The Office of Elder

I invite you to turn your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 3, starting in verse 1. We'll read through verse 7.

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 the snare of the devil. Please be seated. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you in the name of your Son and we are thankful for your Word, for the divine reality of the Apostle Paul's ministry and his prescribed Word, as we go into the text and see how you have organized your church. You have given us elders, you have given us deacons, you have given us offices within the church, and we thank you. We thank you for the structure of the local church. We thank you for the gathering of the believers. We pray that you would encourage us, that you would call many men this evening to aspire to this noble task of being an elder in the church. We ask that you would write this Word upon our hearts as all these attributes, all these moral characteristics are things that we are to seek to attain.

We ask that we would eagerly seek after these qualifications every single day. Your sons and we pray. Amen. Happy Father's Day.

I did not plan this. It's Father's Day and here we are. We're looking at the fathers of the church as they have been prescribed in the Bible. Last month, I didn't mean to do this either, I preached on Mother's Day. We looked at the roles of men and women in the church. Men are to be unified, lifting up holy hands in the church, not quarreling. They are to pray together in the local congregation.

Women are to learn in the church. Paul is rooting this argument for male leadership back in the created order of Genesis. So now he is prescribing the structure of church leadership within the local New Testament church. We'll see this in 1 Timothy 3, verses 1-7, as well as Titus 1, verses 6-8. Both passages can give us qualifications of the church elder, as well as 1 Peter 5 gives us some particular insights. I titled this the Office of Elder, but the word here is actually overseer.

The Greek word behind this, if you'll bear with me with the Greek here, the word is episkopos, epi meaning over, and skopos meaning to see, to oversee. The idea is that one is to oversee the congregation. The Greek episkopos became the Old English biskop, and now we have the modern English word bishop. So if you ever hear of the Episcopalian church or the office of bishop, these things are correlated here. 1 Peter 5, we actually see these words are the same office. 1 Peter 5, Peter says, I exhort the presbuteroi, that is the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, to shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

Exercising episkopos, that is oversight, not under compulsion. So the presbyterians, the elders, are exercising episkopos, that is oversight, and they are called to shepherd the local church. They are to shepherd the flock. Presbuterois, episkopos, and poimenon, these three words all referring to pastors, shepherds, overseers, elders. These are all terms to refer to the leadership within the church. But this concept goes all the way back to Moses.

He was overwhelmed with work and his father-in-law, Jethro, gave him advice and said, Look for able men, emphasis here on plural, men, from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, a kind of Old Testament example of not a lover of money, not one who is greedy for unjust gain. And place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. In Numbers 11, we see the same thing the Lord says to Moses, directly, Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be elders of the people and officers over them. And so this is the job of elders, is to govern the church, and the elders are still called upon today to do this task. We see in the New Testament example, Acts chapter 15, we see the council in Jerusalem. The elders, again, the plurality of elders are governing over the church.

And it is James, the half-brother of Jesus, that he's among them. And he is teaching and preaching, but there's also elders that are present within the local church. And this is a pattern that we see throughout the Bible, that there are men that are sent into places where there is no Christian witness, who is called to teach and preach the gospel. In our denomination, we call this teaching elders. Timothy was not from Ephesus. He was from Lystra, but he went into Ephesus and he preached and taught the Bible to those in the Ephesian church.

Titus the same way, he was the bishop of Crete, and he wrote, Paul wrote in his letter to Titus, This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order. Appoint elders in every town as I direct you. So this is an example of elders being brought up within the local congregation.

We call them ruling elders. But there is this teaching and ruling office of elder within the church. And the goal is that indigenous men throughout the world, men of their own communities, would be brought up and they would be raised up to be teachers and preachers within the local church.

This is how we do missions. Where there is no Christian witness, we send a pioneer missionary out there, typically a teaching elder, and he and maybe one or two others, maybe a support staff, go out into the world and share the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a congregation begins to build, there are mature men within the congregation that have to be raised up. That's what our nominations have been recently. We've been putting out, we've been advertising to nominate elders and deacons to govern Grace Church.

That's the goal. And so as men are raised up, some go off to seminary and get an education, come back and they can lead as teachers and preachers within the local church. And the goal of mission work is that these churches will be self-sustained, that we can go on to where Christ is not named, and we can go out and expand the tent. But the role here, the role for the elder, is to preach the Word and commit themselves to prayer and to govern the church.

The example we have in Acts 6 is that there are disciples increasing in number. There's a complaint among the Hellenists that the Hebrews, because of their widows, are being neglected in the daily distribution. Some of the widows of the church are being neglected. And so the apostles come together and they say, it's not right that we should give up the preaching of the Word to serve tables. They're seeing their own role as preaching in the church.

And what we need are men that are to serve tables, that is, serve in a physical capacity for those that are there. And what we have is the institution of the office of deacon. Deacons are serving the church in a physical way, in a mercy ministry sort of way, so that the elders can continue to focus on preaching and teaching and prayer within the local church. As we go in, I'll actually be preaching on deacons next month.

So just tonight I'll be looking at elders, next month on deacons. But what you will see is there are a lot of the same moral qualifications for both elders and deacons within the church. And within this office, what we see is there is a need for leadership within the local church. John Maxwell said leadership is one who knows leadership.

Being a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. It is essential that the elders of the church lead by example. And so there is a preaching of the Word, but there's also a practice. We have orthodoxy, which is right teaching, but also an orthopraxy, which is a right practice of the Christian faith. Throughout the Bible, we see that where men follow God's Word, they flourish.

The people under their leadership thrive. But sadly, there are many examples where men reject God. They reject God's precepts, they reject the Word of God, and they fall into destruction. In 2 Chronicles 33, Manasseh has made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem worse than the heathens, raising up altars to Baal, committing idolatry. And what we see is that he is following the examples that were set before him. 1 Kings 22, as Ahia, the son of Ahab, he followed his son. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father.

He served Baal and worshipped him and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger in every way, just as his father had done. In the Second Commandment, it talks about how there will be cursings that go on for a third and fourth generation. And that is not the idea that God specifically singles out someone and says, you will be cursed for three and four generations. What it means is that there is a bad example set in a family where a father has bad habits and the sons adopt these same bad habits and then their grandsons adopt these same bad habits. And there is a sin pattern that is generational throughout a family.

And so, sadly, evil sort of begets evil just by the simple power of example. And so goes the leadership of the church. There goes the church that is under that leadership. And that is why this topic is so serious tonight as we go in and look at the office of elder and that we might pick men from among us that set an example for the flock and give moral leadership within the church. Starting in verse 1 of chapter 3, The saying is trustworthy. Remember that phrase from chapter 1, verse 15?

The saying is trustworthy. This is going around the church. This is going around the Christian community that one who aspires to the office of overseer desires a noble task. It is the third greatest honor in my life to be an elder in the church.

Third to being a father, being a husband and then being a father. It is a tremendous honor to be a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. I want to encourage all men to look at these qualifications. Either you are an elder or you are a deacon by personality and seek out to be like this elder or deacon described in the text.

I want to encourage you to consider these offices. In ministry, we have what we call sort of a two-part call to ministry. First is the internal call. It is an internal desire within the heart of the man that wants to be an officer in the church. It is a personal desire for the position. You look at being an elder or a deacon and say, that is something that I want to do.

That is something that I want to be. Secondly, there is this external call which is that other people in the church nominate you or recommend you to that office within the church. If others believe one is called to the eldership, this would be an external call, the hope is that it might match an internal call and that man might be an elder or a deacon. But where there is no internal call, 1 Peter 5 tells us we ought not to compel a man to the eldership.

Let a man come to this conclusion on his own. With the encouragement of others, perhaps one day a man might be an elder or a deacon, but if he is not ready to, do not compel a man. Second, verse 2. I'll be hopping around by the way. Some of these fit differently as I go through.

Right now I'm kind of linear, but as I go through more of these points, they'll start to mix and match together. Verse 2 is above reproach. Your translation might say something like blameless. This is not referring to any sort of perfection. If perfection was a requirement, only Christ Jesus would be our only elder, as he is the head of the church and king of all kings and the shepherd among all the shepherds of God's church. The idea here is that a man is above disapproval.

He is free from any sort of scandal or any sort of question of scandal. It's kind of tied to one's reputation among the congregation as well as among non-Christians. Verse 7 actually talks about a good reputation among outsiders.

Even though someone might dislike the church, never go to church, even say that they don't like Christianity, the hope is that the elder's moral character would be seen by outsiders. They would see his kindness, his hospitality, his generosity, and his overall respectable character. In one sense, I think that above reproach is sort of the qualification over all these. Almost like you could start a list in above reproach, and these are all the many examples of being above reproach.

Being sober-minded, being self-controlled, husband, wife, etc. All these are applications of being above reproach. But the idea is that there's not an immediate negative connotation that comes with the man's name. The man's name is not synonymous with being quarrelsome or hot-headed or money-grubbing, but the idea is that there is no negative idea that precedes the man. One commentator said, If someone was to bring a charge against one of our elders, would you say that doesn't sound like him? If you were to hear that one of our elders got drunk and got into a fistfight, would your default answer be, That's not our elder. That wouldn't be him. I know him. That doesn't sound like something he would do.

Or did you say that's exactly something that he would do? That that reputation precedes him, and that's the idea, is that we would be free from any sort of negative connotation. We would be mature, sanctified, and that any accusation, our default is that it's false, and over time it would be proven to be false. Going in verse 2, A husband of one wife, being blameless, I think, starts with the most immediate relationship in your life. It starts with the one who knows the elder more than anyone.

It starts with one's wife. And if an elder is to be a man of one wife, obviously it goes against this idea of the Roman Catholic Church that we require celibacy. Quite to the contrary, it actually sounds like a man has to be married.

An elder must be a man of one wife. It almost sounds like it requires marriage. But this is not requiring marriage. Paul, writing this, is a single man in ministry, and says it's actually good to be single.

It frees you up to do a lot of ministry work, where a family, you're now divided between honoring and serving the Lord, as well as serving a wife and family. So it does not mandate marriage, but it does say that we must be committed to our wives. It's not saying that a man cannot be remarried. This would exclude widowers, as well as those who are divorced on Biblical grounds, which the two we have are adultery, from Matthew 19, and abandonment from an unbelieving spouse in 1 Corinthians 7. But what it is saying is that an elder is a man.

An elder is a man. Going back to my last sermon, God has prescribed male leadership within the church, and Paul explains in chapter 2 that this is a God-ordained, complementarian role of men and women, that is not rooted in any sort of cultural norm, it's not rooted in his reactionary opinion to anything going on, but it's rooted in the created order. An elder is a man, and also he must be committed to his one wife. There was a problem with polygamy at that time, and Paul is saying that if you go back to the created order, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his singular wife, and the two of them shall become one flesh. So a man's first ministry is to his wife, his second ministry is to his children, and his third ministry is to the church.

A man must have his first and second ministry down before his goal is to serve the church. Verse 4, 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? The family is the testing ground, the proving ground for whether or not a man can lead within the local church. If you compare Timothy here, saying that children must be kept submissive, Titus actually says that children are to be believers.

I have met ministers who say, if one of my six children were to commit apostasy and leave the faith, I would leave the local church. But what is the meaning of this passage when Titus says that his children are to be believers? When we go into the Greek, the word is actually pistos, which can mean believing, my children are believing, but it can also mean that my children are faithful. And in this context, they are being faithful in Titus 1 and not being open to the charge of debauchery or subordination. The faithfulness is to the leadership within the home.

The faithfulness of a covenant child under the leadership of an elder in the home is the focus here, is that they might be submissive to their parents, that they are being led by their parents, and they're not under any sort of church discipline, in charge of debauchery or insubordination. So we are to pray for our children, we're to call them to obedience, because they are obligated to be obedient to parents. And Lord willing, again, we cannot save our children. There are believing parents that do everything they can. There are unbelieving parents that have never done anything. Of course, they're not believers, their children don't believe. There are parents that don't do anything, and their children believe, who have done every single thing in their power, and their children just do not believe. And so we have to realize and rest on the fact that God alone saves. Don't pat yourself on the back if your children believe, but don't beat yourself up if your children don't believe.

Do everything that you can to minister to them, to show them God's Word, to call them to repentance and faith, but ultimately, it is God that saves. And an elder is called to minister faithfully to his children. John MacArthur put it this way, and I think this is a good list on how to persuade children on the wisdom of submission.

He has three points. Number one is the God-ordained authority. Children need to understand that your standard is God's Word. It is God-ordained that they would be submissive to you as a parent, and they are your children. God has said it this way. Secondly is the wisdom. It must be wise to listen to one's parents. If children were to ask, why must I be submissive?

There's an answer there, and there's a wise answer there. God gives us good rules in the Bible. We see the wisdom of God in His instructions. And in the same way, we must encourage our children to see the natural, sensible, reasonable reason to obey them.

And finally, love. It is with love in the heart that we point our children to listen to their father and mother. There is a bond that must occur where we love our children and point them to maintain this bond of love. And as they are disobedient, they are breaking this bond of love.

They are disappointing and being disobedient, and what they need to see is that we have something precious here, the bond of a father and a mother and a family with this child, and the hope is that they will not challenge that or disrupt what would be an otherwise naturally peaceful relationship with their parents. And so a man's immediate relationships must be examined. We have to look at the man, not just based on how we see them on Sunday and on Wednesday, but we have to ask the family, the wife, even outsiders that know this man, what is he like? Verse 2, we continue with sober-minded. Sober is that someone is not swayed. We think of alcohol, but really sober-minded is referring to a man that is temperate, a man that is clear-headed, is moderate, is restrained. He's not under the influence of any sort of cultural persuasion.

There's no external pressures on the man that might make him compromise for any reason. The idea is that we preach and teach the pure, true gospel message, and so an elder must not be prone to pride or flattery or anything that might compromise the word. And of course, verse 3, not a drunkard. Being sober-minded also takes on not being a drunk, not being addicted to wine, as some translations say.

This is not an outright prohibition of alcohol. To be clear, Jesus turned water into wine. We see Jesus instituting the Lord's Supper with bread and wine. We even see in Ecclesiastes 9.7, drink wine and be merry at heart.

In this exact letter, in chapter 5, we'll see that Paul encourages Timothy to take a little wine for your stomach. I've heard it said, alcohol is a good servant and a bad master. We cannot serve two masters. So Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6 that all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. What is prohibited here is an addiction to wine, not being mastered by wine.

That's a question we must individually ask ourselves. Verse 2, self-controlled, a man that's not known for losing control. One must master himself before he is to master leadership within the church. He must be a man of personal character. Titus says in verse 8 of chapter 1, using the term discipline, correlating to this idea of a self-mastery. An elder is to be disciplined with regular Bible reading and prayer, regular study, a commitment to the Word of God. A man is not to be violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome.

Literally the Word is one who strikes, one who is a brawler, one who sets up fights and settles business with fistfights, a hothead, someone who flies off the handle, someone who is arrogant or quick-tempered, as Titus says, someone who responds naturally with violence as an outpouring of pride and anger. Even with quarrelsome, even someone who just likes a good argument, someone who just likes arguing for the sake of argument, even when there is unity. I'm very grateful that our session has a great deal of unity. When I go to session meetings, we work things out. There are so many different ways to look at a situation, and with so many elders, with the plurality of elders, everybody gets to take a different look at the situation at hand. And so we really do turn over every leaf. We really do look at every angle of a situation. It's very helpful to have a plurality of elders, have older men that know these situations, and we discuss everything.

It's very helpful. But if someone was just to start an argument where there's perfect unity among the session, just for the sake of arguing, it is destroying the unity that is within the leadership and tearing apart the church from the leadership. Titus 3 tells us, For a person who stirs up division, after warning him once, then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned.

This is a person that just likes a fight just to fight, just to quarrel with others. These men are known for their harshness. Back in the days of Ezekiel, God was critical of the shepherds of Ezekiel's day. They were violent and they were harsh.

They had ugly attitudes. Chapter 34, verse 4, The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. Truth without love is cruelty, as J.C. Ryle put it. Love without truth is barbaric. Where there is no relationship with the people, these can be just harsh truths that hurt, that there is no consolation, there is no clarity, there is no pointing to the mercy of God.

There is no love. There must be love present in the heart of the elder, that loves the people of God. There was a time, I think, where I just said, I'm just going to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

But I grew up and I realized that how I say things absolutely matter. An elder is not simply called to tell the truth from God's Word. An elder is called to be gentle. An elder is a gentleman. An elder is to communicate gracious truths to God's people. He's a man that children feel comfortable to approach.

It's someone that visitors feel comfortable around, that they can talk to. It's a man that is not only an elder but a mentor, a teacher, and a father in the faith. John Newton said, My people know that I love them and that I've loved them over the years and now I believe that they would take anything from me. He knew that he could preach on heaven, he could preach on hell. He could talk about dying in your sins and burning in eternal hell fire because he knew that his people loved him and he loved them in return. He would plead for their eternal souls and point them to heaven.

He'd point them to grace and point them to mercy found in Christ. There was a love between John Newton and his congregation. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 4. There are countless guides in Christ. I've had a lot of leaders and teachers. I've been in seminary for a long time. But you do not have many fathers because I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Timothy and Titus were children of Paul's ministry. So it matters that we not just be guides but we be leaders, mentors, and fathers in the faith. And one way we do that is we show hospitality to one another. It's a form of generosity as we extend meals out to those that are in hospitals. We invite others into our homes. It's being generous with our home, with our time, with our resources. Being friendly to strangers at church. Not simply being kind, not just saying hello if they approach you, but reaching out, inviting visitors with a friendly hello and a handshake and meeting with people in the church. Inviting people into your home.

Sharing food and drink and spending time together. My brother-in-law was an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina and he attended First Prez, Columbia. There was a man there who was known for bringing college students over to his house.

His name was Henry Foster. I heard this story right before I went to the Banner of Truth conference. I ran into an old friend from school and he was planting a church in Columbia.

They said that some of the elders from First Prez were coming over and helping them with their church plant. This one guy just invites all these college kids over to his house. I'm going, I know that guy. I just know him by reputation. What's his name? He said his name is Henry Foster. I went over and he was at the lunch table there.

I took a photo with him and I sent it out to my family. Not only did my brother-in-law say that's the man that had me over at his house, my father-in-law was invited to his house 30 years prior. This man has been inviting people over to his house for four decades.

Hospitality is this unsung hero of qualifications. A man that is hospitable and opens up his home to visitors, to church members. It is a great simple testimony of faithfulness to the Lord. Continuing in verse 2, respectable. This is the idea of a life that is organized, a life that is orderly.

The opposite of chaos. You go into a man's home and you see there's an orderliness to it. I would say if you have people over for 40 years, you probably have an orderly home. You have to.

There's too many people coming in. You have to keep a well-ordered life. Verse 3, a lover of money.

In the ministry of Jesus, we see Judas Iscariot. He was always holding on to the money and he would not want to distribute it. It's not wrong to have a lot of money. The problem is where we want to hoard this money.

We want to hold on to it. We do not want to channel it into good efforts within ministry. Do you know how you know someone is a lover of money or greedy for unjust gain? He's more concerned about building up the bank account rather than spreading this money into good Christian ministry efforts. And there is a time actually to be tight-fisted. I think there is a time to be very careful with how we distribute funds. There is a wisdom and a discernment which comes from doing this over time. Careless spending, I think, is not being a good steward of the money that God has given us. Where there is an honorable ministry effort, we ought to fund those efforts.

Where there are church plants, where there are missionaries that need help, our brothers and sisters in Myanmar who might need funding. Those are good ministry efforts that we ought to encourage. Verse 6 says, Not a recent convert.

This is a qualification that simply requires time. Some new converts are smart, they're capable. Some new converts might lead Fortune 500 companies. Some new converts might be generals and colonels in the armed services. They've led men into battle.

They have great skills and leadership. That does not mean that we should immediately make them into an elder. To be fair, I see those guys as kind of being good assets to the church. When they're not recent converts, I think they might make a great elder. But again, they are just coming into the church. The King James uses the term a neophyte, a recent convert. So what we must do is emphasize not someone who is just converted to the faith.

There's a warning that comes with it, he might become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. The essential part here is that a man must be mature. The word elder is older. Someone who is wise, someone who has wisdom, someone who has ability to teach the Word of God as well as govern the church will. Elders must be called from the congregation as men that are mature and active in the church.

Titus chapter 1 verse 8 is a lover of good. An elder must love the good of the church. The elder must love the advancement of the saints. The elder loves to hear that churches are being planted.

They must love to hear that families are growing. That professions of faith are being professed. That their children are being born and raised in the faith and they're making professions. The church is growing through covenantal children and covenantal families. We want to encourage the good, promote goodness within the congregation. They must be the biggest fans of personal growth among their hearers as well as themselves.

They must be encouraging this within the local church. Titus continues with upright and holy. Upright is our relationships with one another.

These are horizontal person-to-person relationships. We must be fair. We must be just. We must be upright in our conduct with our fellow man.

We must be fair in business transactions, being impartial, treating everyone fairly. Holy refers to our relationship with God, our vertical relationship with the Lord. We must rely upon God, confess our sins to God, rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, and put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must say with David, wash me of my sin. Put in my heart a clean heart, Lord. We must have a reality where we are crying out to the Lord for more and more personal growth and holiness and that we might set an example for the church and honor the Lord. 1 John 3, verse 3 is that everyone who hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Then chapter 3, verse 2, able to teach.

This is the only skill on this list. A man must be able to teach within the local church. Elders must be able to lead the local congregation. They must encourage the saints through teaching and preaching.

Titus says to rebuke as well. There is this concept of rebuking or correcting or admonishing with the law and then pointing them and driving them to the grace and mercy that is in Christ. We must be able to communicate the Bible.

Not math, not science, not English, not social studies. We have to communicate God's Word. Nehemiah chapter 8, they read the law of God and the elders of the church would interpret the Bible to the congregation. The elders must know Scripture as well as prayer. They must be a man of prayer. Regular, ordinary, daily prayer and study of the Word. They must be able to teach Scripture, but also our system of doctrine.

We are Reformed, we are Calvinist, we are Presbyterian. We must be able to answer the question, what does it mean that we believe in total depravity? What does it mean that election is unconditional? What is the sovereignty of God? What does it mean that God will persevere in the saints?

What does that mean? What is this concept? Will the elders of those who can sit down and explain from Scripture these concepts to those in the congregation? As we look at these, all these qualifications are worthy to be sought after by everyone. No one keeps them perfectly and they should be the goal of every single Christian within the church. Seeking eldership or not, we ought to look at this list and seek to be obedient to the Lord by this example.

Secondly, Christian living is about not only knowing the truth, it is having right teaching and right standards, having right doctrine, but also actions that respond to this teaching. Next month I'll look at the deacons and they are the right practice. Deacons are the orthopraxy.

They are the ones that are out doing the physical work of ministry. Elders are back teaching orthodoxy, teaching the faithful message of God's Word. Finally, to my fellow elders, if you're here tonight, I want to encourage you and exhort you through the words of Peter. I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, who is sufficient for these things? You give us this list, and none of us measure up, but we ask that by your grace we would grow in these qualifications eagerly every day. We pray that you would lead young men toward elder and deacon offices within the church, where they might serve their wives, their children, and the local congregation. We pray that you would continue to work mildly within our hearts, that you would renew us every day. We ask that you would set Christ as our example before us. Meanwhile, Lord, please continue to work within us throughout the week. Let your Spirit be with us within our hearts. We ask that you would renew us and renew our love for you every day. Your sons and we pray. Amen.