WWUTT 602 The Saying is Trustworthy?

The Trustworthy Saying and the Calling of an Overseer

When it comes to creeds and confessions, we tend to think of these things as man's doctrine, whereas what we read in the Bible is God's doctrine. But that's not the case. Thus the confessions summarize God's doctrine when we understand the text.

Thank you Becky. We continue with our study of 1 Timothy chapter 3, this week looking at verses 1 -7, with the Apostle Paul writing to his servant Timothy, 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, 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 as Paul provides this list of qualifications to Timothy, that an overseer is expected to meet, the first thing he says here is that the saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Well, we've seen Paul begin a statement like that before, where in chapter 1 verse 15, he says the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

So Paul is making a reference to something confessional, to something like a creed that would have been memorized and repeated by members of the church there in the first century. It was a summary of doctrines that were taught by the apostles.

It would be like learning catechism. And these creeds not only summarized essential doctrinal truths, which is what we have there in 1 Timothy 1 verse 15, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, but they also taught the very function of the church itself.

And that's what you have in chapter 3 verse 1. The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. And that would have been the statement as it would have appeared in the confessions.

Even when you read the confessions today, whether it's the London Baptist confession or the Westminster catechism or the Heidelberg catechism or something like that, you have listed in there not just a summary of doctrinal teaching, but also the application of that teaching and the administration within the church.

Those things are summarized in those confessions also. And so even here in the first century, when these apostolic teachings were summarized in catechism type form, so they would be easily learned, memorized and applied.

You have not only a confession of a doctrinal truth, chapter 1 verse 15, but also a confession of the function of the church, chapter 3 verse 1. In all three of Paul's letters to his pastors, so 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, in all three of those letters, does he make a reference to a saying that is trustworthy?

And these sayings that we've had thus far, these are from the creeds and confessions that were in use even within that first century church. Studying the creeds and confessions is very important. Now, you don't have to agree with absolutely everything that's in them.

You know, I am a Baptist, so I don't believe I don't agree with everything that is in the Westminster Catechism. I might actually read the Westminster Shorter Catechism and do that with my children. I even read that one with my kids.

A person who is a Lutheran is not necessarily going to agree with what is in the London Baptist Confession. So there's going to be some secondary and tertiary issues that are in there that you don't agree with.

The confessions and creeds, after all, are not scripture, but they summarize things that are in the scriptures. And it's important for us to know what it is that we believe about those doctrinal truths that are foundational to saving faith, especially those essential truths.

Every once in a while, I'll come across a church that will say something like, no creed but Christ or no confession but the Bible. You know what I'm talking about? There's actually a church here in town that the teaching is actually pretty good.

Pastor's a friend of mine. I've recommended people to that church before. But when you go to their website to try to find out what it is that they believe, that's kind of a chore. You go to the we believe section.

I've given this pastor a hard time about this. You go to the we believe section and it just says no creed but Christ. It's like, OK, well, that doesn't actually tell you anything. And even though that church might say that, the fact of the matter is there are creeds that they adhere to and there are confessions that they have adopted, whether or not they've summarized those things and put them in some kind of statement of faith or the about us section on their website.

So, for example, I might ask you, do you believe that Jesus is the son of God? And you say, well, yes, of course I do. The Bible says that Jesus is the son of God. And that is an essential doctrinal truth.

And I say to you, OK, well, a Mormon also believes that Jesus is the son of God. So do you believe in the same Jesus as the Mormons do? And then if you know something about the Mormon faith, you might answer, well, no, of course not, because they believe that Jesus is the literal offspring of heavenly father and heavenly mother.

They deny the Trinity. They deny that God is one God in three persons. So I do not believe in the same Jesus that the Mormons believe in. And then I respond to you, ah, well, see, now you're being confessional.

Now, in order to explain the Orthodox historical Jesus that you believe in, according to what is said in the scriptures, you must summarize the truth about Jesus in a confessional statement that differs your understanding of Jesus from somebody like a Mormon or somebody like the Jehovah's Witnesses who believe that Jesus is the Archangel Michael.

Well, we don't believe that either. And so in order to affirm proper doctrine and differ from those who would teach a different doctrine, we have summarizations that come about in the creeds and the confessions.

And these things were even being adopted and taught and circulated within that first century church. And so Paul is reminding Timothy of something that Timothy would have known full well. First Timothy 115, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

This is not something that Paul was introducing to Timothy, that he's saying, hey, go to the church in Ephesus and teach them this. I'm going to give you a few sayings here. These are sayings that had already been summarized, probably even written out, may have been a list of confessions that every church had.

They were memorized, they were repeated, they were taught. And so Paul is reminding Timothy of something that was from the apostolic teaching and that had already been applied and learned even in the church in Ephesus.

And he does this again in chapter three, verse one. The saying is trustworthy. So the reference to the saying is a reference to that creed or confession. The fact that it's trustworthy, that's an interesting word to use.

What does that mean? Well, the Greek word more literally translates as a loyalty to faith. So it's believing something according to the faith that God imparts. And so because we have this faith that has been given to us by God, there are various passages that point us to that.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 is often the one that I come back to. By grace you are saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not of yourselves, so that no one may boast. So faith itself is something that is given to us by God.

Even though we will have some verses that will state that explicitly, there are undertones of it throughout the New Testament, even though it may not be explicitly stated that faith was given to you by God.

And this is one of those places where there's an undertone of a gifting of faith by God to believe something that is a truth he has imparted. And that's the case in 1 Timothy 1, 15, where we have a statement of a doctrinal, an essential doctrinal truth.

And it's also the case in 1 Timothy 3, 1 where we have a statement concerning the function of the church itself. You believe that this is the way the church is supposed to be, that there is an overseer who administers the teaching and shepherds the flock of God, the spiritual needs for the church.

You believe that the church has been arranged this way, organized this way by God because he has imparted to you the faith to believe that. The faith to believe what it is that the apostles say that Jesus said, that God is instructing for his church.

So the saying is trustworthy. The saying is deserving of your faith to believe it. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. So he even has the ambition to fill that role and he desires to do it with a sense of nobility.

As I mentioned to you yesterday, noble to be noble means to show some fine personal qualities, to be a very principled person. And so he, he displays that in his character. He is a person who is worthy of being imitated.

He shows that he is a mature Christian according to his understanding of doctrine and also his exercise of that doctrine, the godliness and the pursuit of holiness that is evident in his life. It must be observable.

Somebody knows about this person, that he is, he is godly. He is Christlike or desires to be like Christ. And so the, uh, all of these qualifications that follow from that are an example of a mature Christian.

And that's what the overseer is. He's an example of a mature Christian. Doesn't mean he's a perfect man, but when you see that man make mistakes, does he, uh, confess those mistakes? Does he admit that he was at fault?

Does he ask forgiveness for his sins? Is he somebody that is correctable when he does fall into error or transgress the law, any of these things? And so even that becomes an example to the faith. Not that he's somebody who should regularly transgress the law in order to regularly show a spirit of being restored to the body.

That's, that's not necessarily the case. But he is certainly somebody who is deserving of grace as anybody and has been shown the grace of God. And so we must be gracious with the pastor as much as we would be gracious to anybody.

However, we still have that statement James makes in James three, one that not all of you should aspire to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that teachers will be judged more strictly, not just by the things that they say and teach, but also by their behavior, their character.

And so this is, uh, it's a high calling. It's, it's a calling. It's a noble calling. It is a, uh, it is a worthy calling, but it is certainly not something that should be entered into lightly. Dr. Stephen Lawson has written a book called the cost, what it takes to follow Jesus.

It's also one of his more popular sermons. And he comes to Luke chapter 14 and calls upon the listener to consider the cost of discipleship. As Jesus presented this before his very disciples, great crowds accompanied him and he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and it is not able to finish all who see it begin to mock him saying this man began to build and was not able to finish or what King going out to encounter another King in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10 ,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20 ,000.

And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. And Luke 14 concludes this way.

Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall it saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so even when it comes to following Christ, we must consider the cost of discipleship.

It's a great cost, but it is definitely worth the cost. And when it comes to being a pastor, being an overseer, caring for the flock of God, the people of God, administering the teaching of God to the people of God, we must count the cost there as well.

And the cost of being a shepherd is even higher than being a disciple of Jesus Christ. There are higher demands and you are in front of people and are scrutinized greatly. You're kind of put under the microscope.

You probably will live in a glass house in which everything that you do is on display before people. And there's to some degree, there should be quite a bit of transparency in the life of a pastor, since he is a model of mature Christian behavior.

Shouldn't his life be seen by others? This is a reason, by the way, that you should not attend a church where you're watching a pastor on a flat screen. This needs to be a man that you can actually meet and interact with and observe his life, not a television screen pastor in some sort of multi-site campus church.

The very first time I was introduced to Mark Dever, his teaching was when he was in a roundtable discussion with two other megachurch pastors. And the argument that Dever was making is that instead of planting a multi-site campus in which your face is just being beamed into another location, there might be a campus pastor there, but he's not the teaching pastor.

It's still you. It's very egotistical. It has to be all about you. So it's your face being beamed into this other church. Now, Dever didn't say that. He was very patient and kind with these two men as he was talking with them, but that's really the case.

That's the matter of fact there. It's a guy who's got too much of his own ego that he has to plant another campus for more people to sit in there and watch his face being beamed onto a screen and listen to his teaching.

So Dr. Dever was saying, why don't you just plant another church and raise up another pastor there? When we're planting multi-site campuses, it's actually taking away from the body of Christ because we're not training and discipling and raising up other men who are experienced pastors and being able to shepherd the flock of God in a right way.

A flat screen pastor can't do that, especially when you have a megachurch or you've got multi-site campuses. It's a lot more difficult to have particular shepherds and teachers over the flock of God when you don't know who the flock of God is.

And so that was my first exposure to Mark Dever was his argument against multi-site campuses. And I have shared that even with members of my own congregation. So I've mentioned before that our church is very military influenced.

We've got Fort Riley right next door. So we got a lot of young families that will come in. And I say to those young families, when you PCS and that's one of those military acronyms, it means permanent change of station.

And it's a ridiculous acronym because when they get relocated from one post to another post, it's not a permanent change of station. They'll be there for a year, two years, and then they'll get moved again.

So anyway, but that just happens to be the name of it. Whenever a family gets moved or a soldier gets moved from one station to another station, it's called PCSing. It's the military's use of acronyms.

So anyway, I'll talk to these young families and I'll say, whenever you PCS from here, you go to another place, you're looking for a church to attend. Stay away from those churches where you're sitting in and watching a pastor on a flat screen.

It doesn't matter how much you've listened to his teaching prior to coming to that church. And so you're he's one of those famous pastors and therefore you're very familiar with what it is that he teaches.

You can't know that man and he can't know you because you're watching his face on a screen. You can't see his life. You don't know the way that he loves his wife and his children. Does he care for God's church or does he care for his family in a right way so that you know that he's able to care for God's church in a right way?

Is he hospitable? Have you ever been to his home before? Does he even know your name? These are the kinds of things that are important when it comes to picking a church and being a part of that church.

If you have no relationship with the person who has appointed to care for God's church, then there's not going to be much cultivation in that church for other interpersonal relationships. And when I say relationship, I don't mean like he has to be your best friend.

A pastor can't do that anyway. It's stretch him too thin. He can't be best friends with everybody. But you have to have a relationship with him of some kind. I mean, surely he's at least got to know your name or or recognize your face when you come up to him and say hello.

And if you can't have that kind of interaction with that pastor because he's somebody on a flat screen or he comes out on stage and he does a message and then he disappears, you know, he goes back to his green room or something, you know, he's like a superstar celebrity pastor.

You can't actually have an interaction with this guy. Well, there's not going to be very many close personal relationships within that church either. He is an example of mature Christianity. Therefore, you need to be able to see examples of close fellowships that he has with members of the body of Christ.

There have to be examples of that there. And these things are important. I remember that I had a family within my church that got PCS from my church to another location. And there was a in this new town that they moved to.

There was a pastor there that I greatly admired. And I read his books and even quoted from his books in the sermons that I did. And they knew that. And they were like, OK, well, this guy that I've heard Pastor Gabe quote before his church is in this town.

So we're going to go to that church. And when they got there, they found out, well, this place doesn't actually have him there. It's his face on a flat screen. They were very disappointed by that. And so was I.

Unfortunately, I didn't really know that pastor was a pastor of multi site campuses. But despite how much I loved his teaching and he was still a sound teacher, I had to recommend to them when they asked me, I said, try to find a place that's smaller, still looking for sound doctrine.

But don't go to a place where you can't actually know or meet the pastor. You need to go to a place where you can observe his behavior so that he becomes that that mature model of Christian faith to the members of the flock of God that he has been entrusted to care for.

And so we continue on with this list of qualifications that Paul gives for an overseer. And tomorrow we're we'll get into what it means for him to be above reproach after he gives the the the confessional statement.

And if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. We have therefore in verse two. And the first thing that Paul says is an overseer must be above reproach. And that's what we'll get to tomorrow.

A Prayer for Sound Churches and Godly Leaders

Let's conclude with prayer. Our gracious heavenly father, we thank you for your grace that has appeared in Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has brought salvation for us, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions that we may live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.

As we wait for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

My God, I would like to pray for these listeners, and I am grateful for every one of them desiring to learn more about the word of God, that they would make this podcast a part of their daily devotionals.

I pray that you would place them in good churches that love the gospel, that are doctrinally sound and from among those believers would be raised up godly men of the word who proclaim the gospel and are examples of godliness and teach and admonish one another as we grow together in fellowship, we grow in maturity into the head who is Christ Jesus.

Though we all may be part of individual congregations, we are all part of the family of God. And so may you keep us steadfast in the things that we're learning about that are being taught in our belief and adherence to the gospel of Jesus Christ and deliver us into your eternal kingdom.

May our gaze be set heavenward. Even as we go throughout our day, we know that our treasure is not in this world, but it is in heaven forever with you. Deliver us into your kingdom. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

And we pray these things in his name. Amen.

Closing Announcements and Sign-Off

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