God's House Rules #7 - Gospel Order in God's House #2: Fundamentals of Leadership (1 Tim 3:1-7)

Qualifications for Church Leadership in 1 Timothy 3:1-7

1 Timothy 3, 1 -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, a 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. These are God's words to us, and I pray that he would bless our reading of them and our understanding of them as we come to them.

Allow me to pray, ask for God's help, and we will dig into his word for this morning. Well, Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come to your word this morning, and that as we come to this section of your word that is so critical and so pivotal, I ask that you especially help us.

May your Spirit be at work, both in the one who speaks and in your people who hear. May we see not just the necessity of what we see in this passage, but may we see the glory of it, the goodness of it.

Open our eyes that we would see wonderful things out of your law, even on a topic that we may be tempted to think doesn't apply to us. Father, normally we pray for one of our local area churches, but this morning I pray for all the churches in our valley.

Christmas is coming up. Churches will no doubt be having various things going on. I pray that you would use all of the various outreaches that are happening to draw men and women, boys and girls to yourself.

May your gospel go forth with clarity, with power, and may your Spirit be pleased to use the ministry of your word to bring people to the Savior. Be with us once again as we come before your word. I ask in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. Please be seated. I usually have some kind of attention-grabbing introduction each week as I come to the preaching of the word. That's how I was trained to preach, and so I don't think I'm more intelligent than people who trained me.

So I do that every week, but I'll be honest. As I came to this passage and as I studied this this weekend, I put pen to paper and I started to write. I did have an introduction. I'll use it for another sermon.

That's the beauty of sermons. They're kind of like Build-A-Bear a little bit. So I will use it for another sermon, but as I looked over this material and I began to think about it again, I'll be honest.

The weight of what we're going to study hits me pretty hard this week. So for a moment, I'm going to break the rule of a lifetime, and I'm actually just going to speak from my heart for a moment. The next four weeks are a massive part of why some of you I know have been like, we were going to do Luke.

What happened? Well, what had happened was I make a habit of reading 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus once a quarter. That's something I've done. My pastor gave me that recommendation years ago, and I've not veered from it.

And so about six months ago, I started reading through this letter. And for some reason, not only the Spirit of God knows, what was said in this letter, especially 1 Timothy, really hit home for me. And so much so that by the time that I had gotten done, actually, I didn't make it through all three letters like I normally do.

I just read 1 Timothy over and over and over again. And by the time that I was done, I said, yeah, Luke would be great, and we will get to it. This feels more urgent. And a part of why I basically blew up my preaching calendar and had to start over in the middle of the year relates to my own personal ministry story over the last few years.

I moved to this valley in 2017. I left London, across the pond, left a thriving, wonderful church, was engaged in great ministry there, moved here in 2017. For the first two years, my wife and I served at a local church here in this valley.

Don't need to name it because it's not really relevant. But we were there for about two years, the first two years of our marriage, until the Lord saw fit to move us along. There was some stuff that, again, maybe not for messages being live-streamed, you can come talk to me in private.

I'll be happy to tell you that story. In 2019, we became part of, you're technically supposed to say the core group, but we didn't know what we were doing when we planted this church, if we're really honest.

And so in 2019, we became part of the core group, if you want to call it that, of what later became Redeemer. There's a long story there, again, grab me for lunch sometime, I can tell you that long story.

But this year, 2024, that just passed, actually the first Sunday of June, marked five years since Redeemer, what became Redeemer Bible Fellowship, began. Our first service was about that direction, Central Point Library, in a tiny meeting room, because there's only like eight of us.

Five years since RBF began, and about seven since I got to this valley. And in that time, whether you pick the seven or the five, I've interacted with a lot of believers in our valley. And when you talk to believers, obviously one of the questions you're often asked, especially when they're not in the church you go to is, oh, what church do you go to?

And they'll tell you. And then when you ask, okay, well, great, how's that going? Well, people will talk about, more often than not, the leadership at the church they're at. And I began to notice something that, I remember I told my wife at the time, it began to bother me.

The thing that began to bother me that I kept noticing was, people would often talk about their pastors and they would complain about their pastors, which is nothing new. People complain about leadership because that's what leaders are there for.

But what I noticed was the complaints that they had, had nothing to do with what the Bible says a leader is. In fact, the passage that we're going to look at this morning, in fact, actually for the next four weeks, this passage almost never came up.

Okay, let's just notice that. But then I would hear what they were complaining about, what they were judging their pastors for. And it was even more concerning to me because it wasn't just this passage is not coming up.

Do I think you have to quote the reference every time? No, but the general theme should be in your mind. The general themes weren't though. What I began to realize was, some of you maybe have experienced this if you've worked before, had to apply for jobs.

You ever apply for a job and the job description is not clear? Yeah, like, I don't know if you've ever had that happen to you. You're applying for a job and the job description is not clear. I began to realize that for lots of Christians in our valley, and I speak to our valley because I live here.

I can't deal with the world. I deal with the world around me. I began to notice that for lots of Christians in our valley, they were judging pastors and Christian leaders by everything except the job description.

And then what usually I started, I started to notice this and I would ask people and say, yeah, it's kind of a thing around here. Well, the pastor doesn't do the things I think he should do. Nevermind.

Okay. I don't know what God's job description for him is. That's what you start to see this habit. Some of you who've been in the valley long enough know that this is a thing. People just bounce from church to church every couple of years, but they're not happy where they're at, or I need to change, or I need something else.

And sometimes part of that is, I mean, there's a legitimate reason maybe you need to move churches. That's fine. But sometimes it's just, I don't like the leadership there. And the leadership doesn't do the things I think they should do.

Are they Bible things? Well, no, but what ends up happening is that people start looking for leaders who, they do the things that people think a Christian leader should do. Not the things that this book says they should do.

If I can really boil down what I'm trying to say, in one word, there's a lot of confusion out there about what a church leader is and what a church leader does. And in fact, that confusion exists among people at times that it really shouldn't.

I put it to you that there are some leaders who are confused about what a church leader is and what a church leader does. Now, I had to learn a long time ago, I am not responsible for everyone everywhere.

I have a little bit of that problem. I think it's my brother, my brother, Joshua. He sometimes says, Kofi, you have a Superman complex sometimes. And what he means by that is I have this tendency where I think I can solve problems everywhere.

And I've had to learn I'm not responsible for problems everywhere. I'm not responsible for everybody everywhere, but I am responsible for this house. And the confusion that I think exists out there, I don't want to exist here.

And here's the thing, that confusion might be real, but it is not inevitable. You know what I mean when I say that? Just because people are confused on this subject doesn't mean we have to be confused.

Because God in his goodness gave us a book. And in the book that he gave us, he tells us about this thing that we've been talking about for the last seven weeks called God's house, his church. And part of what he tells us in this book is who are the people who should exercise leadership in his house?

And this text, 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 7, answers that question for us. Who are called? Actually, I'm going to skip that word called, I'll come back to that later. Who qualifies to be a leader in God's church?

The reality is if Redeemer is going to be the most healthy church it could be, it is critical for us to understand what faithful leadership looks like. I'm sorry, I understand that we have all been told that our opinions matter.

Your opinion really doesn't matter. I apologize if I sound blunt and really short this morning, that's not my intention. But the reality is, I think on this issue, God has been clear enough that really there's only two things that you can ground any lack of clarity on.

Either it's willful ignorance, I deliberately don't care, or it's laziness. I just don't know what God's word says and I haven't done the work to find out. I want neither of those to be the case. Like I said, I can't fix everywhere else.

I can't even fix here if I'm honest, that's the spirit of God's job. But what I can do is open up this word and allow this word to speak to all of us about what qualifies a man for spiritual leadership in God's house.

Those of you who were here last week when we looked at 1 Timothy 2, 8 through 15, I said that God's house has a definite order and that it's in following that order, in keeping to that order, that's the only way in which the house flourishes.

And a very key part of that flourishing that God desires for every local expression of his house is understanding the leadership that God has put in place over his house. And Paul would agree. Look with me at verse 1.

1 Timothy 3 verse 1, Paul says, this saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work. In our study, you remember I've pointed out to us that when you see that phrase, this saying is trustworthy, or this is a trustworthy saying, you should let your ears perk up.

You should lean in. Because what Paul is doing is he's taking a statement that the early Christians would have used. And he's reminding them of that statement to make a point. Whenever you see this phrase in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, this phrase, this is a trustworthy saying, this is something that every Christian, or at least the majority of Christians in the world of the New Testament would have known to be true.

Now we'll come back to the second half of that statement, of that verse in just a moment. But let me just point out something real, to point out something here real quick. Remember what we've said about this letter that yes, Paul writes to Timothy, but he's essentially expecting the church to eavesdrop on this, if that's the case.

And I put it to you that the qualifications for leadership, they aren't just something that only leaders should care about. Apparently the early church thought so because they had a statement that talked about the goodness of the work of oversight.

The early church knew the importance of faithful leadership and knew it well enough that they could even have sort of confessional statements that talked about this. In fact, I go so far as to say that they thought leadership was critical.

And I think we should think leadership is critical because I put it to you that the fact that God devotes a lot of space in His Word to the subject of who should be a spiritual leader, that tells us that this is critical.

And so I'm going to break a habit of mine. As you all know, I like to generally work through paragraphs in letters. Some of my friends like to do real deep dives and do like single verses, more power to them.

I don't have that kind of gifting, but I am going to do that for this series. We are going to slow it down to a crawl. We're going to be in 1 Timothy 3, 1 -7 for four weeks. Why? Because by the time we're done, I don't want there to be any confusion about what qualifies a man as a faithful minister and what qualifies a man as an unfaithful minister.

And so we come to 1 Timothy 3 verses 1 -7 this morning. Now, 1 Timothy 3 doesn't tell us everything about Christian leadership. Actually, no one text does. So for a few moments before, I'm going to take a while before we get to 1 Timothy 3, because what I want to do for a few moments is I want to paint for you the big picture of Christian leadership.

I want to take a quick trip through the New Testament and to paint a picture of what Christian leadership looks like in general, and then we'll come and see how 1 Timothy 3 fits into that. There are a number of ways we could do this.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to use the major words in the New Testament for Christian leaders. As you all know, I generally don't use Greek in sermons, and I'm not going to make an exception today.

I'm just going to describe the words to you, and we'll look at some places where they appear, and we'll learn what they are. Each of these words teach us about the nature of Christian leadership. So I've got four things I want you to notice about Christian leadership as you read the New Testament, and each of them come from the words that are used for a leader in the New Testament.

Christian Leaders as Men of Spiritual Maturity

First of all, Christian leaders are men of spiritual maturity. Christian leaders are men of spiritual maturity. So when you read the New Testament, the predominant word used for a Christian leader is not pastor.

Actually, the word that's used 60 times in your New Testament, the majority of them referring to the church and its leaders is the word elder. So Acts chapter 14, Paul starts to double back on some of these churches that he had planted, and it says that in Acts chapter 14 verse 23, that as they visit these various churches, they're strengthening disciples, they're helping them in their faith.

Verse 23, when they had appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Acts chapter 15, a doctrinal issue rises among the churches, and so a council essentially is called by the believers in the church at Jerusalem.

It's interesting, Acts chapter 15 verse 4 says, when they arrived at Jerusalem, this is Paul and Barnabas, when they arrived at Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, the apostles, and the elders.

So between Acts chapter 1, where you had just the apostles, and Acts chapter 15, you now have the development of this office we call the elder. Verse 6 of Acts chapter 15, again it says that the apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter, this issue of what do we do with the Gentiles who've come to faith, they need to keep the law.

It's not just the apostles now who are making these decisions, there's now a group called the elders. It becomes apparent that the apostles began to consider themselves as part of this group of people called the eldership.

So you read 1 Peter chapter 5, Peter says, I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and witness to the sufferings of Christ over and over and over again. And by the way, did you notice that every time elders mentioned in the plural, I have to say this in passing, God's design for the church was never for the church to be led by one singular person.

The biblical model is a plurality of elders. Now you may have one person who is the first among those elders, first among equals, so you even see that among the disciples. Who's the main guy among the disciples when you read the gospel?

It's the big mouth guy, his name's Peter. In fact, when the disciples are listening, Matthew chapter 10 explicitly says Peter is the first. So it's not that you don't have maybe a primary person or a lead person, but you don't have an exclusive person.

God's design is for the church to be led by a plurality of elders. And it's kind of interesting, like I said, for most people, if you see a leader in a church, the first word they go to is pastor. It's never elder.

It's interesting though, one of the books I read this week, John McArthur's Commentary on Ephesians, he said this, that in general usage, it may be that elder is a more appropriate term for our day since it is free from many of the unbiblical connotations imposed on the word bishop, we'll come to that word later, and even pastor throughout much of church history.

Unbiblical connotations, whatever could he mean? I'm gonna just let that sit there, we'll revisit that in our study for sure. For our purposes though, leaders are those that this word elder, it carries this idea of spiritual maturity.

The word itself comes from the root for a word for an old man. In fact, there are still some ways in which this word is used in that sense today. So the pastor who discipled and in my opinion, trained me for the ministry, Dr. Tom Dreon.

Years ago, Tom got diagnosed with an eye condition called presbyopia. Presbyopia. He started having trouble with his vision, with things up close, and the reason the term gets his name is it's a condition for folks who are getting older.

That's the name. Presby part refers to an old man, an opiate to do with the eyes. Now, the fact that the word that's used for elder means an old man, that doesn't mean he has to be a certain age, that's not really the issue.

In fact, we'll see later in chapter 4, Timothy's not all that old himself. No, the idea is not that he's older in age, it's spiritually speaking, that he is mature. And that maturity is important because elders have an important role in the Bible.

The role that the elder has is that he sets an example to the flock. So Paul could say, Philippians chapter 3 verse 17, join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us.

We'll see this in a few weeks in 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 12. Paul says, don't let anyone despise your youth, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.

Hebrews 13 7, we'll come back to this verse later, but Hebrews 13 7, remember your leaders who have spoken God's word to you, as you carefully observe the outcome of their faith, imitate their lives. Elders are to be men of spiritual maturity.

Why? Because they are meant to set an example, an imperfect example to be fair, but an example nonetheless for God's people to imitate. So Christian leaders are men of spiritual maturity. Number two, Christian leaders oversee the work of the ministry.

Christian leaders oversee the work of the ministry. The second term the New Testament uses for a leader is the one that actually appears in our passage. So again, look at verse 1, if anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work.

Overseer is not a word that we use all too often in our culture, so let me swap it for another word which actually is exactly the same thing, supervisor. Actually, that's the Latin form of this word, to look over, to oversee.

So we go to 1 Peter 5 1, 1 Peter 5 2 says, to shepherd God's flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion, but willingly. Christian leaders oversee the work of the ministry. Now, Christian leaders are not the only people in the ministry.

Ephesians 4 makes that very clear. God gives leaders to the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, but they are not the only ones in the ministry. They have a role of overseeing the work of the ministry.

They have a responsibility for the direction and the deployment of resources in that work. Not only do they have that in relation to their work, but the Bible makes it very clear, Hebrews 13 17, that they keep watch, just not over the work, but over the souls of God's people.

So it's not just a faithful minister comes and does the functions of ministry. Yes, he does do the functions of ministry, but he also looks over the souls of the people committed to him. So Christian leaders are men of spiritual maturity.

They oversee the work of the ministry. Thirdly, Christian leaders shepherd God's people. Christian leaders shepherd God's people. This is the word that most of us think of when we think of a leader, a pastor, a shepherd.

I'll be honest. I'm not sure why we've latched onto this term pastor as the label we give to Christian leaders more than any other one. The reason I say that is, do you know how many times pastors are referred to in the New Testament?

One time. Ephesians 4 11. He himself, the ascended Christ, gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. In fact, anyone have an ESV in the room? English Standard Version.

I'm not sure if the newer version went in line with everyone else, but I remember when I used to use the ESV, the early edition of the ESV used to say the shepherds and teachers, because that's the actual word.

Pastor is just the Latin form of the word shepherd, but it's by far not the most frequent title. That's why it's number three on my list. It's the most frequent title. It's the title of an elder. If I put it to you that the title is not really the point, you see, the title might not be the most frequent, but the function.

Ah, now that appears a bunch in the Bible. So John chapter 21, Jesus is with Peter post his resurrection. He's restoring Peter after Peter's failure in faith. John chapter 21 verse 16. A second time he, Jesus, asked him, Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Yes, Lord, he said to him, you know that I love you. Shepherd my sheep, he told him. In Acts chapter 20, Paul gathers the elders again in the plural of the church at Ephesus. And when he gathers them, he gives them this exhortation.

Acts chapter 20 verse 28. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. While I may have questions about why we use this title of pastor all the time, I do think that we cannot ignore the function of a pastor, the function of a shepherd, that he is to shepherd God's people, which is to feed and to care.

In fact, actually, there are four things we can say about shepherding from the New Testament, which is going to be good for us to define because I've heard people who say, oh, this pastor is not a shepherd.

Well, what does that actually mean? Well, here's the thing. God has not left us in the dark. We can actually go to his word and see what that means. Shepherding means four things in the Bible. First of all, it means knowing the sheep.

Shepherding is knowing the sheep, having knowledge of and awareness of the needs of the sheep. Shepherding involves knowing the sheep, which, by the way, that's another argument for church membership because if you don't know who the sheep are that you're called to watch over, that can get a little problematic.

Shepherds know the sheep. They feed the sheep. It's not enough for shepherds to just know the people and know their needs. No, they must meet those needs. But what has God given the shepherd to meet the needs of his people?

He's given his word. And so, shepherds know the sheep. They feed the sheep. They minister to the needs of the sheep through the ministry of the word. And the ministry of the word is not just preaching.

It's a variety of ways in which the word of God is brought to bear on the life of God's people. So, they know the sheep. They feed the sheep. They leave the sheep. We'll talk more about this in just a second.

They exercise authority for the good of the flock. So, shepherds know the sheep. They feed the sheep. They leave the sheep. And they protect the sheep. The reality is the sheep are not without potential threats and dangers to their health.

And so, God in his goodness puts men in place who are able to protect the sheep from potential threats and dangers. I think it's especially important for us to define this term properly because in my experience, again, it's just my experience.

Some of you maybe have had better experiences. I've been thankful for. But in my experience, Christians treat this term the way that Africans treat ice cream containers. Some of you are like, wait, what?

Let me bring you into the home I grew up in for a moment. Let's leave the Rove Valley. Let me take you to East London in the 90s when I was growing up. So, in our house, my mom's probably watching this.

Hi, mom. A lot of cooking went on because my mom was a really good cook. And still is. Yeah, she still is. I mean, I say that because I don't eat her food as often these days. But when we were growing up, yeah, absolutely.

She could cook. And obviously, like, there were six of us growing up. Mom, dad, and I have three siblings. There were six of us. Which meant a lot of cooking happened. And that doesn't mean that obviously all of us eat different amounts.

So, there'd often be leftovers. Now, what we would often do to store food for later was we didn't do Tupperware because Tupperware was expensive. So, what would you do? Well, you buy, like, back in the day when we weren't all so hung up on the environment, all the ice cream came in plastic containers.

So, what did you do after you had finished ice cream? Well, in our house, and it wasn't just our house, lots of African houses growing up did this. You'd put leftover food in the container and put it in the fridge.

Okay. So, apparently that happened here, too. Okay. But here was the funny thing about that. Sometimes stuff would be in the freezer for a really long time and you'd forget. So, along comes me, who has a sweet tooth and still does.

I go in the freezer. Oh, it's ice cream. And imagine just the trauma you feel when you open this container expecting ice cream. Oh, it's rice, which I like rice, actually. So, I was like, I'll have some rice.

Okay. But the reality, what happened in that moment? The label on the front said, like, vanilla ice cream, which was always the one in our house. But something else had been emptied out of its contents a long time ago and random stuff had been put in it.

Can I put it to you that sometimes we do this with this word, pastor? That we just empty the word of its biblical meaning and we have substituted a cultural meaning. And then when someone doesn't meet the cultural expectation, we say, he's a bad pastor.

He might be, but he might not be. Shepherding is a great Bible theme. And can I suggest that a great many Christians have done everything they can to ruin that Bible theme. But it's a good Bible theme because Christian leaders shepherd God's people.

So, Christian leaders are men of spiritual maturity. They oversee the work of the ministry. They shepherd God's people. Number four, Christian leaders exercise authority over God's people. They exercise authority over God's people.

This might be where a lot of people really struggle. You see, I told you there were different sets of New Testament words and we're just describing them. There's a whole set. There's actually two of them.

Two different words used in the New Testament for Christian leaders that carry the idea of not just leadership, but rule. So, 1st Thessalonians 5 .12, Paul says, now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to give recognition to those who labor among you and lead you.

My translation of CSB says, if you've got the English Standard Version, it translates that are over you. The recently released Legacy Standard Bible says, they have charge over you in the Lord and admonish you.

1st Timothy 5 .17, the elders who are good leaders. Not a great translation in my CSB. The word there is literally rule well. In fact, if you've got an ESV, they get top marks for this. They translate that as, the elders who rule well are to be considered of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.

So, Hebrews 13 .17 says, obey your leaders and submit to them. That word leaders, different word, but same connotation. It's the word for somebody who has rulership over a group. Why are you laboring at this point?

Very simple. Leaders have real authority. At the risk of sounding somewhat condescending, and that's not my aim, but leaders actually lead people, which means that people are meant to follow them. My pastor used to say all the time, it's funny when somebody says they're a leader, the first question he would ask is, well, who's following you?

Now, people hear that and they can say, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know if I like that. Well, for a moment, let's allow the whole Bible to speak. Let's be clear. Only Jesus has absolute authority over the church.

So, Ephesians 1 .22, the Bible says that God appointed him head over everything for the church. Colossians 1 .18, he is the head of the body, the church. So, yes, pastors have authority, but they don't have absolute authority.

There is only one man who has absolute authority over his church, and his name is Jesus. But the one man who is the head of the church delegates authority to qualified men in the church. So, remember we quoted Ephesians 4 .11 a few minutes ago?

He himself gave some pastors and teachers whatever authority a spiritual leader has, it's a given authority. But let's be clear, just because it's given doesn't mean it's not real authority. It's still real authority, which is to be wielded carefully and obeyed and submitted to in as much as it conforms to the Word of God.

Now, I've taken us on this trip through the New Testament because these various words, the elder, the shepherd pastor, the overseer, the ruler, they're all speaking to the same person and the same work.

It's just different aspects of that person and different aspects of that work. Now, for the purposes of our study for the next four weeks, I'm going to keep using the word that Paul uses here, which is the word overseer.

But in your minds, when you hear me say overseer, that's the same thing as a pastor, which is the same thing as an elder, which is the same thing as a ruler. If that's what Christian leaders do, these four things that we've looked at, that they're men of spiritual maturity, which means they also set an example, that they are not just men of spiritual maturity, but they also oversee the work of the ministry.

And if they are also men who shepherd God's flock and they are men who exercise authority over God's people, if that's what they do, how do we know when somebody should be a leader and somebody should not?

Do we just, I want to be really careful here, but do we do what some churches do? You've been here a while, people like you, or I've seen this in some churches, including churches I grew up in, this person, oh, this person's in the business world.

He's got leadership experience, he'd be great here. Is that what we do? Do we just fill up a quota with men who, you know, they're available and they've got a pulse and people might just listen to them?

Oh no, actually, that's why we're going to be in first Timothy three for the next four weeks. Now, let me just say, before we finally get to our passage this morning, these are not going to be like my typical sermons.

You know, typically I have a big idea, you know, kind of flesh out that big idea with various points. I'm not really going to do that for the next few weeks. We're just going to kind of just have some Bible study together, march our way through each of these qualifications.

This morning we'll feel more like a typical sermon, the remaining three definitely won't. We're just going to take these in order, mostly, I'll explain why one of the weeks. I'm just going to look at what these qualifications are and just trace them through the Bible.