will have accusations thrown at them, what should we do about it?

Let’s look at vv. 19-21 again:

Accusations Against Elders (19-21)

V. 19 starts will a very simple principle, “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.”

It’s simple, but it’s not often taken seriously.

Meaning, most churches work more off hearsay and slander when it comes to ousting a pastor than they do truth and evidence.

And we all know situations like this—for instance, I have a friend in Louisiana who has pastored his church for almost 30 years, he preaches the Gospel, he cares for the people, but there’s currently a minority within the church that has decided that they no longer want him to be their pastor.

But since he hasn’t done anything sinful, they’re making false accusations and they’re slandering him.

Instead of looking at the evidence, they’re doing whatever they can to turn the people against him.

What’s the problem with all this?

It is sin to gossip and slander and these people within his church are resorting to sinful means to try and remove him from ministry.

To prevent this, Paul makes this simple principle, when elders are accused, there has to be evidence and there needs to be at least two or three witnesses to this.

And what Paul asserts is simple—any accusation against an elder needs to be ignored unless there’s proof and there are multiple

reliable people who saw the proof.

So, practically, what this would look like is this (and this is intentionally an absurd example)—if someone comes within our church and claims that they saw me beating up a homeless man to steal his drugs, the church needs to think through this issue like this:

Is there evidence?

Is there an actual homeless person who claims I beat him up and is there physical proof that I beat him up?

Do I have drugs in my home or in my car?

Ok, well, maybe its been a few weeks and the homeless man has healed from his injuries and the drugs are no longer here.

So, the next question would be, did anyone else who is reliable see this happen?

And I’m using that word reliable on purpose because it really doesn’t matter if the person who witnessed it was also on drugs at the time and can’t really remember anything.

Or if that person has a reputation for being a liar, his testimony about all this wouldn’t really be trustworthy.

But did someone who can be trusted see the event happen and how do they describe the event?

If there is no other witness and there really isn’t any evidence, Paul says that any such accusation needs to automatically be rejected.

Now, I used an absurd illustration, but this applies to any accusation against an elder:

If an elder is accused of sin, then the first question has to be, is there any proof of this?

The second question has to be, are there any other witnesses to this?

And, honestly, when you consider other passages of Scripture, Scripture makes it abundantly clear that if you’re going to accuse someone of anything, there’s a proper way to do it—so I would add a third question, did the person making the accusations attempt to reconcile with the elder before making the accusations?

Or in other words, did that person at least try to sit down with the elder, ask for clarity concerning the issue, seek to understand the whole situation?