1 Timothy 3:1-7 (November 3, 2024)

The Faithful Saying and the Office of Bishop

1 through 7 this morning. 1 Timothy 1 through 7. Let's read this passage together and then dig into it. The Word of God says to us, this is a faithful saying. If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires good work.

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous.

One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest he be puffed up with pride, he fall into the same condemnation as the devil.

Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and snare of the devil. Amen. This is God's Word to us this morning. Let's begin in verse 1. We'll spend a good bit of time in verse 1.

It begins by saying, this is a faithful saying. This is the second time Paul has used this phrase. He used it earlier in 115, which we read back in our gospel focus. He says, this is a faithful saying.

This is Paul giving a preface to what he is about to say and to give an emphasis. It's like underlining it, putting it in bold font. This is a faithful saying. If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.

What he's saying is, this is important, what I'm about to say. This serves as a transition point as well. He had been talking about ordering the worship of the church. Specifically, he had been talking about ordering the prayers and the teaching and the authority.

Now he's going to expand on that part about authority in the church by talking about ordering church government. Specifically, chapter 3, he gives instructions for selecting pastors and for selecting deacons.

We looked at the passage about deacons a little bit out of order a few weeks ago when we did Deacon Coordination. Today, we've come back in verses 1 -7 to look at what God says about pastors and the selection of pastors.

This is a faithful saying. A man desires the position of a bishop. He desires a good work. Let's look at that word bishop for a moment. B-U-K-G-B that I'm reading from. Some of you might be thinking about the older guy with the big pointy hat.

You want to say the word bishop. That might be your conception. Or you may be thinking about a bishop that's over in this hierarchy. He's over local churches and pastors in a given geographical region.

Some church denominations organize that way. But that's actually not what we're talking about here. I don't believe that's what Paul is talking about. We're Baptist. We're a Baptist church. So we don't believe in bishops like that that oversee a group of churches and a group of pastors.

But, the word's right there in verse 1. So we have to do something with it. So I want us to look at it and see what this is talking about. Let me first note that you may have a translation that uses the word overseer.

That's literally what the word means here. It means overseer. And that's the word, it's one of the words that the Baptist faithful message, the Southern Baptist Convention's Confession of Faith uses. It actually says it like this in the Baptist faithful message.

We're talking about the two offices of the church. One of the offices being deacon and the other being pastor slash elder slash overseer. That's how it reads. And the reason for that is we believe that the words bishop or overseer, elder, and pastor are synonymous.

Those are three different terms that the New Testament uses to talk about the same office or the same person. And so when you see bishop here in verse 1, you can just make that middle switch pastor. It's a synonym and it's a word that we more typically in our circles use.

But it is one of the New Testament words. And I think that each of these three words that the New Testament uses to refer to the office or the person's pastor, each of those words teaches something about the office and about the nature and about the role of the office of pastor.

So overseer teaches us that or bishop here, it teaches us that the pastor has an overseeing responsibility for the church. He has responsibility for direction and administration of the church, especially the administration of the church ordinances, the Lord's Supper and baptism.

He has the high level responsibility that the ministries of the church get done. The buck stops with him there. And he has responsibility not only that they get done, but they get done rightly. They get done in accordance with God's word, what God has said.

In other words, he oversees those ministries. Then you have the word pastor that's found elsewhere in the Bible. This means shepherding. This word for the office teaches us that a pastor cares for, feeds, guards, and protects the flock of the church.

He primarily feeds them with God's word, preaching and teaching, counseling with God's word, taking a situation, reading God's word to bear on using the word of God to feed the people. He cares for the souls of the congregation, spending time with them, praying with them, praying for them, giving guidance.

Typically in American culture, we don't have a whole lot of shepherds. And so we often misunderstand this analogy that scripture makes. Context where Paul's writing, there's a lot of shepherds, a lot of sheep.

But that's missing within our culture. Sometimes we misunderstand that metaphor. Maybe you've seen the old children's Sunday school artwork of a shepherd. It's a kind of a dainty guy in the middle of a green meadow just kind of hitting the lamb.

That's the image we often have of shepherds and therefore of pastors kind of very dainty. I think a more apt metaphor or an apt metaphor that we can appreciate that is very similar to a shepherd but also very American is a cowboy.

I think that's a good analogy as well. Obviously shepherds better because it's in the Bible. But this is one way we can apply and kind of learn here. So we picture cowboys as a little bit rough around the edges, tough.

It's easier for us to picture the protection guarding element that a shepherd does when we think about cowboys. Cowboys are not known for being dainty. And actual sheep shepherds really aren't dainty either.

You go read the Old Testament. You see David, he's a shepherd cowboy fighting bears and lions, right? And if that's the metaphor, then that's what shepherds are actually like. Pastors ought not to be that, you know, they shouldn't be dainty either.

Because caring for God's people, teaching them what the Bible actually says and applying it to their actual lives, protecting them from very real wolves who would destroy their souls, not theoretical ones, not wolves from 500 years ago, but the actual ones that we face now and we do, that's not the word for those faint of heart.

And so we should neither expect nor accept that type of man for the job. Overseer, pastor, third word is elder. Elder teaches us about the pastor's role in the governance of the church. And here I'm specifically thinking about exercising discipline, exercising correction, adjudicating disputes within the church.

And so elders function like fathers in the church, keeping watch over the lives and souls of those in His care, agreeing correction when necessary. So we can learn, there's a lot of overlap between these.

I don't mean to kind of separate these out with two hard lines. The lines are blurry. But I think all three words give us a full picture of what God intends for the office of the pastor and those who fill that office.

Now I've used, in talking about this, I've used the pronoun he here. But I think that using the New Testament as our guide and pattern, it would be better to use the pronoun they. And what I mean by that is the New Testament pattern is for a plurality of pastors within the church, a plurality of leaders within the church.

The New Testament pattern is shared pastoral responsibility and authority rather than investing all of that in one man. So there are tremendous advantages to this model. With a plurality of pastors, you get the gifts of multiple men.

You mitigate against the weaknesses of any individual man by the strengths of the others. In a single pastor model, if that pastor has a moral failure or gets hit by a bus, then the sheep are left without a shepherd.

Or he moves somewhere. Whatever it is, the sheep are left without a shepherd. If you have a plurality of pastors, then even if it's the guy who everybody recognizes as the senior guy, that's going to happen inevitably in your group.

The church still has recognized pastoral leadership. They're cared for. The pastoral office has authority invested in it, both formal and informal. And it's generally not wise to invest all of that authority into one man.

I'm guessing if you've been around the church long enough, you've probably seen the ill effects of a pastor on a power trip. And so it's better to diffuse that authority among a group of wise, mature, qualified men recognized by the church.

And so I think that's what we see often. What we see is the New Testament pattern is this plurality of pastors, elders, overseers. I think we see a lot of wisdom in that. Now, if you get back to verse 1, this is the office that Paul is talking about.

Everything we've just said, pastor, elder, overseer, is all what Paul is talking about when he says, the man desires the position of a bishop, pastor, elder. He desires a good thing. So the one who oversees the ministry of the church and gives it direction, the one who feeds and protects and cares for and guards the seats of the congregation, the one who leads and corrects and adjudicates disputes within the church.

That's what Paul is talking about. And he says, if someone desires this, that is good. It is a good work that he desires. Now, I want to be clear here. Being a pastor is not the only good work for a Christian man to do.

And not every mature Christian young guy who loves his Bible and loves the church ought to be nudged into vocational ministry. I've seen that in the past. Somebody shows a little bit of interest in the Bible and everybody thinks he ought to go to seminary.

That's not necessarily the case. There are many good works that a Christian man can give himself to. There are many good vocations that a Christian can give himself to. We need lots of Christian doctors and lawyers and plumbers and construction workers and teachers and bankers and salesmen and software developers and software engineers, and we can fill in the blank and go on down the line.

There are many good works to do. Being a pastor is one of those. It is a good work. Now, I do think we've seen something of an overcorrection. I think in the past we've seen kind of that model of anybody that shows any kind of interest in the Bible, you ought to go to seminary.

And there's been something of an overcorrection in recent years over the course of my adult life that I've seen where we've so downplayed pastoral calling that we don't actually call gifted and qualified men into that office.

So nationwide, we're actually entering into a pastoral church around the country where there are more churches that need a pastor than there are qualified men to fill those offices. There are a few reasons for this.

One of them is a good reason, and that is we rightly corrected before where we just have anybody and everybody ought to go and be a pastor if they like the Bible and they like the church. And we've reformed our doctrine of vocation to see that there is all kinds of meaningful work that serves the Lord, serves the body, and serves the world in a multiplicity of vocations and a variety of industries.

I think that's a good thing there. One of the bad reasons is that we don't have enough pastors is because we don't think we've trained our kids right. And so we have a generation that's grown up to leave the faith and be otherwise unqualified or uninterested in the office.

And another bad reason is we have professionalized pastors such that we only see the role of a pastor as a paid vocation that someone must leave their local church to pursue. And that involves the category of lay pastor, which is someone who's a member of a church, works a regular job outside the church, is called by the church to serve the church through shepherding, overseeing, and teaching and elder.

And so if we bring this back to 1 Timothy, what we see is that pastoring is a good work. People are often drawn to good works. And so when a man desires that good work that he's drawn to, we need to recognize that it's a good thing.

But what do we do? What do we do if that were to happen here at First Baptisms? One among us felt that desire towards this work. What would we do? Thankfully, Paul tells us where to start. And that is he gives us a list of qualifications here in 1 Timothy chapter 3.

There's also one in Titus chapter 1. He gives us a list of things to look for, a thing for a man to measure himself by, and a congregation to measure him by. And the fact that he gives us a list of qualifications means that not just anyone or everyone should be admitted to the office of a pastor.

And the same thing as we saw a few weeks ago, we see it in verse 8, beginning of verse 8 of chapter 3, the same is true of deacon. People must be fit for office. And so the church is to evaluate the man's life to see if he is fit to lead and exercise authority in the church.

Because nothing can be more detrimental to a church than having people lead it who do not have a Christ-like character. Men who are in it for themselves, they'll seize it and will use the church rather than serve the church.

They'll take it from the church rather than blessing the church. And so when it comes, what's typically called a call to pastoral ministry, we see both internal and external elements to that. There's this inward, internal desire that a man might have.

He is stirred within from maybe from reading the scriptures or there's a particular sermon or maybe somebody's speaking into his mind. There's something in there, there's this internal stirring and desire to serve the Lord and the church as a pastor.

But an internal desire for a particular ministry is not enough. No one gets to call himself to that. Once there's an internal desire, he then puts it forward to the church to be externally evaluated. That is, the church, outside of the man himself, the church looks at his life and sees how it lines up with what God has said on the qualifications here in verse 23, verse 1.

So there's internal and external. And if those two things line up, then there's good reason to believe that God is calling a person who deserves to be a pastor. So what are those qualifications? What are those qualifications?

Now you might be listening to this, you might be thinking, I'm never going to be a pastor, so what does it matter to me? One, you're in a church, you should want to see that in your pastor. But also, this is a pattern for all believers.

We should all be looking and because this is a list of Christ-like characters which we all ought to be being conformed to. And so it is aspirational for all of us. So let's look at the qualifications that begin in verse 2.

The first one relates actually to what we talked about last week. So Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he said that he does not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man. And in this passage, he then expands on that fault about church authority to get further qualifications.

And so scripture doesn't allow a woman to serve as pastor, see chapter 2, verse 12. Also chapter 3, verse 1, where he says if a man desires the position of a bishop. But he also doesn't allow just any and all men to serve in that office.

They must meet certain qualifications as we've mentioned. So what are these? First is he must be blameless. You'll notice that many of these qualifications are going to be similar to that which we saw a few weeks ago if you keep reading chapter 3, the qualifications for deacons.

They are very similar. There's one major exception. We'll get to that in a minute. And you'll also notice that of these qualifications, almost all of them have to do with a man's character rather than his competence, rather than his skill set, rather than his education, rather than his past experience.

They have to do with his character. Now it's fine for churches to look at those other things, but it's not fine for them to look at those other things in place of a man's character or to outweigh a man's character.

That he must be blameless does not mean that he must be perfect. It does not mean that he must be sinless. Only Jesus is perfect and sinless. Rather, it means that his character is such that if he was charged with ungodliness, the charge would not stand.

Another translation saying it like this, he must be above reproach. There's nothing in his life that widely known would bring shame on the prices of a church. He claims in that way. Second, he must be the husband of one wife.

This does not automatically rule out a single man as pastor. However, we believe that marriage is normative and so when evaluating a single man as pastor, a church ought to inquire about why. There are many perfectly fine reasons for that to be the case and there wouldn't be any issues.

There are also some really bad reasons why that might be the case. And so a church ought to do its due diligence to see which it is and evaluate. Church disqualification does not automatically prohibit a divorced man from serving as pastor.

But again, a church should do due diligence to learn the reasons for divorce and to evaluate his life now. The essence here of disqualification is he is a one woman man. So if he's remarried, he should have a track record of faithfulness to his current wife to demonstrate that he is a one woman man.

In other words, it likely would not be wise to install a recently divorced man as pastor. And the point of all of this, the point of disqualification, is that the household is the proving ground for church leadership.

So a man who is faithful at home is much more likely to be faithful in church. A man who is untrustworthy at home is much more likely to be untrustworthy in church. And so the house, the home, is the proving ground for church leadership.

And so the church evaluates his home life to test his leadership. And so a pastor must be a one woman man, faithful to her, faithful to the church, faithful to Jesus. Third, all of the qualifications together.

The church says he must be tempered, sober minded, of good behavior. These qualifications demonstrate that a man fit for pastoral ministry must have self-passion. That is, he's not controlled by his passions, he's not led by his emotions, he's in control of himself.

Not letting temptations from within, his own indwelling sin, or passions, nor temptations from without, coming from other people, he must not let those control him, sway him. Being in control of himself, this lends towards good behavior.

That is, his life is respectable because he lives in accordance with God's word. These qualifications for self-mastery have to do with something that I mentioned last week, what we call toxic empathy or untethered empathy.

This is when a person sabotages a group through emotional manipulation. And so a shepherd, a shepherd, the pastor, is called to guard and protect the flock. That often means protecting them from such emotional sabotage.

And to do that, he must be sober minded or he will be easily swayed. He must be able to tell an emotional person, one who may have even been hurt and harmed in some very real way, even in the past, but is now trying to pass that hurt along to the church, he must be able to look at that person in the eye and lovingly and firmly tell them, no, he's sober minded, he's in control.

Now if you're interested in that topic, in the resource table back in the foyer, there's a book called Leadership and Emotional Sabotage by Joe Rigney. You're welcome to take that copy, or somebody else gets it before you come in and you want a copy, I hope you get a copy.

But that is, particularly for anybody leading organizations, family, the church, getting that concept of a sober mindedness to lead is incredibly important. Fourth, he should be hospitable. That is, he is a joyful host.

He loves people, loves being with people, invites people in in order to care for them. Well, church member and stranger aligned. So, I want you to know, we love having people over at our house. You're welcome just about any time, and Shane is an amazing cook, and we'd love to have you over for dinner.

I'm sure she'd just love it by inviting a hundred people to come over at various points in time. We'd love for you to come up and say, hey people, we'd love to have you over to the house. Fifth, he must be able to teach.

This is the qualification that's different than deacons. Deacons are, they give leadership in the earthly affairs of the church, and so teaching is not required, but pastors give leadership in the heavenly affairs of the church, and that requires being able to speak for God, what he has said in the scriptures.

They must be able to teach that, communicate that to their people. And so, can a man handle the scriptures accurately? And can he accurately instill that in others? That's a question that needs to be asked, and it's required of pastors.

Then you've got to take this and put it together with some of the other qualifications. Another really good question to ask is, have the scriptures mastered this man? Not only has he mastered the scriptures, but the scriptures have mastered him.

Is he in subjection? Continuing on, he must not be given, that is, addicted to wine, not addicted or controlled to any harmful substance. Again, he has self-mastery, and it doesn't allow him to have mastery over him, but God.

He must not be violent. His temper is under self-control. He doesn't lash out at others to harm them. Rather, he uses his strength to protect you. He's not greedy for money. He's actually there to serve and bless others, not to use the church to serve his own self.

Paul later says to Timothy that an elder who does well is worthy of double honor, referring to financial remuneration, so it's good to pay pastors. But any pastor worth his salt ought to be willing to get another job and pastor his people for free if it came to it.

He's not greedy for money. He must be gentle. Again, not aiming to be violent. He must not be quarrelsome. He doesn't just love to fight about everything. He's not stirring up controversy in a controversy setting.

He promotes unity in the church and strives for it. He may need to be willing to fight, but he's not looking to fight. He's not looking to take a fight over every little thing. He must not be covetous, not driven by envy, which is roughness in the bones.

He doesn't covet others in the church. He doesn't covet the pastor across town. He is content to live with open hands, content with whatever God puts into those hands, and content with whatever God takes out.

He rules his own household well, having his children in submission with all reverence. Again, the home is the proving ground. If you want to know what effect a pastor will have on the church, look to his kids.

For if a man, verse 5, does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? This has been a neglected qualification in the American church. With too many men with rebellious children who live in total opposition to the God of heaven, and they still get up and hide a little bit.

He should not be a dog, as the scripture says. That is, he should be a new believer. Rather, he should be tested first, see the quality of his life and his doctrine and his character. Then the last one, he should have a good testimony for those outside the church.

Now this one's tricky for when you live in a culture that hates the word of God, and despises everything that the Bible calls faith for. So a Christian who stands on the word of God will often be maligned by those who are outside of the church.

Yet, the church should say he must be well thought of, good testimony among those who are outside. So I think the point here is that they don't see hypocrisy in him. They don't see him saying one thing, but doing another.

Rather, he watches his life and doctrine, such that his life has integrity. And so what do we do then? We're going through the list of qualifications, verses 2 -7. What do we do if we have a man in our church who senses and expresses a desire for pastoral ministry?

And I hope and I pray that we would have men in our church who sense that internal desire to serve God in pastoral ministry. What do we do? Well first, we evaluate his life and see if he meets these qualifications.

If he doesn't, then I would point those out to him and I would make a plan with him for addressing those issues and then reevaluating after a certain set time frame. Of course, just because one doesn't, isn't qualified presently, doesn't mean he would never be qualified.

Maybe he just needs a bit more discipleship. If he does meet those qualifications, then I would start an equipping and training process with him. Now usually what happens is the church is just out to all the seminaries.

Somebody, a young guy, he's got no agreement with students in the church and feels like he's called to be a pastor and they meet him and say, alright, go to the seminary. And why I believe that there's much about the seminary that is valuable, especially some of the technical teaching on biblical languages, theology and those things, I believe is that's not to divorce pastoral training from the local church where there's actual students involved.

It's not wise to uproot a man from his church or community and send him off to Raleigh or Louisville, have him incur a large debt only to then move elsewhere in the country to serve a different community where he has no previous relationships.

This is what happens often. And further, I would say our seminaries, they do a lot of really good things well, but one thing that I would caution any man about is that they often serve as finishing school for preacher boys, by which I mean they smooth out those rough cowboy edges, leaving those men ripe for the emotional sabotage that is inevitably going to come when it comes to the heart of the church.

So a better way forward is for pastors to train men in the church and then use distance and online education options from seminaries to supplement by giving them lots of real life opportunities with lots of real life sheep.

Because that's where character is evaluated and developed and that's where pastoral ministry is the learner. And so ideally you would find them a way to serve here in our church. And that might mean revisiting the category of lay pastors that I mentioned earlier.

Or that might mean some serious study and consideration of the plural pastorship model that I said earlier. Now many churches, including our own, have something of a halfway version here. That is, they'll have different pastors of various names.

They have a worship pastor. We do that with Pastor Berry or youth pastors or associate pastors for this or that ministry. But I do believe that the New Testament pattern and model is one of a full plurality of pastors where they share shepherding duties and authority as a group for the good and I'm not putting this forward for you today as a plan.

I'm not putting this forward to you because I'm proposing we change anything. I am putting it forward to you today to think about as our church grows in maturity and as, Lord willing, our church grows in number, these are some things we're going to need to consider.

So what I want to do is let the scriptures shape our thinking on these issues more than what churches like ours have always done because that's the way we've always done it. And so I'd ask you just to, we're not saying we're going to do anything different.

I just want you to chew on this concept. Let the scriptures master us. And then the last thing, and I said that towards the beginning, these qualifications are important because the pastor stands as a minister of Christ, representing Christ to the church, therefore he's characterizing Christ-like.

But that really goes for all of us. We are all called to Christ-likeness. And so I would encourage you, men and women, young and old, all of us, let us strive to make our lives like what we read about here in 1 Timothy 3.

Let us live blameless, temperate, faithful to our family, self-controlled, gentle lives. Because after all, the church order that Paul is arguing for, the whole point of the letter, he says this in every sermon, the whole point of it is church order for godliness.

So let us strive to live lives like that.