Truth Will Out - [1 Timothy 5:24-25]

Well, let me ask you this, what do you think may be the easiest spiritual gift?

And I put spiritual gift in quotation marks. What do you think the easiest spiritual gift is to exercise? The one that people love to exercise, judgment is mine.

I was thinking, you know, here's the one that I personally like, and I find that a lot of other people like it too, and it is the spiritual gift of hindsight.

It is absolutely wonderful because it's never wrong. I mean, just thinking about, you know, when we bought our house, we bought it at the peak of the market, and so now

I like to tell people, we couldn't have paid anymore for the house. We outbid somebody for the house. You know, in hindsight, maybe

I would have waited a little bit. You know, that would have been a nice move. People love hindsight.

It's when, you know, we try to figure things out, and we're looking to the future, foresight would be a lot more handy.

But some things are very easy for us to tell, to judge, if I dare use that word, and I dare.

Why is it so easy to make some judgments? Because the Word of God tells us what to do.

There's no doubt about some things. I would invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Timothy 5, where we're going to be tonight in verses 24 and 25.

Some things, especially things spelled out in the Bible, are as plain, my mom used to say, as the nose on your face.

Some things are just super obvious. And I entitled the message tonight,

Truth Will Out, because I just thought, you know, there's a phrase you never hear anymore. Why is that?

I don't know, really. I looked it up, because I thought, I'm going to use that phrase as the title of my message, and then

I had to find out what it meant. So I looked it up, and it's a very common phrase, which is used in daily life, and it describes that the truth will be unveiled, unmasked, uncovered at the end.

Everyone will be able to see it, and nobody can hide the truth for long. The truth will be uncovered.

The truth will out. The truth can never hide for so long, or it can only hide for so long, and then one day it comes out in front of everyone.

You know where the phrase comes from? It comes from Shakespeare, from a play called

The Merchant of Venus. Merchant of Venus was a game.

Merchant of Venice, which only I owned. But Merchant of Venice is the play, that's right. Lancelot says this,

Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son. Give me your blessing. Truth will come to light.

Murder cannot be hid long, true? A man's son may, in other words, may be able to be hid long, but at length, truth will out.

Some things will just be revealed. The truth is going to come out. And it's not just true of events, but it is true of people, of their character.

Eventually, no matter how hard someone tries, their true nature will become known, for good or for ill.

And this is, in fact, a biblical concept. 1 John 2 .19 says this, They went out from us, but they were not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

It's this idea of being made evident, of having the veil kind of ripped away, so that we can see what's behind it.

These people in 1 John might have looked like us. They might have acted like us. They sang the hymns.

They were there every Sunday morning, and once in a while on Sunday night. But in the end, either in this life or on Judgment Day, truth will out.

We will know who belongs to the Lord. Now, just to bring us up to speed, where we are in 1

Timothy, the church at Ephesus was one that was near and dear to the Apostle Paul.

And so he sent Timothy, someone who was near and dear to him, his son in the faith.

He sent him to the church at Ephesus to set things aright. In 1

Timothy, what we have is the Apostle Paul's instructions in Timothy on how to run a church generally, and how to correct errors the

Christians at Ephesus had fallen into. He instructed them on how to appoint godly leadership to ensure that the word, or that the

Christians, the church, would continue to grow in the word of God. And in three of the last four messages, we've dealt with ways of avoiding bringing shame upon the church.

We've talked about proper care of widows, proper care of pastors, proper discipline of pastors and elders.

And the last time, we focused entirely on what the Bible says about wine, since Paul commanded

Timothy to use a little wine. Now, to our text, 1 Timothy 5, verses 24 and 25.

The sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgment.

But the sins of others appear later. So also, good works are conspicuous.

And even those that are not, cannot be hidden or remain hidden.

Now, this evening, I want to draw your attention to four commands based on our text so that you will be cautious to judge the character of those that you would become involved with in any sort of venture, and especially spiritual leadership.

These are for what I like to call, this is cop talk, bolos, be on the lookout, be on the lookout.

Bolos, things to look out for in people, which principally apply to choosing elders.

That's our context in the local church. But these principles can and ought to be applied to a variety of circumstances in life.

And our first bolo, watch out for those whose sins are on parade.

Watch out for those whose sins are on parade. Look at verse 24. The sins of some men are conspicuous.

Now, after talking about how elders ought to be disciplined, if they need to be disciplined,

Paul had written, Timothy in verse 22, Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others.

Keep yourself pure. Don't rush to put other men into ministry, into the office of an elder.

Why? Because you'll wind up being held accountable for their sins when they fail. Now, taking verse 23 out, the part that deals with wine, treating it as a parenthetical thought, a word of personal counsel to Timothy, which is what

I think it was, then we have a real flow of thought. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others.

Keep yourself pure. The sins of some men are conspicuous. Don't take part in their sins.

Keep yourself pure. The sins of some men are conspicuous. It continues that same idea. Let me put it to you this way.

You want trouble in a church? Allow men into leadership who are clearly unfit for the position.

Let men in who have been involved in sexual sin, those who are maybe known for their greed, those who are known for causing dissension, those who are known for drinking, put those men in leadership.

Violate 1 Timothy 3, violate Titus 1, and what are you going to have?

Chaos, bedlam, madness, a church running amok with no steady leadership.

And some people might say, well, you know, that's judging, right? It's judging.

You can't discriminate against some guys. Well, yes, you can, because we have the Word of God that tells us not to put these people in ministry.

Look again at the text. The sins of some men. This isn't talking about general sinfulness, as in all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

This is talking about a particular group of men within the body at Ephesus. And in every body, in every church body, there are going to be saints at different points in their walk.

There are going to be people with different spiritual gifts. And indeed, if a church is big enough, there are going to be people in it who aren't even believers.

They're there every Sunday for whatever reason, but they're not believers. They may not come in and, you know, have like a little sign,

I guess, maybe that says adultery, greed, you know, just holding maybe a little sandwich board, you know, with all their sins listed on it.

They may not do that. And that's not really the point, but they are conspicuous. They're obvious. You can see them.

They are in plain sight. There's something in... I'm going to do another police thing here.

There's something in the police world called the plain sight or plain view doctrine. If you're executing a traffic stop, anything you're doing really when you're a police officer, and you have a legal right to be there, and you see something illegal, you don't need a search warrant to get it.

So if I walk up on a car, I stop it, and I walk up on a car, and I look in the back seat with my flashlight, and I can see an open container of alcohol,

I can get everybody out of the vehicle to get that open container of alcohol. It's plain view. All I have to do is write in the report that I saw that open container of alcohol in the back seat, and the car is mine.

As we used to say, it's bought and paid for. And so is everybody in the vehicle. It was pretty sweet.

And that's the idea here. They're making no effort to hide their sin. It's conspicuous.

It's obvious. It's in plain view. Anybody could see it. It is as obvious as the nose on your face.

Their spiritual failings, their sins, are all in plain view.

Now you might be thinking, well, who would choose those kind of guys for spiritual leadership? My response would be, look around at the evangelical church.

Women in ministry. If that's not a violation of 1 Timothy 2, I don't know what is.

Overt homosexuals in the ministry. Again, if that's not a violation of 1

Timothy 3, I don't know what is. Even in this area, right here around Worcester.

Men in ministry who have been divorced while in ministry. Men who have confessed to adultery in the pulpit and been allowed to preach.

It doesn't take a master of divinity or a doctorate of anything to figure out that these guys are not qualified to be in leadership.

So why are they? Because some Christians are willing to overlook even the most conspicuous sins.

They're willing to ignore the Bible. They're willing to push truth aside and just pick people for whatever reason.

Not God's reasons, their own reasons. And again, just continuing the theme of kind of bringing shame on the church.

What a way to bring shame on the church than to have men and women in conspicuous sin and conspicuous violation of the word of God and invite them into leadership.

And look back at your text because these conspicuous sins, verse 24 tells us, go before them or going before them to judgment.

This is a great word picture. Going before them. I mean, they're like literally in the back.

When I said when I made the first point about being a parade, that's the picture. It is literally a parade of their sins.

And their sins are in front of them. They're in the back just kind of watching these sins march forth right into the judgment seat of God.

They're already there. The judgments are already, or the sins are already there, ready to be judged.

You don't have to turn there, but I want to read John 3 .18. The beloved apostle writes this, whoever believes in him, talking about Christ, is not condemned.

But whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only

Son of God. People say, well, how is that possible? Sometimes I get asked that. How is it possible that people are already condemned?

Don't they get a chance? Because this is an interesting word, this condemned here. It means judged, condemned, and it's a perfect passive, meaning it was done to them by God one time.

Ongoing results forever. Judged, condemned. In the past, ongoing results cannot be changed.

We don't know who those people are, obviously, but here's the point. The point is, just as that condemnation is sure, and in the same way, this tells us that the condemnation has taken place and the evidence is already there.

If this is a courtroom, the only thing missing is the defendant. The verdict's in.

The evidence is there. The only thing waiting to happen is for the defendant to walk in so he can just hear guilty, and it's done.

This is like no court of law ever. Kistemacher says this, talking about the 1

Timothy text, about their sins precede them to judgment. He says, This does not merely mean the man in question has a bad reputation.

For that, after all, might be based on slander. Oh, no. It's not just a bad reputation. But that he is bad.

This is a bad person. This is a man who is sinful. His sin is on parade.

Our second thing to be on the lookout for. Watch out for those whose sins are in disguise.

Look at verse 24 again. But the sins of others appear later.

So we have one group where the sins are just kind of, they're on virtually on a conveyor belt.

He's manufacturing the sins, putting them on the conveyor belt, and there they go, straight into the throne room of God.

Now, in this case, the sins of others appear later. And what that picture is, the sins show up after he gets there.

The evidence is there later. And this is another group. Those who are, as of this point, undiscovered.

They haven't been uncloaked, as it were. But whose qualifications as elder material are just as dubious as those in conspicuous sin.

The sins of these men appear later or follow them. It's the opposite. Maybe they've got the opposite of their sins going first.

Maybe they've got a secret sin life, something that nobody knows about. Maybe on the outside they appear godly.

But surely, Numbers 32, 23 is still true, and their sin will find them out.

So how ought the church to handle these men, where we don't necessarily know what their sins are?

They're not conspicuous. It's not obvious. Their sins are cloaked. Their sins are still in the darkness, as it were.

Philip Ryken says this, one of the best ways to avoid ecclesiastical, that is, leadership scandal, is to be careful whom you ordain in the first place.

And that's the thrust of this message to Timothy. Take great care before you put somebody in the office of elder.

Think about the book of Jude. And he says that certain persons, what? Walked in the front door with a sign that said, false teacher, sinner, conspicuous sins.

No. They crept in. They snuck in. They came in the back way. How can that happen?

It happens when churches don't take their time. And that's what we need to do.

Take our time in evaluating them. It is far better to be overly cautious than to invite disaster and calamity by precipitously putting a man in a position of authority for which he is completely unqualified.

Now, this is such a key principle that I think it's applicable in a number of situations in life.

And this is application, purely application. I was thinking about it and I thought, you know what?

This principle of waiting, of watching someone, of getting to know them, what does that sound like?

Sounds to me like something you need to do in marriage. I like the analogy of the pastorate with a marriage to the church.

Why? Because it's something that you want to be very careful about getting the right man because once you do it, it's hard to undo it.

And in marriage, it's very wise to get to know someone well before you even begin down that path, before you even start thinking courtship, dating, etc.

It's wise to get the opinions of others, particularly if you have godly parents.

I mean, how many heartaches, how many divorces, how many bitter marriages would have been stopped if there would have been a bit of patience applied in the beginning?

Just kind of watching the guy's life, watching the girl's life, kind of figuring out who they are, what their character is, waiting for the truth to come out.

Thinking about also another application, business. Would you want to start a business?

I just have a friend, he's an unbeliever, but I had a friend over the last few months kind of reconnected with him and he lost millions of dollars in a business deal.

Why? Because he got into business and then he found out the guys he was in business with were crooks. They were liars.

It'd be a good thing to know ahead of time, wouldn't it? How would you like to hire somebody and then find out that they're lazy?

This issue of characters has become quite an issue in our culture. There are teams, professional sports teams, that wait on people, that don't draft them, that pass over them because of character, because they're afraid that their investment is going to spend more time in jail than playing whatever game it is.

Character matters. And that's the heart of the issue here. Getting to know somebody, watching their character, learning about them.

It's true of the leadership of a church, marriage, business, anything that can reasonably be described as a spiritual enterprise.

And if you don't think business, if you don't think money is a spiritual enterprise, then you don't understand stewardship.

But I digress. How do you determine someone's character?

How do you kind of unmask them if their sins have yet to be revealed? How do you do that?

I think our pastor says, time and trials.

How do you figure out if somebody's saved? You watch how they respond over a period of time. As the ebb and flow of life comes and goes, you get to see whether or not that person is truly saved.

In the same way, you can watch a man and see if he's fit for the office of an elder or not.

The day that we come to you and say, hey, we've got a great new guy who we want to put in as an elder, it better be

John MacArthur. He better be walking through that door. And even then, I'd be a little sketchy. We need to get to know the guy.

Given the imperative to Timothy to keep himself pure, it is ultimately the church that will be tainted by unwisely choosing its leader.

Sure, Timothy, the elder board, we would be kind of complicit if we put somebody in there that should not be an elder.

But who ultimately gets hurt? It's the church. So our first bolo was watch out for those whose sins are on parade.

Secondly, we need to watch out for those whose sins are in disguise. The ones that are obvious and then the ones who aren't so obvious.

Third bolo, look for those whose righteousness is in plain view.

Just as there are some whose sins are conspicuous, sins are in plain view, so there are some whose good works are conspicuous.

Verse 25, so also good works are conspicuous. They're in plain view. Again, keeping in mind the context of choosing an elder wisely, what are some traps that a church might fall into?

Well, they could choose men on the basis of worldly success. The rich guys get to be elders.

The next rich guys get to be deacons. Other people, maybe not so much. They could also choose men on the basis of everyone takes a turn.

I was on a church website not too long ago, and they voted for new elders every three years, and I was just kind of like, how does that work exactly?

I don't even understand that concept. Again, not in the Bible. How about this?

Choosing men on the basis of their ability to get along with those already in leadership. Now that may be key, but that shouldn't be the basis for doing it.

Or maybe because they're relatives. Get some of my family up here.

Put them on the elder board. That's not the way to go. But Paul, in contrast to those whose sins are on parade before them, would have

Timothy choose those who are obviously qualified, those whose righteousness is on parade, not because they are, you know, hey, look at me.

I'm the righteous guy, because then they wouldn't be righteous, right? But their good works, or their lives are filled with good works, and their good works are inherently

God -given. They are vehicles by which the

Holy Spirit is showing His work through this life. Galatians 5, 22 and 23.

You don't need to turn there. Familiar passage. Talks about the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

This is kind of a positive way of saying a lot of the things that he speaks of in 1

Timothy 3. If you have these things, you're probably going to have the other things. And when you know a man like that, you're not out to change them.

If you see a man who has all these spiritual qualifications, you don't want to change them. You want to emulate them.

You want to bring them on board. You want them to serve. You want men who reflect the work of the

Spirit of God in their lives. By the way, this in no way implies salvation by good works.

However, good works inevitably accompany salvation. If you are saved, your life is changed, and it reflects that salvation.

It reflects the work of God within you. Now, we need to be on the lookout for these kind of,

I think, Pastor Mike, when he was introducing Scott last week, called it a, duh, no -brainer.

We need to be looking for men like that, no -brainers. Men who don't have a brain, but men who are so obviously

Spirit -filled, so obviously Spirit -controlled, that when we announce their name, there's no, like, and no organized protests or anything like that.

It's good. Men who prove themselves faithful over time. That's what you want.

Men whose qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are impeccable.

If we held up their spiritual resumes, and we compared them side -by -side with those passages, we'd go, yeah, that's our guy.

Check, check, check, check. That's what we want. It is wise for a church, and I'm not trying to pat us on the back, but it's wise for a church not to just give the keys to the place off to somebody who just shows up.

We want them to be here at least a year before we give them any teaching responsibility or any money.

That's just the way we do it. And again,

I can't help but make a little application here, just in terms of marriage, because this is something that we so often deal with, the heartache of choosing unwisely.

And in this case, I can't help but think how many people overlook a great man or a great woman, a spiritual giant, because they don't like the outside.

They get caught up in appearance and personality, and they forget what really counts is the character of the person.

I think back to Mike's Bible study in Los Angeles. There was a young woman there, and we'd gotten to know her quite well.

I think even after Mike left, she was coming over to our house and meeting with Janet, and Janet was spending time with her, discipling her.

Then she began dating a young man who professed Christ but seemed to have some different priorities, things that I didn't really understand, like too sick to go to church, but miracle recovery could go to the

Dodger game in the afternoon. I didn't get things like that. Didn't quite understand them. And I remember

Janet and I getting called by Bill Shannon, actually.

He asked us to come in. He was counseling this couple, and they were going to go get married against his wishes, and he thought maybe we might have some influence on them, and we went in there and we begged her not to get married because we didn't trust this guy.

She did it anyway to her misery. It's so hard.

It's so hard to say this, but it really is the truth. Character matters, and spiritual leadership, and marriage is about spiritual leadership.

When you're talking about, for the young ladies, marrying a man, you need to make sure that he is a spiritual leader.

A lot of people don't grasp that, at least until they've been married to them a couple years.

Our fourth bolo. Look for those whose righteousness will be revealed.

Look for those whose righteousness will be revealed. Verse 25. And even those that are cannot remain hidden.

These are what I would call diamonds in the rough. These are the guys that maybe they don't look like so much on first inspection, but they're faithful.

And over time, the things that they do, even if they're humble, whatever the situation is, even if they're kind of in the back row and nobody really ever knows what they're doing, eventually, their faithfulness comes to light.

Over time, we come to realize that they're not exactly the sort of men we typically look for in leadership.

Maybe they're quiet. Maybe they're the opposite. Maybe they're a little bit brash, whatever. They may not initially seem like elder material, but over an extended period of time, the truth comes out.

We see their character. And we discover that they are, or they have become, everything we could want in a man of God.

Maybe it's a matter of just God rubbing off some of the rough edges or developing their theological knowledge or kind of training them in terms of teaching or preaching.

Maybe it's just that no one has noticed yet. I'm going to read

Luke 12, verses 1 to 3. In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he,

Jesus, began to say to his disciples first, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.

Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light. Whatever you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on housetops.

Now, it's true enough that Jesus was speaking judgment on sins. Things that are done in secret.

Sins that are done in secret. But don't you think that the Lord will reward those who do good works?

Those who don't seek credit. Those who just faithfully work behind the scenes. Those whose righteousness, we might say, is hidden.

Whose good works are covered up. I do. And maybe not even in this lifetime.

But we will find out who those faithful servants are. We tend to think that the only thing that really matters is the flashy assignments, the big assignments, being up front.

And my question to you would be, is the body of God, is the body of Christ, not made up of many members?

And the ones that seem really important, get all the credit, the ones that don't seem so important are, in fact, important.

I mean, do we really believe that in terms of it, let's say that one particular man has five talents and he's faithful with those five talents.

Do we believe that his reward is going to be much, much greater than someone who was given two talents and doubled those two talents?

The Lord God rewards those who are faithful. He wants us to be faithful wherever we are.

And as we are faithful, he what? He blesses that faithfulness and eventually it will come to light.

You be faithful in all that is put before you and trust the Lord, not for glory, but trust the

Lord that he will do right. Rikens says this, many things will look very different in the light of eternity.

By the power of God's grace, we are called to perform the kind of good deeds that cannot be hidden forever, especially if we are shepherds who serve

Christ's sheep. But wherever we are, the things that we do now, if they're done for the glory of God, count for all eternity.

Good works, inherently good works given to us to do by God that we fulfill by the spirit of God working in us are good and they will be revealed.

And they shape and mold our character so that as God works these things in us, we become more like Christ.

And again, you know, I think there's a tendency to kind of misrepresent this because when I talk about diamonds in the rough, ladies, especially, sorry ladies, but ladies are more prone to see a man and say, well, you know what?

He may not seem like much like a spiritual giant, but he's really just a diamond in the rough.

Sometimes he is, but why not wait and just see kind of how that diamond shows up when it's polished, when it's really looking good, instead of just presuming that you are going to act as the

Holy Spirit. We wouldn't want to do that. We wouldn't want to put somebody into ministry until we are certain that God has called them, that he has, in fact, worked in their lives and brought them to that point.

We would never say, you know, of a man, let's bring him on board the elder board, let's send him to seminary, and maybe he'll grow into the role.

I know that he can't today, but maybe, you know, Lord willing, 10 years from now, wait.

Why? Because if you put more responsibility on somebody than they're ready for, what's going to happen? Train wreck.

Train wreck. Don't do it. So what are the solutions for this situation?

Well, it's obvious here. He tells them not to be hasty in putting his hands on someone in ministry, so the number one rule would be patience.

Be patient. And that goes for all things with regard to spiritual enterprises, be it ministry.

You don't want to put somebody in ministry who's not ready for it. Be it marriage. You don't want to rush somebody into marriage who's not ready for it.

Be patient. Here's a big one. Get counsel. I'm here to tell you, if Pastor Mike doesn't sit in his office and just go, you know,

I want this guy to be an elder, and the rest of us just go, it's 1 -0.

Mike wins. We talk about it. We analyze things. And in the same way,

I would say, you know what? If you're going to make, and I'm not asking for extra work, but I am going to say this, because I think that if you're going to enter into a potential relationship that could lead to marriage, or if you want to start a business with someone, or you want to take a major step in life like that, it's good to get some counsel.

It's good to have somebody who's not emotionally involved in it, and kind of take a step back and apply what the

Bible says to the situation. And yet, time and time again, I find that people are loath to do that.

I don't know why that is. And of course, prayer. Prayer, not because, you know, we believe that God is going to somehow zap us, give us a peaceful, easy feeling, but because when we bring our petitions to the

Lord, what happens? This whole process sometimes unfolds right before our eyes.

That person that we're unsure of, we find out about the good works that they're doing that are hidden, that cannot remain hidden.

Or we find out about their sins that are revealed, that we never would have guessed. God answers the prayer of His children.

Jerome. I think this is our third message of the day between Sunday school,

Mike's message this morning, and tonight, we've got three quotes from Jerome. I don't know what's going on, but Jerome said this.

Certain persons sin so deliberately and flagrantly, I was about to say fragrantly, flagrantly, that you no sooner see them than you know them at once to be sinners.

These are the men whose sins are on parade. But the defects of others are so cunningly concealed that we only learn them from subsequent information.

the good deeds of some people are public property, while those of others we come to know only through long intimacy with them.

Be patient. Wait, watch. See what's happening. What about you?

I'm going to guarantee you that everybody tonight falls into one of these four categories. You may not perfectly fall into it, but let me just put it this way.

Is your sin on parade? Are you in unrepentant sin? Is your sin advancing toward the judgment seat of God even now?

Well, I have a message for you tonight, and that is that there is forgiveness available today for every sin that you've ever committed or ever will commit.

Don't wait. Don't wait. For all you know, your life may be demanded of you this very night.

Life is a vapor. Sin is not to be taken lightly. God is going to judge every sin, and it can only be forgiven in Christ.

I'm reminded of Colossians 2, verses 13 and 14, and listen to this. And you who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,

God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. So the point is that those who are in unrepentant sin, dead in their trespasses, as it would say here,

God will make you alive, forgive you all of your sins, if you will but believe fully on the

Lord Jesus Christ and his life and his sacrificial death, that his death, his being nailed to the cross, was in the place of your sins, and that God raised him from the dead on the third day.

So that's the first group. Is your sin on parade? Second, is your sin to be uncovered? Has it not caught up to you yet?

Does nobody know what sin you've got going on? If that's the case, then my message is the same. Repent.

Repent today. Third group, is your righteousness conspicuous?

Not that you, again, have a sandwich board saying, I'm really righteous on the front, and on the back, you know, it says, I'm filled with good works.

But that your life consistently shows the work of the Holy Spirit. Maybe you're someone who people don't even know about you.

Your good works are yet to be discovered. In all cases,

God knows. And he will reveal it in his time. Truth will out.

When it comes to putting our hands on men for the work of ministry, it is right, it is proper, it is wise, to take our time and make sure that we have the right men with the right spiritual qualifications.

If we don't, trouble ensues. For you personally, anything you're going to do, whether it's marriage, whether it's business, whatever major decisions you're going to make, you better know for sure the character of the person or persons that you're getting involved with.

Let's pray. Father in heaven,

Lord, we are reminded again tonight of our own sinfulness, our own failure to do everything that we ought to do.

Father, we are thankful again for your word, for your grace, for your love, for the mercy that you extend to sinners.

Lord, if there's anyone here tonight who doesn't know you, anyone tonight who's dabbling in secret sins, sins that they think that they've masked from the world, that no one knows about,

God, I just pray by your spirit that you would convict them even now, knowing that someday, whether it's in this lifetime or before your throne, those sins are going to be revealed.

Lord, I would pray that they would repent even now. Father, would you be glorified here as we go through this process with Scott, as we look for more men to be spiritually qualified to lead this church?

Father, would you raise up more men to be elders, deacons, or to serve the body of Christ?

Father, for those who are thinking about embarking on other spiritual enterprises, be it marriage, some form of business, even investing in something with a great magnitude,

Lord, I just pray that you would give them pause this evening, that they would know for certain who it is that they're getting involved in before they do this.

Father, I pray that they would even take the time to get counsel, that they would proceed with caution, because there's no greater tragedy than to think you know someone and then to have the truth revealed, and it not to be what you thought.

Father, would you bless each one here, bless our time tonight as we just have fellowship and ice cream. In Christ's name we pray.