Elders: Taking Care of God’s Church (Part 2 of 2)

A church leader's spiritual progress sets the pace for the rest of the congregation That's why we should take special care when choosing church elders. But what are the virtues we should be seeking?

And what vices should we be on the lookout for? Alistair Begg answers those questions today on Truth for Life. He's teaching from 1 Timothy. We're looking at the opening verses in chapter 3. Above reproach. Above reproach. In other words, he is not to be open to attack or criticism in terms of his Christian life in general and in terms of the characteristics which now follow. There's a sense in which a colon after reproach might be quite helpful, and then we might view these other characteristics as an explication of what it means to be above reproach. Now, again, we're not saying perfection.

Trap, the commentator, who is a wonderful old guy—I mean, very old, he's dead—but he says some wonderful things. He said, Every faithful pastor must be such as against whom no just exception can be laid, no gross fault objected. Involuntary failings and unavoidable infirmities have a pardon, of course, both with God and with all good men. So in other words, he's distinguishing, as you rightfully must do, because otherwise the quest is for perfection.

He distinguishes in between gross faults, justifiable glaring exceptions, and involuntary failings and unavoidable infirmities. Now, the challenge in this, of course, is who's setting the beam? And there's always a difference when we're setting it for ourselves or setting it for somebody else. And the same thing happens. For example, just recently, somebody wrote to me from the radio program to say what a bad pastor I was. Now, I understand that, and it was kind of nice to have it reinforced, but the point of emphasis in this letter was the story that I told to you folks concerning the sixty-four-dollar pizza, if you will remember, which had to do with a speeding ticket in Sugarine Falls, followed by my desire to reroute the traffic flow in the center of Solon.

So they wrote to say, one, if you were a proper, decent, one Timothy 3-2 pastor, one, you wouldn't have got a speeding ticket, two, you wouldn't have tried to cut through the thing, and three, you would have been appalled that your congregation laughed when you told them. Now, what do I say to that? I say, Whoa! And I listen. And you know, maybe that's right. But it was honest.

You know, I could have pretended to you that I didn't speed and I didn't cut through, and I never once thought of telling lies to the cop when he caught me. Then you might have been tempted to think that not only do I wear this black suit when I'm preaching, but I wear it to my bed, and that I have my house set up in the Stations of the Cross, and that I'm really, really, really weirdly holy. The husband of one wife. What does this mean? It literally means a man of one woman.

Now, you're getting familiar with the idea of applying the text woodenly. A wooden application of the text would suggest that what Paul is mandating in these verses is that the only person who can serve as an elder is a married man who has at least two children, because it says he must be the husband of but one wife. And people say that means he must have a wife. No, it doesn't necessarily mean that. It means that if he has a wife, he's only supposed to have one wife.

Yeah? And also, oh, he must have at least two children. He can't have one child, because it says in verse 4 he must manage his children, plural. Therefore, it couldn't possibly… You can't be an elder if you don't have a wife, and if you have a wife, you can't be an elder if you only have one child.

Or you can't be an elder if you had a wife and she died and you got another wife. And so on. And people get themselves absolutely tied up in knots over this stuff. You'd be amazed at the conversations. They go on for hours.

They generate a tremendous amount of heat, very little light at all. What is the plain meaning here? Paul is taking what I would take to be the sort of common context in Corinth, where a guy is married and he has kids.

This is the sort of normal circumstance. And what he's saying is this. The man who serves as an elder is then to be marked by purity in relationship to his home life. He mustn't be anything other than pure in both his thoughts and in his deeds. I don't believe that from this phrase we can teach a whole doctrine concerning the place of divorcees in the potential leadership of the church.

And I'm certainly not about to descend into a discussion on it right now. The plain and obvious meaning is this. If a man is going to serve in leadership, then he needs to be marked by fidelity and purity within the framework of his interpersonal relationships in his own house. That makes perfect sense. Then he says he's supposed to be temperate, self-controlled, and respectable.

A wonderful little trilogy. There's two words in here, incidentally, that could be translated as having something to do with drinking, and the NIV distinguishes between them helpfully. This first word, temperate, means sober-minded. It has to have about him the kind of sobriety that you expect to find at the cockpit of a plane, especially when things begin to go wrong. He has to have about him a self-control, which is apparent insofar as he doesn't become 480 pounds, nor does he waste away as some horrible little skinflint because he is unable to control the simple appetites of his desire for food. He is to be respectable, orderly, well-behaved, and virtuous. And he is to be hospitable.

There is to be something of the hospital about him, something of the physician's care, something about the shepherd's heart. He mustn't be, in the teaching role, incomprehensible on a Sunday and invisible during the week. If you imagine a situation where you have a community and a community church and someone living in that community, what Paul is saying is that when you get the guy teaching you in whatever context, or you meet him in the street, or you find yourself in his home, you will find that his character commands his message and doesn't deny his message.

That's what he's saying. And in all of this, he's supposed to be able to teach. What does it mean to be able to teach? I think that his word in Titus 1.9 helps to unpack that. He says the elders need to hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. And this is to be done with gentleness and with respect.

2 Timothy 2.24. In other words, the leadership of the elders is to be a leadership by the crook of the Word of God. This is the influence here. This is the authority. It's not the power of personality.

It's not ultimately the influence of giftedness. It is the power of the Word of God. And we shepherd the people by the instruction of God's Word. So somebody comes and says, Well, I feel this or I wonder this about the will of God. The elders' response is, Let's see what the Bible says. Someone says, You know, I'm out of sorts with Mr. So-and-so, and I'm not sure what I ought to do about reconciliation. The elder says, Well, let's see what the Bible says. Someone says, I was thinking about the possibility of beginning ministry in this way, or whatever it might be. And the elder says, Well, let's see what the Bible says. And that has to happen both in a public forum, and it has to happen in less-than-public forums, in every avenue of what we do, and it has to happen in private forums. And that's why it is such a wonderful thing—and I'm sure you as a congregation pick it up—that without any sense of coercion or of trying to generate it, it's virtually impossible to have any one of our elders stand up here to say anything, but they don't stand up, first of all, with their Bible, and then they quote their Bible.

Why? Because they understand that ultimately, the only thing they have to say is what's in the book. You know, over the weekend, I had all kinds of people come to me to say all kinds of things, but one lady came and told me about her mother, for whom she was greatly concerned. And she asked my advice. And if you compressed it to a sentence or two, it was this, You know, it's very important for your mother to sit under the instruction of the Bible. Another man came to me and told me that he was separated from his wife and was wondering about the counsel that was being offered, etc.

And I said to him, You know, I think it's very important that the two of you sit under the instruction of God's Word. And pretty soon people are going to say, You know, if you go to those guys, they all say the same thing. Exactly!

If they don't, something's really up. Because the only crook that the great shepherd has provided to the under-shepherd is the crook of his Word. Now, our time is gone. Let me just rattle through these remaining comments here. He moves to some vices. These are virtues that are to be present, and then he says there are some vices that are to be set aside.

For example, verse 3, he's not to be a drunk, he's not to be violent, he's supposed to be gentle, he's not supposed to quarrel, and he's not supposed to be a lover of money. This is just a sort of caricature of it, to try and make the point. Somebody says to someone, You know, do you know George? Oh, yeah, we know. You mean George, the guy at the wine bar? Yeah! Yeah!

Oh, George, yeah. He comes in about eleven-thirty every morning, has the same spot, and basically he gets himself in a corner where he can just see the screen. It's not so much that he wants to watch the picture, he just wants to see the ticker tape coming across the bottom. He's totally into the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He is consumed by the NASDAQ, the American Stock Exchange, the whole thing.

And that's it. He drinks wine and watches for certain stocks coming through. In fact, the only time that you can drag him away from that is if you get him into an argument. Now, if you can get him in an argument, you can get him away from his wine and away from the screen for a wee while, and every so often, and it hasn't happened often, but every so often, the guy actually fights people, and he's been known to throw a couple of people right across the room and bang their heads on chairs. Why are you asking about George? Because we were thinking he might become an elder in our church. You say, that's a bit far-fetched, isn't it? No.

Isn't it interesting? Like, it doesn't say he shouldn't spit, you know. It says he shouldn't be a drunk. What does that tell you? That there were people there that had real problems with the booze.

He shouldn't be a lover of money. What does that tell you? That there were people there, like us, who have a real problem with acquisitiveness. He shouldn't be a quarreller. What does that tell you? There are people there that like arguments, and he shouldn't be a fighter. And people say, you know what? You say, when you're looking for elders, don't go for those guys. Now, when you read it like that, you say, this makes perfect sense. He should be an example of contentedness, whether he's got a lot or whether he's got a little.

The elder's life must not be controlled either by alcohol or controlled by money. That's what he's saying. Now, there are groups that will tighten it up. There are groups that will lighten it up.

There are people that will dress it up. But what is being said is what is being said. You can understand that. And he says, if you go home to his house, you will find that he manages his household well. Not that when you go into his house, he has perfect children and a perfect wife.

We all do perfect things and all say perfect things. The people like that are a perfect nuisance. Because you know that somehow or another, when they close the door, somewhere they kick the cat or they do something. They are not like that all the time.

They go out, they beat on garbage can lids or something. So neither is the leader perfect, nor does he have perfect wife, nor does he have perfect kids. He's a normal guy with an extraordinary calling and given an extraordinary task. But we have every right to anticipate that he will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the little prerogative of his own family, and indeed, if he can do it there, he can do it in the church.

And he argues from the lesser to the greater. Why would you ever give anybody the responsibility of looking after a huge big family if he can't look after his own wee family? Perfect sense. Now, again, you can tighten that up or you can lighten it up.

You can dress it up, but what it says is what it says. You've got to be able to look after your own family. And that doesn't mean you have to beat your kids into subjection. That doesn't mean that you should produce children that are like semi-comatosed all of their lives. Indeed, if you have kids like that—but I'm not talking personality now. I'm talking about parents who do that to their children.

You've got a guy who does that to his children, and his children have no joy, no humor, no initiative, nothing. Then don't appoint him as an elder, not unless you want to turn your church into a huge big group of people that look like that. That's not a congregation. Those are clones. Those are slaves.

Those are people in servitude. That's not a family. And that is not what he's talking about here. He's simply arguing the principle.

In your home, sobriety, sensible, nurturing in the faith, encouraging them in belief, bringing them up in the instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay? And we anticipate that he would do the same over here. And in all of this, he shouldn't be a recent convert. Why? Because if you give a recent convert, if you give the newly enlisted guy in the army all the stripes and a general's hat, everybody's in trouble. Because he'd be like, Hey, hey, I'm the general! When in point of fact, no, you're not.

You're not even a private. Who gave you that hat? And the person will go around, and you won't be able to find a hat big enough to fit his head. And that's exactly what happens here. When you thrust people who are new converts, they blow up with conceit, and they blow out in usefulness. And in verse 7, he says, By the way, when you go down the high street, if they know him in the post office, if they know him in the car wash, if they know him in the dry cleaners, if they know him in the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers, it ought to be no surprise to them that he is an elder in your church.

Not because they understand the doctrine, not because they understand even eldership, but because they would be able to say, You know what? Mr. X is a kind man. Mr. X is an honest man.

Mr. X is a respectful man. And so on. He who desires these things desires a noble task. Let me finish by giving you three words that are the peculiar temptations that fall to those who are called to the task. Temptation number one, the temptation to shine. To shine. i.e., to seek the limelight, to enjoy admiration, to become totally unbearable because you can only listen to the sound of your own voice and the wonders that you are now unfolding for the sorry listeners to absorb.

The temptation to shine. Secondly, the temptation to recline. And I talk now to guys in my position rather than my lay elders, because my lay elders, I have not found any of them reclining. They don't have time to recline.

But for those of us who are entrusted with the privilege of getting up in the morning without the demands of a factory, without the oversight of someone who is calling us to another task, and we have been set to the privilege and responsibility of becoming students of the Word of God, one of the greatest temptations is to become downright lazy. And one of the saddest things to see in gatherings of pastors to which I go with frequency now is to see a bunch of recliners. And I'm not talking about those lazy boys. I'm talking about lazy boys that are on the lazy boys. The apex of pastoral ministry for some of these jokers is when their congregation buys them one of these big chairs. I don't ever want one of those chairs, because too many of us are just looking for a chance to recline.

The problem of shining, reclining, and whining—whining! Nobody know the trouble I've seen. I'm the only pastor that preaches in the whole of the world, you know. I'm the… Oh, I'm the only one. I'm the only one that understands. I'm the only one left. I'm the only one the object of criticism.

I'm the only one burdened by the… Oh, give us a break, you know. I know there's days like that. But, you know, Martin Luther, he came down for his breakfast one morning, remember? And his wife was dressed in her complete funeral regalia, totally in black, head to toe. And as she sat to breakfast with him, he looked up, and he said, My dear, has someone died? And she said, Martin, apparently God has died. He said, My dear, where do you get this from? Thinking he might correct her mistaken theology? And she said, Essentially, the amount of whining that you've been doing for the last two and a half or three weeks seems to indicate to me that there is no longer a God in heaven to whom you may turn.

And so I determined to dress for his funeral. So let's be realistic. Let's be prayerful. Let's not establish standards the Bible doesn't establish. Let's not weaken standards the Bible clearly states. Let's not turn principles into rules and laws.

And let's be done with shining, reclining, and whining. That is Alistair Begg with some important thoughts for us to consider before we assign or take on the role of a church elder. If you're listening to Truth for Life, Alistair will be back to close today's program in just a minute. One of our goals here at Truth for Life is to encourage men who are called to church leadership. In fact, it's in our mission statement. We're committed to teaching the Bible in a way that is clear and relevant. We trust that as we teach God's word, his spirit will work through that teaching to reach unbelievers, to draw believers closer to himself. And then our prayer is that as a result, local churches will be strengthened and more committed to the proclamation of the gospel. This is the mission that you're supporting every time you pray for or give to the ministry of Truth for Life.

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Box 398000, Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Now here is Alistair to close with prayer. Father, thank you for your Word.

I pray that your Spirit will bring clarity where my words muddy up the waters. I thank you for the privilege of serving you here with my colleagues, the awesome responsibility of being called to account one day before the bar of heaven for every word spoken, every decision made, every counsel offered, every sermon preached. Thank you for our congregation, for their prayerfulness, submissive heart, genuine interest, honest challenges. Thank you for the wonder of the body of Christ. We're not what we once were.

We're not what we will be. We're making progress, and we thank you that we are being renewed day by day into that glorious image of your Son, Jesus Christ. And now unto him, that lovely one who is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power. Now and forevermore. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine.

We're so glad you joined us today. So are elders the same as deacons? What does the Bible say about the differences between their spiritual requirements or their functions? Is one role more important than the other? Alistair Begg brings answers to these questions tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.