First Timothy lesson 15 cont
1 Timothy · Mike Doyle · Dec 1, 2024
1 Timothy, No. 42
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261937257406

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So we are on 1 Timothy, lesson 15, and we had J.D. got through up to question three, and what we're studying here are the first three verses of chapter three. It is a trustworthy statement. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money." So we talked about, in the last class, we talked about what a trustworthy statement was, and we had gotten into almost what an overseer means. What is an overseer? He's just a elder. How do you, where do you find elders? Where do they come from? Come from the body. And how do you know that Mr. A's, the Lord would have him be an elder?

God raises them up, and you know. It's not, that brings us to the idea, notice that the verse says, if any man is a fine work he desires to do, So it looks like God isn't gonna raise up somebody who doesn't have the desire to be that position. You agree with that? I think so. Granted, as believers grow within the body of Christ, they become more and more servants and really would do whatever God wanted them to do.

But you have to desire the job. Some of you remember Ben King was an elder at a big Presbyterian church and the way they did elders over there, they elected you and you served three years and then you were done. And it was kind of a good old boys political club. Once you're an elder, are you an elder for life? What do you think? I think so, too. You know, you don't get to say, well, you know, I don't want to be an elder anymore.

Or where does the desire come from? And the desire has to be there. And that desire, I think, is placed in a person by the Lord, and it is not a matter of I want to be the leader. and I want to have the clergy sticker on my car. That's not what it is. It's I want to serve. And this is a good way for, I think God has called me to serve this way. Now we're going to go through the qualifications. If the desire is there, that's one thing. The other side of the coin are the qualifications.

Yeah. Isn't it possible that there There may be something that might disqualify an elder from being an elder for life. Oh, I know what you're asking. Where the qualifications at some point after he became an elder were violated. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right about that. I think you're right about that.

And I think most of the qualifications we're going to go through will fit under If a person who's an elder is in place and he doesn't walk the talk, so to speak, can he be disqualified? Sure he can. Sure he can. Because he's a servant of the body. That's his job. He's not the follow me, we're going to go.

It's like the two elders at the Baptist Church in University Hills. Remember that a lot of those people came to church here for a while? And there are two young guys, and without telling the congregation, they sold the church. and they went out to Highlands Ranch and bought a church out there, bought property to build a church, or joined another church. Who's serving who in that deal? You know?

Yeah, so. So then, what I have in, a fine work he desires to do would mean more than just to desire. It includes the idea of reaching after, or seeking. The word desire is, I can't pronounce it, a passionately longing after. So that's kind of cool to see a guy like that, and we've seen him around here like that.

All right, qualifications, second verse, an overseer then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, and able to teach. So when I think I put on your sheets that certain qualifications are to be met for approval of this person, listen, explain those in verse two. Now, before we start that, let me ask you a question. Does a potential elder have to meet every single one of these requirements?

Or maybe put it another way. Maybe he's strong in some and not so strong in others. To some degree. Yeah. Okay. Keep that in mind as we go through. So the very first one is you must be above reproach. What does above reproach mean? It's, oh, here we go. Anapilobano. Epi means to take, to lay hold of. All this is stated in the negative by having a prefix, alpha.

And I would define it as this, a bishop or an elder must be of such a spotless character that no one can lay hold upon anything in his life which would be of such a nature as to cast reproach or cause upon the cause of the Lord Jesus. Now, again, It's a good thing you guys didn't know me when I was 25, because I didn't meet this requirement. I think it has to do with the time. I mean, if you don't get saved until you're, say, 35 like I did, well, the first 35 years didn't do anything to qualify you for any position in a church at all other than to show up and be one of the members. see so hey mike i'm really reminded of uh both daniel and joseph in the old testament who were young men but um they found themselves in hostile enemy nations and um neither one of them could be pinned for any any kind of corruption they both had to be uh falsely accused in order to get in trouble yeah yeah and then and they're they're That's a two-way street.

One, you can be falsely accused of whatever. And the other is, is that the accusations are accurate. You know? That goes to, you bring a charge against somebody, two or three witnesses, and so it's not... Actually, Zodiac has had further limits. One is, one has nothing which an adversary could seize upon with which to base a charge. Right.

Now, you know, if you come to Christ as an adult, there's all kinds of stuff you probably could be accused of before you were saved. So is it legitimate to disregard those things as a candidate? Let's say there's a 50-year-old person that has a desire to be an elder, and he has only been a believer, say, 20 years.

And he was, oh, who's the guy that the Catholics love to talk about in the 600s? Oh, I forget his name. But he was a terrible guy. And then the Lord got ahold of him and totally changed him. So, you know, it's like the word of God says, there's a lot of things that After you're a believer, you're ashamed that you did them, but you did them. So what makes the difference then? One is you're not continuing to do them, because there's a change that has taken place, which we study a lot around here, that identification with Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection, you have a new resurrected life.

But in that context, he must be under, above reproach. And if he's a businessman in business dealings, in relationships with people, in anything he's involved in, he must be of really good character. You know, the one who comes to mind, I always use an example, is Bill Faye. Bill Faye was totally of the world, totally of everything, totally, and Then he came to know the Lord, and then it's been used mightily by the Lord.

I don't think he's, you know, are you accountable for anything before you're a believer? Did you have a choice to believe? Yeah, you had a choice to sin. That's my point. You had no other capability. So, are you accountable for that in new life in Christ? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm sorry. What was that last part? Sure, he's perfect. And most of those guys that the Lord called, you know, they weren't your stellar guys, you know. Peter certainly wasn't a stellar guy, you know. Yeah, what happens then, not to talk about it too much, but when a man becomes a believer, if he understands what happened at the moment that he believed, then he may be responsible for something that he did.

He might be in jail, in prison. He's responsible to pay the penalty that the state has inflicted on him, but he's different. I had a close friend for quite a few years before the Lord took him home, a guy from Salt Lake City, and he had a ministry to pedophiles in prison. Imagine that. And he said that in the prison environment, they wouldn't put pedophiles with the regular population because they didn't last very long. For some reason, the prisoner's code of ethics, a child molester is someone that's worse than the other guys.

But he said, you know, these guys that initially come to Christ have tremendous remorse about what they've done, and they know it's gonna stick with them for the rest of their lives. But they also know, and this guy really knew his doctrine about identification and position and grace, they also know that because of the work of the Lord Jesus that that isn't attached to him anymore. It may be in the world, And I don't know if you could take a guy like that and make him an elder, but the Lord would certainly find something else for him to do within the body of Christ.

And I think a lot of those guys that he ministered to in turn were ministering to other men in a prison situation. And so, his goal was to make sure that the prisoners got the right doctrine. Because there are so many crusaders that go in there and their motives aren't wrong and they're not very sound doctrinally. This guy was really, he would go into prison once a week and just sit with guys.

He had a Bible study and he would work with them and teach them to try to free him up. from what they were, see? So I thought that, I was just amazed by that guy when I got to know him a little bit, and actually he came to Denver and we had lunch a couple times.

So spotless character is something that is, how do I say this? In this street language, you must have cred. You know, he's got to be credible. You know, so, you know, Mike, I mean, obviously, you're not going to find anyone, any believer who is sinless, you know, in terms of their, their condition, either before or after they were saved. But, but I think, you know, we have to understand that, that a believer to be, I think as described here, has to be someone who understands their identification. They have to be someone who has learned Romans 6, their identification with Christ, because that's the only way you're going to live a life above reproach.

It's got to be Christ in you, not you. Yeah, that's really good, Myles. That's right. That's exactly right. Because you can't live a life above reproach, really, is the resurrected life of Christ being lived out through you. That's really what it is. And he's above reproach. He's not above being accused, but he's above reproach. You can bring accusations if you want, but whether they're provable or not. Okay, the next one is just the one we angst over a lot.

The husband of one wife, the word, actually, the Greek is the man of one wife, is anthropos, a generic term for man, and anere, which means husband, and all it means is a male of the human race who is a husband of one wife. Does that mean ever or one at a time? One at a time. One at a time. What else goes in with this requirement?

Because I've had endless discussions about this with different people. I'll give you an example. I was married before I was saved, and I was divorced, and I remember when Vern first asked me if I would be interested in being an elder, there were two men that left the church because of me, because I had been married before.

And they took this verse literally and said, you can't make him an elder, he's been married before. And Hal, to his credit, sat down with these two men and took them through the scriptures and said, that's not what that means, it means, It sounds superfluous, but one at a time, meaning one, you don't have more than one wife, and two, you're not always looking. You can't be a Mormon.

Back then, they had a huge problem with polygamy. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. So if you're a guy who's a polygamist and you become a Christian and you go to church and you bring all your wives with you, I guess you're disqualified. You have to make up your mind.

I look at Solomon, did he ever have any other time? It's interesting because there's a lot that goes into this requirement in terms of the kind of a man that he is. He might be married to the same woman, but he's kind of got an eye that's always sort of looking around. And you see a lot of that in some denominations where there's all kinds of scandals where the pastor takes off with somebody in the choir and don't want to disperse any of the singers.

Did that happen here once? Yeah, it did. Yeah. I heard about it. Yeah. And so what are your thoughts about that requirement? I think to some extent it's, you know, what I believe with you is you can never be divorced. Well, just as we said on the last, if you, before you're a believer, that also is important. Hold on a second. Nick was saying something. Can you hear Courtney? Yeah. Anyway, I think it's the same thing. If you're divorced before you're a believer, it still goes in the category you're not a believer.

You're only subject to your own flesh at that point. And then again, yes, then the interpretation is afterwards, it is still One at a time, that does sound very hard, very weird. One at a time, you line them up, you have eight wives lined up, that's not what the intent is. But again, if it's before you're a believer, that all gets erased. And if you continue that, then that may be an issue. But if you do get divorced five times, I would say that would be cause for concern, isn't it?

Oh, sure. Because of the wandering eye and just, you know, that then I would say, yeah, we have one at a time. It goes to the character of the man. Yeah, right. Just something that through the years has been an issue with Christians in other cultures where they have not been believers and have multiple wives as a custom. Then they become a believer and the Christians that are leading them to know God require them to put the women away and the only cultural aspect that is left to the woman put away is promiscuity to exist. Sure. It's a hard issue, isn't it?

Well, what's interesting about the issue, the requirement for the man is the husband of one wife. So a good example would be Calvin C. Tang. Most of you know C. She had three mothers. Because in the Hmong tribe thing, you know, the men could have, not only don't have to have wives, but they could have children by whomever.

And I remember she, one of her mothers who was not her birth mother was the one who led her to the Lord. So, I mean, if you are a polygamist and you show up in a Christian environment, it just—what does it mean? You probably aren't going to have the desire to be an elder, because the Lord isn't going to put that in you, you know? You can serve some other way, you know? Like Ron says, if you have more than one wife, you're busy.

What does this also say about celibacy? Exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing. You know, we've got a great meeting on Monday night with young men, of which three or four of them are single. And it's not from an elder candidacy point of view, but I've sat with a couple of single men who wanted to talk about that issue. You know?

And I said, I told him, I said, look, if the God of the universe can save you through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you trust him, he can make you celibate, and you won't be angst over it. See, so to live the Christian life is not one of those things I'm really trying as hard as I can to be celibate for a single man. It's that I'm growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, and he's the one that keeps me from not only that sin, but tons of others. I think that's rare. we find out how powerful the world can be. Yeah, and how powerful the Lord can be.

What if you come to Christ and you're a practicing alcoholic? Well, probably in order to function within the body of Christ, you're going to have to leave the Jack Daniels at home. And you're going to want to get free from that. Well, you can. The Lord can free you up from anything, but that discussion probably needs to take place with celibacy for young men. You don't tell young men you gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta. You teach them about who they are in Christ, and they understand and they realize. And because the Spirit of God convicts them of their sinfulness, just like he does everybody else, you know?

I mean, it's being, Not being celibate, is that a worse sin than cheating on your taxes? Or telling a lie? Sin is sin. I don't know, Bob, this is where you're going at, too. Like in the Catholic, the priest can't marry, is that right? Yeah. And I think that's, it may take this, or you know, where is it in your camp? you can't be married as a priest in the Catholic Church. It's like, where does that come from? I assume that's maybe what... Is it in Scripture? Yeah, where do the Catholics get that? I have no idea. Here it says, you know, it hasn't been won, obviously. I know Catholic priests, personally, that are in a parish in Denver who have wives and children and nobody knows about it.

In Guatemala, we had the Maranao fathers, they were married men and openly married men. Yeah. As priests as well. Or the bigger, the big issue in the denominations was pedophilia. What about those guys? You know, I've had a lot of, I went to a Jesuit boarding high school. And I've had more people than I want to talk to ask me, well, did that go on in your school? I said, not that I ever knew. And I think if we had known it was going on, somebody had gotten hurt, you know, because these are all macho guys, you know. But they, you know, there are priests that take advantage of vulnerable kids, and they are pedophiles. They should boot them.

You know? And the other thing is, is that if you have a desire, you have this desire put in your heart by the Holy Spirit, then you should go through these things. If you have an issue, you have to go to the Lord about that issue. Say, look, you know, Father, I like ladies. If you're a single man. And the Lord says, yeah, so do I. Let me show you how to deal with them. how this new life works.

Does that mean, like Courtney said, in order to be an elder, do you have to be married? What do you think? Is that what this says? Because to be a Jewish rabbi, you had to be married. So the apostle Paul was married. Never hear about who he was married to. what the circumstances were, but a rabbi had to be married. Does a man who ascribes to be an elder, does he have to be married?

I would say no. You're right. I don't think so either. So the issue is more the character of the Lord Jesus manifested in the man. That's really what's going on here. It is interesting in the following verses it talks about You know, if he doesn't know how to manage his own children, how's he to manage the household of God? So it's interesting that I think there's a lot that the Lord teaches all of us through, you know, marriage and child raising and so forth. But I think that's a potential indicator of a disqualification rather than saying you have to have, you have to be married and you have to have children, you know. Well, you know, and Paul gives explicit instructions about that if you're a believer.

Let's say you're a believer and your wife isn't. And she wants to get rid of you. And she does. What do you do? You can't stop it. You know, if, if she's not a believer and wants to stay with you, she stays with you. That's it. You know, cause she might get saved in the process.

So everything points, not so much, I'm gonna talk about it today. If you start with the premise that God does everything he does to glorify himself, then this fits under that heading. How is my life, married or not, single or not, gonna glorify the Lord? How is that gonna happen? You know, and that's the point. And so, anyway, we can beat that one up all day long. The Lord knows. Huh? The Lord knows. He does know. Yeah. He does know.

Yeah, we're the only ones that are ignorant. So an elder must be, without reproach, his leading characteristic must be self-control. So self-control is an interesting way to put it, because it would seem like self-control is that you and yourself can control yourself. And my question to that is, how's that working out for you? Probably not too good. Romans 7. That's right. That's right. So, how do I say this? It's interesting because some of the notes I put down is the first place, and this has special force in the east.

He must be a man who has natural or acquired a high conception of the relationship of the sexes. A married man, or his wife dies, does not remarry again. Men whose position is less open to criticism may do this without discredit, but the elder must hold up the high standard, high ideal. And one of the things that was a major issue in the United States in particular was the ministers to the Indian nations required divorce by the men when they became believer.

And not to gain leadership, but just to remain in fellowship in the church. You know, it's living under law rather than grace. You know, not to throw darts at the Catholic Church again, but no organization in the history of mankind has murdered more people than the Catholic Church. No organization.

And they do it systematically during the discovery of the Western Hemisphere. is unbelievable what they did. So let's talk about self-control or temperance. What does that mean? First of all, I want you to notice that one of the gifts of the Spirit is self-control, temperance. Isn't that like the beating of the sword? It's heated and then dipped in water and... Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. The temper of the steel. I don't know. Alcohol is a good issue.

You've got to remember now, this is the control of the Holy Spirit in our lives, not our own personal self-control, but God in control. Yeah, and I think that's where it goes. It isn't that I take a look at the requirements for being an elder and I make a refrigerator list and this is what I'm going to work on. Because what is that? That's illegal.

That's like when you're married, you put all the things up there that are pleasing to your wife and then you go to work on them, you know? The thing is, is that when a person becomes a believer and he gets this new life, he knows nothing about how this life functions. He can read the words and try to understand them and try to implement them in his life. But with the characteristics of the resurrected life of Christ, there are certain things about it that have to be manifested by the resurrected life of Christ, and it's not imitation. You see that?

Another Catholic story. A close college friend called me Friday or called me Wednesday, because he sent me a happy Thanksgiving card with a picture of Christ. The first thing I said was, that doesn't look like Christ to me. He said, why not? I said, well, that thing over his head, what is that? Anyway, he said, did you ever read Thomas Akempis' book, Imitation of Christ? I said, see, I got about five pages into it, and I put it away.

And he said, why? And I said, because I can't imitate the resurrected life of Christ. It's impossible. You can't imitate it out of your own strength. It's just quiet on the other end. I said, it's a life. manifested in you by the Spirit of God. It's his life. And all of these criteria fit into that life. See that?

Because I may be, have it all squared away with husband and one wife, yet quietly I'm mad all the time at people. Or I really like golf. and I'll sacrifice anything to go play a round of golf. Or like the guy at Young Life, first golf tournament I went to at Young Life, I'm in the driving range, and the guy next to me is one of the guys that works for Young Life, and boy, he's hitting the ball straight as an arrow in the practice range, and I said, man, you're really good. He said, golf is my thing. And I said, I thought Jesus Christ was your thing. He said, well, yeah, golf is my thing, too.

And Zodiac isn't here yet. It has definitions of it, for the word sober, temperate, and self-controlled. It goes back to wine, but then it says in 1 Timothy 2, or 3, 2, and 11, we find later, it's a state of mind which is free from excessive influence of passion, lust, or emotion. And I think that's, you know, the influence of passion, less emotion. You say angry that several would follow on pugnacious and all the different things. It falls in the same category. If you were, you know, influence that, you know, you're up and down and all around.

So let's say today you're up and excited. Yeah. So let's ask the question. Is it okay to drink alcohol? Well that quieted you down. I agree. It's okay to drink alcohol as long as you don't do it in excess. Okay, so who determines what excess is? You do. You do? Don't let it control you. Yes. There you go. There you go. If it masters you, then it's an issue. I remember Chester McCauley and those three tapes on Grace. If you've never listened to those, I recommend you listen to them.

His next-door neighbor was so into gardening that he'd come home from work with a suit and tie on. He wouldn't even change. He'd go right to the garden and start with the tie on. Gardening was his thing. I just noticed the time. We've got to stop. We should be like that with the word. Respectful of the garden and got dressed up. Be respectful. Hopefully he took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you again for for showing us things that are relevant to the character of a potential elder, but also the life of the Lord Jesus in every single one of us. All of these things are characteristic of the life that you have raised us up and put into us. We thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.