Christ Leads His Church

Why does Paul think that we need to be told, given special attention to the fact that this is an important thing that we have to understand? Let's look at the context here very quickly. If we move up in your Bible there to the end of chapter 2, the prior context is about why women can't hold the office of teacher. So he says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." Our society often hears these verses, and they think that this is a kind of sexist restriction on women based on disparaging comment about their mental abilities. I don't think that's what it is. It is a restriction, but if you look at this, it's even a worse commentary on men. Eve was deceived. What she did was wrong, but she didn't realize it. Adam knew he was disobeying, and he did it anyway. Worse, because God made Adam responsible for leading Eve, he failed doubly, because he failed as a moral agent in his own right. He sinned, he disobeyed God, and he failed as a leader. So if women are excluded from teaching because of their connection to Eve, then it seems like Adam's behavior ought to matter for men, right? Paul is telling Timothy about how leadership in the church is supposed to work and it looks like neither men nor women would be qualified. So what do we do? I think this trustworthy saying is intended to give encouragement to men who wish to do their part to reflect the second Adam in being good leaders. So that's the prior context. If we look at what comes after, we have this list of qualifications preceded by the word, therefore. That's a clue to us that if we're going to understand this trustworthy saying correctly, the obvious next question is going to be about the qualifications of overseers. So if we, if our interpretation of what this trustworthy saying means doesn't immediately make us wonder, so how do you get qualified for this? Then we've missed something. Okay, first claim, the office of an overseer is good. This is gonna be most of our time today because we need to understand what this sentence says, then what it means, and then we're gonna figure out how to apply it. We need not only to know that this is true, we know it's true, right, because God said it. In fact, God not only said it, but he told us that it was true. But we need to understand a little bit more about why it's true so that we can apply it well. Here's the first part that you have to really think about. We're going to talk about some grammar and vocabulary. I know, your favorite thing, right? What kind of sentence is this? It's not a command, right? It's also not really a rule. It looks like it's just a simple statement. It's a declarative sentence, a conditional statement, if you will. It's telling us something about the world. It's not giving us instructions yet. And this is going to be important here in just a moment. Notice there are two verbs in this passage. The first one is aspires, and the second is desires. The word desire here is just a generic word for wanting something. You all know what this means. Aspire is a little bit more interesting. It includes this notion of desire, but it also includes this sense of reaching out for something. It's not just that someone wants to be an overseer, it's that he's pursuing it. Now the words are synonyms, so they generally mean the same thing, but they're not exactly equivalent. And this helps us see that when Paul says the office of overseer, that's supposed to match up with the noble task. So if he's saying office of overseer, that's a noble task. There's two nouns. in our sentence. The first is overseer, and the second is task. In the original language, in the Greek that this is originally written in, office of overseer is just one word. It's just overseer. So it's something like, if a man aspires to overseer, so what's the office then? What are we talking about? In this church we teach that the office of overseer, pastor, and elder are all the same office. I'm going to spend just a little bit of time on this today because I want to make this case to you that the New Testament treats these three labels as different words for the same job. So in a parallel passage in Titus 1, one of the other pastoral epistles, Paul says this, this is why I left you in Crete, he's speaking to Titus, so that you may put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, if his children are believers and not open to charge of debauchery or insubordination, for an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined, He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction and sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it." Notice that Paul tells Titus that he's left him to ordain elders. But then in verse 7 he says that these qualifications he's listed so far apply to the elder for an overseer must have a particular character, and then he goes on. That is, the character of the elder matters because he is an overseer. Thus, the two terms apply to the same office. So what about pastor? So the passage that was read earlier in the service from 1 Peter 5, Peter, an elder, says, I exhort 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, shepherd the flock of God that is among you." This word shepherd is the Latin form of, or is the Anglo-Saxon form of the Latin word pastor. So this is actually something that gets us, can get us into trouble. We use words from lots of different languages and it can make us think that there's something extra going on here. The shepherd is just the word for somebody who keeps sheep. In Latin, pastor is the one who keeps sheep. It's the same job, just two different words. It's interesting, though, that when the New Testament talks about pastor, when it uses that word, it's usually a verb. So it's elders and overseers, pastor. So when we, in our church and our society generally, we talk about the pastors. But usually in the New Testament, we find it talking about the elders or the overseers, and the job they do is pastor. It doesn't mean we should stop calling people pastors. No, no, no, no, no. There's lots of jobs where the characteristic activity of that job is just what we call it. So think like teacher. What do teachers do? Well, they teach. What do judges do? They judge. What do pastors do? They pastor. It just turns out that there's some other words that also apply to the same office, and those words include elder and overseer. So that's my very brief case for saying that we should use any of these words interchangeably. So it makes perfectly good sense to call me Pastor Andrew, even though I'm not a staff pastor, because I'm an elder. and the elders are the pastors, and the pastors are the overseers, and all of these words are equivalent. Now, I admit, it's weird. It sounds weird for me to call myself Pastor Andrew, but we call it Pastor Keith. That's fine. We could also call him Elder Keith. I'm recommending we don't do that because it has a connotation, right? So there's a way that we talk about these offices, but we need to understand that when we're talking about these, when we're studying the scriptures, trying to understand what these people do, These words all are referring to the same thing. Sometimes there is a slight difference in emphasis depending on which word we use. So pastor, for example, implies care and provision and protection. It's what a shepherd does. The central task of shepherds is to guard the flock and to ensure that it's fed. Elder refers to men who are mature. So in the ancient Near East, and honestly, usually for us, age comes with a presumption for wisdom and good judgment. Now we know that you can be mature, you can be wise and have good judgment, even though you don't have a lot of years under your belt, as it were. Wisdom isn't limited to people who were born a sufficiently long time ago. In fact, Paul, in just the very next chapter in 1 Timothy 4, is going to tell Timothy that no one is allowed to despise him for his youth. So chronological age seems to be less important than maturity. We use the word elder in order to sort of flag that maturity is something that you're looking for. The word in our passage in this trustworthy saint is overseer. The Greek word is episkopos. which probably sounds like a word you've heard before. Episcopal, it's the name of a denomination. It combines two Greek words, the word for look and the word for over. So to understand it, it might help us to pick a different language. So not overseer, not episkopos, because we don't use that really. But Latin has these words too. If we combine the two Latin words for look and over, we get supervisor. Two observations about this. Supervisors are official roles in an organization. So when the ESV that you have perhaps in front of you calls this the office of overseer, that's a good translation because it emphasizes that this is an official job. This is part of the organization of the church. Well-functioning organizations need leaders, and these leaders have specified roles and authority. The other two terms for this office, the pastor and elder, don't necessarily come with this organizational comment. The other thing to notice is that supervisors lead in a distinctive way. Primarily they lead by directing and evaluating. So I take it that most of you have had a boss at some point. The boss decides what the project is. He decides what the team, what the group is going to aim at, and more or less how they're going to do so. They also decide whether something has been done well or not. So your supervisor perhaps does a performance review or they'll decide when the project is done. How many of you have ever done a job where you said, okay, I'm done. Then your supervisor comes along and says, no, you're not like that's part of his job. Supervisors often don't do the legwork. They support it. But if you've ever been a supervisor, you know full well that that's often a lot more work in and of itself. So there's our first noun, the word overseer. The second one is task. And this is just an ordinary word for a work or job. One further word, this word noble, an adjective from the sentence. What does this one mean? So as a first pass, the idea here is just good. But there's a couple of senses of good. So I could say, for instance, that God is good. Or I could say that some person is a good person. So in this sense, I'm talking about someone being morally good. The other sense of good, though, doesn't have this moral component. We can talk about having a good car or a good house. In this sense, we're talking about the kind of thing that has a function, that has a job to do. And when we say that it's good, we say that it does the job well. Or we might also be meaning that it's excellent or beautiful. So, for example, you might say that a baseball player has a good swing. It means that it functions well, but it usually also means that it has a kind of aesthetic component. It's pretty to look at. It's excellent in some way. This word noble is this second sense of good. It's this sense of being excellent or beautiful or functioning well. It doesn't, the verse then does not say that being an overseer is a morally good thing to do. It says that the office of overseer is an excellent job. So we might reword the whole sentence in this way. If a man pursues being a supervisor, he's wanting a good job. One further thing to note here, the verse does not say that someone must want the job in order to be qualified for it. We haven't gotten to the qualifications yet. It's not a rule. So we might build a parallel sentence with the same construction. If a man wants to be a husband, he wants something good. This is true. Proverbs tells us that whoever finds a wife finds a good thing. But someone doesn't need to want to be married in order for him to be qualified to be married. It might not be a really good idea to get married if you don't want to, but it's at least possible. You're not forbidden from it. Now, so if it's not a rule, if you don't have to desire the job, does that mean that we should conscript elders for the church? Should we go draft people and say, hey, you got the job now? No, not a good idea. And furthermore, the Bible tells us that we shouldn't. So again, the passage that was read earlier from 1 Peter 2, It continues saying, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you. We aren't going to draft elders, but God might. As we see here, God might want you to serve and you need to submit your desires to his will. But that's God's prerogative. It's not what the church will do. You notice that there is great kindness and wisdom here in Paul's inspired words. Remember the context we just talked about. Men naturally want to lead. That's how God made them. But they've just been reminded that they are descended from a guy who had literally every advantage one could ever want in his leadership, and yet he completely blew it. And as a result, the entire human race was plunged into sin. A godly conscientious man might think, you know, I'm pretty sure that I'm not as holy as Adam was there in the garden, and I'm pretty sure that it's a lot harder to lead now than it was then. I'm pretty sure too that I shouldn't trust my own motives so much. I'm worried that I just, you know, mess things up the same way Adam did, and I love the church too much to do that. And you might think, I think I shouldn't do this job. I think Paul here, under the inspiration from the Spirit, is encouraging men who are thinking this way to think again. It's a good job. Why is it good? What makes it good? Well, there's a couple of, I think, fairly straightforward things. Organizations need leaders. It's just true. So groups just have leaders. It just happens, right? The challenge then is having good ones. So anytime you have a group of two, at least, you have an irresolvable disagreement about what to do. Someone's opinion has to take priority. And the others either have to just submit or stop participating in the group. That means there's just going to be a leader. Someone's opinion gets preference. That's part of leading. It may not always be obvious who that person is because you might not disagree that much, but someone is going to be in charge. The more people there are in a group, the more likely there will be disagreement about what to do and thus a greater need for a leader. You get five people and try and make any decision as a group of five and it might take you a while. But also when the wrong person is at the top, the wrong person is the leader, or when he or she leads badly, things can go very wrong. So it really matters to have good leaders. Back in the Old Testament, David at the end of his reign says this in 2 Samuel 23. It says, the spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His word is on my tongue. The God of Israel has spoken. The Rock of Israel has said to me, when one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth. David knows what he's talking about at this point in his life. He has seen good and bad leaders. He has been a good leader and a bad leader. and has seen those consequences. And he is able to say, when someone rules well, it is good, not just for him, but for everyone that he leads. The leaders in the church have extra value beyond just the sort of organizational things. They're not merely there for resolving disagreement and coordinating activities, although there is some of that that happens. Church leaders watch for our souls, as Hebrews 13 tells us. This idea of watching is connected to the protection that we've mentioned. It's like a soldier who keeps watch or a shepherd who keeps watch. This is, in part, what the entire church does. We covenant together to watch over one another. but our leaders have a special weight of this responsibility. The writer to Hebrews concludes from this that we should submit to our leaders, not just because things run better when we do, but because they protect us. It's their job to keep an eye on us, to keep an eye on the dangers, and to steer us away from harm. That's good. It's good for us. It's how God made it. So there's my case for my first claim that the office of overseer is good. The second one is the desire to be an overseer can be good. Notice that this trustworthy saint does not say that the desire to be an elder is good. It doesn't say that it's bad either. The office is the thing that's good. But it doesn't say whether the desire is good. If you think for just a moment about this, this makes sense, right? Not everyone who wants to be in charge wants to be in charge for good reasons. There are men who very much would love the job of being in charge at church or anywhere else for that matter, who really shouldn't have the job. If someone likes the job, for instance, the job of overseeing a church because he likes bossing people around, probably not a good thing. Furthermore, if we look through the New Testament, we find lots of examples of false teachers. Apparently these men were pretty natural leaders, right? They'd almost have to be because they get people to follow them. And yet they typically wanted the job for the wrong reasons. Usually it was because they would get rich by doing it. They are leaders, but they aren't the right kind of leaders. Their desire for the office is not a good thing. We can be fooled, I think, by the abuses of leadership, of which there are many, into thinking that the office itself is bad. Sometimes men who shouldn't have this job get it anyway, and perhaps because they really want it. And then they mishandle the responsibility and abuse their authority. Our temptation in these cases is to disparage the office itself, to think that all authority, or all authority in the church is bad. But the desire to be an overseer can be a good desire. You say, okay, what does it take for it to be a good desire? Well, in general, when we think about our desires, what does it take for a desire to be a good desire? I think two things are worth noting at the moment. First, a desire needs to be for the right object. You can genuinely desire something, even really, really desire it, desire it an awful lot, and still be wrong to pursue that thing. Some things are just forbidden. We cannot forget this. Our culture will often tell us that any sincere desire, any sincere, especially intense desire, just can't be wrong. How could it be wrong because I want it so much? Even when that desire is for something that God explicitly forbids. Furthermore, we're also, I think probably too often familiar with times where we desire something that we think is going to be good, and then we find out later that it really wasn't. Thankfully, the office of overseer is not like this. We're not going to be disappointed with the object of our desire. It's a good job. A desire to be a good desire needs to be, the desire needs to be in the right way. You need to desire the right thing in the right way. Just because the office of overseer is a good thing in itself doesn't mean that anyone who desires it is doing something good. So here's an example of the kind of person who might want to be an overseer but shouldn't. A woman. Paul just told us this. Now, look, a woman might really want to lead, and in fact, she might be really good at it. But if she deeply desires the office of overseer and does not strive to submit her desires to God's rules, then she's sinning. It's a good thing to desire, but not for her, because that's not the right way. If a man wants to be an overseer without wanting to be morally qualified for the job, then he wants it in the wrong way. Just because you want it a lot and just because it's a good thing and you want it a lot doesn't mean that you should be desiring it. There are some restrictions on this. And there's plenty of other things we could say here, but I'm going to move on. There is another aspect of desire that we should consider. When a man desires to be an overseer, what is he actually desiring? Is it okay to want to be in charge? Is it okay to want the title of elder or pastor? Can a man have any uncertainty about his desires or any reservations about the wisdom of taking on this role? Look, it would be pretty weird if you found a guy who wanted to be an elder, and when you asked him why he wants it, he says, well, I just can't wait to experience all the difficulties and the heartache, the criticisms, the frustrations, the sharing of burdens with members and the congregation. Let's do it. Someone like that is pretty strange. Probably not actually the person you want to be in charge. And yet, if you find someone who understands that he will experience those things and still seems to be pursuing the leadership in spite of them, that's a good sign. He doesn't need to know all of the details, but he's not naive. In fact, I think it's God's great kindness to men who would take on this role, as with many other roles, but especially this one, to not tell him in advance what he's going to have to deal with. I mean, we have a number of either current or former pastors in our congregation, go talk to them sometime and say, if you had known when you started your ministry what you would have to deal with, would you have done it still? It might be hard for them to answer that question, to be honest. But here's the thing. Most of the really valuable activities we can do require us to commit to them before we can see their value clearly enough. Think about a young man who's preparing for his wedding. He wants to be married. He wants to be a husband. Does he know what that will require of him? just barely, and probably only in very generic terms. It is going to be both harder and more rewarding than he can possibly imagine right now. So how does he know to pursue it? He doesn't even know what he's aiming at, right? How can he come to understand what is good about marriage? I think first he's going to see others who have done it successfully. And second, he's gonna commit. By committing, he can learn by trial and error, if necessary, without having to always rethink whether he's actually capable of the job. If a husband, every time a husband messed up, he thought, man, should I have done this? It's gonna be a hard life. I think something similar is true about being an overseer in the church. You, by committing, you can mess it up sometimes knowing that this is what God wanted you to do. So the desire for the office of overseer is not necessarily good. The work is. It's a good job. One can aspire to the office and even commit to it without fully understanding what the role is going to require. We can know that the work can be done because others have done it and God commands it. And a man can commit like a soldier in the army. I have a friend who joined the military in June of 2001. I think a three-year tour. He thought it was going to be a nice job. He spent several months in Pakistan. He wasn't planning on that, but he was still committed to it. Sometimes that's the way it works. You commit and then you learn what you're getting into. So now you might say, how do I know whether someone is desiring the office of overseer in the right way and at the right time? Perhaps you're asking this about yourself. But we all need to know because we need to be able to evaluate whether some man in our congregation is being called out by God for this task. How do we avoid the men who want the job for the wrong reasons? This brings us to our third claim for this morning. The desire to be an overseer is good when it accompanies a life of exemplary holiness and service. Paul answers our question. There are essential qualifications for an overseer. We see these starting in verse two. We read it again really quickly. 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 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 a snare of the devil. I'm not gonna work through every item on this list and explain what they all are. I think most of them are pretty easy to understand. There's a couple that are a bit trickier, but we're not gonna stay here that long today. Just notice four things about the list. First, there are things we expect from an elder that aren't here. So for example, we'd expect an elder to be pretty consistent in Bible reading and prayer, right? It's not on the list. Why not? Well, I think the list isn't supposed to be comprehensive. Another reason to think that it's not comprehensive is the passage from Titus 1 that I read just a little while ago. They aren't identical lists. Now, they're very close, but they're not exactly the same. The second thing to notice is that there are the moral qualifications listed here, especially in verses 2 through 5. These are all public. It explains why things like personal devotion aren't here. These qualifications are intended to be the kinds of things that we can evaluate together. We can all see if someone is satisfying these. Third, notice that several of these qualifications seem to be on a kind of scale. So for example, in verse six it says, you must not be a recent convert. Well, how long ago, right? It doesn't tell us. And the reason I think is that for many of these, we need to use some wisdom and good judgment in order to decide whether someone is sufficiently characterized by this list. It's not, the rules don't apply themselves very easily. And fourth, notice that except for this one thing that says able to teach, All of these characteristics are ones that all Christian men should aspire to. They are simple marks of Christian maturity. Remember, the office of overseer is the office of elder. We're looking for mature men. And here's a list that gives you a sense of what it looks like to be a mature Christian man. When you're looking for an overseer, you look for one of those, plus someone who can teach. Also, as we look at this list, we can group these characteristics into four groups, I think. So first, we see a list of characteristics that a man must have. This is especially verse two. In verse three, we see a list of characteristics that this man must not have. So these positive and negative qualities are important. We're often tempted to emphasize one over the other. It's not enough that a man seems to lack obvious flaws. He needs positive virtues as well. And merely having these positive virtues isn't enough if he also has certain habits, if these virtues come with certain kinds of vices. If someone is a great leader and seems wonderful in lots of ways but doesn't satisfy one of these standards, that's not enough. This good and bad, having the good and not having the bad is just a mark of godliness. It involves putting off bad habits and putting on good ones. You have to have both. I'll comment very briefly on the able to teach. criterion. I think it is a special case. I think it has to mean that a man has some ability to explain and apply the scriptures. Now, I think this can take a number of forms. Other passages, the core requirement concerns evaluating the doctrine along with actually speaking it. For example, in the Titus passage from earlier, not every mature Christian man can do this, and that's okay. But let me also suggest that it's a good idea to let others evaluate your ability here. Men who I think are actually qualified on this point sometimes don't feel like it. And honestly, men who aren't qualified on this point frequently think they are. So let other people tell you if you're any good at this. Ask them to be honest. Go to somebody who looks mature, who you respect, and say, do you think I have this ability? And see what they say. The third thing to look at in these groupings, the third grouping is that a man must be a good leader in other ways, particularly in his household. So it's someone who manages his own household well. So does that mean that a single man can't be an overseer? I don't think so. Instead, I think it's a matter of demonstrating diligent competence in whatever leadership roles he already has. Often a man's circumstances will put him in a position to lead others, whether that's formally or informally, and without his necessarily volunteering for the role. One's household is a perfect example of this kind of thing. In these situations, or perhaps in other official duties, does this man lead well? That's who you want to find, the guy who's already good at it, has shown that he's good at this leadership, this oversight. And fourth, these last two characteristics from verses six and seven, I think are about protecting the man from the attacks that Satan will surely bring on those who serve the church. So a recent convert too quickly elevated may become proud, and a proud leader will be more than sufficiently destructive for Satan's purposes. Commentators will typically see the requirement in verse 7, this requirement for a good reputation, as part of the same principle. Even someone who's been gloriously converted but who has had a reputation for sin in his community will struggle to have an effective ministry. The fruits of conversion will need a chance to become manifest to those who formerly knew him. We want to welcome sinners into our church. But we need not and should not quickly elevate them to leadership, even if they are good natural leaders. It needs to be, we don't want our church to be the kind of place where people in the community say, they made who their pastor? That's not good. That's what Paul is trying to, is instructing us to avoid right here. Satan really wants to hinder the credibility of the church. and especially of its leaders. We should take care to prevent this wherever we can and have opportunity. I think it's not unusual or particularly surprising for someone who is truly qualified according to these standards to be uncertain about whether he is so. We each know the complexity of our own motives better than anyone else except God. This is why I think it's important that these qualifications are publicly visible. It allows both for saying to a man no, or maybe not now, but also for saying yes. It may be there are men here at Jefferson Park who you think should be leaders, but who don't think they want to do it. If they appear to be qualified, point this out to them. and encourage them. You don't have to evaluate their desire. You can evaluate the rest of the qualifications, and your encouragement may be the call they need to hear from God to take this responsibility. God can genuinely call people who don't think they want the job. God called Moses, and what was Moses' first response? I don't wanna do it. And what was God's response? Tough. I'm calling you. Saul, the first king of Israel, was the same way. Where is Saul when the prophet comes to anoint him? He's hiding. It doesn't look like he wants to do it. What about someone like Jeremiah? God comes to Jeremiah and says, I'm calling you. And Jeremiah's two arguments against this are, I don't want to and I'm too young. And then he wrote two books of the Bible and had an effective ministry, a very hard one, but a genuine ministry that we still benefit from. So what now? Some applications. What implications are there for those of us who believe this teaching, that this office of overseer is a good job? Well, first, if you should be qualified, but don't really want to do the job, then why not? If someone offered you the chance to lead your favorite organization, would you take it? Suppose your boss came to you today and said, I'm going to bump you two levels on the corporate chart, organizational chart. Give you way more responsibility. Would you take the chance? Suppose someone came to you and said, you want to come work in the front office of your favorite sports team? Would you take it? Suppose someone said, you want to be on the city council in Charlottesville, would you do it? Do you believe that leading the church is better than any of those things? And look, of course, it's a possibility that you really can't take on another responsibility right now. No matter how good it is, that does happen. But be very, very sure that you've not misplaced your priorities. It's a good job. Here's a stickier one. It's a good job. We should pay it like one. I'm gonna talk about this because you don't pay me and because I know the guys who we do pay feel awkward talking about how much they're paid. We, as a church, we will never pay our staff elders more than they are worth. It's not possible. Their job is so good for us that we cannot pay them more than they are worth. To say otherwise would be to imply that we could put a price on being taught the word of God. Now, it's true that we can pay them more than we can afford. So you can pray for the elders and deacons as we make annual budgets. This is part of what we're trying to decide. How much can we actually afford? But we should be as generous as we can be, because it's a good job. If we pay them more than they need, trust them to be generous with their abundance, as you should be generous with yours. Paul talks about this later on in 1 Timothy, he alludes to Moses, and he forbids us from being stingy with our leaders. In fact, he says they are owed double honor, which Paul immediately ties to how much they are paid. Look, there may be some financial benefits to being a pastor, just as there were benefits to the ox when he was treading out the corn. That's okay, that's how God designed it. We should be as generous as we possibly can be with our staff. It's a good job. Now obviously not everyone can have this job right now, but we can still think about what the fact that this is a good job means for us individually. So men, if you're not qualified for this job, why not? Now it might be that you're not a good teacher and that's okay, but if you're qualified and you don't want it, why not? Make sure that you actually believe first that the office of overseer is good and that you're not resisting God's will right now. Wives, if your husband is qualified, don't forbid him to serve or otherwise make it hard for him to do so. If your husband serves as an overseer, it will be a significant commitment for you to ask the wives of elders now. They can tell you. Make sure that you're letting him manage the household well, joyfully submitting to him and empowering his leadership there. If you think, oh man, our house is chaos right now. I can't imagine him taking on this extra rule or extra responsibility. Well, remember that one of the qualifications is that he needs to be managing his household well. If it really is that chaotic, then he's not qualified and you don't have to worry about it. But that's not a good thing. If that's the way your household is, can I suggest that you come speak to one of the elders? Because we'd like to help you. Do you women, do you believe that being an overseer is a good job for your husband? Look, there will never be a convenient time for him to serve in this way. There will never be a time when there is less going on. Young men, if you are a man between the age of 13 and 30, would you stand up? All right, you can be seated, thanks. I'm talking to you all right now. The three great enemies that you have are the world, the flesh, and the devil. Honestly, I'd say right now, most of you are not struggling with the devil. If you're in your early teens, you're just now starting to learn what kind of sway your flesh has. If you are in your later teens, your 20s, you know the power of your flesh perfectly well, but you're also in a place where you're going to start being seduced by the world. The world is going to try to convince you to build your wealth, to build your influence, to become somebody, to enjoy all the pleasures that this age has to offer. Your flesh is going to try to make you disqualified And the world is going to try to convince you that some other job is better than this one. Resist these temptations, grow in holiness, and learn to lead. Young women, I'm not gonna ask you to stand. Begin preparing now to encourage and enable your husband, should God give you one, so that he could do this work. Cultivate the strength of character that you will need now so that you can be ready to sacrifice along with your husband for the sake of the church. Learn how you can empower your leaders by submitting to them now. Parents. Do not discourage your sons from ministry. Encourage them to pursue it, even vocationally. Don't overpraise wealth or public notice or getting a job that will be respected by the society. Teach your sons now how to serve the church. Don't teach your daughters that work outside the home, having influence or wealth in their own right, is always better than supporting a godly and faithful husband's ministry. Teach them to be strong in the face of adversity. Teach your children that the rewards of eternity will overpower anything they could enjoy in this life. Finally, church, let the overseers lead. That means you have to follow them. Allow them to delegate responsibility to you. Take initiative and be aware of how things work around here so that you can help do the work. Help make the job seem as good as you can. Overseers need encouragement. It's nice to hear compliments and thanks, don't get me wrong, but it's even better to have folks who eagerly want to learn and who gladly join in the work at hand, even if it's not their preference or their favorite thing to do. Be easy to lead and be on the lookout for good leaders. In fact, we're going to do that beginning even now. I think, I hope, that when you leave today, if you're a member of this church, you'll be handed a sheet in which you can nominate new elders and deacons. Read over it, think carefully about it, bring it back to us sometime in the next couple of weeks. As we conclude, Hebrews 13 tells us to obey those who have the rule over us. It says we're to obey those so that those who rule can give account of their work with joy and not with groaning. The church needs what God has ordained as qualified men who desire to lead. Thankfully God calls qualified men and gives them this desire to lead even hard congregations. But it will be no good for us if our pastors Stand before God one day and give an account of a faithful ministry in spite of us. Let us resolve to live together in a way that shows forth the goodness of God's design for his church. Would you pray with me? Our Father, we are.