65 - People in the Church, Part 2 | Qualifications of Church Leaders

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

We are going through our book, or our class actually, on Systematic Theology. We're going through this as an introduction.

This specifically is what we're calling God's Plan for the Ages, the Doctrines of the Church, and the

Doctrine of Last Things, those end time things. So we hope that you follow along with us, that you are not just jumping in in the middle, just saying.

It's always good to start our theology in the beginning, and we're like 65 lessons in. That's a lot, but you could pick up a syllabus at the website at strivingforeternity .org.

Just go to the store, pick up the Syllabus for Systematic Theology Book 4. That is our introductory class for Systematic Theology.

It has four volumes to it. The reason we're doing it that way is so that each volume, about 20 -25 lessons, and with that, each of the volumes or the syllabuses will cost $25.

So basically, we're trying to get it so that all the syllabuses would be about the same price. Today's lesson is going to be continuing what we started last class, which is lesson number two,

People in the Church. Now, as we mentioned last class, or we looked at last class, we looked at the membership of church, and we mentioned this week we're going to look at the officers.

So that's going to be the focus for tonight, or today, whenever you're watching, maybe even in the morning.

We're going to discuss the officers of the church. And there is, you know, we mentioned last week the responsibility that members have to their congregation, the fact that we want to keep the church pure, that we looked at the idea of church discipline, now we're looking at this idea of officers.

And here is the thing. When we talk about officers, we have to be aware that, well, not everyone's qualified.

Okay, now there are differing views. We're going to be looking at in the next lesson, we're going to look at different types of church government.

And within that, you're going to see different views of officers. Some churches, some of the

Presbyterian churches, would say that people should not be doing things like you shouldn't be partaking of the

Lord's Supper unless an officer of the church, a pastor of the church, is there.

Some of them will say that you can't even open air preach unless you're ordained. Some say that you can't publicly criticize other

Christians that say things in public unless you're ordained as a pastor. Now that's one extreme.

The other extreme would say that anyone can be a pastor. Anyone can get up, preach at a pulpit, anyone could just do because God has given each of us the

Holy Spirit and therefore each of us can just do that. You'll see a lot of people that start home churches.

They just start a church in their home typically, not always, but for a lot of people it's because they can't get along in church.

Because I find a lot of people, clearly not true for all home churches, but I know a lot of people that say they're part of a home church because they don't want the accountability of a church or they really have an issue.

I've seen a lot of guys that have pride issues and they don't like going to church because people point that out.

How dare they? Well, the reality is that they just set themselves up and say,

I'm a church. I knew one person who just basically preaches the gospel on the streets on Sunday instead of going to church and says, this is my church, here's my congregation,

I'm the pastor. It's like, that's not the congregation, they kind of come and go every week. So, when we talk about church, and this is one of the things

I have with guys that say that the street corner, preaching the gospel on the street corner is church, because the church is different.

The church has members. The church has pastors and deacons, has officers.

You don't have that on the street. Now, I understand there's some churches, as we mentioned in the last class, that don't have membership.

If you go to some of the Calvary chapels, for example, and I'm not pointing them out It's just that that's one of the things, they don't have a church membership.

It's not that I'm saying they're bad, it's not. But they don't have church membership. But they know who the members of the church are.

I mean, they may not have a role of people that they're members, but they know who's coming.

They have a membership that is looking to serve one another. So when we're saying membership, it's not that you've signed along a dotted line or something.

But there's officers as well. So let's take a look. We're going to spend a time, I'm going to go through some titles of the officers.

I'm going to explain them. And I'm going to spend a bulk of this time on the qualifications of the officers.

I'm going to get into some controversial things. Can women be in leadership? We're going to discuss that.

Yikes! Yeah, that's right. We're going to say what the Bible says.

I'm not going to give you my opinion, but we're going to point some things out that, well, it's probably going to upset some people on either side of the issue.

Just saying. Because I'm going to say things that when you go to the two extremes, both sides are not going to like what

I'm going to have to say. I'm just saying. But I'm going to tell you what I think the

Bible teaches. And if you're going to disagree with me, I don't mind. Disagree all you want. Just disagree with me with Scripture, okay?

Actually, if you want to disagree with me, you can actually email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

Send us an email, academyatstrivingforeternity .org. Email us the Scriptures you think would better support your position, alright?

So let's start as we look at officers. Let's start with the office of pastor, the pastors.

As we look at the pastors, if you look in your syllabus, which I hope you have. You know, I didn't mention this at the beginning, but the purpose of having the syllabus.

The syllabus is helpful because what it does is it allows you to fill in the blanks that we're going to have. It's also going to allow you to take your own notes.

It's going to allow for you to get more out of these classes. So I encourage you to go to Store Dutch Driving for Eternity, pick up the syllabus.

They're really not that much actually. We're thinking of starting to run some specials where you can get four syllabuses for $75 or all six that we have currently for $100.

So if you want to get them all and do that, it reduces the cost. But I don't think that's on the website yet.

Alright, so let's look at titles of pastor, alright? There are three primary names for the office of pastor.

And note that these are delineated because of the work of a pastor. That's your blank there, the work.

So the idea is that this is not three separate offices. Now this has been a thing that in some church governments, as we're going to look at next class, some church governments are going to have a different hierarchy based on these titles and they're going to make the different titles a different office.

I am making the case that I believe there is one office, one position of pastor.

You can call them bishop, you can call them elder, you can call them pastor or overseer. Those three titles are titles that describe the different type of work of this office.

Now I'm calling the office the office of pastor. I say that because I've seen a couple things.

So let's describe how this breaks down. You see in some churches where you have guys that are pastors but they're paid and pastors that are not paid.

And you know what a lot of them do? They differentiate them by saying these are pastors and elders. The pastors are paid and the elders are not.

And what they effectively do though, they don't plan to do that, they actually kind of make it that there's two, there's a hierarchy, there's two offices.

There's the office of elder and there's the office of pastor. And what inevitably happens is that the office of pastor is higher in the hierarchy.

Some churches are going to say there's the pastor and then associate pastors, same hierarchy happens.

Some churches are going to see that there's a pastor, there's an elder who's unpaid, a pastor who's paid and a bishop who's over the church, over several churches.

And that's when you start getting into denominations and things like that. So those are how you have that. So, the office of pastor.

We're going to start with this title of bishop and you're going to see as we look at this that there are times where all three of these are used interchangeably for the role of or the office of,

I should say, the office of the pastor. Okay, it's one office. But there's three different roles and these roles delineate the type or designate the type of work that each role has.

So, if you think about it this way, you have a person in a position that he is at times he's doing bishop type work, there's times where he's doing pastoring or shepherding type work, there's times where he's acting as an elder.

Okay, so with those, I want to break those three down so we see what those roles entail and realize that as I'm doing this, this is describing that one office.

And I believe everyone that has that title is in that office is equal in authority. I don't believe there's a hierarchy.

This is, obviously you're going to see where I'm going to differ from denominations that have a hierarchy above the local church.

I'm not saying it's unbiblical to do that. I'm just saying that the only two offices that I see in Scripture is the office

I'm calling pastor and the office I'm calling deacon. Okay, those two. I'm not saying that there can't be more organization, but I am saying that we have to be careful not to create hierarchy that's not in the

Scriptures. And so I see pastors, deacons, just that simple. And so we want to look at this, and I would argue, some may question and say, when you have multiple pastors, there should be the guy that's preaching at the pulpit.

He's the pastor. They call him a senior pastor nowadays as a title. The reality is that I call him the preaching pastor.

And there's some churches, like the brethren churches, where they have several pastors or elders and they just rotate around.

And these pastors, just each preaches a different week. So there is no one guy that's at the pulpit.

They're all at the pulpit. I'm not saying that's an unbiblical model. I don't know that it gives the best of consistency in the preaching.

But it is a model that they've done to try to show the equality of all of the pastors.

And so I like that aspect of it. I believe that there is one among equals in different areas of ministry.

So when I was pastoring at the church full time, I was the preaching pastor.

Now, when it came to decisions that had to do with preaching, what text

I'm going to preach, I had the say. Now, if we would all meet,

I would discuss it with all the other men. But as I did so, if it came to one guy wanted to have 1

Timothy preached, another guy wanted Titus preached, I would choose. If there was disagreement,

I would be the one to break the tie, kind of, if you think of it that way. We always tried to get unity, and for the most part

I think we did in a lot of areas. But if there was a tie that had to be broken, I would break it.

However, when it came to things like the nursery, well, the pastor over the worship had that responsibility.

And because he had that responsibility, anything dealing with worship, whether it was the songs that were sung, whether it was...

because we had under that area, it's just how we broke it down, there's nothing biblical about it, it's just how we broke it down.

Nursery was under that area. Well, he got to choose who would serve in nursery, who ran the nursery, things like that.

That was left for him. And if there was disagreement that someone would bring to me about something in the worship,

I would turn to that pastor and say, he's in charge of the worship service.

He makes that decision. You got to go and talk to him. And if they don't want to talk to him, he makes the decision.

And if there would ever be a disagreement made between me and another elder, or another pastor, sorry, this pastor over the worship would break the tie.

I mean, not that I could think of a time that that happened. But, you see, the idea being is that we're all equal. We're all equal in authority.

But there's going to be areas, I mean, we can't all be everything. So what we do, just because in larger churches, you have to have some way of managing things better.

And the way we chose to manage it was to break things up into teams. And so in doing so, what you have is you have teams of ministries.

And we'd have a pastor and a deacon over each team. That's how we chose to do it. So when you looked at it that way, you end up in a point where you have everyone's equal, but there's areas where one pastor's going to have just a little bit more authority in that area because he's focused in that area.

I hope that makes some sense. Alright, so let's look at the topic of Bishop. Bishop is the idea of an overseer.

If we look at 1 Timothy 3 .1, we see this is what

Paul says. And the saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

That's the term bishop. That word for overseer is the Greek word for bishop.

You also see this used in Philippians 1 .1. Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the notices, overseers and deacons.

Those are the only two offices that we see. The overseers and the deacons. And this is why

I make the case that we only have those two offices. This role of bishop or overseer, the significance of it is it deals with the administration of the church, the running of things, the organizing of things.

That's the mindset of the pastor should be an overseer, should be administering the church.

It's one of the reasons why a pastor must have the gift of administration, the ability to organize.

Because his role as an overseer is to oversee. Just saying.

Right? So he should be overseeing. The second is that of a shepherd or pastor.

Let's look at Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4 .11 -15. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherd teachers.

I actually, where you see the word and there, in the Greek the and is not there. Kaya is not there.

So it's just shepherd teachers. So many people take that as one office.

Okay, so you have an office of apostles. I think they no longer exist. The office of prophets,

I don't think that exists. The office of evangelists. Those are what we call missionaries today.

Then you have shepherds, teachers. Okay. To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, of the knowledge of the

Son of God, to mature to manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness, in deceitful schemes.

Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way to him as head into Christ.

So there, I'm reading that extended passage because when you see kind of that role that you see as the shepherd.

Alright, do you see that? His role is to do some feeding and some leading and some preaching.

Okay. I think all of that's involved. Those offices were given for that. But we see this also in Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 verse 28. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the

Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which obtains in your own blood.

Now here's why this one's interesting. Notice, pay careful attention to all the flock.

This is the idea of shepherding. And then in the same passage, it uses the word for overseer.

Okay. Let's look at 1 Peter 5, 1 and 2. 1 Peter 5, 1 and 2.

So I exalt the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the suffering of Christ as well as a partaker of 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 the shameful gain but eagerly.

So here you have all three roles in two verses but one passage.

He mentions elders, talks about the idea of shepherd the flock, and the oversight. So in here you have all three.

That's why I say these are interchangeable. These three offices are all interchangeable.

Okay. And the idea of pastoring or shepherding is the idea of feeding and leading and preaching, proclaiming the truth, teaching, helping the flock to mature.

The last role is that of elder, which is the idea of being worthy of respect.

And we already saw some of those, but let's look. Do we have Acts 14? And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the

Lord whom they believed. 1 Timothy 5 .17 Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the preaching.

You see the idea of the worthy of respect? Titus 1 .5

Thus, this is why we left you in Crete, so that you may put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

So as we see this, the significance of this is that typically, the typical title for a pastor is an office that's, an office to be respected by the membership.

There's a respect factor here. And we're going to look at the qualifications. I'm going to hold off on the qualifications because I'm going to try to bring the qualifications for pastors and deacons together in one.

So I want to go through the two offices and then we're going to look at their qualifications. But what you see there is that the qualifications are relating to their personal character, their family, and their ministry.

Those three elements. And as you're going to see in just a few minutes, the majority of it deals with the personal character issue.

I find that interesting. It's less about the ministry, less about their family. But most of the qualifications deal with character, how you behave.

So let's look at the deacons. You can look in detail of this, really in 1

Timothy 3, 8 -13. This is where it will deal.

But the first deacons, we think, may have been in Acts 6. And we'll get there. So again,

I'll look at the qualifications in a bit. But you're going to see the same thing with the deacons. Personal character, family life, ministry.

So in 1 Timothy 3, 13, there is a reward to being a deacon.

For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence that is in Christ Jesus.

So you see that there is a reward given. They'll obtain an excellent standing before God.

They'll obtain assurance from God. There's a selection process.

I think that I would say the first we have is in Acts 6, verse 2. And the twelve summoned the full number of disciples and said, it is not right that we should preach, that we should give up preaching the

Word of God to serve tables. Now, to serve tables, you go, well, how's that a deacon? Well, that's actually the name deaconos.

Deaconos means to be a waiter of tables, to wait on tables. That's the idea. And so what you see,

I think, in Acts 6 is that the apostles said, look, let's string up, gather men together and let's have people that are going to be the waiters of tables.

So I think what you have here, and this is where I make a distinction, the way I think I see this in Scripture, is that the church selects from among themselves men that they think would make good deacons and the pastors of the church would end up, from those people that the congregation brings up, the names the congregation brings up, the pastors would select.

I think it's the opposite when it comes to the pastors. I think the pastors would end up giving up the names and the congregation selects.

So I think that's a distinction that I kind of make between these two offices of how

I think that I see these in Scripture, is that the pastors will select pastors and the congregation votes on or chooses from among those names.

Where the deacons, the congregation will give up the names and select them and then the pastors would vote on or choose them.

Okay? So, now what's the responsibilities? And you're seeing here in Acts 6 this delineation

I think that's being made. The pastors are going to be focused on oversight as we've said, leadership, shepherding, going to deal with the preaching, teaching aspects.

So what does the deacon do? I think the deacons are there to serve the needy. They're there to take care of the things for the pastors, to free them up for the study of the

Word of God, for prayer, for the oversight and management. Okay? They're to be spiritual leaders.

They are leaders in a sense where they are to lead but they're not to oversee of their own authority.

So in other words, the idea being is that you have the pastor who has the oversight. He's responsible for God for the decisions that get made.

Now, he's going to hand down some of the daily work to the deacons. So where I make this distinction is that you have pastors who have the long -term vision, who have the big picture view, and then you have the deacons who are going to focus more on the day -to -day details.

Does that make sense? So, big picture, pastors. Day -to -day details, deacons.

Alright? For those who are in business and understand the concept, you could think of it almost like the pastors are the board of directors.

They're the ones setting the big decisions. They're ultimately the ones responsible for the decisions.

But then they have an executive, you know, chief executing officer or president that carries that out every day and reports back to them.

So, with that, I want to spend time going over the qualifications because this is, excuse me, we're going to spend most of the time here in describing the qualifications.

But I do want to make sure it's clear that the two distinctions in these roles. Pastor is going to be overseeing, leading, teaching, okay?

Shepherding the flock. The deacons are going to be under the pastors to help them to carry out the things that the pastors set on the daily activities.

So, I understand that some churches, it's like the deacons take care of the money and the building because the pastors are not supposed to know anything about the money.

I don't see that in Scripture. I'm just saying. They brought the money to pastors, you know, at different times.

You know, who'd the money come to, you know, in Acts? It came to the apostles.

Now, there is a time, though, the daily writing of checks and things like that, yeah,

I think that's a daily activity the deacons would do. But I don't think it's this hard line where pastors shouldn't be involved in any money.

Is it wise? Yeah. It is wise in the sense that you don't want to have,

I've seen where some pastors are influenced because they don't want to say something to someone that they think is a big money man that might be giving to a church, and that sometimes influences people.

The irony is sometimes those big money men aren't giving anything, but the pastor just thinks, like, oh, well, they got a lot of money, so I want to keep them happy.

Never make decisions based on that. Just saying. But the flip side is, you know, if someone's unhappy with the church, you know how you usually find out first?

They stop giving. So, in a sense, your giving can reveal your spiritual heart for the church, and that may be one of the first things.

You know, there are times where, as someone who was a deacon in a church for many years, before being a pastor,

I used to see that someone's giving would drop off. I would go and talk to that person because often what I'd find is one of two things.

There was either a spiritual issue there that they were struggling with or having problems with the church, or it was that they were running into financial troubles and they were too proud to say anything.

And so then we as a church could help them. But let's look at the qualifications. I'm going to give you a chart.

The first chart is going to be, and I have it here. I have it.

It's always good when I cover my face, right? Yeah, it looks much better. But I have a chart here.

This is what we're going to go over, and I can make this available to you. Actually, what we may do, like we have, do we have it?

We don't have it here anymore. Okay. We have our, what we mentioned last class, our process of reconciliation card.

It's a nice hard card. I may do the same thing with the qualifications of a pastor, just so you have this, if this is helpful to you, for a quick reference.

So we may make that available. But we're going to go through all those, so why don't we put that up. And this is,

I hope that you can read this. It might be a little bit hard to read. So with this, though, if you look, this right here that I'm focused on is just going to be only on the issue that you see of character.

Now, the next one that you're going to see, I'm going to deal with that, and that will be one where, again, you know, like I said, that's going to be one dealing with the other two, the family and the ministry, which should tell you something, okay?

If you look, can we flip to the other one just real quick to show? Okay, so you see the difference in the number of, it's like ministry and family is like a third as many as the character.

So this is just to show that character is a big deal. So as you see here, actually before we go to that, let me just make the mention if we could.

So you see there I have elder or pastor, whichever title you want to have. But you have the pastor, and then you have the deacons or servants.

Now, I'm saying servant. The deacons, I understand historically that deacons became leaders in many churches.

Deacons became where they were, it became really, at least in Baptist churches especially, you had your pastor and then your deacons.

Your deacons were overseeing, they were acting as pastors. But they were really not fulfilling the role of deacon or they were doing both, okay?

Now, if you view the deacon as a servant, a waiter of tables, and not as an overseer, you won't have problems with what

I'm going to say next. And this is why I'm spending the time to say that a deacon is a servant, not a leader.

They don't have the oversight. The pastor has the oversight. The deacon serves.

With that said, I believe that the Scriptures allow for a deaconess, a woman deacon.

So you have male deacons, you have female deacons. Male deacons that serve the church as a whole.

Female deacons are going to be more specialized to work with maybe people that, you know, just the women, okay?

Or things like that. But they are female servants. They're not making decisions.

Now, if you're in a church where the deacons are the leaders, then

I would say you shouldn't have deaconesses. You shouldn't have women in that role. But really,

I would say to correct it. Actually, why don't we, if we have, do we have 1 Timothy 3, 8 to 13? Okay, good.

Let's read through this and let me show where this is before we get into it because this may be new to some people, alright?

So let's look at what the Scripture says. This is 1 Timothy 3, 8 to 13.

Deacons. Now, this is a male. In the Greek, this is in the masculine sense.

So this is clearly referring to men. Deacons.

Likewise. Now, the likewise is referring back to the pastors because the pastors were saying that it was just to the men and it had qualifications as a pastor.

You see that in 1 Timothy 3, 1 to 7. It deals with the pastors. But look at here.

It says, deacons likewise must be, now notice all these are character issues, must be dignified, not double -tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain.

They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience and let them also be tested and let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.

Now, here in verse 11 is the problem. It says likewise their women.

And it's not really there. In the Greek, it says likewise women must be dignified.

And so the word there in the Greek could refer to wives of men if the man is referenced.

And so what many people do, many translations do, is say their wives, saying the deacon's wives. So deacon's wives, they say, should likewise be dignified, not slanderous, not sober -minded, faithful in all things.

I actually believe that this is women. Likewise, what's the likewise refer back to?

Well, just like in verse 8, where you see deacons likewise, deacons, just like the pastors, have all these qualifications, likewise, so there's qualifications for the male deacons.

And here you have women likewise. So now you have, again, you see this thing.

I think that's three separate, not offices, but three separate qualifications.

Now, why would there be qualifications for the deacons and not the pastor's wives?

That's just one thing. I know there's people that make an argument for that to say that the deacons are doing more day -to -day stuff, therefore their wives are more involved, and therefore they have qualifications.

Their qualifications, not only, I would say, these women, have the qualifications that you see in verses 8 -10, but also they have the extra qualifications that they must be dignified, not slanderous, sober -minded, and faithful in all things.

Now, look at verse 12. Let deacons, it goes back to the men. Now what you have is things that women can't be.

See, when it has the likewise, the likewise referring to the male deacons, all those things that are from verse 8 -10 are true for women as well.

Women should have those characters. They should also have these, in verse 11, those separate characters.

But then we go back to the men. Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, or one woman -man, we'll get into that, managing their children in their own households well, for those who serve well as a deacon gain a good standing for themselves, also with great confidence in faith in Christ.

So you see there, what I'm saying is, I do believe that if women are acting in the role of a servant, they can be a female deacon.

I have no problem with that. Because they're not making decisions, they're not having oversight. Clearly, what

I'm saying is that I don't believe that women can be in the role of pastor. We have a video in our

Hormonics class that deals with that. But I believe that 1 Timothy 2 -12 and following is very clear that women should not be in a role of authority over men.

Therefore, they shouldn't be making decisions and having the oversight. When you look at 1 Timothy 3 -7, when it's talking about the pastor, there's no mention of women.

It's all the role of the men who have to do that. Then you have these servants, and I think it's broken out into male and female servants.

So if we go back to the chart now, with all that explained, you see there in the big blue area, it says elder or pastors, and that's true for all.

And then there's the deacons. You see that's kind of shrunken down a little. And then you see it broken down as kind of a subcategory under deacons as male deacons and female deacons or deaconesses.

So let's look at the qualifications here really quick. We're going to go through this quickly. I can provide these for you if you need, but blameless is the first one.

And I put this so you see some of the overlap. You see there's overlap here on where the pastors have qualifications and where the deacons have qualifications and how they overlap.

Basically, I think everyone should be blameless. Really, I think where it says likewise for the female deacons, many of the things that are for the male deacons apply as well.

So I would say all three really should be blameless, but the Scripture is speaking just to the men there in that area.

But blameless means it is in the Greek to not nail. It's basically not to be nailed.

It's to not have something that someone can hold against you. It doesn't mean we do not sin. It means that when we do sin, we are quick to reconcile.

We're quick to ask forgiveness and bring reconciliation. That's the idea there.

So you see that of both male deacons and elders or pastors. Temperate.

We see both pastors and the female deacons are told to be temperate. And this in the

Greek means wineless or unmixed with wine. It's the idea of being sober. Being sober, not necessarily that you don't drink.

It's really the idea that in your decision making in your life, you are sober minded.

You're not given over. Now, I think that there may be reason for female deacons because women tend to, not always, but tend to be more emotional.

And so the idea here is to be less emotionally minded, more level headed in decision making.

For the elders or pastors, they should be sober minded. Sober minded is the

Greek word. It has the sense of being sane. Curbing one's desires.

Being in self control. And so a pastor should be self controlled. Good behavior.

You see this one for the pastors. And this is the word that means well arranged.

Simply or modest. So it's the idea that you're well disciplined in life.

Next is hospitable, used of pastors. And this one is the idea of showing love to strangers.

Being generous to guests is the idea here. The next one, number six, is not given to wine or not given to much wine.

I find it interesting that people make a distinction here. I was once in a church where someone said he didn't want to be a pastor because he liked to drink wine.

And so as a deacon he can have some wine. Because to the pastor it says not be given to wine.

And for the male deacon it's not given to much wine. And some people tried to make a distinction there between the much and not.

But it really has neither one of them matter. It means the idea of not being a slave to alcohol or to other things.

Any addiction. To not being a slave to addictions. It doesn't mean that people can't drink.

It doesn't mean that they can drink. It means, again, it's a character issue. It deals with whether they're given over to addictions.

You don't want a person in an office that's given over to addictions where he can be controlled by an addiction rather than Scripture.

Next is not violent. And it means just that, to not be given over to violence. To not be a striker literally is what the

Greek means. So he shouldn't have anger issues. He shouldn't be one that strikes out in anger. Not greedy for money.

This is for both pastors and deacons. You don't want a pastor that is looking for money.

That money becomes more important than shepherding. I understand that for many ministries, the ministries I've been involved in, if you've been in a love for money, you shouldn't be in that ministry because it's not paying very well.

But there are people who we see on TV and all that, out of a love for money, are trying to get into the church and serve the church.

And the reality is they have a love for money. And a love for money is the root of all kinds of evil.

And so they shouldn't be greedy for money. They should be satisfied with what God provides and content with that.

They should be gentle. This is for the pastors. Pastors should be gentle. It is the idea that he doesn't keep a list of wrongs that are done to him.

He shouldn't hold a grudge. You should be able to accept criticism.

It's the idea, it means literally to be suitable or fair, mild, moderate.

It's the idea that when wronged, you don't think of retaliation. Not quarrelsome is the next.

Not quarrelsome is for the pastors. This is to not be a brawler or uncontentious.

It has the idea of meaning not to be withstood or invincible.

To not be contentious or to be abstaining from fighting. This is the idea that you're not looking to win every argument.

It doesn't mean there has to be physical aggression. But you have men that want to win every debate, want to be in the right.

And they can't accept when people disagree with them. You shouldn't be like that. You shouldn't feel like you're invincible or that your argument should be the only one.

If you have a pastor who's saying that because he's the pastor, he has the right to say things.

He's the one that has the right opinion. His opinion must matter more. Well, that could be an issue.

Not covetous. The Greek word carries the meaning of someone who is free of the love of money, not greedy.

This is used of the pastors. Good testimony or good reputation. This is used of both the pastors and the male deacons.

And this is the idea that we actually get the same word for martyr from this.

But it is one that has a good report, is a good witness. People have a good view of him.

Even unbelievers would respect him, even if they disagree with him. Next is not self -willed, at Titus 1 .7.

This is for the pastors. This has the meaning of being self -pleasing, self -willed, or arrogant.

A pastor should not be having his own agenda. It's the idea that he shouldn't be a self -willed man trying to get his own desires.

Next is that he's not quick -tempered. Not quick -tempered.

This is for the pastors. We see this saying that he shouldn't, again, not be quick to anger, prone to quarrelsomeness, but be quiet, peaceable, tranquil.

You're seeing some of these that are being repeated, I think, for emphasis here.

And some of it is because there's a difference between the way the words that Paul uses to Timothy in 1

Timothy 3 and to Titus in Titus 1. That's why you're seeing here some of these differences that are different Greek words but having similar ideas.

Next is a lover of what is good. Titus 1 .8 talks about the pastor should be a lover of what is good.

The Greek word has the meaning of loving goodness. It carries the idea of strong affections for that which is intrinsically good.

He should be just. This is used of the pastor. He should be one that is just or right, meaning that he denotes things that are proper and fitting in God's sight, not in his own.

Also, the next for pastors is he should be holy. Now, we cannot be perfectly holy, I understand. But we should be separate from sin, free from wickedness.

That's the idea here is that we're not given over to a sinful lifestyle. We're going to continue sin.

We're not going to stop sinning until the day we die. But the fact is that we shouldn't be given over to that.

It should be something that we're constantly working at. Then for the pastor is self -controlled.

Again, we've seen this one a little bit. But having mastery or controlling or curbing or restraining one's life to be disciplined, self -disciplined.

That's the idea here. It's someone that should be able to maintain doing what's right. The next one that we have is reverent.

This is for both male and female deacons. Reverent is used for the deacons.

It has the idea in the Greek of meaning worthy, of honor, of reverence, dignity, serious, honorable.

It has the idea that it's a serious and respectable demeanor that they have toward other people.

So they should be reverent in their behavior toward others.

A servant who will be working in the realm of the mundane, the realm of assisting other people, should have an attitude of being respectable to others.

So they should be reverent. They should be serious -minded. Next you see, and this is for the male deacons, is not double -tongued.

Not double -tongued. And with this it is the idea, quite literally, the not double -tongued has the idea of to speak out of both sides of your mouth.

It means to not be two -faced or deceitful, insincere, hypocritical.

You think of this as the person who is going to be engaged in gossip or someone who is going to be saying one thing to another and something else to another.

That's the thing you want to avoid in someone that's going to be dealing with day -to -day activities of individual people.

You don't want someone that's going to put on a false face, a false impression to one person so that they can try to be insincere.

So you don't want someone that's double -tongued. Next, for the male deacon, is full of the

Holy Spirit. I'm taking this from Acts 6, verse 3, full of the Holy Spirit.

And again, I'm assuming that the passage in Acts 6 is the selection of deacons.

There's some that disagree with that, I understand, but we're going to say that that's the case. So, with that, we see that it requires that the male servants, male deacons, though this could be applied to the female as well, they must be fully yielded to the control in every area of their life.

They shouldn't have areas of their life that, well, kind of like for the pastors, they shouldn't be self -willed, it's kind of the same idea here.

They're full of the Holy Spirit, they're controlled by the Spirit. Now, it doesn't mean they're not going to sin. We all sin, we're not going to have an area where we're never in sin.

But it means that in our life, we're going to be looking to do the

Spirit's will. We're going to be looking to be yielded to the Holy Spirit. Next, also from Acts 6, we see full of wisdom.

Full of wisdom is used for the male deacons there in Acts 6. And they must have the biblical and theological knowledge and practical wisdom to apply that biblical knowledge to situations of everyday life.

They must be men that are sober and righteous in their judgment. And so, this is the idea of full of wisdom.

It doesn't mean they have to teach like the pastors, but they do have to have a biblical understanding of things and be able to apply it.

And that's the idea there. Now, to the women deacons. There's two here that we have for the women deacons.

Not slanders. This is almost like the men deacons not being double -tongued, but it is not slanders.

The Greek word means slander, malicious gossip, or backbiting. When used in the singular form as it is here, sorry, when it's used in the singular form unlike what it's used here, it's translated for Satan.

So, this is a name that's given to Satan. It literally means one who accuses.

This is what it literally means. And so, that's how it's used here. Women who are going to be ministering in this area need to set an example of proper speech.

Not one that's complaining about people in the church, but one who is bent on building people up.

And if needed, willing to confront instead of complain. So, it's the idea of what is so easy for so many people is to kind of slander another person, to bring another person down, to belittle another person.

They're not doing that here. They're lifting people up. Then we see, if we look at the last one there, it's faithful in all things from 1

Timothy 3 .11 to the female servants. It is the Greek word meaning being trustworthy or faithful in everything, that they should be absolutely trustworthy in all areas of life and ministry.

Women who are those who are not going to be faithful to things shouldn't be given the job of a servant in the church.

So, they should be faithful. Let's look now, if you look now, to the next categories that we have.

And here we have the ministry and the family. As you can see there, there's three in each category.

And except for the first one, this first one is for pastors only. And that is able to teach.

This is apt or skillful in teaching. This means that they can communicate a message so that people can understand it.

It doesn't mean that they can stand up in front of people and just wax eloquent with lots of big words that nobody knows.

No, it means that they can communicate in a way of being understood by people.

It's a giftedness. Now, this is one where, as a pastor, they must be gifted in this area.

Just like we said, they have the gift of administration. They have to be able to be organized. In this category, they have to be gifted to teach.

Deacons do not need to be gifted to teach. But as we saw, the deacons do have to be able to handle

God's Word, understand God's Word, apply God's Word. But they don't have to be able to communicate

God's Word the way a pastor would. So, the rest of these now are both for all the males in office.

So, it's the pastors and the male deacons.

As we look at the next one here, it's not a novice. In the Greek, not a novice, it actually means newly planted, referring to trees.

And so, it's the idea of not having a tree that's newly planted. Why? Because its root system hasn't grown deep yet.

You want a man who is proven, who has got his roots deep in Scripture and it's evident.

You can see that. That's what we want in this. You don't want a novice.

What happens so often is you get someone that's new to Christianity and they are just rushed into leadership.

You don't want that. You want someone that's been proven because time and truth go hand in hand.

You want someone that you're going to see them go through the hardships of life and that they handle it in a biblical way.

Next is the last in the ministry category. So, we have in the ministry, able to teach, not a novice.

And last is holding fast to a faithful word or holding fast to a mystery of faith.

It's worded two different ways for pastors and deacons, but it's the same idea. The two phrases have the idea of being steadfast in sound doctrine of God's Word.

It's the idea of loving God's Word, living God's Word, teaching God's Word, and being faithful to God's Word.

It's more than mere head knowledge. It is an understanding of the details of sound doctrine that includes practicality in living it out.

Now we get into the family. The family is husband of one wife. This literally means one woman man.

Now this does not mean, as some people argue, that this doesn't mean divorce. It doesn't mean that a man can't be divorced.

Because some people say that you can only have one woman for life. The problem is that a divorced man can be divorced and never remarry.

And in that, even though he never remarries, he actually has only one wife.

What do you do then with a widower? Is he disqualified if a widower loses his wife in his twenties and he remarries?

Is he now no longer qualified for ministry because he's a widower? No. That wouldn't be biblical.

So it doesn't mean one wife. Because one wife doesn't eliminate the divorce issue. And one wife does eliminate widowers.

And there's nothing sinful about a man who remarries after his wife dies. The issue is a one woman man has the idea of someone that doesn't have an eye for other women.

He doesn't have a straying eye. He's not looking at other women. He doesn't do those longing looks.

He is a man who has an eye for his wife. The wife that he has.

That's the idea of the character. Next we have, rules his own house well.

The idea of rule is to mean to manage, to preside over, to have authority.

It doesn't mean that the children are saved. Some translations and some argue that the child have to be, well actually that's the next one.

Either way, since I brought it up, he rules his house well. That he administers. He doesn't give everything over to his wife.

His wife is not the authority in the home. He's the authority but he rules it well. He doesn't rule it in a demanding way but in a loving way.

Next is having children in submission with all reverence or ruling their children well. That's the last one in their family.

And with this, some people argue that this means that their children should be saved. I don't think that's the case but it means that he as a man should be able to control them.

That they should be under his authority. That there's a respect factor for the father.

That there is, while they're in the house, that they're not outwardly rebellious to the gospel and things of God.

That there's a dignity that's there. So that's the idea with those. That there is an element there of dignity, an element of respect.

It is not, as some try to argue, that they're believers in Christ. That they must be believers.

I think that would eliminate some. So I know this was a little bit of a longer class but if you have questions about this, next week, let me tell you what we're going to do next week actually.

Next week we're going to talk about church government. The different styles, Presbyterian style. Denominational governments.

Independent governments. Brethren style. All these different ways that churches organize themselves. Which is right.

Which is wrong. We're going to go over that and go through each one. Give the pros and cons to each.

I'm just going to tell you up front. I don't really think that there's something in Scripture we can hold to and say, this is the only model.

I'm more practical on that because I don't see Scripture being really clear. And I think that we're going to have some grace that we can show.

So with that, if you have questions about this or any other class, email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Just feel free to email us. We'll hopefully get back to you sometime. No, we'll get back to you with answers as best we can.

So you can also go to our store, store .strivingforeternity .org. You can pick up the syllabus there.

That's something you'd be able to pick up while you're there. You can also get my book, What Do They Believe?

A Systematic Theology of the Major Western Religions. You can host a Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar at your church or church group.

You can go to the website while you're there. Do that. Now, some big news that we have to let you guys know is there's going to be another

Reason Rally. That's the Atheist Political Rally. And we're going to have another Reason Rally Outreach.

So you can go to reasonrallyoutreach .org, www .reasonrallyoutreach .org.

Get all the information there. Here's what's going to be going on. Basically, we're going to have a conference

Friday night, June 3rd. June 3rd, Friday night, we're going to have a conference.

We're going to have Ray Comfort. He's going to speak or he's going to be interviewed by Bible Thumping Wingnut. They're going to be there.

He's going to be playing the first 10 minutes of his newest movie. This is, as far as I know, the first time it's ever going to be any portion of it played for public consumption.

Then we're going to have Matt Slick from CARM. He's going to be there. Then we're going to have, I'll be speaking.

And then what we're also going to do is have the prayer rally and meeting that Living Waters is having as part of their

DC outreach. We're going to be starting our outreach a little bit earlier than theirs because we're going to get out there at 9 o 'clock in the morning, maybe even earlier, on Saturday to start the

Reason Rally outreach. But Living Waters is going to have their own outreach. You're not going to miss anything because what they're going to do in their meeting on Saturday morning, we're going to be doing on Friday night.

So you're going to get the same thing. Then thereafter that meeting, they're going to come out and join us. And they're going to be filming.

Ray's going to be filming for the new season of Way of the Master. They're going to be filming for their new atheist movie.

So I encourage you to June 3rd and 4th come down to Washington, D .C. for the Reason Rally outreach.

Lastly is Jersey Fire. Matt Slick, Justin Peters, myself will be speaking. Jersey Fire in Toms River, New Jersey.

That's jerseyfire .org. That's July 8th and 9th of 2016. Really, really, really, really, really want to encourage you to come out for that.

The topic is the Word of God. We have some great messages being prepared. Really looking forward to that.

You're going to learn how to interpret the Bible. You're going to learn the sufficiency of Scripture. The importance of Scripture. How we can trust that the

New Testament is reliable. A lot of things like that. So it's going to be great information for you. And then we're going to go out and evangelize afterwards.

So, long class. Sorry about that. Next week we'll talk about different church governments.

But until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. Make it an eternal day to the glory of God.

Striving for eternity. Striving for eternity.