When leaders get headed in the wrong direction everyone else tends to follow. So how do churches avoid going astray? It all begins by making sure that the people in leadership have the essential characteristics necessary for church ministry. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches from Titus chapter 1 verses 5 through 9. As you read through the Acts of the Apostles, you will see that very quickly elders were being put in place in the church.
And as you read through Paul on his missionary journeys, you find that he is not only going, first of all, to evangelize, but in many cases he is coming back in order to make sure that those who have now professed faith in Jesus, these fledgling groups of individuals, will then be galvanized and structured within the framework of leadership as God intends. And you can read that for your benefit all the way through. Let's go immediately to the way in which he addresses the characteristics of these individuals. If anyone is above reproach, there you have it in verse 6, and then verse 7 again, for an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach. So we could use the word unimpeachable, blameless, above reproach, but we dare not use the word faultless or flawless, because if that was what it meant, then there wouldn't be any elders at all. No.
No. We have to understand what the Bible is saying and why it's saying what it's saying. What I mean by that is this. If you bury down on, for example, this notion of the husband of one wife, and you approach that in a wooden way—you say, it categorically means the husband of one wife—now you have to say, Well, no single person can ever be an elder, because he doesn't have one wife. No man whose wife has died, leaving him a widower, and who is remarried can ever possibly be an elder in a local church, because he has more than one wife. And when you start down that line, you very quickly say to yourself, I wonder if that is what Paul is on about here.
Is that what he's actually guarding against? If you think about Crete for a moment, if you think about the contemporary world then, at the most basic level, what was he saying? No polygamists must serve as elders in the church. Polygamy was part and parcel of the social structure.
People had one, two, and three wives. And he says, Now, when you put your leadership together, make sure that we get this absolutely clear in our minds that the person that is serving in this way must not be guilty of that. So if you stand far enough back from it, you say, Well, what is he actually saying needs to be true of leadership in the church? In terms of marriage, he's to be a one-woman man. He's a one-woman man. He's to be a man who, in the area of marriage and in sexuality, is unimpeachable. And to violate that obvious application brings with it all kinds of ramifications. And I don't think we ought to stand back from it one iota. It's very challenging.
It's supposed to be. And when you stand back from it in relationship to parental jurisdiction, what is he saying? Is he saying that anyone that serves as an elder can have naughty kids? Is he saying that anyone who serves as an elder must never have children who go through a rebellious phase?
Now, someone may say that's exactly what he's saying. When I think of that, my father would have been excluded from eldership through the majority of his life dealing with me. And he was effective in leadership throughout all of my life. But I was routinely thrown out of things—Bible classes and all manner of things—and it would reflect dreadfully on him, I'm sure.
He'd have to come and pick me up. Did you get sent out again? Yes, I did.
You are such a pain in the neck. I know that, Dad. I'm sorry, I won't get sent out next week.
And I didn't, but sometimes a week after that, I got sent out again. No, again, if you stand far enough back from it, what's he saying? He says that the people who are in leadership, if they're gonna lead the family of God, their families need to be under some kind of control. They're not debauchery-filled. They're not full of insubordinate nonsense. They're not people who are rebellious and cantankerous and tearing the place apart. No, the degree to which we want to micromanage that varies. And the extent of the timeframe that extends to that also varies in people's minds. So is there a difference between parents who have raised their children, nurtured them in the faith, and whose child now has turned their back on what perhaps they once professed and no longer believes? They might be twenty-two, they might be twenty-four, they might be thirty-five.
Is what Paul is saying here, this individual now is absolutely disqualified from the eldership in the church? Well, we must work these things out. We have to figure them out. We've got to apply them.
We've got to understand them. I was speaking with a man yesterday. He's in his nineties. We're talking about the fact that one of his children, his oldest, had turned sixty tomorrow. And the great sadness of his life is that this one boy, unlike the rest of his children, professes no faith in the Lord Jesus, raised in the same home, read to from the same Bible, the recipient of the same prayers. A kind man, a clever man, but not a believing man. Now, you have to say to yourself, is that what Paul is actually saying here? That Mr. X may exercise no leadership in the local church because that one boy is there?
I don't believe so. You're sensible people. You have to figure it out. Now, why is it so important? Why is it so important? Well, because of what he says at the beginning of verse 7. For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach.
This is not some kind of arbitrary standard that is just invented by Paul. Paul is saying that if leadership in the local church is going to be effective, we have a right to believe that if someone doesn't know how to manage their own household, how are they then going to become a steward of God's house? That's the terminology there, as God's steward. He's the household manager. It's Downton Abbey again. It's the big old guy. He's the manager of the household.
How are you going to make him the manager of the household? It doesn't mean that he moved from perfection in one realm to the perfection in the other realm. But it does mean that when people look at it, they say, Well, there's a justifiable correlation here that Mr. X might be able to fulfill this role. Because surely marriage and family life—marriage and family life—provide the most probing analysis of a man's character. You say, Well, there may be other areas.
I'm sure there are other areas. But what I am in my house, what I am with my children, irrespective of whatever the public persona is, in the privacy of my bedroom, in the security of my family—that realm is the foundation for this realm. And clearly, neither I nor any of my colleagues is working from the position of perfection, of flawlessness. But you don't need me to tell you that. This is a joke in our family now, but it's actually not a joke. The reason it's funny is because it stings so much.
When our children were all together riding along in the back of the car and volunteering bits and pieces of information along the way, every so often I would go off on one of my verbal voyages, and when I had finished my little diatribe, in the silence that would follow, then my son's voice would be heard in the back seat. And he just always used to say that same thing. And that's another kind word from your pastor. And it absolutely flayed me every time. He was absolutely right.
That's it. That was completely out of line. Completely out of line. But that's the accountability concerning which we're talking. Why would somebody be trusted with the task of managing the church if they're glaringly unsuccessful in managing their own home? You see what I mean about standing far enough back from it? I mean, the danger you see in these lists—and I've got all the lists and everybody's lists on the lists and the sublists of the lists and everything else—about how someone who's been divorced, you know, eighty-five years ago can still never be a leader in the church, and I have all that stuff, and I'm prepared to interact with it all. But if you stand far enough back from it, what is he saying?
He's saying something really simple. Marriage and parenting is the testing ground for real leadership. It probes your character, and if you're messed up there, just don't take it on in the church.
Because you'll be even more vulnerable in the church than you are in the privacy of your own home. Now, what then follows are characteristics—five must-nots and six musts. And when you look at this list, for an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach, here comes the first not, the must not, he must not be arrogant. The characteristics as a whole make it perfectly clear that the real need on the part of a congregation is not the giftedness of those who serve in leadership but is the godliness of those who serve in leadership. That the real essential requirement is not the requirement that is often the case in terms of a person's giftedness, in terms of a person's status in society, in terms of a person's education. So we look for Mr. Gifted, Mr. Educated, Mr. Money, and on the basis of that, since he was doing it out here, he's probably going to be able to do it in here. No sense, Paul, don't do that.
What you need to look for is where he is probing into the deep recesses of marriage and family life, and then here are the characteristics. Arrogance. Now, what a challenge is that? Especially into the millennium later, we find ourselves the generation of I did it my way—to think I did all that. And may I say, not in a shy way. Oh no! Oh no, not me. Now, do you know that that is in the top three songs played at non-Christian funerals in twenty-first century America?
It's in the top three! So the people all sit there and say, Oh, how wonderful is that? They're following on from the arrogance of Nebuchadnezzar.
Is this not the great Babylon that I have built? Arrogance. Pride. Samuel Rutherford, who was very effective in his day—intelligent, useful—realized he had to take himself in hand with this stuff.
He wrote in his journal, Be humbled. Walk softly down with your top sail. It is a low entry to go in at heaven's gate. Every day in a thousand ways, we're tempted to make ourselves the center of the universe.
That's why we're such a pain in the neck around the family table. That's why the people can't tell us stories or volunteer information when we're having a sandwich break after we've been cutting down trees in the metro park. Soon as somebody says, I was going over there the other day, the person says, Oh yes, I was over there the other day, and what I did when I was over there, I found this, and I found that, and I found the next thing. So there's just a pause. He pauses for breath. Somebody else says, Well yes, as I was saying, and then once he's got his breath back, he says, Yes, as I was saying about Isaac and Isaac. And if you're a talker—and I've been known to talk—you realize your top sail is up!
It's up! Luther says the trouble with this is we're curved in upon ourselves, tempted to believe that what we have to share, the information that we possess, is really the most significant thing in this three-hour car drive to Detroit, that everybody's just decided to come with me in the car so that they might hear everything about me. That's why, you know, T. S. Mooney said, Every pastor needs a wife if for no other reason than to keep him humble. That's why you need children that are not in awe of you.
They respect you, but they know you have warts and flaws, and they know that you daily have to repent of your sins. It's not easy, is it? Because a position of leadership gives you prominence. It gives you notions of significance.
And the more that is the case, the harder it is to deal with it. Charles Simeon, who exercised a phenomenally effective ministry for what, some fifty-four years in Cambridge? A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Highly influential, wonderfully effective, students hanging on his every word, and so on.
He received a letter from his good friend John Thornton, which reads in part as follows, and I'll wrap it up with this. Charles, watch continually over your own spirit, and do all in love. We must grow downward in humility to soar heavenward. I recommend you having a watchful eye over yourself, for generally speaking, as is the minister, so are the people. You get an arrogant dad. You get arrogant kids, by and large. You get a family that sits around and extols its significance.
You will find when those children go out into the community, they simply represent. That's why loved ones' grace is so important. He makes the sinner sad.
I'm a sinner, saddened by how easy I can take notions of significance to myself. And that, you see, is why if eldership is ever going to work, it has to work. In other words, in the same way that the wife says to her husband, Hey, wait a minute. It's the same way that the leadership has to say to one another, Hey, that's out of line. And it's not hierarchical.
It's like this. I said I wouldn't tell this story in the second service, but I'll tell it now in any case, because I think it makes the point as strongly as anything I can give you. In the course of the elders' meeting, I had occasion to point out to one of the elders where I thought he was largely out of line, and I did so with a measure of effectiveness, I thought. It wasn't well received, either by him or by anybody else, but I hadn't really regretted it.
The next morning, I got a telephone call from one of my fellow elders. The elders said, you know, what you did, what you said last night was actually true, but the way you said it was wrong. The context in which you did it was wrong. You should have said that one-on-one to that guy. You shouldn't have done it in front of everybody else.
She humiliated him in front of everybody else. And then he said, I want you to phone him up and apologize. And then he said, and once you've done that, I want you to phone me back and tell me that you've done it. And I told him, blow it out your ear. No, I didn't.
But the reason I could say that I did is because that was my first. That was my knee-jerk reaction to it while I held the phone out here. Do you think I've done I'm this, I'm that, and you're gonna phone me up? And then I realized, this is a pivotal moment in your life. This is God's way of teaching you how this thing works.
It's a lesson you're gonna have to learn and learn and relearn. And in the goodness of God, these are the men who are my fellow elders in this place. And just in case you ever wonder if I have a free pass amongst these guys, the answer is no. I love them.
They love me. We are accountable under God, to his Word, and to one another. And you should be glad of that, because ultimately, every problem in the local church may be traced to defective leadership.
May God help us. I hope that Alistair's transparent example from his own life helps all of us understand how we can more effectively pray for our pastor. You're listening to Truth for Life. Alistair Begg is outlining for us characteristics we should look for in church elders.
And keep listening. Alistair will be back to close today's program with prayer in just a minute. In addition to praying for your pastor, you might want to make sure your pastor knows about the Basics Conference.
It's back this year. Basics 2022 will take place May 2nd through the 4th. This is a conference to equip and encourage pastors and men involved in church leadership.
And the theme is, very simple, Back to Basics. Alistair will be speaking along with guests Toni Morita and John Woodhouse. If you're in ministry, you can register online at BasicsConference.org.
By the way, Toni Morita, one of the speakers at the Basics Conference, is also the author of the book we are recommending to you today. The title of the book is Love Your Church, Eight Great Things About Being a Church Member. Love Your Church presents a number of ways you can contribute to the overall well-being of your entire church community. When you read the book, you'll not only learn more about the importance of church membership, but the chapters on caring and serving. Explore how each of us can serve our congregation in ways that might not seem obvious. For example, Toni Morita writes about how important it is for church members to care for others who've strayed or who have sinned by guiding them back through a process of restoration.
This is a role you might not have thought of, but as Toni points out in the book, it may be a role for which you are well suited. The book Love Your Church explains a number of other similar opportunities that might inspire you to be more fully engaged as a member of your local church community. You can request the book Love Your Church when you give a donation to Truth for Life today.
You can give through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Tomorrow is the last day we'll be featuring this book, so contact us today. And while you're online, if you'd like to own all of the messages in this series from the Apostle Paul's letter to Titus, it's available to purchase on a USB. The title is Get It Right, and it's available for just five dollars at truthforlife.org slash store. The series is also available to listen to online or on our mobile app for free.
You can download these messages as well at no cost. Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. It would be wrong for us to think that just getting the structure right is the answer, because it isn't. You could have a bad structure with Spirit-filled people, and it would be better than a good structure with people who were not living in obedience to God's Word and filled with the Holy Spirit. And so we bring ourselves back to the prayer of our hearts that the Spirit of God would fall upon us in leadership and as a church. And so may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with us as we seek to follow Christ, obey his Word, and live attractive lives before a crooked and perverse generation. And may grace, mercy, and peace be our portion today and forevermore. Amen. I'm Bob Lapeen. We hope you'll join us tomorrow. We'll hear what the Apostle Paul identifies as the five must nots and the six musts that we should look for when we're appointing church elders. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
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