The Call to Lead the Church--Elders, Part 5

1 Timothy 3:3

     Let's open our Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 3...1 Timothy chapter 3.  We are looking at the call and character of church leaders and discussing the qualifications for the ministry.  First Timothy 3:1 to 7 is the very familiar text in which Paul writing to Timothy at Ephesus gives him the qualifications necessary for those who lead in the church.  Since Timothy is given the responsibility of setting right leaders in the church and getting rid of the wrong leaders, he needs to know what characteristics should mark those that he brings to leadership.  The church at Ephesus had fallen into sad times theologically and as well in behavior and their leadership needed to be replaced and the standards need to be established as to who is fit for spiritual leadership.

     Here then in 1 Timothy 3:1 to 7 you have the standards for one who pastors or is an elder or overseer in the church.  A very high standard is given.

     Now before we get into the list again, and we're taking our time because there's so much that we need to talk about, we might just answer the general question, when a person is called to lead the church in general what are they really called to do?  And I don't necessarily mean just in specific, their teaching and leading and praying and those kinds of things, ordaining other elders, but within that leading and teaching and praying, what are their objectives?  What are their goals?  What are they trying to accomplish?  What is a church leader to be all about? 

     Now let me answer that by just giving you a brief list of things that the church leader must focus his life on.  These are the priority things.  We could spend a lot of time talking about the things we don't need to be doing but if we talk about what we do need to be doing it will adequately fill up our whole life, and the other discussion would be a rather moot discussion.  What is it that one called to pastor a church, to lead in the church as an elder or overseer, is really called to do? 

     First of all, those called into church leadership are called to work for the salvation of the unconverted, to work for the salvation of the unconverted.  That's obvious.  Whatever else we do in the church, the ultimate primary task and objective is to bring about the salvation of lost souls.  So all of the means of the church and all of the disciplines of the church and all of the duties of the church and the functions and programs and ministries of the church have as their ultimate end the salvation of the unconverted, bringing to Christ those that do not know Him.  We are called, as was Paul, to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them that are sanctified.  We are called to bring about the salvation of the unconverted.  We are to cry after the impenitent, the unbelieving and apply the great work of converting souls, whatever else we may have to leave undone.  This is essential, this is why we're here, to see people who do not know Christ come to know Him.  So mark it, when you are called to church leadership, you are called to the task of bringing unconverted sinners to Christ.  And even though you may emphasize the edification ministry and even though you may emphasize some kind of design of church program, even though you may have oversight into some area of administration, the ultimate end of everything you do and I do is to bring the unconverted to Christ.

     Secondly, it is a supporting priority for the church leader to build up the saved to maturity in Christ.  We are called to build up the saved.  This includes warning them that are unruly, encouraging the faint hearted, supporting the weak and being patient to all men, Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:14.  We are called to perfect the saints for the work of the ministry to the building of the body of Christ.  So the priority then of perfecting and polishing the saints for useful service, for strong service for Christ is a top priority.  This means we must provide care for those who fall into sin, for those who lose their zeal, for those who disobey the Word, for those who lose their first love, the responsibility of strengthening, restoring those who are overtaken in a sin, feeding, challenging the strong to greater perseverance and even greater strength.

     The third thing, and we could spend a lot of time on each but just to touch them, the third thing that we are called to do by way of objective in the ministry is to feed the flock the Word of God regularly...to feed the flock the Word of God regularly.  A strong and steady diet of divine truth and exhortation is the core of the church's life.  There should be in the heart of the pastor or elder a certain amount of anxiety, a certain amount of pain...Paul calls it travail or birth pains...until the people have Christ formed in them.  This means that we are involved also in the ministry of intercession on behalf of those to whom we speak the Word of God.

     So we are called then for the work of seeing the unconverted come to salvation.  We are called also to build up the saved to maturity in Christ.  And we are called to feed the flock of God regularly, to feed them the Word which equips them for service.

     Another of our priorities is to give special attention to the spiritual order and devotion of families...to give special attention to the spiritual order and devotion of families.  This involves leading families, I think, into proper roles, men into proper roles for men, women into proper roles for women.  This involves teaching families how to love each other, how to serve each other, how to combat treacherous destructive things that are happening in the world around them, influences that tend to tear the family apart.  This involves teaching the family how to devote themselves to one another, how to devote themselves to God, how to devote themselves to the Word, how to devote themselves to the church, how to devote themselves to the ministry and how to have Christ at the center of everything they do.  It is a high priority of ministry in the church to give special attention to the spiritual order and devotion of families.

     Another one that helps crystallize what it is that the pastor or elder does, we are to minister to those people who are in special distress.  We are to minister to those people who are in special distress.  One of the great traditions in ministry and as it ought to be as the Savior gives us the example is to reach out to those people who have unusual problems, whether they are ill, whether they are facing death, whether they have disease or divorce or disappointment, whether they've gone through a disaster, whether they are need of comfort, this becomes a very...a very important matter of commitment on the part of those who serve in the church to minister to people who are in special distress.  Very often you sort of see yourself tracking down a certain track in your ministry and all of a sudden a disaster happens in the life of someone and you are diverted to that disaster because of necessity.

     I was just a moment ago expressing love and greetings with a family who recently lost a father and husband.  And in the midst of my own pattern of ministry, it was necessary and happily so to make a turn from the normal ministry, have the privilege of seeing both the husband who is now dead and the wife come to Jesus Christ and the family be joined together in the Savior.  And that kind of thing is that special distress that calls upon the servant of God to give attention.  That's part of the ministry.

     There are people, I hate to admit this, who feel that things like that are an intrusion in their schedule when the fact is they are divinely appointed things that God would have at the very head of our list if we could see that our list was like His list.

     Another one, in terms of objectives or goals is to administer the Lord's ordinances of baptism and communion.  I believe those who are called into leadership in the church have the responsibility to keep the people alert to the death of Christ and alert to the resurrection, to keep the death and the resurrection of Christ in the forefront of the thinking of the people.  And that is done by the patterns of the Lord's table and baptism.  The Lord's table reminds us of His death, baptism reminds us of His resurrection.  We constantly involve ourselves in those ordinances in order that we might demonstrate to the people as reminders that Jesus died and rose again for them.

     Another element of objective and purpose in the ministry is to lead the church together in holiness and Christ's likeness so as to be salt and light in the world.  To lead the church together in holiness and Christ likeness so that it can be salt and light in the world.  The church is to shine as a light in a dark place.  It is to penetrate this evil generation.  That is essential to the life of the church and therefore must be a priority that is established in the hearts of those who lead the church.

     Now you can see then by just this little list of things that we are called to that we have a very very serious responsibility.  Working for the salvation of the unconverted, building up the saved to maturity in Christ, feeding the flock the Word of God regularly, not only that but we are called also to give special attention to the spiritual order and devotion of families, to minister to those in special times of distress, to administer Baptism and communion, to lead the church to holiness and Christ's likeness so it can be salt and light in the world and penetrate the darkness with the saving truth of Christ.

     Having said all of that we recognize then that this is a high and holy and sacred calling to which men are called when they are called into the leadership of the church.  It involves several things. It involves discipline.  Anyone who is going to be successful in fulfilling this divine calling is going to maintain in his own life discipline.  There's going to be in his own life self‑denial because your life is not your own.  You talk about a person who is called into a task beyond himself, this is it.  You are not the master of your own fate, you are not the captain of your own soul, you are not the determiner of your own destiny.  You move at the bidding of the Spirit of God.  And the work that is done well will be done well then by those who are disciplined and by those who understand self‑denial.  Giving yourself to this tremendous immense task of taking the unsaved out of the hand of Satan and from the clutches of death and hell is not an easy task...not an easy task.  And even instructing the saints to maturity is not an easy task.  And the work demands diligent effort, it demands hard hard toil because rescuing men from hell is no easy job.

     It also demands not only the discipline and the self‑denial and the hard work, but it also demands great care, planning and order...the ability to do what is priority, the ability to structure your life to the things that matter.  It also involves doing all of this with gentleness and all of this with humility while maintaining passion and severity and zeal and seriousness.  It is a matter of being confrontive and dramatic and direct and authoritative and yet being warm and loving and affirming and compassionate.  The various things that come together to suit a man for this are quite humanly impossible.  And over all of this must come a great amount of patience...a great amount of patience. 

     Richard Baxter writing in the seventeenth century said, "We must bear with many abuses and injuries from those to whom we seek to do good.  When we have studied for them and prayed for them and exhorted them and beseeched them with all earnestness and condescension and given them what we are able and tended them as if they had been our children, we must look that many of them will requite us with scorn and hated and contempt and account us their enemies because we tell them the truth.  Now we must endure all this patiently and we must unweariedly hold on in doing good in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves if God per adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.  We have to deal with distracted men who will fly in the face of their physician.  But we must not therefore neglect their cure.  He us unworthy to be a physician who will be driven away from a frenetic patient by a few foul words," end quote.  There must be patience.

     Now this kind of duty, this kind of goal and objective structure, this kind of necessary ingredients of attitude and temperament all comes together to say this is a very unique man.  And because the task is so great and because humanly it is so impossible and because it demands so much, there are only certain people who qualify to do that and those are people who are qualified according to the standards of 1 Timothy 3 and that takes us to our text.

     Let's look at it.  First Timothy chapter 3..and may I say at the very beginning, please, you understand that I am not intending to set myself up as the perfect fulfillment of all of these things but to simply say to you that by God's grace as much as is humanly possible within me under the power of the Spirit, I strive to fulfill these things.  And that's all God requires of those of us who as yet have not been fully glorified.  These are things that are true as a general pattern in the life of one qualified to serve in leadership in the church. 

     And I also would add, if the church would do a better and more careful job of screening people going into ministry, it would have less anxiety when they fail in the ministry and make a black mark on the church.  The standards are all here.  They are those which are pursued by, if not fully attained, those who fulfill the qualifications for ministry.

     Now notice what I said to you before in verse 2 that the first and over arching qualification is blameless.  The person who serves in the church is to be a blameless person.  That is, there's nothing that can be held against him as a blight on his life.  Now that blamelessness then is defined in a series of categories.  First, his moral character, then his family life, then his maturity and then his reputation.  And that flows down through verse 7.

     Now we're looking at his moral character this morning and we'll wrap that up in our discussion today.  What is to be the moral character of this man's blamelessness.  First of all, and I'll review briefly, verse 2 says he is to be a one‑woman man.  That is singly devoted to the wife that he has, a one‑woman man.  It is not an issue of whether or not he is married, previously married, divorced, widowed, that isn't the issue.  It isn't status and it isn't circumstance, it is attitude.  It is moral character and it is that he is to be a man who is singly and wholly and totally devoted to the woman who is his wife, if indeed he does have a wife.  So it's speaking about his moral character.

     Secondly, we noted the word temperate, which means literally wineless, wineless.  That is his mind is not clouded by taking in drink.  It came also metaphorically to mean alert, watchful, wary, aware, sensitive, wide awake.  This is a man who is alert to what's going on. He's alert physiologically and he's also alert in terms of his spirit.  He senses what's happening.  He is a watchful person.  He knows how to read the signs of the times.  He understands what's going on around him.  He is perceptive. 

     Thirdly, he is sober minded.  That means well disciplined in his mind.  His mind is ordered.  He has a sure steady thoughtful earnest well‑disciplined, well‑ordered mind.  He has control of his pleasures.  He has control of his passions.  His mind is an ordered mind. 

     As a result of that, we remember of good behavior which comes next, the fourth of the qualifications in his moral life.  That is a well‑ordered life.  A well‑ordered mind produces a well‑ordered life.  A chaotic mind produces a chaotic life.  So you have an ordered life flowing from an ordered mind.  Because everything in his mind has its priority ranking, because everything in his mind has its time and place, everything in his life does as well because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

     Fifthly, he is characterized by being given to hospitality which means he loves strangers.  He has the ability to love strangers.  He is not at all a respecter of persons.  He does not hold one race as superior to another.  He is able to love strangers.  He goes beyond the circle of his own friends and his life is open. He's not a closed person.  He's not a recluse.  He's not private.  He is public in the sense that he opens his life and his heart and his arms and his home and his world to people in need, whether he knows them or whether he does not.  He demonstrates the love of Christ, the compassion of God toward those who are in distress and those who have need.

     Sixthly, it says at the end of verse 2 he is apt to teach.  He is skilled in teaching.  He is skilled in teaching.  Now this is the only one of the qualifications that has anything to do with what he does functionally.  All the rest are strictly characteristics of his life.  This does relate to his function but is nonetheless a moral qualification.  For the essence of all teaching is in example and it is what he is that is the priority in his ability to communicate to others.  So the heart of the task of teaching is his character.

     Now when you look at this concept of skilled in teaching and you say, well, if a man's going into the church as an elder, or a leader in the church, an overseer, a pastor of a church, you young men that are looking for that you folks that are trying to evaluate perhaps your own children and whatever, you may be looking at what are the criteria that identify a person as a skilled teacher, let me help you with that.  I can't leave this ap