Redeemer Live - January 5th, 2025 (Full Worship Gathering)

The Priority of the Word in Worship

And so gracious has revealed himself in such a way that those who would come to know him would have riches beyond measure, a faith that cannot be denied. So this next song expresses this wondrous mystery that has been given.

One of the things that we seek to give priority to in our gatherings together is the Word.

Of God.

And in the book that actually we're preaching through at the moment, in 1 Timothy, we're told that one of the things that we are to give priority to when we gather together is the public reading of Scripture.

And so for the last few months, we've just been working our way through the book of Psalms, this book of worship that God has given to give us the words for our worship of him. And this morning, we come to Psalm 66.

So if you have a Bible nearby, Psalm 166, excuse me, Psalm 66. If you grabbed one of the red hardback Bibles that we give away, that's on page 504, Psalm 66. Just a couple of words about this Psalm that we're about to read as you come to it.

This is a Psalm that has the theme of praise. A lot of the Psalms have that, but especially praise for what God has done in the life of the Psalmist. And I have no doubt that as you read these words, you'll be able to echo them if you know the Lord Jesus and have found rest in him.

So with that in mind, Psalm 66, beginning in verse 1. Psalm 66, beginning in verse 1, for the choir director, a song, a Psalm. Let the whole earth shout joyfully to God. Sing about the glory of his name.

Make his praise glorious. Say to God, how awe-inspiring are your works. Your enemies will cringe before you because of your great strength. The whole earth will worship you and sing praise to you. They will sing praise to your name.

Selah.

Come and see the wonders of God. His acts for humanity are awe-inspiring. He turned the sea into dry land and they crossed the river on foot. There we rejoiced in him. He rules forever by his might. He keeps his eye on the nations.

The rebellious should not exhort themselves.

Selah.

Bless our God, you peoples. Let the sound of his praise be heard. He keeps us alive and does not allow our feet to slip. For you, God, tested us. You refined us as silver is refined. You lured us into a trap.

You placed burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads. We went through fire and water, but you brought us out to abundance. I will enter your house with burnt offerings. I will pay you my vows that my lips promised and my mouth spoke during my distress.

I will offer you fattened sheep as burnt offerings with the fragrant smoke of rams. I will sacrifice bulls with goats.

Selah.

Come and listen, all who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for me. I cried out to him with my mouth and praise was on my tongue. If I had been aware of malice in my hearts, the Lord would not have listened.

However, God has listened. He has paid attention to the sound of my prayer.

Blessed be God.

He has not turned away my prayer or turned his faithful love from me. Pray that God will bless that reading of his word and give us understanding of it. In light of what we've just read, let's pray in response together.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we read these words, we are reminded of the great and mighty things that you have done. There is only one proper response that we can give, which is to return praise to you.

Father, we thank you that when we were lost in our sin, that when we were far from you, when we wanted nothing to do with you, you, by your Spirit, came and found us. You were never lost, but we were.

And your Spirit found us and brought us to you. That even when we had regarded sin in our hearts, your Spirit did a work, changing us and transforming us and making us desire you. Father, we thank you that our souls have found rest in you.

We know you. That we are no longer striving to establish our own righteousness. We're not striving to earn favor with you, but you have shown us favor because of your Son and our Savior, Jesus. Father, we thank you for him.

We thank you for all that he has done for us. We thank you for his love and his care for us. We thank you that he has kept us up to this point, that we're able to gather this first Sunday of 2025, and we come recognizing that we are undeserving of all the kindness that you have shown to us.

Father, we thank you that it is not anything that we do that makes us deserving of your kindness, but it's what Jesus has done for us. And so, as we continue to worship, may we worship in the full assurance of all that he has done for us.

May our praise rise higher as we think deeper and deeper upon what you've done in the cross. We ask all this in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen.

Well, can I invite you to stand, and let's sing about the fact that all.

That we have is Christ. His joy in me, too ...proclaims the goodness truly speaking to us every time we read.

The Public Reading of Scripture and Psalm 66

Once again, a happy New Year to you as we gather on this first Sunday of 2025. It truly is a joy to be with you. I'm going to jump straight into God's Word. And so, if you have a Bible, and I hope you do have kids, you're dismissed.

If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, take it. Turn with me one more time to the passage that we have been in for the last few weeks. 1 Timothy 3, 1 Timothy and chapter number 3. We have been taking quite a slow journey through 1 Timothy 3, verses 1 through 7.

And this morning, we bring that journey to an end. So, 1 Timothy 3, and verses 1 to 7. If you have one of the red Bibles that we give away, that's on page 1052. Page 1052, 1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 1 to 7.

1 Timothy chapter 3, and verses 1 to 7. If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me out of respect for God's Word? 1 Timothy chapter 3, reading in verse 1, and reading through to verse 7.

1 Timothy 3, 1 through 7. Brothers and sisters, these are God's words to us this morning. This saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work. An overseer, therefore, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

Not an excessive drinker, not a bully, but gentle. Not quarrelsome, not greedy. He must manage his own household competently and have his children under control with all dignity. If anyone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of God's church?

He must not be a new convert, or he might become conceited and incur the same condemnation as the devil. Furthermore, he must have a good reputation among outsiders so that he does not fall into disgrace and the devil's trap.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God will remain forever. Allow me to pray, ask for God's help, and we will get to work in His Word this morning.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come to Your Word once again, that Your Spirit would use that Word in all of our lives to glorify Your Son and our Savior Jesus. As we think about the Word of God this morning and the importance of its taught, pray that even as that happens now, Your Spirit would do a work of turning blind eyes into seeing eyes, turning deaf ears into ears that hear.

May Your Spirit be pleased to use the Word to draw us closer to the living Word, the Lord Jesus. Father, as we pray the fast, we pray for our friends at Community Bible Church here in Central Point, pray for Pastor Kevin and the elders there as they gather on this first Sunday of the year.

Be with them, encourage them in the ministry of the Word. May Your people be built up, and may those who don't know You come to know You through the ministry of the Word there. We pray that for CBC, and we pray that for ourselves now, asking it in Jesus' name and for His sake.

Amen.

Please be seated.

The Qualifications for Elders in 1 Timothy 3

Well, if you are joining us anew this morning, we are in the final week of a deep dive that we've been kind of doing, working our way through 1 Timothy 3 -1 -7. As you saw when you came in, this is part of a larger series that we've been in called God's House Rules.

God's House Rules, an exposition of 1 Timothy. We've just been working our way passage by passage through 1 Timothy. But when we got to chapter 3, I made the decision that I wanted to slow the pace down considerably because as I studied this letter and prepared to preach it a few months ago, I became convinced that this might be the most misunderstood section in this whole letter.

There are some complicated things in this letter, but none of them, I think, as misunderstood as what Paul says here in 1 Timothy 3 -1 -7. And so I wanted to take the time and to look carefully at what Paul says, what he means, and why it matters for us as God's people.

And so I won't re-preach all, what's now, five of the messages I've preached, or four actually, in this section. But by my count, we have looked at 13 different qualifications. I'll put them up on screen to look at again.

So Paul says that, first and foremost, assuming that a man has a desire for the work, I called that, if you remember, those of you who were here, I called that the forgotten qualification, that it's assumed a man actually wants to do this.

Well, if he does, what kind of man should he be? Well, firstly, he should be above reproach. And we saw that above reproach doesn't mean that he's perfect or that there's nothing you can say. It's that there's nothing serious that you can say that sticks.

And we said that that's something of a headline and everything else is indeed a detail of how he is above reproach. And so he's above reproach, he's to be the husband of one wife, literally a one-woman man, not just that he's married, but that he is committed to his marriage, that he's known as a man of single commitment.

We saw that he's to be self-controlled, sensible, and respectable, and those three form something of a unit, that he is to be somebody who's characterized by keeping his desires and passions in check.

He's to be sensible, someone who thinks well, and as a result, respectable, somebody who acts well, who acts with excellence. We also saw that he's to be hospitable, that he is to be somebody who has a love of strangers, that he opens not just his home, but his heart to those he's not immediately connected to.

We also saw that he's not to be an excessive drinker, that he's not somebody who is characterized by a love of any substance that can dull his thinking. He's also not to be a bully, but gentle, not to be quarrelsome, that he's not characterized by the use of force to get his way.

He's also to manage his own household competently, that he exercises authority in his home in the kind of way that it elicits respect and submission from those underneath him. He's not to be a new convert.

There's a maturity that's to be expected there. And finally, he's to have a good reputation among those who are outside, that he lives in the kind of way that even those who don't know Jesus can look at him and say, I might not believe he's Jesus, but I know he does.

And so that's what we've seen so far. But there's one of them that we have skipped. We've looked at 13. But jump back up to verse 2 if you've got it open in front of you. See those three words at the end of verse 2?

Able to teach. Some of your Bibles might say apt to teach. That's the qualification I want to take some time and think about this morning as we come to the ministry of God's word. Like I said, I think all of these are very easy to misunderstand, and I especially think this one, being able to teach, can be easily misunderstood.

The thing about this one qualification is it's very different from all the others. The 13 that we've looked at so far, and if you missed any of those or you want to catch up on that teaching, you can go to our website.

We're on YouTube as well, and we even have an app. You can find the teaching there in a number of ways. The thing about these qualifications we've looked at, the thing that links them all together so far is character.

This is who the man is. We've not spoken too much. We've kind of made some implications about what he does. But the focus so far has been who is this person? Today, however, and by the way, the character that's assumed here is not a superhuman, otherworldly character.

This is past the character versus everyone else. The point I've made over the last few weeks is that this is a character of a Christian. He's just supposed to be an example of what a Christian looks like.

This is not a superhuman, otherworldly character. It's spirit-empowered, grace-empowered, gospel-empowered character. Like I said, most of this is character. There is only one competency. There's only one skill.

There's only one giftedness, if we can call it that, that an overseer, according to Paul, is supposed to have. Those three words at the end of verse 2, he must be able to teach. So this morning, I want us to think about just those three words.

I think I joked with my wife the other day that this may be the only time in history I've preached a sermon on three words. But I want us to think about those three words, being able to teach. I want to think about what that phrase means, what it looks like, and why it matters.

For those of you who've been here through this series, I've kind of broken with my usual habit of having a big idea for every sermon. I'm glad to announce the big idea is back. For this message, I do actually have a big idea statement.

Here's the big thing I want you to leave here with this morning. It's very simple. The primary work of an elder is word work. The primary work of an elder is word work. And to do that work, he must be able to teach.

The primary work, and please note the use of words here. Primary, not only work. But the primary work. The first work above everything else of an elder is word work. And to do that work, he must be able to teach.

One more time. The primary work of an elder is word work, and to do that work. To do word work, and I'll explain what that phrase, word work, means in a moment. To do that work, he must be able to teach.

What exactly does Paul mean when he uses this phrase, able to teach, and why does it matter? I'm convinced it does. And I hope maybe you're convinced. I mean, it's in God's words. It must be important.

But my hope is this morning to ask and answer that question of what is disqualification and why does it matter? To do that, for the rest of our time, I want to consider three questions. I want to consider three questions that will open up the meaning of this phrase, able to teach.

I want to consider three questions. And my hope is as we consider these three questions, we will be able to ask and answer the question, what does it mean to be able to teach? So three questions. Question number one this morning, probably the most straightforward of the three I'm going to ask.

What does the phrase, able to teach, mean? That's probably a good place for us to start. Now, we start to hit a bit of an interesting situation with this question because normally what you do is you go back in the original language and you, because, again, the Bible wasn't written in English originally.

It's been translated into English. It was written in Hebrew in the Old Testament, another language called Aramaic in a few places, but mostly Hebrew and Greek in the new. Well, normally what you do when you want to find what phrases mean is you look in the original language and you find the meaning based on what it originally said.

This phrase, however, is interesting because it's only one word, the word able to teach. And, in fact, Paul only uses it in two places. He uses it in this passage and he'll use it in the next letter, 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy 2, but that's about it.

In fact, in every resource I looked in, and there are some resources that Bible nerds like myself like to use to try and get answers to these questions, the most I could find in some was, like, three sentences because there's not much to say.

He only uses it twice, and the word is pretty simple. It just means able or skillful to teach. So, okay, well, that doesn't help too much. Is there a way that we can figure out what Paul means by this phrase?

Because he can't just have three words. That was my sneaking suspicion. And as I thought about it, I realized, ah, he does explain this somewhere. Take your Bible, turn with me two books over to the book of Titus.

Titus chapter 1. So we're in 1 Timothy, you want to skip over 2 Timothy and you'll land at the letter of Titus. Titus is actually very similar to 1 Timothy in a lot of ways. Titus has been sent by Paul to deal with the church situation in a particular area.

The area is known as the island of Crete. It's a particularly challenging place. And part of why he's there, so look at Titus chapter 1, look at verse 5. Titus 1 .5, Paul says, the reason I left you, Titus, in Crete was to set right what was left undone, as I directed you, and, excuse me, as I directed you, to appoint elders in every town.

Okay, so Titus' job is there's some stuff that Paul didn't quite get to finish before he left Crete. And so he says, Titus, I didn't quite get to finish, so I need you to clean this up for me and get this stuff done before we leave, before you leave.

And one of the things he needs to do is to appoint elders. And so in Titus 1 .5 through 9, you have a very similar passage to the one that we are in. In fact, very similar. He uses pretty much the same words and lays out qualifications for elders.

For our time, I want us to focus in on verse 9. So look at verse 9. So verse 9, he says, an elder must be one who is, this is how he says it, holding to the faithful message or the faithful word as taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict it.

Can I put it to you, though? I think in Titus 1 .9, Paul gives us an expanded version of what he gives us in 1 Timothy 3. What does it mean to be able to teach? It means this. Now, we'll get to the practice of this in just a moment, but now I want to break down this one verse a little bit and show us three different facets of what it means to be able to teach.

Again, I'm convinced that Paul is saying the same thing here that he said in 1 Timothy 3 .2. So what does it mean to be able to teach? First of all, it means that being able to teach means having devotion to the Word of God.

Notice what he says, beginning of the verse, holding to the faithful message as taught, holding, present tense, that he has a living active grasp of what Paul describes as the faithful message or literally the faithful word, that he is characterized by a devotion to the Word of God.

The faithful message would be the message that had been preached by the apostles. That was the Word of God at that point. The Scripture is still being written at that stage. And he says that an elder holds to the message as he has been taught that message.

He's characterized by a devotion to the Word of God. There's one writer put it, in a pastor there is demanded not only learning, but such zeal for pure doctrine as never to depart from it. So he says that an elder, a man who would be a leader in God's church or to use the language of our series, a leader in God's house, he is to be one who has a devotion to the Word of God.

He has heard the Word. He has not just heard the Word, he has taken personal ownership of that Word. And as a result, he's able to minister it. Well, why does he need to have a devotion to the Word of God?

Did you notice those two words in the next part of the sentence? He says, holding to the faithful message as taught so that. Okay, what's the purpose of him having a devotion to the Word of God? Actually, there are two purposes.

One of them positive, one of them negative. So being able to teach means having a devotion to the Word of God, but it's not just having a devotion to the Word of God. Secondly, it means declaring the Word of God.

So not only is he to have a devotion to the Word of God, he also needs to declare that Word. So again, look at our verse, Titus 1 -9. Holding to the faithful message as taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching.

I'm going to stop there. The faithful leader knows the Word of God and holds to it, so that he can encourage with sound, healthy, wholesome, life-giving. Actually, the word that's used here is where we got our word hygiene from.

That which is clean, teaching. Encourage is an interesting translation. I don't think it's personally the best one. It doesn't carry the sense of coming along someone and saying, hey, you're doing a good job, it's okay.

That's not the word here. There is a word for that in Greek, it's just not this one. It can mean that in some context. I think a better way to translate this in the ESV translation, I think does a good job here.

It translates it as instructing, that he knows the word. But he doesn't just know the word. He knows the word for the purpose of being able to declare that word, to be able to instruct God's people in that word.

He knows the word, and so he can communicate it to God's people for their growth and for their obedience to Jesus. Everyone still following me so far? So being able to teach means he has a devotion to the word of God.

Being able to teach means declaring the word of God. That's the positive side of word ministry, of word work, if you will. But there's a negative. He needs to know the word, he needs to be able to encourage or to instruct in the word.

It also means he has to defend the word of God. Being able to teach means defending the word of God. So notice, again, how Paul ends this. So he says, holding to the faithful messages taught, devotion, that he will be able both to encourage a sound teaching, that's the declaration part, and to refute those who contradict it.

I'm sure I don't need to say this, but allow me to remind you of something that might be obvious to you. There are lots of people who claim to speak for Jesus. There are lots of people who claim to be teaching and proclaiming.

The word of God.

There are lots of people who claim that they are speaking for God. But just because somebody says they're speaking for God doesn't mean that they actually are speaking for God. Just because somebody says they are proclaiming the truth doesn't mean they actually are proclaiming the truth.

And the reality is when people who say that they are, by the things that they say and the things they do, when they start to demonstrate that they aren't, a faithful shepherd, a faithful overseer, a faithful elder has to, catch this, deploy the word of God against that error.

The faithful leader doesn't have the luxury of saying, well, I just want to focus on the truth. I don't need to worry about that. I just want to be positive, encouraging. I was going to say Caleb, but never mind.

He doesn't have that luxury. He has to know the word well enough, not just to be able to teach it positively, but that when somebody says something that, my historical hero, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he had a quote about this.

He said, discernment is not the difference between right and wrong. He said, discernment is the difference between right and almost right. A faithful communicator of God's word doesn't just know the truth on a positive level.

He also knows that when you're saying something that's even a degree off, he can say, wait a minute, no, that's not what it says. He has to know the word well enough to be able to know when someone is speaking against that word.

I've never worked in banking. I know some of you have. I am reliably told by people who have worked in banking. And I don't know if this is still the case today. I know at one point when they wanted to teach people, dad, help me out here if I'm right.

My father-in-law was in banking for years, so he can back me up if I'm right on this. I'm made to understand that when they teach tellers to know the difference between a fake note and a real note, they don't give them a bunch of fake notes.

They give them a real one and tell them to learn that. Does that sound about right? Okay, so I'm right on that. He needs to know the original well enough. I don't know. Have you ever been burned by a fake note before?

I have.

Will never forget because it annoyed the life out of me for months. I had a laptop. I was selling it. I sold it to somebody online.

First mistake. Used eBay.

But anyway, I sold it somewhere online. The person came by the house, sold it for a certain amount. They gave me the money in cash. So I count the thing. I'm kind of in a hurry because the person was late and I had somewhere to go.

So they hand me the money.

I count it.

All looks fine. I go about my business. I get back home. I'm like, okay, let me count this thing properly.

Okay, okay.

What is this? One of these 20-pound notes was clearly fake. It was not like the others. Now I'm looking at all the other ones. I'm like, no, this looks. Pull the actual 20 out of my wallet. No, this looks.

I just got burned. Do I know if the person did that on purpose? I hope not. But how could I know that this thing I'm holding wasn't the real deal? Because I've held enough of the real deal to know this isn't it.

A faithful elder is the same. He's been around this book long enough. He knows the truth well enough that when someone comes along and they say something that's not quite what this book says, they wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

This isn't what I heard. This isn't what I've been taught. This ain't it. That's what Paul means by being able to teach, I think. I think Titus 1 .9 gives us the full version of what he summarizes in 1 Timothy 3, that he must know the word of God and have a devotion to it, that he should declare that word, and that he can refute those who contradict the word.

That's what it means to be able to teach. So for a moment, let's just clarify what Paul does not mean by this. Paul does not say that the man has to have natural speaking ability. He doesn't say the man even has to be brilliant at it.

He doesn't say you have to like his style on a subjective level. Different people have different personalities. One of my favorite quotes on preaching by Phillips Brooks, he said that preaching is truth mediated through personality.

That means some people will have a personality and a style that doesn't appeal to you. That doesn't mean he can't teach. It just means you don't particularly like the way he teaches. I think you can personally, for what it's worth, as somebody who's preached a while, want to pick up other preachers and say, sometimes we could all stand to be a little less subjective about our views on preaching.

If he's faithfully preaching the word, you don't have to like his style. Just be thankful he's faithfully preaching the word. So Paul doesn't say you have to like his style on a subjective level. He doesn't say the man has to be confident in his ability to teach.

Sometimes that can actually be more of a danger than a help, depending on the person. Now, to be fair, I'm not going to say that being confident in what you do doesn't help. I'm not going to say that, you know, fine tuning your style and defining your own voice isn't a good thing.

I'm not going to say that natural speaking ability is bad. We praise God for those who are eloquent. I know I'm not, but I'm thankful for those who are. All of those things are good to work on. In fact, I would argue that a good preacher can grow in those things.

In fact, he should, 1st Timothy 4 .15, he should make progress that is evident to all. And on the style point, like I said, styles can actually grow on people. If you give it enough time and you seek to be gracious, somebody's style with all of his differences might actually grow on you.

But none of those things, style, natural speaking ability, confidence, none of those things are essential. What is essential is that he knows the word, that he can communicate that word, and that when someone is out of line with that word, he can point it out.

So, again, what does it mean to be able to teach? Having a devotion to the word, declaring that word, and when necessary, defending it. If that's what Paul means, and I hope you're convinced that it is, if that's what Paul means, then, well, why is it important?

Why would we want to take time to think about this? Thankfully for you, that's my second question this morning. So question number one, what does the phrase able to teach mean? Question number two, why does this qualification matter?

Why is it that both, going back to 1st Timothy 3, that both in Titus and in Timothy, the only competence that Paul lists is this one? Why is this the one skill Paul expects from every leader in God's house?

I think to answer that question, you need to kind of zoom out a little bit and think about God's grand purposes in general. Allow me to put a few pieces in place that might help us with this. Why does this qualification matter?

Well, first of all, consider it be the fact that God works in the world through his word. That God works in the world through his word. You see this pattern right at the beginning of the Bible. When God creates, how does God create?

I'll ask you a trick question. Seriously, how does God create? He speaks. His word goes forth and things are created. So the psalmist can say in Psalm, I believe it's 33 verse 9, that let all the earth stand in awe of Jehovah.

Why? Because he spoke and it came to be. And all throughout the Bible, when God wants to do something, before he does anything, he speaks first. That's a principle you see all through the Bible. God speaks and then things happen.

I think probably my favorite picture of this is in Ezekiel 37. In fact, let's turn there real quick. Ezekiel 37. All the way back in the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel.

Ezekiel in chapter 37. One of the things about Ezekiel that makes it a very challenging book at times is that the majority of this book is basically one vision after another. And they're very picture-driven visions.

So much so you have to really pay attention because every detail matters. Pick it up with me in chapter 37, verse 1. Ezekiel 37, verse 1. The hand of Yahweh, the hand of the covenant God was on me and he brought me out by his spirit and set me down in the middle of the valley.

And it was full of bones. He led me all around them. There were a great many of them on the surface of the valley and they were very dry. Then he said to me, Son of man, which is a term that he uses a lot for Ezekiel in this letter.