WWUTT 612 A Pastor Must Be Respectable, Hospitable, and Able to Teach?

In the list of qualifications for an overseer, he must be respectable, hospitable, he must be above reproach, but there's only one skill that's on that list.

He must be able to teach when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand the

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Thank you, Becky. We are in First Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 through 7, where the Apostle Paul is provided a list of qualifications for overseers of the church.

Beginning in verse 1, the saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, and able to teach.

Not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

So we've been in this paragraph for a few weeks now and only halfway through verse 2, but we're going to pick up the pace a little bit.

We spent the most amount of time on the biggest things first. An overseer must be above reproach.

Then we spent a week or three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, on this qualification that he must be the husband of one wife.

On Monday of this week, we talked about how a pastor must be sober -minded, meaning that he's not given over into wild ideas, into myths, into speculations which can cause division.

He's not going beyond what is written, but he's holding firm to the trustworthy word as taught.

As a pastor or an elder who is overseeing the flock of God, he understands the importance of preaching the gospel and that which flows from the gospel.

This accords with godliness. It grows a person in their understanding of who God is and what

God expects of his people. This comes only from the teaching of God's word.

So he's sober -minded in that respect. His doctrines are not constantly shifting and changing, but he has strong, straightforward convictions according to what the word of God says and desires to teach the whole counsel of God as we have it given to us in the

Bible. So that's what it means to be sober -minded. The next one we looked at on Tuesday, yesterday, he must be self -controlled.

So he's able to control his mind. He's also able to control his body. When tempted, he has disciplined himself to not give himself over into every passion that comes to his flesh, the desires of the body and the mind, but rather he's taken his whole self and committed it unto the

Lord. Romans 12 1, submit your whole bodies unto the Lord as a living sacrifice and this is your spiritual act of worship.

Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

And this is a way that we worship God all the time, every day by obeying that very command.

And so a pastor or an elder becomes an example to his entire church body in these things that he is fixated on the word of God and that he is also able to discipline his body for the

Lord and not being led astray by the temptations and the snares of the devil.

This is something that every one of us should aspire to be mature in, not just that the overseer qualifies for this, but we all follow that particular example.

So like I said, we're going to pick up the pace a little bit more with some of these things that are coming up. Today we're actually going to knock out the rest of verse 2, where it says that an elder must be respectable, hospitable, and able to teach.

We'll cover all three of those there. Now respectable really kind of summarizes the previous two qualifications that he must be sober -minded and he must be self -controlled.

So then we have this next word that he must be respectable and this is really the only time that this word appears in the

New Testament. It's kosmion in the Greek and it basically means that he is a man of good behavior.

He just behaves well. So if he's able to submit his mind to the

Lord and he's able to submit his body unto the Lord, then everything he thinks and everything he does is just an example of good behavior.

He is a respectable man, a respectable person, and we should all aspire to live that way, not just in regards to our brothers and sisters in the

Lord, but also the way that we conduct ourselves in the world among unbelievers, treating one another with dignity and respect and with charity.

We know that bad company corrupts good character. That's mentioned in the Proverbs.

Paul repeats that also with the Corinthians. So we need good examples to keep us on the straight and narrow when it comes to living a life of righteousness.

A pastor is a good example for us in that way, but also our brothers and sisters in the

Lord who help to keep us on the right path. We are going to have non -Christian associations or relationships.

You'll probably have them, especially if you work in a secular job, but then our

Christian brothers and sisters are who we should be most in fellowship with so that they keep our conduct admirable, especially as we live among unbelievers in this world.

And one of the ways in particular that we must be a demonstration of good conduct is in the words that we say.

I mentioned this yesterday that when it comes to a pastor being self -controlled, being able to discipline his own body, one of the members of his body that he must have under control is his tongue, his mouth, the words that he says.

And we see these instructions come up over and over again throughout the scriptures. In fact, in Proverbs 8, it says that the fear of the

Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech.

I hate that's Proverbs 8, 13. So we should want to speak words that are honoring to the

Lord and are also uplifting to one another. And again, not just believers, but also to unbelievers.

Paul said in Ephesians 4, 25, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Again, this is all falling under the instruction to be self -controlled, that we would not just abstain from doing sin, but we would apply ourselves to doing righteousness, to doing good work that we might be able to share with one another in need.

Going on, verse 29, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

So let the words that we say be honoring unto the Lord, that we wouldn't be tearing each other down, that we wouldn't be perverse in our speech, but we would have words of kindness to share with each other and even with those who are unbelievers.

That is especially the case for a pastor. You got a guy who is cursing and who is slanderous in what he says, gossips a lot, can't keep control of his tongue.

You have a guy who's disqualified for the pastorate. He cannot be a pastor if he cannot keep control over his own mouth.

And so that is a model or an example for everyone else as well, that we would have a mouth that is honoring to the

Lord, that what comes from our mouths is a reflection of the heart that has been changed by Christ or is being changed by Christ.

So even when something comes out of your mouth that you know is not honoring to the Lord or is not honoring of his commandments, that we would be convicted about those things, that we would be open to correction, and we would continue to keep a tight rein on our tongue and submit that even unto the

Lord. Because even Jesus said that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

And by every word that we say, we will be judged in the end. So we must be very careful and make sure that even the words that we say are honoring unto

God. And this is a requirement for everybody. So the pastor must be sober -minded, he must be self -controlled, he must be respectable in his character and in his behavior, but so must you.

You also must follow along with this example. So this is the first of the qualifications that we're looking at today, the first of the three, that he must be respectable, he must be good in his conduct and in his behavior.

Secondly, he must be hospitable. And there's a very simple definition that goes with this.

He must receive or treat guests or strangers warmly and with generosity.

He must welcome people into his own home and make them feel at home.

The Spanish saying that goes with this, mi casa es su casa. Literally, my home is your home.

Now there's a couple of different ways that we could apply this. First of all, we could apply it in that an elder or an overseer has been blessed with a home of his own and he welcomes people into his house and makes them feel at home in his house.

They are welcome there. Some of you probably follow me on Twitter and you'll know that on Thursday I take pictures of whatever meal that I'm preparing in my home and I'll post it on Twitter because I'm welcoming people into my home for Bible study on Thursday night.

And I usually cook a meal of some kind, might be something in the crock pot. Although if I start at a decent hour,

I'll cook something that goes into the stove as well and we'll eat something out of the oven.

So we welcome folks from our congregation into our house on Thursday evening for our

Old Testament Bible study. We cook them a meal. Those who have kids, they come over and they're playing toys with my kids.

You know, we clean the house. We let everybody use the best of our furniture and stuff like that.

So we want folks to come over into our house and feel at home. We also want our congregation to see how we live.

We're not trying to hide anything from anybody. How do we conduct ourselves in our own home is just as important.

An example in our behavior is the way that people see us in the church, behaving in the church, and the way that I behave within the community as well.

So we're often welcoming guests into our house, not just on Thursday night, but that's kind of the the one night of the week that you can be sure we've got guests in our house cooking food and opening up the

Word of God, doing Bible study, sharing prayer requests, sharing stories with one another, experiences, stuff that happened with us this week.

So that's something that I do on Thursday, and that's one way that as a pastor

I exercise hospitality with my brothers and sisters in the

Lord. Now there are occasions in which I will welcome somebody who is an unbeliever into my house, but I'm very careful with that.

I know this person for one, so I'm not putting my family at risk, and they're coming into my house with the intention that I'm going to be sharing the gospel with them.

Because I've got small children, in particular, I have three daughters, we as a family don't welcome people into our house to stay the night if we don't know who they are.

So if we do not have an experience with this person, we can't vouch for their character. I'm not just going to let them into my house and put my family at risk.

That's wise. That's not being unhospitable, it's being smart. We had a family in our church once was very, very generous, but I felt like they were a little overly generous to a point that they were kind of risky with their generosity.

They had small children in their home, and yet they would find folks down at Walmart who would have cardboard signs saying looking for food and shelter, and they would invite them over to their home.

I had to try to talk them out of that. Fortunately, they had not had any bad incidences with somebody that came into their house.

They did say one time we brought a person in who had drugs and we had to ask them to leave.

And so through their bad experiences, I was able to convince them this is not the right way to go about that, and I think eventually they agreed with me.

We've got a family in our church right now, a husband and a wife that don't have any kids, and I've witnessed them down at Walmart witnessing to some of the hitchhikers that'll come through, but they'll stop there at Walmart to get food or something, and they'll take them over to the family buffet and buy them lunch.

See, that's hospitable. It doesn't have to involve your home, yet you could be sitting around a table somewhere in a restaurant where that would be a safer place, having a good conversation, sharing the gospel, and treating them to a meal.

So that was going to be the second part of this. So the first part I said exercising hospitality by welcoming people into his home, but a pastor must also show hospitality by welcoming people into his church.

Hopefully the church is not cliquish or, you know, closed off in such a way that when new faces come in they find it difficult to make new friends, but rather the church is open and welcoming to new faces, and not just those who are

Christians who are believers, but also unbelievers. Are unbelievers welcome in your church?

Now, we must recognize that an unbeliever is not part of the church. If they are not a follower of Jesus Christ, if they're not indwelt with the

Holy Spirit of God, they might be inside the church and welcome there, but they're not actually part of the family of God if they're not a follower of Christ.

So a church needs to agree that a certain amount of time is allowed for that unbeliever to be there and hear the gospel proclaimed, and hopefully they will be convicted in their sin, and they'll turn from their sin and worship

Christ, and be baptized, and then become part of that body of believers. But if after a time that unbeliever still will not repent of their sin and become part of that fellowship, then it must be said to them, look, we've shown you all manner of generosity, but you've made it clear you don't want to become part of us, and so therefore we must ask you to leave.

And you can still do that kindly and generously, just like you would a person in your own home.

Hey, it's time for us to go to bed, you need to leave and go home, okay? So this needs to be the way that we conduct ourselves in our churches as well, hospitable in our homes, hospitable in the church.

And again, I want to clarify, that's not an either -or, that's a both -and. We must be hospitable in our homes and hospitable in our churches.

Tim Challies talked about this at G3 just this past week. He said the following, create a culture of hospitality in your church.

Invite people into your home, or go into other people's homes.

Stop making an idol of your own comforts. Get to know people. See, that's another aspect of hospitality, it's not just that you would be welcoming of people into your home, but that you would also go to other folks homes whenever they invite you over.

Sometimes it's easy for us to invite someone into our house because then it's our territory, and we don't we don't feel awkward or odd about making ourselves at home, it is our home.

But you must also accept an invitation that somebody else extends to you, welcoming you into their home.

That's the other aspect, the other side of hospitality. Unfortunately, I as a pastor have to admit,

I have to say, I have not been to every home of every member in my congregation.

But when I am invited, I am sure to want to accept that invitation and be able to see how that person lives, be welcome into their home, give them an opportunity to bless me by serving me and showing me hospitality.

Because in allowing them to do that for me, I'm helping to grow them in maturity in that exercise of showing hospitality to others.

So this is the second of those three qualifications that we're looking at today.

An elder or an overseer must be respectable, he must be hospitable, and here is number three, he must be able to teach.

And of all of the things that are on this list, 1 Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 through 7, of all the things on this list, this is the only skill that is listed.

This is the only skill that an overseer, a pastor elder, must have.

He must be able to teach. Now that's different than a deacon. A deacon must be able to serve and so must an overseer, but a deacon doesn't have to have the ability to teach.

So when we go into qualifications for deacons, which is verses 8 through 13, rather than saying that a deacon must be able to teach, it says that a deacon must hold to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.

That's in verse 9, 1 Timothy 3, 9. So he doesn't have to be able to teach, but he must hold a sound doctrine.

He still must be sound in his belief and his understanding of the Word of God and desire to learn it and grow in it and mature in it.

But for the person who is an overseer in the church, he must have an ability to teach.

To help the people of God understand what the Word of God is saying, how to apply it to their lives, and live that out in all manner of godliness in the way that they conduct themselves in this world.

The way that they mature in sanctification and in belief. This is something that the elder or the overseer helps the people of God do.

And the scriptures are difficult to understand sometimes. And by the way, the Bible says that. In 2

Peter chapter 3, Peter said that Paul writes some things in his letters that are difficult to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.

And so it is necessary that we have teachers, that we have people who teach us the Word of God and how to apply it to our lives.

And that is an ability that the overseer must have. That is one of his qualifications.

He may excel in all these other things that are mentioned on this list, but if he does not have the ability to teach, then he's disqualified from the position of overseer.

I remember years ago a pastor saying to me that if you think that God is calling you to be a leader, a good way to find out or to put that theory to the test is to lead somewhere.

You know, have somebody appoint you to a position of leadership. If people follow you, then maybe you have that gift of leadership, but if nobody's following you, it might just be that you want to be a leader, but the

Lord is not actually calling you to be a leader. And this applies too when it comes to teaching. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don't know how to communicate that knowledge to other people and help them understand it, then your gift simply isn't teaching and your calling is not to become a pastor.

And remember, when it comes to learning all of this knowledge, the pastor must be sober -minded, not given over into myths and conspiracy theories or wild speculations, but he holds firm to the trustworthy word as taught and teaches the full counsel of God in sound doctrine.

I remember when I first became the senior pastor of our church, there was a man who had been attending our church for a couple of years and he had just retired from the military, so he was wondering what he needed to do with his life next.

And so he came to me to talk to me about becoming a pastor. What would I need to do to become a pastor? And so I said, ideally, you want to go to seminary.

You want to learn the languages. You're going to learn church history. You're going to learn homiletics.

You take courses in which they teach you how to deliver a sermon. And he started getting passionate about it as I was talking about it, saying, yeah, somebody needs to teach people the truth.

We need to teach folks to stay away from these lies and myths and rather teach people the truth of what

God has said. And I'm getting fired up with him. I'm like, amen, brother. Yeah, as it says in Titus 1 .9,

we must also rebuke those who contradict the word of God. And he said, yeah, we need to teach people about dinosaurs.

And suddenly I got a little skeptical about his intentions as a pastor.

I said, what do you mean teach people about dinosaurs? He says, well, there's no such thing as dinosaurs.

I mean, this is all a myth. It's a it's a conspiracy, man. They show these pictures of people digging up dinosaurs out of the ground, but they're all fake.

Dinosaurs never really existed. These fossils are all it's all just a scam. And people are being fooled into thinking that the earth is billions of years old because of these dinosaur fossils.

And so we've got to we've got to raise up pastors that will teach people that dinosaurs are lies.

And I'm going, man, there ain't no way this guy's ever going to become a pastor. So already this man is given over into wild conspiracy theories and crazy ideas.

He's disqualified from the position of overseer. Jesus said in John chapter four that the worshipers that God is seeking must worship him in spirit and in truth.

And that is what the overseer of the church helps the people of God to do. Worship God in spirit and in truth.

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