Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction & Recap

The Need for Good Leaders

You know it.

I know it.

We need good leaders.

We need good leaders.

You want your kids school to have a good principal.

You want your manager at work to be a great leader.

You want our mayor, premier and prime minister to be really good at their job and upstanding people even when the cameras aren’t on them.

We want good leaders.

We need good leaders.

God has given us 3 primary realms of government and God appoints leaders in each of these 3 realms.

This is in Family, in Civil/state government and Church.

In each there are real leaders with real authority.

God expects us to submit ourselves to the leadership of the family (within their zone of authority), and for them to use their power in a godly way.

God expects us to submit ourselves to the leadership of the state (within their zone of authority), and for them to use their power in a godly way.

God expects us to submit ourselves to the leadership of the church (within their zone of authority), and for them to use their power in a godly way.

Over the past year and a bit, every so often I have preached on the nature of the Church.

And I have called it the “Church in the Trench” because we understand that the church here on earth is in the midst of spiritual war.

The trench is a refuge and defensive position (like the Church), and we also expect to advance on enemy positions.

We also looked at how each person in the church has a role to play that contributes to the mission of the whole.

God equips his spiritual soldiers for the task ahead and gives them different jobs to do.

Today, we’re really honing in on subset of those God has equipped for His service, the leadership.

So lets return to the trench metaphor for a moment.

In times of war and battle we want capable ranking officers in the trench.

Officers who will lead well.

Officers who will:

care for the troops’ well being

prepare the troops well with the right training & equipment

give out good orders and instructions

Make strategic decisions that minimize casualties while gaining victory.

You imagine for a moment that you didn’t have raking officers on the front line in war.

You’ve got the Generals somewhere else, making the big picture calls about the battle, when to attack, when to retreat etc.

But then you’ve got all the enlisted soldiers on the front line.

They’re there, hearing the orders come down the line, but they’re not sure about how those orders should be specifically carried out in their context.

One guy thinks that when the general says to take out the enemy position that they should wait till night and attack in the dark, so he stays still an doesn't do anything.

One guy reckons that they should try a stealth attack and sneak up from the rear, so he chuffs off to give it a go.

One guys reckons that that they should launch a full frontal assault with as many explosives that they can get their hands on.

His mate likes that idea too, so they head off to do it together.

Before you know it the whole platoon is off doing their own thing with completely different approaches - with friendly fire because they’re approaching the same objective from different angles.

It’s chaos.

Everyone has a battle plan that is right in their own eyes.

It’s an uncoordinated mess, and unsurprisingly, it all ends in a shameful defeat.

The troops in the trenches need commissioned officers who

care for the troops’ well being

prepare the troops well with the right training & equipment

give out good orders and instructions

Make strategic decisions that minimize casualties while gaining victory.

Unsurprisingly, we need the same thing.

We Christians are the Church in the trench, this is an outpost of heaven, on on the front lines of God’s expanding kingdom.

We need commissioned officers who will

care for our’ well being

prepare the us well with the right training & equipment

give out good orders and instructions

Make strategic decisions that minimize loss while gaining victory.

And you know what?

Jesus thinks we need those things too!

So he set up the structure of the church to work that way with commissioned officers.

Now if you’re in the air force or one of the other arms of the defense force, you’ll find a whole bunch of different ranks like wing commanders and Commodores and lieutenants and so on.

But you won’t find that in the church.

The church is not an earthly militarized organisation with a rank for everybody and a continual struggle to rise up the ranks.

Jesus gave three formal officers in the church under himself.

Head - Jesus

Apostles

Elders

Deacons

We’re mainly going to focus in on two of them today, Elders & Deacons, but let’s start at the top, and work our way down.

And these aren’t ranked per-se.

It’s not like defence where if you serve for a certain period of time and tick some boxes then you can step up to the next rank.

It’s not a hierarchy of “Christianness”, you don’t climb the ladder to get closer to Jesus.

Instead, these are especially commissioned officers.

They are singled out with a commission to do their job.

To use some old language, we would say they are “ordained” to their job.

Now, being comissioned means that there is a specific job window.

Like the “Royal Commission into aged care” has a specific job to do - to investigate aged care, and not whether or not big companies are paying taxes, whether international policy is successful, or anything outside their purview.

So too the commissioned officers in the church are given a job to do, and to do it well.

Sure there is a ranking of honour, Jesus gets all the glory, and the Apostles get more honour than Elders.

But it’s not a ladder to be climbed.

And it’s not as though you or I are less of a Christian because because we don’t have the job that somebody else has.

As Paul reminds us:

We all have our different gifting and role to play and some will be commissioned to the specific office of Elder or Deacon.

Speaking of the way that we all have different roles, God has designed men for the role of church leadership.

We don’t understand fully why this is the case, and this has nothing to do with devaluing women.

You can’t say that a hammer is less valuable than a screwdriver because they have different jobs to do.

In a pinch a hammer can drive in a screw, or a screwdriver a nail, but you make a big mess.

It’s just best to let each be used to it it’s full, natural designed potential.

In the church, God appointed the leadership for men (and only some men at that), and we don’t need to be apologetic about God’s good order.

Even so, I know this is weird for some people, and we have been taught by the anti-God world to think this is somehow a problem, so if you want to work though this gender issue with Laura and I, we’d love to catch up over a coffee and tease out what God says in the scriptures about this - we won’t think any less of you if you struggle on this point.

So lets have a look at the details around church leadership.

We know we need good leaders, and we know God has given them to the Church, but who are they and what are they like?

In every case of talking about leadership in the church, we need to start at the top, with Jesus.

1. Jesus: the Head

Jesus is the head of the Church.

He’s the general, Chief Marshal, he’s the guy who calls the shots.

He’s the one with ultimate authority over absolutely everything.

He says "jump”, and we hay “how high”.

Now he isn’t some gruff old man worn out by too much war, he’s our loving savoir and captain of our souls.

He’s a gentle King who loves his people so much he died for them.

But even though Jesus comes near to us as the gentle and lowly saviour, He’s also the guy who dealt with sin, crushed death, disarmed Satan and now sits at the Father’s right hand in heaven.

He’s the guy who fought in the trenches, walking the walk and talking the talk, but now he is exalted!