Pastors, Overseers and Elders

While I was out, I read a book that I wouldn’t normally have read.

It was written by a liberal - in fact, he’s a very liberal liberal.

I suspect in the world of politics and policy, he and I probably wouldn’t agree on a whole lot of things.

But that’s not what his book was about.

His book was about evil people and the evil things these evil people do.

Evil people in leadership - that you see on TV.

Who get awards and accolades and are heralded as great men and women.

And they are evil.

Their decisions cost us lots of money..

And their decisions cost lives.

Lots and lots of people are hurt and lots of people die because of these very evil people.

As you might expect, the more I read the more the worked up I got.

The more I thought, “someone needs to do something.”

So I prayed - because really, what?

What can one person in Gray, Georgia among 7 billion people on the planet, what difference can I make against that kind of power?

I believe Jesus sent me His answer.

Be the Church - he said.

Be the Church.

Sounds kind of self serving, right?

Be the Church.

What we are pivoting to from Find Jesus, Give Jesus to Be The Church.

But it IS what we can do to defeat the evil.

It is the only thing we can do to defeat the evil all around us.

The Church is the last citadel of power in the universe - and that’s not hyperbole.

Jesus is all we’ve got, but that’s good, because Jesus is all we need.

So where are we?

Timothy was written to tell Timothy how to turn a dysfunctional church - probably even an apostate church, back into a Christ following church.

The people of the church - now listen - the people of the church looked and acted no differently than the people outside the church.

In fact, it was almost like there was a competition.

We in the church can be just as open minded, powerful, enlightened as you people outside the church.

Only, we have history and our stories on our side so we are even better.

That’s how this church operated.

They wanted to be just like everyone else, only better.

The Romans were very violent.

You think Trump’s tweets were mean?

These men were tweeting mean tweets against people in their own church.

Their prayers sounded like coarse, mean tweets.

And that was inside the church.

The Roman rich flaunted their wealth and the women of the church didn’t want to be left behind.

Those with money made sure you knew they had money.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Hunger Games or not, but if you have, have you noticed how much the things our wealthy class wear today look like the Hunger Games?

In that environment, church people decided that Jesus just wasn’t enough.

People found out they could make a killing selling “a new Jesus.”

Jesus is a way, but He’s not the only way.

There are other things you need to know, other ways, higher, things you need to know.

And because Jesus is so low key and slow - and mean tweets get so much publicity and make names for people, well.

People followed the money.

Paul was incensed.

So he wrote this letter.

First, he told Timothy to help this church understand that their job was to proclaim the gospel and protect the gospel, because the gospel is all they have.

It is the power of God for salvation.

In Acts, Peter preached, Acts 4:12

Acts 4:12 ESV

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Second, Paul says if there are people in the church preaching a perverted gospel, kick them out.

Third, Paul said quit acting like Trump, Schumer, Pelosi and McConnell when you pray.

The Father isn’t amused with your verbal prayer battles accusing each other of everything on the face of this planet.

Pray for everyone - pray for the President and everyone on down, because all we want, all Christians want from government is to live in peace so we can practice our faith as God calls us.

Fourth, men need to act like men and women need to act like women.

God created us with roles and responsibilities that complement each other so that the work of the Lord can be done.

We are not interchangeable so quit trying.

And with chapter 3, he shifts gears just a little bit.

What he does here is, he intimates, “think about the leaders you have in place right now.”

Now, here’s what they leaders really ought look like.

Read 1 Timothy 3:1-7

1 Timothy 3:1–7 ESV

The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

To be the church, you have to have the right people leading the church.

You have to have leaders who are reputable and leaders who know what their jobs are and aren’t.

The leaders in the Ephesian church were corrupt.

The list Paul gives in these seven verses are for a reason - he’s essentially saying, you overseers, you elders, you pastors - you are the opposite of this.

This is what you should be.

Now, before we go one step further, we’ve got to have a history lesson.

I expect this will challenge some of us more than others because culture has infiltrated the church.

Many of us will be challenged to whoop the Baptist war-cry, “We’ve never done it this way!”

So please listen carefully - and make notes.

All through the new testament, the writers use three terms interchangeably.

Overseer, elder and pastor.

I wish they had stuck with one term, but the Lord has his reasons.

In 1 Timothy, Paul uses the term overseer.

In verse 1, the word is singular, but the idea is that at each church there would be a number of overseers - a number of elders.

These elders, although they were generally not young, didn’t have to be elderly either.

But the did have to fit Paul’s qualifications.

The primary job of the elders - each church is to have several - is to teach the truth of the gospel and to stand against error.

Their secondary jobs are to run the church with congregational approval.

They might decide to have a new roof put on the church because the old one leaks.

They wouldn’t take that to the congregation - why would you vote on that?

But they would have the congregation vote on new elders and new staff.

Things that we couldn’t pay for, obligating the church into debt, adopting new budgets, all of those things would come to the congregation with recommendations from the elders.

But the recommendations would not be binding unless the congregation voted to accept it.

It sounds a little like us - but here’s where the murkiness comes in.

In the majority of Southern Baptist Churches, you have a Pastor - singular - with maybe a staff - but the Senior Pastor is pretty much the man.

Then you have Deacons and if the church is large like ours, you have a Church Council.

Now follow the confusion - we call our Deacons the spiritual leaders of the church.

But in scripture, that’s the role of the elders.

So essentially, in most Southern Baptist churches, the Deacons are the Elders.

But now, here’s the problem.

When you talk about Deacon’s duties, you start pointing towards Acts 6 where they made sure the widows were well cared for in the distribution of food and tonight I’ll speak to the character of a Deacon which is similar but not exactly the same from 1 Timothy 3:8-13.

So in our minds the Deacons are the Spiritual leaders of the church but we say they are supposed to operated like Deacons in the scripture.

Which leads people to ask the question, “What do the deacon’s do, anyway?”

It’s confusing.

Now, for all of us who have been Southern Baptist for a long time, we’re thinking - we’ve never had elders in the Southern Baptist Churches.

But that’s not true.

Prior to 1963, there were two Southern Baptist Confessions of faith.

In both the 1859 “Abstract of Principles” and 1st Baptist Faith and Message in 1925, the offices of the church are listed as “bishops or elders (reflecting the interchangeability of the terms in scripture) bishops or elders and deacons.”

In the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith and Message, Herschel Hobbs who was the main driver in getting them written, changed the BFM to read “It’s scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.”

When he was asked about it, Hobbs replied, “Pastor is one of three titles referring to the same office. The other two are ‘bishop’ and ‘elder.’”

I have my opinions about why a lot of things happened, but they are only my opinions.

What the change did though was it invited civil religion into the church.

The pastor became the president.

The deacons became the senate.

The church council became the house of representatives.

That’s great for a country.

It’s not how God designed His church to work.

I’ll tip my hand here so you can see my cards.

Do I believe that we should work towards an elder-led model of church polity?

Yes, I do and the Deacons and I are having some basic discussions about that now.

Not elder rule - not a body of men who run everything and no one has a voice - that’s not scriptural.

But elder led.

Why would I want to open up this can of worms?

In Midland, Michigan, a rumor got started that the school had put litter boxes in the bathrooms for children who identified as “furries.”

The school denies the rumor and I believe them - but what kind of world do we live in that people would think something like that might be true?

A friend of mine on Facebook posted this week - she obviously works in a doctor’s office - she posted that she doesn’t care how you identify - live and let live - she doesn’t care - but for you to get the proper treatment at the doctor’s office, the staff has to know your biological sex.

She says it’s not disrespectful, it’s necessary due to biology.

West Lafayette, Indiana is proposing a law that will make it illegal for unlicensed persons, read pastors, and parents, to try to help a person who is struggling with same-sex or trans thinking.

If it passes and becomes law, anyone who tries to help someone that is having same-sex ideas to stay straight, that person would be punished by a fine of up to $1,000 per day.

That would include certain preaching from the pulpit as well.

Everyone has a story of a new pastor who came in and blew the church up.

In an elder led church, the lead pastor is an elder among elders.

The body of elders lead the church.

The body of elders determine direction and goals and orthodoxy.

For those of us who listened to the podcast, “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” if they had had an effective body of elders in the beginning, what happened would never have happened.

We don’t live in the same world we lived in 2 years ago, much less 40.

New and improved gospels are being created, taught and sold all of the time.

Some name brand folk preach more than the gospel of Jesus on a routine basis.

What are we to do?

Preach the Gospel and Protect the Gospel.

Be the Church.

Do what the Word of God says.

That’s why we have to consider what the Bible is saying to us.

So let’s talk about elders.

If you want to be an elder - that’s a “noble task”

It’s a good thing.

But who can be an elder.

Notice Paul says “he” desires a noble task.

It is our society that says what you can do defines how equal you are.

God doesn’t work that way.

God created a man, then He created a woman.

Each have assigned roles by God.

Unless a man is called by God to celibacy, a man cannot complete his function without a woman and a woman cannot complete her function without a man.

We are complementarians - the sexes complement each other but they are not equal to each other.

One of the roles God assigned to men is eldership.

In every church, there should be a number of elders, smaller churches have fewer, larger churches have more, elders who are men who shepherd the church.

Paul bookends the qualifications with “Overseers must be above reproach” and “he must be well thought of by outsiders.”

That’s essentially saying the same thing.

When we read the entire list of qualifications, you really start asking the question, how is this different from how any Christian - or any good person for that matter - how is this different from how they act?

And the answer is, it’s not different.

Paul is saying, if the people of the church can’t be as good as a good pagan, what good are we?

If “church leaders live in such a way that unsaved outsiders refuse to listen to their message,” [Lea] isn’t that exactly what Satan would want happen?

And listen, you feel this just like I do - when a name brand leader is caught in disqualifying sin, doesn’t that splatter on all of us?

Don’t these scandals make everyone say, “Why do I want to be a part of that?”

“I can stay at home and watch “Real Housewives” or “90 Day Fiance’” or “High School Moms” and see the same thing.”

Why do I want to be a part of that?

Paul is overwhelmed their decadence.

No - no, you represent Christ.

You represent a way that every person alive has a chance for freedom and life and worth and peace.

You don’t get to mess that up.

If you can’t at least be as good as the people outside the church, you do not deserve to be a leader in the church.

So what does this good look like?

In verse 2, Paul gives seven things an overseer should be.

In verse 3, he gives four things an overseer can’t be.

And in verses 4, 5 and 6, he gives two more things a overseer must be.

1 Timothy 3:2

1 Timothy 3:2 ESV

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,

All of these are qualities of someone who is level headed and has good sense -it’s that simple.

Obviously the people in the church were acting like heathens.

There are two things, though, that I’d like us to look at for a moment.

Paul says, “Husband of one wife”

That has been taken so out of context and has hurt a whole lot of people.

It does not mean that an elder has to be married.

If that was the case, Paul and Timothy were disqualified - there is no evidence either was ever married - so that’s absurd.

It does not mean than an elder has never been divorced.

Scripture interprets scripture - there are biblical reasons for divorce.

If a person was married 10 times and divorced 10 times before they were saved, that would not be an automatic exclusion either.

The point of this is, Paul is addressing the rampant sexuality and promiscuity that had invaded the church.

You can’t get more like today.

Think about what it means to be a one woman man - that’s Paul’s phrase.

If he is a serial flirt - he’s excluded.

If he has an affair that doesn’t end in divorce - he’s excluded.

If he enjoys his porn, he’s excluded.

An elder is faithful.

To his Lord, to his wife and to his church.

And his relationship with his wife proves his reliability.

The other thing we need to drill down on a little is, an elder has to be able to teach

An overseer, an elder, has to be able to teach.

The idea being, I could get hit by a bus and Sunday morning any elder we had could fill the pulpit.

It means he has to know the truth and be able to sort out truth from error.

It means he has to be able to gently and if necessary forcefully teach and demand others teach the truth.

He has to be able to know when someone is incorrigible and has to be removed from the body for not adhering to the gospel of truth.

An elder has to know the gospel so he can proclaim it and protect it.

1 Timothy 3:3

1 Timothy 3:3 ESV

not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

Four things an elder is not.

Here’s drinking again - don’t you hate it when that shows up - and strangely this word indicates more than simply not being drunk.

It’s more forceful - it’s the idea that alcohol is not the elder’s drink of choice.

It’s almost abstinence.

An elder can’t be a bully.

He can’t be that guy that loves a good fight.

And he can’t be greedy.

Elders have some financial oversight.

If an elder is greedy, he might be stingy in meting out resources for legitimate hospitality and ministry needs.

Or on the other hand, he might find a way to slip a little under the table to himself, if he is greedy.

1 Timothy 3:4-6

1 Timothy 3:4–6 ESV

He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Preacher’s kids are the worst, aren’t they?

And you want to know why?

Because they play with Deacon’s kids!

I don’t think my kids were the worst.

We had the normal bumps and bruises of raising kids but ours behaved and they all have made us very proud.

One of the things that was so apparent about Matthew and Skye during the interview process was how well behaved Liam, Blayke and Sawyer were.

I’m sure they can be a handful, but it appeared their children knew who the bosses were.

Absolutely, everyone can have a wayward child - everyone has a mind of their own.

But, for a child to know who the boss is, in the proper sense, the child has to see a firm, yet compassionate hand.

The elder manages his household that way.

Something you aren’t going to remember later when we get to 1 Timothy 5:14 “So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander.”

Women are to manage their household and husbands are to manage the household.

What does this say to us?

It’s God’s design coming out loud and clear.

A husband and a wife, working together, respecting the differences that God created in each of them, managing their household well.

So in the same way, an elder, working with other elders and deacons and church members, recognizing that God places in the church those for the edification of the church, he manages that household well too.

If after investigation, an elder candidate is found to be a bully in his home, or is found to be very permissive in his home, the candidate would need to be rejected.

What you live at home, you’ll bring into the church.

And an elder can’t be the new kid on the block.

I watched this happen once.

A church had a very young man they ordained as a deacon.

Nothing wrong with that - we’ve ordained young men before.

But they made him the chairman of the deacons.

He became somebody.

He became “puffed up with conceit,” “by golly, I’m the chairman of the Deacons and you people need to listen to me.”

And for a season, the church was in chaos.

A chaos, by the way, that Satan loved to see.

The devil is there in verses 6 and 7.

Paul knows there is a real devil.

Paul knows that the more prominent you are, the more the devil will work to derail you.

Paul knows that the devil really does want to steal, kill and destroy reputations and lives.

Wise men and women will realize that, too.

So What?

The Lord views being set apart as an elder to proclaim and protect the gospel of Jesus as a noble calling.

Because the gospel of Jesus is all we’ve got.

It’s our only power and if we throw that away, we have nothing left.

Why is this important to study?

It’s important because Jesus wants everyone to know they can be saved.

It’s important because He wants everyone to know what it means to be saved.

It’s important because He wants everyone to know how to be saved.

It’s important because he wants everyone to know how to live once they are saved.

It’s important because the Lord doesn’t want the organization to get in the way of Jesus.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14 that “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”

God’s desire is if a person is looking for him, and they come to First Baptist and then they go to Greenwood and then Bradley and then Gray UMC, that the same gospel of Jesus would be heard at every church.

The organization is important only in so far as it is invisible behind the message.

Because our message has the power to change lives.

Listen, you may have heard some of yourself in today’s message.

The Holy Spirit might be convicting you right now of being more like the world than you are like Jesus.

That’s why the gospel is so important.

God’s message to you says, 1 John 1:9

1 John 1:9 ESV

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We are only lost when we neglect the gospel.

Come to Jesus.

Come to the gospel.

Come let the Holy Spirit clean you up and set you free.