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21st Century Stewards Part 2

Wisdom for the Heart / Dr. Stephen Davey
The Truth Network Radio
January 20, 2025 12:00 am

21st Century Stewards Part 2

Wisdom for the Heart / Dr. Stephen Davey

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January 20, 2025 12:00 am

In a world increasingly skeptical of authority, the church faces a critical question: can its leaders be trusted? Paul’s letter to Titus speaks directly to the integrity required of those leading the church. Today, Stephen Davey delves into what it means to be a faithful steward of God’s household. The qualifications Paul outlines for elders and overseers aren’t about wealth or power—they're about character. It's not just about what leaders do, but about who they are, both in public and in private. In this episode, we’ll explore why qualities like humility, restraint, and generosity are so crucial for church leaders—and why they matter for every believer. Whether you’re in a leadership role or a supportive role in your church, this message is a call to live with integrity, to model Christlikeness in every aspect of life. Integrity builds trust, and trust is the foundation of a flourishing church. Listen in to be challenged and inspired to live as a steward who honors God in all things.

Listen to the full-length version of this sermon: https://www.wisdomonline.org/teachings/titus-lesson-06

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I am personally grieved how pastors and elders are now bragging about their own breweries in their basements, their own brew, as if this is some kind of great pastoral badge of relevance and liberty. Listen, sometimes our liberty strangles common sense. You know, all these people following you. It isn't how close I can get you to the precipice of something that can destroy you, but how far away from it I can lead you.

Thank you. Everyone loves the idea of liberty and being free to make choices regarding our behavior. That's true for pastors and elders as well. Freedom is alluring and we crave it. Sometimes when thinking about personal liberty, what gets lost is the importance of acting in the best interest of others. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey returns to Titus 1, where the Apostle Paul gives the qualifications for church elders. What we'll see today is that spiritual maturity values the good of others over personal liberty. That means that those who lead must sacrifice liberty.

Here's another negative. An elder is not controlled by anger. Paul described it in verse 7 as quick-tempered. It's important to understand that Paul in these is referring to a way of life.

This is their character. In fact, there are two primary Greek words for anger. One word translated anger in your New Testament is the word thumos. We get our word thermos from it. It refers, however, to something differently than we would use a thermos for, but it refers to a fire that quickly blazes up and just as quickly subsides, like throwing straw or newspaper on a fire.

You get that whoosh, and then as quickly it's gone. The second word is orgalos, which is an anger that a man actually nurses internally so that he can keep it warm. That's the word Paul uses. Paul isn't referring to someone with an occasional burst of anger, but to a person with a propensity to anger. In fact, he enjoys it, and he enjoys it so much he keeps it on the stove, so to speak. Warm, ready to burst into flame at any moment. In other words, this is a person known as an angry man. He has an internal inclination toward anger more than any other emotion, and that's how he kind of responds to life with anger. And the reason this is so critical is probably obvious.

Let me simply say it. Working with people provides so many wonderful opportunities to get what? Angry, right?

Are you going to laugh? You serve in that classroom. You coach that team. You manage that department.

You've got more than anybody else a thousand good reasons to lose your cool. And if losing your cool is your propensity, everyone loses because the role of leadership means you're going to be able to add resentments upon resentments, hurt upon hurt, anger upon anger. As one author said, even when everything in the church seems to be going in the wrong direction and people are critical or indifferent, the qualified elder must guard himself against a spirit of hostility and resentment and anger. It's frustrating, isn't it, those of you who lead?

Reminds me of what another author wrote rather humorously. He said every leader in here can identify with this truth, that being a leader is kind of like running a cemetery. There are a lot of people under you, but nobody is listening. So what are you going to do about it?

What are you going to do about this? Well, let's go all the way up to Christ, the ultimate model shepherd. Can you imagine the irritation of spending three and a half years in the same room with Peter and Thomas and Judas? In fact, to come to the end of your ministry and the disciples are debating and arguing about who's going to be the greatest in the coming kingdom. It's going to be me. No, it's not going to be me. It's not going to be you. It's going to be me. No, here are the reasons it's going to be me. And what does Jesus do?

No. He gets a towel and a basin of water and washes their feet. And they never forgot that. And at the utmost of his agonies while he is being crucified, while he is receiving the worst offenses possible, he prays, Father, forgive them.

They really don't know what they're doing. Luke 20, 30, 34. None of us have been offended like Christ. None of us have been hurt like Christ. None of us have been betrayed like Christ. So it's as if Paul is saying, this is the kind of pattern we're all to follow.

And I want some human agents that are dedicated passionately to following this model and then turning around and allowing the body to pattern after them. Third, an elder cannot be influenced by alcohol. Okay, this ought to be interesting, right? What does he mean? Paul writes, a steward of God cannot be addicted to wine. I've never met anybody who said I'm addicted to wine.

I've met a lot of people who drink, but I've never met anybody, apart from those who are recovering alcoholics who will admit it was a problem. What does the word here imply? The word Paul uses carries the idea of continually being alongside of wine, literally someone whose elbow is at the wine. In other words, he's saying wine is not to be seen as his companion. If you study biblical instruction regarding alcoholic drinks, as we call them, you'll soon discover that abstinence is not mandated. In fact, there isn't a verse that states that Christians should abstain from all wine at all times. What you do find are strong exhortations, prohibitions against strong drink and much wine. An elder isn't to be then perceived as someone who is under the influence of much wine, which would take quite a bit of wine as you understand what the New Testament wine was like, by the way. In fact, what's most often overlooked in this issue of understanding is what wine was like in Paul's day. Most people never stop to consider through study that the wine of the New Testament days is not the same wine of Harris Teeter today.

Far different substance. In fact, we know from history that wine was basically purified water. Pliny, the first century historian, referred to wine as eight parts water, one part wine or alcoholic or fermented juice.

We have so much data from the first century. We've got recipe upon recipe. The wine of the New Testament days. In fact, the average mixture was about three to four part water to one part wine. It was effectively purified water that gave it taste and cleansed it as a disinfectant, which explains then, by the way, why Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for your what? For your stomach's sake. I know a lot of people that are drinking for their stomach's sake and they go right to this verse. What they overlook is the fact that Timothy in the first century was so concerned about his reputation as a young elder that he not be viewed in any way as attached to wine or ever under the influence that he swore off on any of it all and began drinking straight water. Not a good idea.

He wasn't safe. In Santiago, I got a bottle of water and used it in my hotel room to brush my teeth and to drink. You go to a restaurant and you order a bottle of water. If they bring you that bottle of water and you turn that cap and it doesn't snap open, you ask for another one because they probably filled it with a tap and put the lid on. All it takes, in fact, I take a shower, I close my eyes, and my mouth so tightly my lips will hurt. Why? Because one drop can change my mission experience for a week. Timothy, you need fermented wine.

You need water cleansed from contamination. One Bible scholar who studied the making of wine in the first century made the comment that the average first century person would have needed to drink 12 eight-ounce glasses of wine to get the same amount of alcohol one could get today in one martini. Wine today, the wine of Harris Teeter, is comparable to the strong drink of the early centuries which the Bible clearly forbids.

Why? Because it so quickly can bring you under its influence and impair your judgment, and for those of you who will lead, you can never have your judgment impaired. I mean, I ask people in my own greenhouse class because this subject comes up, is there at any point a time in my life when you would be comfortable with me or any of our elders being under the influence, slightly inebriated?

No. What I find then personally tragic is in this age we live in when we now know the effects of it all, half the murders, suicides, accidental deaths or related alcohol, one in four families we will deal with, deal with some kind of substance abuse, often alcohol. It's one of the largest health problems in America, destroying families, reducing life expectancy, and on and on and on. Why would any elder in this culture defend it but rather instead model a pattern that stays as far away from it as possible? You add to that the fact that Paul and Timothy and Titus had virtually nothing much to drink, and we have hundreds of choices which will never impair our judgment, never cloud our thinking, and further never hinder our testimony or credibility and never tacitly endorse to some younger believer or maybe even a younger person and cause them to stumble, Paul wrote, to be ruined, this brother for whom Christ died. 2 Corinthians 8. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 31 along these lines, and it's not for kings to drink wine or for rulers to crave beer, the NIV translation for strong drink, lest they drink and forget what is decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. In other words, those who lead, you gotta be careful.

You have people under your leadership. See, I think Timothy was onto something. That's usually kind of thrown under the bus in the debate.

There's your model. It isn't how much you can drink without offending somebody or needing a ride home, but how far away from it you can stay. And Paul writes here not addicted to wine. Literally he's saying someone who's not always seen as drinking because he would have to continually be drinking, and this man perhaps could with his elbow at the table so that he would drink those 12 glasses in the daytime so that he could get that buzz and be impaired.

I am personally grieved and amazed, and I've watched it happening over the last five, six, seven years, how pastors and elders are now bragging about their own breweries in their basements, their own brew, as if this is some kind of great pastoral badge of relevance and liberty. Listen, sometimes our liberty strangles common sense. And whether you agree or not, I want you to know you're not gonna find that here. For no other reason than that of influencing others toward holy living, our elders and our deacons and our leaders and our teachers are asked to model not how much they can handle, but how clean a life can you live.

You got all these people following you. It isn't how close I can get you to the precipice of something that can destroy you, but how far away from it I can lead you. You see, people are gonna want to excuse all kinds of things.

This isn't just the same. The only issue, you got gluttony, you got media choices, certainly pornographic material which would flow into sensuality in movies and in music and the use of drugs. People are gonna want to take all that and put it into Romans 14 and say, listen, it's my prerogative, man. Don't put me into legalism.

I'm under the constraints or the release of liberty. An elder does not think like that. He's thinking, what would be best for the flock? What would be the best pattern of living for those who follow us?

What would protect them the most? That's how an elder thinks, who's a genuine shepherd. And by the way, every father and mother needs to take note as well. What you allow on television is gonna become the standard and they'll stretch it, they'll stretch it, they will stretch it.

What you listen to endorses for them a world of whatever that world is, where they came from, whatever you have in the refrigerator is gonna be their starting place, not their ending place and they're gonna take it further than you may have ever dreamed. For the elder, he must not allow anything to cloud his mind or captivate his senses and he wants to be sensitive to that. Number four, the Pope goes on to say that an elder cannot be recognized as abusive. He writes in verse seven, not pugnacious.

Interesting word, it originally referred to a striker, somebody who punches with his fists. In the apostolic canon, you go back a number of centuries and you'll find this interesting prohibition. I found it enlightening of what must have been going on and I quote, we order that any bishop who strikes an erring disciple should be deposed. So it must have been such a problem.

You get out of line, whack, that they had to come up with this injunction. The word came to refer to violence not only in action but in speech. It came to refer to what we call a browbeater.

It's not physical assault but verbal assault, someone who berates and verbally abuses another. And this character, by the way, would become so critically important for the elder, right, because he's gonna handle highly emotional conflict. He's gonna present himself oftentimes in the middle of a shouting match. He may be the recipient of all the shouting. He's gonna be in the middle of tense situations where he's gonna act as a referee and what does the crowd often do to the referee? They hate him more than anybody else.

He's gotta have a bodyguard to get back to his car, right? What Paul is saying here then is that if an elder is given to respond to abuse with matching abuse, oh, you're saying that to me? Well, I got a few things to say to you with the same attitude and the same spirit. And he kinda shouts his way from one argument to another. If he berates and belittles others into submission, he is not qualified as a pattern of life in modeling Christ's response, who when he was reviled did not revile in return. One author wrote, If he will treat the sheep roughly and hurt them, if he will in his frustration respond to the sheep with verbal assaults, he cannot be one of Christ's under-shepherds. Another author commented on this text by writing, True spiritual authority has nothing to do with a vicious tongue or white knuckles and clenched fists.

An elder then, as a pattern of life and character, is not to be blinded by arrogance, controlled by anger, under the influence of alcohol, recognized as abusive. And one more, he cannot be driven by affluence. Paul writes at the end of verse 7, Not fond of sordid gain. Paul is referring here to an elder whose life is all about money.

No matter how he makes it, doesn't matter, honestly, be dirty money, whatever, as long as he gets it. Money dictates his character. He then represents not the spirit of Christ, but the spirit of materialism.

The spirit of the world. Everybody around him knows that making money is really his chief love in life. And maybe this is one of the reasons this kind of characteristic appears on this list here with Titus, because the Cretans, those who lived on the island of Crete, had a reputation for greed. In fact, one Roman poet living around the time of the Apostle Paul said that the Cretans are as eager for money as bees are for honey.

So it's as if Paul is warning Titus not to choose a Cretan to be an elder, or at least make sure the Cretan has the Crete kind of squeezed out of him as he's reformed by the spirit of God first. If they haven't had that squeezed out, if they haven't decided to battle it and fight it, there are going to be a lot of implications. Their ministry is going to favor the wealthy.

They might be in somebody's back pocket. They're going to treat people for what people can give them. They're going to be looking for the perks in every opportunity. They're going to make decisions based on money and not ministry. The most hidden motive for serving the flock is not in feeding the flock, but in fleecing the flock, which is the opposite of the nature of an elder's ministry, which is to give, to be generous, to manage funds, assets, to steward for the benefit of those under their care.

This with a clenched fist, but this with an open hand. In fact, the very next phrase in Titus 1 is a direct contrast to greed. We don't have time now, but he's going to say, but be hospitable. Don't be greedy and care how you get the money you get. Don't be greedy, but be hospitable. What is a person with a gift of hospitality or those given to hospitableness?

Those leaders must evidence it. What is their attitude? Hey, everything, I've got yours. I know people in the congregation that reflect that so wonderfully. Their house, their car, their stuff, hey, you want it, you got it. Generosity and giving, according to Paul, and the Spirit of God speaking through him, should be the hallmarks of a shepherd's heart. He's effectively saying, don't be a greedy elder, pastor, bishop. Don't look at people as if you're looking at dollar signs.

Don't treat them like that. Be generous and giving. Is there anyone more generous than Jesus Christ, our chief shepherd? Does he not daily lavish us with his grace? Did you and I not get out of bed this morning and find deposited in our bank account of life a fresh deposit of mercy?

It's new every morning. Grace, love, and he constantly models that spirit and so must his under-shepherds for the body. Not stingy, not greedy, not shady, but generous, great-hearted, and giving.

Let's model that in the way we give to Christ, the way we give to each other, and the way we live, shall we? I want to close with an email I received from a teenager just a few weeks ago. I'll leave her name off. I'm sure she didn't expect me to read it, most of it, but I wanted you to hear how we might even be able to model some generosity today. The subject line of her email to me read, this is all in her subject line, my experience regarding a way in which Christians can improve their witness. She had my attention immediately. She wrote, you probably don't know who I am, but I've been attending Colonial ever since I was a baby, and we were in the old building.

Now I'm a senior in high school. I wanted to tell you about a conversation I had with a coworker this past Saturday. I work at the Eldorado on Tryon Road on Fridays and Saturdays as a waitress. Eldorado is a good spot for a lot of people to go after church because they have good prices for lunch, and it is right next to the church. I didn't say that because I'm looking for a deal after church when I go over there. She said, I know Colonial isn't the only church that goes over there, but I know a lot of Colonial people do. I was talking to a coworker recently, and I mentioned how I bet Sunday is a good day to work because it's really crowded from all those people coming after church. He told me that in fact it's not because he never receives good tips.

I'm sure you know as a waiter or waitress the majority of our salary comes from tips. I remember him very clearly saying, they go over there and they get blessed by God, and then they can't even come over here and pay for our service. He claimed that was the reason he never went to church. Do I believe that is the only reason?

No. There must be something else going on, but nonetheless it is still a bad witness. One of the other waitresses calls us Christians freeloaders, and the worst is when somebody leaves a gospel tract instead of a tip.

Don't do that, by the way. I think if you want to leave a tract, you ought to leave a really big tip inside so they'll read it. As I said, I know Colonial isn't the only church that goes over there.

Nonetheless, Colonial is a big church. You can do what you like with this information. You can keep it yourself, share it with a Bible study, whatever, but I wanted to tell you because you could make a big difference. In my opinion, Christians should always tip well, especially when they come in their dress clothes on Sunday for lunch because it's obvious that's where they came from.

And if they can't afford to tip well, they ought to get fast food or eat at home. There you have it. She says at the end, Like I said, you can do whatever you decide you want to do with this information. Thank you.

I thought I'd tell a few thousand people today that information. Well, that's the spirit to model, right? And with this as our closing challenge, let's model the spirit of Christ as a flock, certainly those who will lead the flock. We are stewards in the 21st century. We are slaves of God, led to manage the church which belongs to God.

We cannot be driven by affluence, recognized as abusive, influenced by alcohol, controlled by anger, or blinded by arrogance. That was wisdom for your heart today from God's word. Today's message from Stephen Davey is called 21st Century Stewards. It comes from his current series entitled The Shepherd's Mantle. The series is from Titus 1 and is based on Paul's list of qualifications for church leaders. If you're a pastor or elder in your church, we have a resource that I think could be a real blessing for you. Stephen, you've written a book through this entire epistle of Titus. Yes, I think it's about 300 pages if anybody had dared sit down and read it, but it's a commentary. It also involves all the illustrations and principles, and I think it'll be helpful.

If you'd like that, you could give us a call here at the studio, and we'll help you out. You know, Scott, when you deal with chapter 1 of Titus, obviously it's dealing with church leadership, and the goal that God has in mind is for church leaders to minister faithfully to the flock because the flock is growing in their understanding of the word of God, and that's why we must be who we are to be and teach the way we should teach, which is directly from God's word. The lives of the flock are at stake, and we're challenged to feed them. If you'd be interested in this resource for yourself or if you'd like to buy a copy for your pastor, give us a call right now at 866-48-BIBLE. It's always encouraging, Stephen, when we hear how people are growing from the teaching ministry that we provide, and you've heard from some people recently.

Yeah, amen. It's a thrill to have sheets of paper here in front of me with lots of names and states and even countries, but the things that are written that really touch our hearts, friends, are comments like Maria, who writes from San Diego, California. The teaching that you provided on forgiveness helped me reconcile with my estranged sister after years of silence. I'm now applying biblical truths daily, and my spiritual life has never been stronger.

Maria, we're thrilled to hear that. Samuel writes from Cape Town, South Africa, As someone new to Christianity, this ministry has been a lifeline. Step-by-step teaching through the Bible is clear to me, and I've learned how to read Scripture with confidence. I now understand God's word in a way that gives me hope and direction. For example, the series on the book of Genesis taught me about God's sovereignty, even in the hardest circumstances.

When I lost my job, I leaned on those truths and found peace instead of fear. Thank you for this ministry. It's a gift to me and to the rest of the world. Thank you so much, Samuel, for writing all the way from Cape Town, South Africa. We're so glad you found wisdom way over there in Africa, and thanks for taking the time to write. Friends, we would like to hear from you. You can send us an email if you address it to info at wisdomonline.org. I hope we hear from you today. Please join us again here next time for more wisdom for the heart. Thank you.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-20 00:14:48 / 2025-01-20 00:25:21 / 11

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