9 Marks of a Healthy Elder

Introduction

Most of you that know me know that I was home-schooled for the vast majority of my life until I graduated high school in 2018. And because of this, it turns out that I had a lot of time to kill. In my earlier teen years I will admit that I played a lot of video games, but as I started to get older, I came to the realization that there are more important things in life than my Xbox, and so I started applying for jobs when I was about 16 years old. Well after a few months, it finally worked out, and I landed a job at McDonald's. Now it took me a little while to get used to working with people all the time and to talk to strangers all day as I took orders and things like that, but once I found my groove, I was able to easily get along with my co-workers.

Now the way the employee hierarchy went, there were employees on the bottom level. The next level included the shift managers, and then there was the general manager, and finally there was the owner of the store. Now, for a little while, I was knew who my bosses were and what they were like and I knew the things to do and not to do and I had found my place at the store. But, one particular summer during my employment, we were notified that our store was being sold and that there was going to be a new owner and a new general manager. And me being a guy who isn’t fond of change, I was getting pretty nervous. How were these new bosses going to be? Would they be good at their jobs? Would they care about the business? And it wasn’t just me who had the questions, but all of my fellow employees were talking about it too. I think the reason that it was so important to us is because of a principle that dominates many areas of our lives. And the principle is this: Leadership matters.

I think that’s true for all of us. I mean just look at how seriously people take politics. Election season this past year was insane with the different opinions of who should be in office. It’s not just politics, but it is people at our jobs like what I was just talking about. It could be a soccer or a football coach. It could be parents. People wanting to get into fostering or adoption have to go through pretty rigorous background checks and piles of paperwork so that these agencies can be confident that these kids will be going to a good, safe home. It could be a teacher or a camp counselor. I could go on, but you see my point. Leadership is very important to people. It matters.

Well it turns out that the importance of leadership is the dominating theme that I will be talking about today. This week is the second week of a two-part series on the qualifications for elders in the church. We need to remember what Paul has been saying in the verses before the ones I’ll be preaching today.

Remember, Titus has been left on the Island of Crete by Paul to appoint elders. Crete was a place where beliefs in myths were overwhelming and where sin was not only tolerated, but celebrated, and as a result, there was much hostility towards Christians. Because of this, there were no big corporate buildings where churches gathered like ours, but the Elders that Paul instructed Titus to look for on Crete were instructed to lead house churches that were forced to meet a little more discretely.

Now today here in America, we aren’t at the point where we need to hide in people’s houses to have a church service, but there is increasing hostility towards Christians and there is sin being celebrated shamelessly everywhere, and it has gotten to the point where this sin-celebration has begun to re-shape and frankly break down the church! Godly leadership in the form of Elders is becoming more and more necessarily as the world becomes more and more evil.

I want to give you a clear main idea so that you can track with me throughout the sermon because I plan on referring back to it quite a bit, and if you’re a note-taker it might be helpful to right this down. Here’s the main idea: A biblically qualified elder has a love for people motivated by a love for God. When you break proper leadership down to it’s basics, I think it makes a lot of sense that love is the most fundamental requirement that one needs. If the Lord is not who you love most, then you cannot hope to serve Him by leading God’s people. Elders must have a heart of love.

This passage is broken down into 9 different qualifications, and I’m going to address them all in two different points. Point one is found in verse 8 and point 2 is found in verse 9.

1. Loving by who you are

2. Loving by what you do

And by the way, if you’re someone who can’t be or doesn’t want to be an elder, please don’t think that this sermon doesn’t apply to you. Think about it like Paul’s letters to Corinth. The letters were written to address issues in that particular church, but those same principles given to Corinth by Paul, and ultimately by God are addressed to us as well, and the same thing is true for this sermon because elsewhere in scripture, everyone is commanded to be all of these things except for one, which I will address later. But please know there are important truths in here for you and for me as well.

1. Loving by who

Hospitality

The first point involves the first 6 marks, and they all involve how someone should act and what their character should be if they are going to lead a church. Look at the first qualification: Hospitable. If I’m being honest, I thought for the longest time that hospitality meant having someone over to your home and feeding them, and that that was pretty much the extent of it. But as it turns out, the term “hospitable” has a much broader definition than that. To be hospitable to someone, in its simplest terms, means to love someone. And love is seen not only in inviting someone into your home for a meal, although that is a good example, but is also means to simply being opened to talking with someone, or to take time out of your day to serve someone in need. All of these things are examples of hospitality.

And it gets interesting because even though this is the general meaning of the word, this rendition of the word in Greek literally translates to “lover of the stranger”. The stranger! So, this is not a call to just love your friends or people you know, but literally everyone.

This was crucial during Titus’ time in Crete because while he was there, there were other Christians all over this island sharing the good news of Jesus with them, and unless they wanted to sleep on the street, they needed to find someone willing to shelter them, and more often than not, these hosts would end up being other Christians who lived on the Island, which were not many, by the way. But it’s not like all the Christians new each other on the Island, and so this only left the option of walking up to someone’s front door, asking to stay the night, and then to be on their way the following morning.

What does this mean in a church leadership context? It means that Elders should be one of the first people to see someone new walk into their church building and to welcome them with joy. This new person should be able to walk out of their first service at a church feeling welcomed and cared for particularly by elders and pastors. Think about your own journey to becoming a member of this church. If you never felt loved, cared for, or noticed, would you have become a member? I’m willing to bet probably not, so if you see someone at a church service that you haven’t seen before, take a little time and introduce yourself to them and welcome them. You’d be surprised at the impact you could have on someone’s life through a simple conversation. Let me tell you about my own hospitable experience that I’ve had as a stranger myself in the last couple years.

When I started attending Boyce College in August of 2019, I needed to find a church, and by God’s grace I was able to find one and get connected pretty fast. But as you can probably imagine, I didn’t know anyone. 2 or 3 weeks after I started attending this new church, a man named Chris came up to me and introduced himself and we chatted for a little while. Now, through the next couple months of the semester, I saw him 2, maybe 3 three time, and even then we didn’t talk for a long time. It was more just exchanging a few sentences and then being on our way. But, on my last Sunday at 3rd Avenue before coming home for the semester in November, he came up to me out of the blue and asked if I would like to join their family for thanksgiving. Now mind you, he didn’t really know me that well at the time and he didn’t know if I had other plans already, but he wanted me to know that his house was open to me, basically a stranger, during their thanksgiving meal.

Fast forward to the next semester, spring of 2020, the semester where Covid kicked everyone out of school. It wasn’t a day after I found I that I needed to leave campus that this same guy offered his house to me AGAIN for me to stay at until I figured everything out with how I’d get all my stuff home and everything. And guess what, this guy isn’t even an elder! Just a very kind, very servant-hearted church member willing to serve even people who he doesn’t know that well motivated by a love for the Lord.

How are we when it comes to new people in our church? Are we prone to go over and introduce ourselves, or are we more inclined to avoid them and talk to our friends instead? In scripture, loving the stranger isn’t merely a suggestion, but it’s a command. Listen to the words of Matthew 22:

“37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Your neighbor. Not just your friends or your family, but really anyone you come into contact with whomever that may be. This is a kind of love for people that is motivated by a love for the Lord.

Lover of Good

Look at the next description. An elder is to be a lover of good. Now, on the outset, this probably sounds pretty obvious. You shouldn’t love bad things if you want lead a church. But the more you think about it, “good” can sound really unclear. What is good? Well, I think there generally two different kinds of good. There is subjective good and objective good. Subjective good is completely left up to each person to define. It is their own opinion.

I love cheeseburgers. They are one of my all-time favorite foods. But the thing about burgers is that different people liked them cooked in different ways. It’s summer time. There are a lot of cookouts happening at this time of year, which means there is a large consumption of cheeseburgers. There are some people who will request a burger to be cooked very well done, basically black. People who like them cooked to this extent believe they are good that way. These people are wrong, but that is their opinion, nonetheless. But that is as far as their standard of good goes, it is nothing more than an opinion. It is subjective.

Objective good, on the other hand, is not based on opinion, but on fact. But then we have to ask the question, “What is objective good?” Where is that found? In the Christian life, objective good cab ve categorized as anything that gives God glory. Objective good is every command God has given His people to follow. It is mercy that He shows and grace that He gives. It is the worship we give to Him because of our salvation through the death, burial, and resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ. Someone who loves good loves glorifying God with their life.

At this point you might be thinking, “okay, but what does this have to do with the people of the church? What does loving good have to do with loving people? Think about what God considered good, specifically in Genesis 1 during Creation. When he created the light and the ocean and the stars and all the animals and plants, he called all of that “good.” But, do you recall what said and did on the 6th day? Turn over briefly to Genesis 1:26-31.

“26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”

God creates man in His own image to be like him. God blesses man. God gives man dominion over all other creation. What I am trying to communicate is out of all the good God loves, mankind was His greatest good, and the earth was not called “very good” until God created mankind. By loving good, elders are to love what God loves, and what God loves most is people, which means, Elders are to love the people of God more than anything else in this world. Elders, if you desire to lead and grow a church, you must have a love for those who are created in God’s Image. You cannot love the church of Christ without loving the people of Christ because His people are His church.

For the next four descriptions or qualifications, I am going to talk about self-control and discipline side by side and then come back to finish off uprightness and holiness because these two groups of two sound similar to each other, and it is going to be easier to differentiate between them if I talk about them right next to each other.

What is the difference between self control and discipline? In their simplest forms, self control is consistently not doing something that you want to do, and discipline is consistently doing something regardless of whether or not you want to do it.

Self-Control

First off, self-control. Being able to control yourself means being able to restrain yourself. We know that this an important practice to have. After all, it’s one of the fruits of the spirit. But what we want to know is why is it specifically important for an elder to do. What particularly is affected if he doesn’t practice self-control? Well, in a word, it affects EVERYTHING. As I just stated, having self-control means restraining yourself, and another way to phrase that is resisting temptation. Temptation is a massive issue in the church today. If you have been a Christian for any length of time, you know that this is an issue. In fact, anytime you sin, you fall into temptation. It doesn’t matter what the sin is. The act of defying God and going against what He commands always starts out as a desire to do that sin. Then that desire later turns into an action. Anyone who sins is first tempted to sin.

But if we are to truly understand what it means to practice self-control, we first need to know how sin works. This is extremely important. Sin destroys from the inside out.

That is how it’s always worked! Think all the way back to Adam and Eve. Satan planted the lie in Eve’s mind that if she ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she would be like God. She was tempted because she wanted to be like God. After she ate, she gave to Adam and he also ate because He wanted to be like God, and then BOOM! The entire world became cursed due to their sin.

Think about Korah in Numbers 16. He didn’t like the leadership of Moses and Aaron while the Israelites were wandering around in the wilderness, and through his internal hatred for Moses and ultimately God himself, he got other Israelites to join him in his hatred, and then suddenly, God pronounces judgement on all of those people by opening up the earth so that they were swallowed by the ground. Sin destroyed all of them, and it started with a temptation to rebel in a single person.

These examples bring up another crucial point, which is this: When you sin, it never only affects you. It always affects other people whether you are aware of it or not. This is especially true with people who are elders in the church. If an elder cannot resist temptation, if they have some sort of addiction in their lives, it is guaranteed to affect their leadership.

The elder who is a drunk will never be able to have a conversation with someone without thinking about their next drink.

The elder who watches pornography will never view church members as God’s subjects, but rather as objects, used to satisfy the fleeting desires of the world.

The elder who is short-tempered will become frustrated whenever someone confesses sin or needs help with a something. They cannot be bothered without becoming angry with their sheep.

The elder who is lazy will never want to serve anyone. He’d rather avoid talking to people and do whatever makes him feel comfortable. Whatever requires the least amount of work.

I could go on and on, but you get the point. Sin never only affects us as individuals, and if elders want to effectively lead a church, they must have a hold on sin. This is for all of us: If you do not gain a hold on sin, it will have a hold on you. You can bet your life on that.

Well, that’s what someone is supposed to do. But how is that done? How is self-control gained? How do you defeat sin? Well, it is done first by recognizing that we are not capable of defeating sin. In our own power, we will lose to the battle of sin every single time. So the first thing we must have to take a hold on sin is humility. It involves praying to the one who gives the strength to defeat sin and saying “Lord, I am weak. I in my own strength am powerless. Only you can defeat sin and so I need your strength in me.”

Self-control is not primarily won by fighting, but by surrendering. Surrender your temptations. Surrender the failures you’ve already endured and the sin you have already committed. Surrender it to Jesus Christ who will forgive you of your sin if you put your trust in Him.

Now, that is not to say that there is no battle. There is battle and we are still called to fight. But we are not called to fight as the commander, but as the soldier. Our control of the battle must go to Christ if we wish to defeat sin. Why? Because Christ has already won the war. He, along with sin, was nailed to the cross, and the power of sin died right along with Him. So, surrender, and let Christ lead you to a promised victory.

But nonetheless, we are still called to fight, and this is done through the next qualification I want to talk about.

Discipline

Remember, discipline is a consistent practice of something, and in this context, we are specifically talking about spiritual practices. This would involve things like reading your bible intentionally, actively looking to see how God will speak to you through His Word each day. It involves prayer, both for Elders in their own lives along with those in the church whom they lead. It involves scripture meditation and scripture memory and all of these things that draw us to God in order to know him and love him more.

Now, I’m not saying that that’s all an elder should be doing. They have lives and other responsibilities that they are to be faithful in, but it is necessary to involve those things in your life. Why? Because these are the keys to growing in Christ and fighting wickedness. We must remember that, as Christians, we are swimming upstream, and if we stop fighting, if we lack in our spiritual disciples, the currents of sin will drag us down the river.

Here’s another thing. What you are disciplined in shows what your priorities are. That which you devote the most time to is what you prioritize. That just makes sense, doesn’t it? If you don’t have any interest in doing something or spending time on something, you aren’t going to do it. But things important to you, things that bring you joy are what you will devote more time to.

So, take a look at your own lives, elders and all. What is it that brings us joy? What is that we devote most of our time to? If we want to get to know someone, do we go along with our lives without ever speaking even acknowledging their presence? No. It requires us speaking to them. It requires us taking time out of our day to intentionally get to know them. That’s how friendships are formed, and the same is true with our relationship with God. As Christians, we desire to know God, but we will never know him if we don’t devote time to spend with Him. The most important relationship in your life is the one between you and the Lord, and if you and I want to know and love Him more, we must make time to spend with Him, and only Him. This discipline of loving the Lord in what you say, think, and do is how you fight sin.

Now we’ll come back to the two middle qualifications upright and holy. In the Greek, these are both forms of righteousness, but they are different kinds of righteousness. To be upright means to be righteous to mankind. To be just. To follow laws. On the other hand, holiness talks about being righteous before God. So let’s talk about them one at a time. First off, being upright.

Upright

This is not entirely difficult to understand. To be qualified as an Elder, you must be a moral person to those around you and a good, law abiding citizen in the country in which you reside. This takes shape in a variety of ways, including inside the church and outside the church, and I want to address them both.

If you want to be an elder, then they MUST treat members of the church they oversee with care and respect. It doesn’t matter who these church members are. It doesn’t matter whether you as an Elder like to hang out with them all the time or someone you don’t really see except for on a week-to-week basis in your church building. An Elder must see the members of his church as people they love, people God loves, and people for which they will have to give an account for one day when they stand before the throne of God. Church members are his sheep, and as an Elder, he is responsible for leading them and feeding them with spiritual food, namely, the Word of God.

The same thing goes for all of us in terms of loving all of our church members. If we do not practice this, then we inevitably fall into the sin of favoritism. Favoritism is extremely dangerous and is one of the biggest destroyers of church unity. And as Christians, we shouldn’t be subject to favoritism and if we do, then it exposes something about our hearts. It shows that we have different motivations for being friends with the people we are friends with. Maybe we think someone is especially presteigous and so you gravitate towards them so we have their approval and favor, or maybe someone has money and we think we can get something financially out of the friendship if we just get them to like us. It could be a number of things, but the bottom line is this: When we express favoritism, we whether we know it or not, we are seeking our own glory above God’s.

Think about it. If we truly prioritized the glory of God, it wouldn’t matter who we were friends with because we aren’t in it for us. Let me give an example about why this matters specifically for elders. Let’s say that there are a couple church members that have gotten into quite the argument and things are getting heated and escalating really quickly. There’s name calling and shouting and all the rest. Now, an Elder knows what he needs to do and he steps into the argument and gives each person a chance to tell their side of the story and why it lead to the argument. He hears both sides and right away he knows that one person is completely in the wrong, but there is a problem. He likes this offender way more than he likes the offended person. He seeks the approval of the offender and doesn’t care what the other person thinks of him, and so he sides with the person who is clearly in the wrong. You see the problem with that, don’t you?

His desire for their approval takes priority over doing the right thing! The godly thing. Next thing he know, this other member sees that his favoritism for his friend is more important to him than godly leadership and conflict resolution, and trust and relationship breaks in half. Friends, favoritism is sin and it breaks churches apart. We must see our fellow church members as God sees them: As His image-bearers. As his chosen people. How do we see other members of our church? The people we wouldn’t normally hang out with? Do we view them negatively while setting others up on a pedestal? Again, we must search ourselves and give ourselves an honest heart-assessment. Think about it.

That’s inside the church, but what about outside the church? Does how an elder lives and s people who are not members of their church matter? Absolutely, it does! As an elder, he must remember that he is not only an elder on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. He is not only an elder when there is a group of people in the building. He is an elder every day of the week, and he is a representative of his church wherever he goes and however he lives which means he must live differently in the world than the people of the world.

Think about Titus while he was looking for elders in Crete. If Christians acted like the Cretans, how in the world would Titus be able to identify anyone who would be a good elder? The first sign that they would be someone who could lead a church is that they are different from the typical citizen of Crete. If they acted like the typical person on this island, then Titus would easily pass by them and not give them a second thought. They needed to act different. They needed to be different. The same is true with our elders today.

The way an elder lives in the world should not reflect the ways of the world, but the ways of Christ and His church. If he is serious about church leadership, then he is not going to only act godly to people when he is in the safe confines of the church building walls, but wherever he goes. How is this done?

In terms of uprightness, maybe it means taking the laws of man more seriously than them (unless they go against the Word of God of course), maybe that means forgiving unbelievers that have wronged him, even in a deep way. If you know people of the world, you know they generally aren’t very forgiving. If someone makes them angry, there’s a good chance that they won’t speak to the offender ever again. But as a church leader, or even a Christian in general, we are called to forgive other people. Whether or not they are Christians. Whether or not we like them, it doesn’t matter. We will look weird if we forgive people, but that is what it means to be upright to people in the eyes of God, who created them all.

Holy

Finally, we have this word holy. “Holy” is a confusing word because it has multiple meanings. In some cases, to be holy is to be separate from something or someone. For instance, God is holy in that His greatness and majesty separates sinners from Him. That is why the temple existed in the Old Testament. Only the high priest, once a year, was allowed to enter the direct presence of God in the holy of holies inside the temple. The average person could not come into the holy presence of God lest they die.

Another use of holy refers to the state of your heart being pure and blameless. For instance, those who believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for their sin are saved because their sin has been paid for, leaving you holy and righteous in the eyes of the Father. Praise the Lord.

But, neither of those is what this word “holy” means. This word holy refers specifically to outside actions. It refers to how someone physically live their life for the glory of God. It is being a do-er of the word and not just a hear-er. How in the world do we do this? First of all, if we are to live genuinely holy lives, we must first acknowledge that our ultimate purpose in this world is to glorify God in whatever we do. Nothing should mean more to us as a Christian than the glory of the One who sits on the throne! Let me be clear. Being a do-er of the word is not what saves a person. Us pursuing holiness through works does not make you pure and blameless. Faith in Jesus Christ alone saves us, but that saving faith is proved through the doing of the word. Elders should be so obviously focused on the glory of God that it shows in the way they live their lives for Him. They should be passionate for him. Their character should especially reflect that of Jesus Christ. Can they be just like Him? No, because they are sinners like you and me, but they should be spiritually mature to the point where they have a long-standing record of lived-out holiness in their lives as Christians. Why is this?

Because their love for the Lord affects their love for His people. If elders are not passionate about living for the Lord, they will not be passionate about being servant leaders to their churches. A love for the Lord precedes a love for His church.

If we want to be better lovers of the people in Christ’s church, then we need to more than anything pursue Christ! Why is this? Because when we become saved, we become one with Christ which means we become like him. We come to hate what he hates and love what he loves, and what the entire Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy spirit love more than anything in this world are God’s people. If we want to learn to pursue and love people, we must pursue and love God.

2. Loving by Doing

Hold Firm to the trustworthy Word as Taught

The first phrase of verse 9 is the central idea of this entire sermon. It is what brings together what I have already preached and what I have yet to preach. Let’s look at it. “He must hold firm to the trustworthy Word as taught.” Hold firm. Cling tightly to the word of God.

In a movie called “The Princess Bride,” there is a scene where a man is trying to rescue a princess who had been recently kidnapped by three men. At first he chases them by boat, going along with river. But then the kidnappers dock the boat ashore and start climbing a gigantic structure called the Cliffs of Inanity. The reason they were called the Cliffs of Insanity is because they were literally 1000 feet in the air, and surely the man trying to rescue the princess would not dare follow the kidnappers up the cliff. Well, as it turns out, they were wrong, and he did. But it was incredibly dangerous! Mind you, this man had no safety equipment to make the climb safe, no! He had had to free hand it, holding firm to the jagged rocks of the cliff, lest he fall.

Friends, another way we know if a man is qualified for leadership in the church is by the way and the intensity with which he clings and holds fast to the Word. How l much does he prioritize the word in His life? How important is it to him? Someone who deeply loves the Lord will hold firm to the bible until his fingers are white gripping and holding firm to God’s Word with everything that he has.

If we are not holding firm to God’s inspired Word, then there is something else we are holding firm to. Think about it. There is something that we prioritize most in our lives, and if it is not God, then it something of this world, which means it is something that will eventually perish. Furthermore, let us not fool ourselves by saying we can prioritize God and something else with equal passion. Hear the words of Matthew 6:24:

“No one can serve 2 masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Obviously this passage was talking about financial idolatry but the principle carries to anything else in in this world and the point is this: What your master is, is what will dominate your heart. The way you live your life is completely dependent on what you and I desire most. If it is not the Lord and His word, then it is something of this world, which makes the path on which we walk hell bound. Then let’s consider for ourselves, what it is that we hold firm to?

Here’s another quick thought. Notice that it isn’t holding firm to just the word, but the trustworthy Word and this brings up an important point, unless we trust the God and his Word, we will not hold firm to it. But we if do trust God, then we have no reason to not trust the bible, why? Because “all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16).” All scripture is inspired by God Himself, so if you trust Him, we can and must trust the scripture.

If we Hold firm to the trust worthy Word as taught, then we come to be everything I have mentioned in verse 8, and now Paul will go on to give two reasons to hold firm to the trustworthy Word as an elder, and we will discuss both of them with the time we have remaining. The first reason is to teach.

Teach

That’s exactly what Paul says. Look at the text:

Hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, why? “So that you may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine.” By the way, this qualification of giving instruction or teaching is the only qualification for an Elder or pastor that is not also given to everyone who is a Christian in general. Out of the 9 marks of a healthy elder I am giving in the sermon, ability to teach is the only requirement not explicitly commanded of every Christian in the bible. However, we should still know our bibles to the point where if someone who is not saved asks us what we believe and what Christianity is, that we can give a clear answer and gospel presentation with chapters and verses from the bible. If we cannot not defend our faith with scripture, we have work to do.

Anyway, back to the text. An Elder must be able to teach. What does it mean to teach? This means to impart or give knowledge about something or to show someone how to do something. This may sound obvious to you but in case there is someone listening that isn’t familiar with this, it is important that they clearly understand an Elder’s responsibilities. So an elder must gain knowledge from scripture by reading and studying it himself, and then clearly be able to share that information with other people in a way that they will understand it.

Okay, so now we know what teaching is. But what exactly are elders supposed to teach? Well Titus 1:9 answers that question, too. Sound doctrine. That word for “sound” in the Greek is literally translated to hygienic or healthy doctrine. Meaning doctrine that clearly comes from the Word of God.

I mentioned near the beginning of my sermon that Cretans not only rejected the truth but fully accepted and embraced false doctrine entirely and said I’d talk about it a little later. Well, later has arrived. So what exactly was it that the average Cretan believed? Well, simply put, Cretans were consumed with Greek mythology. In fact, at the time, Crete was the central place of worship for all of the Greek gods. But not every god was so clearly worshiped as was the god called Zeus. He was known as the god of the sky or the god of thunder, and he was seen as the provider and protector of all human life. However, Zeus did not have a terrific legacy. This was a guy who did whatever he wanted. It is said that Zeus was a womanizer, who did whatever he pleased with them by flaunting his deity. There was no love, no respect, and the biggest problem with these beliefs was not only did Cretans tolerate these beliefs, but they LOVED THEM. They were all for it and it was to the point where they worshiped Zeus this god of thunder. Times were wicked, and in order to cut the through the thickness of false doctrine in Crete, there needed to be Elders well-versed in scripture who were able to teach the truths about the God of the bible so that people could listen, understand, and come to faith in Christ.

And friends, look around you. The same exact thing is happening today. False doctrine is being celebrated. Think about the prosperity gospel, where if you have faith in Jesus then you’ll have health and wealth and be materially blessed in your life. The bible never promises that, in fact, it promises the opposite. It promises suffering. It promises rocky roads and rough oceans. Life for a Christian is not easy.

While the prosperity gospel is a huge issue, we also must pay attention to the currently up-and-rising issue. Which is the issue of the LGBTQ+ community. Friends, do you understand what is going on with this teaching? It is not as if it’s churches in America vs people who those who aren’t saved. In fact, it’s not even that churches are simply tolerating these practices and ideologies. That would be bad enough, but the evil is more intense than that in the fact that churches are CELEBRATING this! Churches all over America and all over the world are welcoming lesbian and gay married couples with open arms to be a part of their congregation. The standard of love and of marriage is changing in the church, and it is directly opposed to the biblical view of love and marriage. The minds of the people in the church are being infected with worldly doctrine. It is not simply that these things are tolerated, but they were being celebrated.

So, just like in Crete we need biblically convicted Elders today who hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught and teach sound doctrine. But then, that begs the question, “what is sound doctrine?” The root of sound doctrine is the gospel. What is the gospel? It is this.

We are sinners, and the world has been cursed with sin since the first man and woman disobeyed God. Left to their own devices, every human, including us, would be subject eternal separation from God in hell forever. But we have a way of escape for that. How? Jesus Christ, the son of God came down to earth and took on the form of a man. As fully God and fully man, He went out and preached the coming kingdom of God while living the perfect life, a life without sin. Why did He do this? He did this to take the sins of all who believe in Him on His shoulders. Christ was nailed to a cross, and He died, and when He died, the sin that he carried on his shoulders died with Him. But He didn’t stay dead. On the third day, Jesus rose from the cgave; finally defeating sin, finally conquering death for all who believe that He died for them. After this, he ascended to heaven where He is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. There, he awaits the day where He will come back to the earth. But this time, it will not be as an infant. It will not be silent. He will come back on a day unknown to us with full power and majesty to finally judge the wicked and save those who have confessed Jesus as their Lord and Savior. To the Christian, he will come as their eternal Savior, and to the wicked, He will come as their eternal Judge. That is the gospel, and all sound doctrine finds its roots in the gospel.

Elders are to hold firm to the word so that they may be able to teach in sound doctrine. The doctrine of the church indicates the health of the church. If there is no sound doctrine, there is no healthy church. That’s the first reason that hey hold firm, in order to teach sound doctrine. Here is the second reason.

Rebuke

Let’s look at those last few words, “and also be able to rebuke those who contradict it.” To rebuke means to reprove or correct someone. This means that Elders must be bold and be willing to confront people. That was true of Titus in Crete, and it is true today. What does holding fast to the Word have to do with rebuking? Well, in order to detect and rebuke false doctrine, they first needed to know what healthy or sound doctrine is. If they didn’t know what the bible says, it became difficult to correct them and lead them to the right path.

Why should Elders rebuke? This is an important question because I think many people have the wrong intentions in mind when it comes rebuking. It is very common today to say that rebuking is purposed to defend the gospel and to stand against anyone who goes against it. To put them off. To shew them away. Now, I partially agree. We need answers for why the bible is true and we should be able to defend our position, but, the main purpose elders were and are to rebuke is not to shew away those who believe false doctrine. God doesn’t need us to stand in front of Him and defend Him. No, rebuking is done first and foremost out of love for the person they are rebuking. If we’re going up to a person who is an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and belittling them for their beliefs and throwing bible verses at them, then you’re doing it all wrong. The mindset someone should have when they go to rebuke a person should be something like this: “This person believes something goes against the word of God, and because I love them, I want to show them the way of truth and life by the power of the Spirit in me.” Our primary motivation for rebuking should be our love for them and our desire to show them truth.

On that note, if an elder or any other solid Christian person at our church confronts us on an issue, we shouldn’t have hard feelings towards them. They speak to us out of love and out of a desire that we better walk the path of a Christian. Furthermore, we are to listen to our elders because they have been put in authority by God over us. Specifically at GBC, we have been blessed with elders that deeply care about us and our spiritual wellbeing. So, even if they tell us things we don’t want to hear, we should be a thankful people that they were willing to do the hard thing and tell was not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear.

Conclusion

I want to close by giving us 2 points of application, and they won’t be long. First of all, we should praise God for the elders we have been given and for the elders in training. These 4 guys so obviously love the Lord and pursue him, and that shows especially in the way they love the people of this church. We have been blessed by these men, and the Lord deserves all of the praise for His grace to us shown in these men.

Secondly, pray for your elders, and we can start off by praying through these 9 things that I just got done talking about. We can pray that they would be the things of verse 8 and do the things of verse 9, which ultimately comes from the power of the Holy Spirit inside of them. Pray for them and encourage them in this way because being an elder is not easy. Leading a healthy church takes work. But it can be done by the grace of God. It can be done by loving people being motivated by a love for God who, out of love for us, has given us salvation from hell through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.