The Man Of God In The Church Of God - [1 Timothy 5:11-16]

Well, let me ask you a question. Does image matter? You know, it's easy to say no, but when you meet someone, you form an impression.

Who gets, in your mind, more respect? Someone who shows up and looks sharp or someone who shows up and just doesn't?

A police officer who presents himself well, has highly shined shoes, nicely pressed uniform, or one who rolls, looks like he just rolled out of bed and weighs 400 pounds?

And this image thing carries over into the pastorate. You know, when I was in seminary, a lot of the younger guys,

I mean, they would walk around all the time with their, kind of their ties untied and, you know, their top button unbuttoned, as if that made a difference.

You know, it was kind of their protest thing. They weren't going to conform to the seminary standard. I didn't really understand that.

I didn't get that. I mean, to me, of course, I'd been wearing a uniform, whether it was the army or the sheriff's department, so wearing a shirt and tie was just part of the uniform.

People have expectations of men in ministry. They want them to look a certain way.

I mean, if you see someone, if you see a certain image of a pastor, it's hard to see it completely transformed.

It's hard to think of, you know, a tie -dye t -shirt -wearing, long -haired, you know, pastor.

It's just not what we're used to. But it's not always just how we look.

Most of the time, it's how we act that tells people a lot about us. And tonight, as we go, and I would invite you to open your

Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 4, and as we look at 1

Timothy tonight, we're going to see what I think is really the heart of Paul's instruction to Timothy.

Really, basically, like a bit of a message from a father to a son, as it were.

He's going to tell him what is really at the heart of leading, of pastoring a church.

As I've said frequently, 1 Timothy is specific in the overall letter.

It's specific instruction from Timothy to Paul on how to, or let's transform that, change it, from Paul to Timothy on how to pastor a church, specifically the church at Ephesus, which he had sent

Timothy to. What should a pastor do?

How should a church look? How should a church be structured? How should a church be run?

What should a church tolerate? What should a church not tolerate? What sort of men should lead the church?

What are the roles of men and women within the church? All these issues and more are addressed in 1

Timothy. And the last time that we were here, lo those many weeks ago,

I think it was last Sunday night, we were in 1 Timothy 4, verses 6 through 10, and I gave three principles that applied not only to Timothy, but I think to each one of us, that we needed to train ourselves in truth, train ourselves in godliness, and train ourselves in hope.

Tonight we're going to be looking really just at verses 11 and 12, but I'm going to read 11 through 16 because we'll be covering the rest of that next

Sunday morning. Paul writes Timothy and he says, Command and teach these things.

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.

Practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress.

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

Now this evening, I want you to see the three essential elements of verses 11 and 12 of any biblical pastoral ministry, so that you will both be encouraged to support and encourage those who are

Bible teaching pastors, but also to challenge you in areas of your own life.

These are three non -negotiables of pastoral ministry. This is where the rubber meets the road.

What does the man of God in the church of God need to do and how should he conduct himself?

Our first essential element of pastoral ministry is in verse 11.

A pastor must command the church. Command the church.

Well, when we read that, that's kind of a scary word. Command means what?

Take charge, control. But look right there, it says, command and teach these things.

Well, first of all, let's sort out what these things are. One example of it would be back in verse 7, where Paul writes to Timothy and he says, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths.

He's telling him, he's just reinforcing what he's just taught. He says, Timothy, focus on these things that we're talking about right now.

These are the essential elements. These are the foundations that will carry you through a successful ministry.

Everything that Paul has instructed Timothy up to this point and all that is implied in those instructions, that was the very point of Paul writing this entire letter.

The purpose of the letter, 1 Timothy, is in 1 Timothy 3, verses 14 and 15, and he writes this,

I am writing these things, these things over and over again, Paul writes, all the elements of this letter.

I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, and he knew he was going to delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. One of the most common charges of authoritative preachers is what?

That they act as if they know it all, that they're arrogant. Somebody might say, well, who died and left you in charge?

The answer, of course, is, well, Paul. Paul died.

He left Timothy in charge. He wasn't dead yet, but the

Lord Jesus and the apostles made it very plain that Timothy, in this case, was to be in charge, but pastors thereafter were to be in charge, in command of the church.

And his language here is unmistakable. The verb is a present tense imperative, a command.

Paul commands him to command. And it means make an announcement about something that must be done.

Give orders, instruct, direct all kinds of persons in authority.

This is what people in authority do. This is what they constantly do. Now, Paul could have said, you know what?

I suggest that you do these things. I'm going to give you some recommendations. You can follow them if you'd like.

Here's some ideas that I'm just going to toss at you. You take what works. Or I could have said something like, you know, if you have nothing else to talk about, you can always, you know, kind of work your way through my letters for ideas.

I remember the first time we came out here when we were candidating. By the way, if I look around, a little odd.

Oh, yeah, here it is. I just threw my wedding ring off. Just wringing my hands and throwing things around.

But I remember the first time we came out here. And there was an event over at the park.

And Charlie and the boys were playing over there. And I don't remember what else was going on. I think they had somebody giving their testimony.

And this lady wandered over from the West Boylston Congregational Church. She wandered over, and she was standing there with Mike.

And I think I was, well, I know I was standing there, but I don't remember who else was there. And she said, she goes, you know, this is really interesting.

And it's giving me a great idea of what I might say tomorrow. Well, there were a lot of things wrong with that. But she really didn't know what she was going to.

She. I mean, that just tells you it's off the rails right there. But she really didn't know what she was going to talk about until that night.

Command these things. These very things that Paul has given Timothy by the authority of the

Holy Spirit. Now, when we say command, you know, where does the authority of the pulpit end?

Where does the authority of the pastors and the elders end? Where does it come to a screeching halt?

We already know the answer to that. Where the Word of God does. What would you call a church that upholds standards above and beyond what the

Bible does? That goes beyond the Bible. Or a pastor who says, thus says the

Lord. And you say, well, where does it say that? And he goes, thus says the Lord. I am speaking for God.

What do you call something like that? I think the answer is. I'd call it a cult.

Someone says, you need to listen to me. I speak for God. And they don't have anything here to back that up.

There's a problem. The man in the pulpit only has authority so long as he commands these things.

So long as he commands what the Word of God commands. Pastors, elders, even you, all of us, can give godly counsel.

But we can't say, thus says the Lord. Heed the Word of the Lord. You must do

X, Y, or Z without a chapter and verse. When Paul says, command these things, he is defining the very extent of pastoral authority.

He might as well be saying, preach the Word. Because it's the same message. What he's doing here is he's laying out in black and white, in stark terms, the role of the pastor.

The role of the shepherd. The role of the elder to protect the church from bad teaching.

And to continually command sound doctrine. To continually press the claims of God upon his people.

There can be, if I may borrow a phrase, no compromise. There are no gray areas when the gospel and the

Word of God is at stake. Some practical application.

In every aspect of your life, wherein you have authority, whether it's in your home with your kids.

Whether it's at work with people who work for you. Whether it's in your home with your wife.

You only have authority insofar as the Word allows it.

So far as God has given you that authority. You can't go farther than that. A pastor must command the church.

Secondly, a pastor must teach the church. A pastor must teach the church.

Right there in verse 11 again. Teach these things. It is one thing to command people to obey the

Word of God. It is a slightly different thing to teach them. It means to provide instruction in a formal or informal setting.

What would be a formal setting? Sunday school?

Sunday morning church? Sunday evening church? Might be a little less formal. What's an informal setting?

Could be a Bible study. Could be an office. Could be driving in the car.

Could be any place where two believers are together and one is instructing or teaching the other.

Generally speaking, do you teach unbelievers? The answer obviously is no, you don't.

Teaching. In order to teach somebody, this is an obvious statement, but not always done, as evident by this woman

I mentioned earlier. What does a teacher have to do before he teaches? He has to prepare, he has to study.

If you don't know something, you can't teach it. I'm reminded, well, let me just say this before I get to that.

Teaching, though, is more than just understanding or studying. Teaching is communication.

You have to be able to communicate what it is that you've studied, what it is that you've prepared to deliver. A man can be godly in every way, knowledgeable in the

Word, solid in doctrine, and not able to teach. Some people have a way with words.

Other people don't.

But teaching requires that ability to communicate. Teaching can also require imagination.

I once took a college mathematics class, and the students would ask questions.

You know, I have a question. And the guy would just kind of, he would give an answer, but everybody would still be looking and going, what did he say?

And, you know, could you give us an example of that? And the man would go up to the whiteboard. We still have those in colleges,

I think. Go up to the whiteboard, and he would take an example that was already done in the book, and he would just take it and copy it up on the whiteboard.

Really? That's it? But he had no way of kind of looking at it from a second perspective, giving us another idea, framing it in another way so that we might understand it.

And teaching sometimes requires that. Teaching also requires patience.

If you have parents, or sorry, if you have parents. How many don't have parents? If you have children, you understand this.

Because kids don't always get it the first time around. Neither does anybody else necessarily get it the first time around.

Talking about teaching, Paul wrote this in 2 Timothy 2 .24, And the

Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil.

Now this primarily has as its focus talking to unbelievers or those who contradict sound doctrine and waiting for the

Lord to change their hearts. But notice what he says there, must be kind to everyone, patiently enduring.

Sometimes even believers don't get it the first time around. And for a teacher, patience is important because you have to take the long view of things.

You have to think, my objective here is not to win some kind of debating competition.

The objective is what? If I'm teaching something, what do I want to happen? I want the other person to get it.

And I want them to grasp it. I want them to be able to use it for themselves. Furthermore, what else would

I really like them to be able to do? Teach it to somebody else. That's the essence of teaching.

What else is that called? It's discipleship, thank you, it's exactly right.

Ultimately, a teacher would like to fully empty all the knowledge he has.

He would like to, as it were, take his picture and pour it into the empty picture until he's done.

And then say, you know what, I don't have anything more to give you. And then what he would love to see is what?

That pupil go on to teach someone else. That's discipleship. That's what we long to see.

Here's something else you might not think about. Maybe you would. Teaching requires confidence.

You say, well, sure, you have to get up in front of other people. Well, no, you don't. It could, as I said, it could be in an informal setting.

It could be just you and somebody else. What do I mean by teaching requires confidence?

It's not self -confidence. It's a confidence in the truth of what you are teaching.

When you teach God's Word, you have to have absolute confidence in its capacity to change other people's lives.

And there are times where you don't even know, you'll say something and you don't even know the impact that might have on someone.

I might have told this story before, but there was a program at Grace Community Church called Discipleship, or not

Discipleship Evangelism, there was Grace Evangelism. And we were meeting in a small group one night, and I had about six or seven people in my group, and it was the first night getting to know each other.

How long have you been coming to the church? How did you get saved?

You know, just basic questions like that so we could get to know everybody. And we got around to about the second or third person, and this young woman said, well,

I've been coming to Grace for like five years, and I got saved in your Fundamentals of Faith class.

And I just thought, I never knew that. You know, we don't know.

When we say something, we don't know how the Lord's going to use it, but we have to have the confidence to tell people the truth, to teach them the truth, and trust that God will use that.

So first, a pastor must command the church. Secondly, a pastor must teach the church.

And thirdly, and this is where we're going to spend most of our time, because I like to rock my wife's world sometimes and not have the first point be the longest one.

Thirdly, a pastor must set the example for the church. It is not that when they look at him, when they look at the pastor, when they look at the elder, they think, you know, someday

I'd like to be like Pastor Dave. Someday I'd like to be like Elder Pradeep.

Someday I'd like to be like Pastor Mike. That's not the point. It's that they think, they look at them, and they think, that is a man in whom the work of the

Holy Spirit is evident, both to those in the church and to those outside the church.

I'm going to emulate him. Now, it's interesting in talking about how he must set the example.

Look at verse 12, and you kind of think, well, how does that really fit in there? I'm not really sure.

Let's work it out. It says there, Let no one despise you for your youth.

He cannot be intimidated, this man. He sets an example because he can't be intimidated. It's not because he's confident of himself.

It's because he's confident of his calling. The situation is this, that Timothy is somewhere in his 30s, probably about his mid -30s.

And in that culture, he was a pup. Let no one look down on you because of your youth.

We'd think, well, come on. My kids think that's really old. It's a major trauma for Megan that she's about to turn 25.

Oh, did I say that? But in that culture, it was considered young to be given such a weighty task.

To be called to command a church, to be called to teach a church, was a serious, and really is a serious obligation.

And add into that, that Timothy was not a natural leader. He was somewhat, he wasn't outgoing and gregarious.

And you had a recipe for trouble. Imagine, he gets there to Ephesus. And they kind of go, well, who are you, you young pup?

The elders of that church would be much older than he was. The people who were already there, the founding members.

And so almost the expected welcoming would be, you're kind of young for this, aren't you?

I think it was maybe, I don't know, maybe 20 years ago or something like that, I determined that I was going to learn how to play bridge.

And I went to this bridge club. And I thought things were going pretty well. It was just the first level of bridge.

And I was reading the book. And we were going through and doing all this stuff. And I thought, you know, I'm getting pretty good at this.

There was a problem though. The problem was, I wasn't really too modest about things.

And I guess they sort of knew that I thought I was doing pretty well at this whole bridge thing.

I mean, I was the youngest person there by probably, I don't know, 30 years. Everybody was older than me.

And so when it came time to register for the second class, they weren't going to have it at the same place anymore.

They'd moved it. And they really didn't want to tell me where it was. You know,

I got the hint eventually. I was like, but, yeah. What does it mean to despise?

It can be defined this way, to look down on someone or something with contempt or aversion, with the implication that one considers the object, or in this case,

Timothy, of little value, to scorn, to treat with contempt. So he was not to let people look at him that way, just because he was a young man.

So what was he supposed to do? Go to the founding members of the church at Ephesus and say, you know, respect my authority.

I don't care how old I am. You know, you guys need to listen to me. Do you know how many young men, men of Timothy's age and younger, flame out of ministry because they, pretty much for this exact reason, they think that the folks who say that they want

Bible teaching and then bring them across the country actually want Bible teaching? Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

But a lot of times they're looking for someone they can control, someone they can intimidate, or someone who will just go along.

But Timothy wasn't to allow that to happen. He was to be the man. He was

God's man in that church, and it didn't matter that he was going to be looking up and going, these guys are much older.

They're much wiser than me. Not good enough. He could not let that happen.

He also needed to be an example. Now, when it says they're an example, it's the word for type, which we talked about this morning, amazingly enough.

But the idea is that not that he needed to kind of set the pace, but when you read through the

Scriptures, that he needed to be living a solid Christian life in all these areas, that there could not be any separation between the

Christian ideal and what the people perceived in Timothy, that he had to be living that kind of life.

And it's interesting, because there's a strong contrast here. When he says, don't let people look down on you, and then there's a but.

But set the believers. It's a strong, there are two different words. We mentioned this from time to time.

That word but there, there are two different ways of saying that in the Greek. And this is the strong adversative.

So this is kind of the, don't let this happen. On the contrary, this is what needs to happen.

So he says, set the believers an example. Again, this is for the church, for the believers.

And you are to kind of set the pace spiritually for them. You know, this whole concept of speech here, it's pretty interesting because these days, in fact,

I was just reading a list of some of the things that one pastor not only has said in his pulpit, but what he's written in his books.

It's become pretty fashionable, even cool, for pastors to swear from the pulpit, to give a sermon that's

R -rated, to even use props like queen -sized beds while they're preaching.

You know, to all that, I just want to say, really? I mean, just look at this. Look at this passage here.

And there are many others. I'm going to go to a couple, and I would invite you to open your Bibles now to just turn over. We're going to come back to 1

Timothy, but turn over to Ephesians 4. I'm going to read quickly through some of the things that Paul says about speech.

And again, as we think about it, Timothy is to set an example, that he's to kind of be the fulfillment of the

Christian standard, as it were. Ephesians 4, verses 25 and following.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, speech, right? Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one of another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Verse 29, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths. What kind of talk should come out, but only such as is good for building up or edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Verse 32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Moving on to chapter 5, verse 4. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

There are things that mark the language of the world. And Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, and he says, don't let the worldly language infect your language.

This is how you used to talk. You don't talk like that anymore. This is not how

Christians talk. But instead they should be doing what? Forgiving one another.

Being kind to one another. Being thankful. This is, don't talk this way, instead talk this way.

Now turn over to Colossians 3. Again, talking about the sort of speech that is fitting for Christians.

Verse 8 of chapter 3. But now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

Well, what about my R -rated sermon? Verse 9, do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.

Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the

Father through Him. Well, what do we know?

When we say something, what does it really say about us? If something comes out of my mouth, what does it indicate about me?

It indicates where I am spiritually. You know, I think last Sunday night,

I said, garbage in, garbage out. Well, that's true here. I mean, think about what Paul was writing in Colossians 3. He said, let the words of Christ dwell in you.

Let them be there. Let them just kind of seep into you. You know, meditate on those things.

Think about those things. If that's where your head and your heart are, then what comes out of your mouth?

Not these other things. You can go back to 1

Timothy, and I'm just going to read to you as you're doing that. Galatians 5, 19 -21.

We often hear about the fruits of the Spirit, but I'm going to read the works of the flesh. Listen again.

Now, the works of the flesh are evidence, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Look at how many of those come directly from what we say.

But again, what we say is evidence of what is within us.

Sin and speech doesn't happen in a vacuum. It takes preparation. Question. Did you ever think about it that way?

When we hear, someone was trying to excuse their language here with me not too long ago by saying that they've been in this environment for X number of years.

I just said, really? Are you really talking to me and telling me about that? I mean,

I don't mean to brag, but I spent three years in the army and 21 years with the finest people in the world.

You're going to tell me about language? We have to make a conscious effort not to do those things.

It is a matter of preparation to stop sinning like that. What do

I mean by preparation? Well, it comes, for example, by recognizing that you have an obligation to glorify

God with your words. To thank Him, to praise Him, to glorify

Him in all that you say and do. Recognizing that you don't have to blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind.

I can't help myself, I just have to speak my mind.

Well, yes, you can. If the Spirit of God has taken up residence in you, you can.

How many times have you said something and instantly wished you could take it back? What's the best cure for that?

Not to say it at all. We also need to recognize that sometimes the best thing to say is absolutely nothing.

Proverbs 21 -23 says, whoever keeps, watches over, guards his mouth and his tongue, keeps himself out of trouble.

It's pretty hard to get yourself into trouble when you don't say anything. It can be done, but it takes effort.

I like to say a lot of times when I'm counseling people who struggle in this area, I just go, you know what?

If you would just take, because I had to do this. When I first got saved, it was a great struggle for me.

It's still a struggle, but it's not as great as it was. But you have to think for just a moment before you say things, and you have to think, what is the impact of what

I'm about to say going to be? And if it's not going to be good, don't say it.

Now, just think about Timothy, this young man going into this area where people were going to be examining him, watching everything that he did.

If he said one thing that was wrong, he could easily discredit himself.

He could easily just start a brush fire within the church.

He had to be very careful. He had to be an example in speech. He also had to be an example in conduct.

Think even just as a chapter before in chapter 3, as Paul described what Timothy should look for in the leadership, in the elders, the

Church of Ephesus. The emphasis was on conduct and character. Chapter 3, verses 2 to 7,

I'm just going to read through some of this pretty quickly. An overseer or an elder must be above reproach.

It's conduct. The husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

Not so much a conduct matter, but not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle. Not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

Moreover, he must be well of, in verse 7, moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders.

Had to have a good reputation even. The emphasis on conduct is obvious.

Hebrews 13, 7 says this, Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.

Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. That was the goal for Timothy. Paul could have said this to Timothy, Timothy, you'll be the sort of leader worthy of having his life imitated.

Live your life in such a way as to be worthy of emulation, so that someone might follow you as you follow

Christ. That's exactly what Paul said to the Church of Corinth in 1

Corinthians 11, 1. Timothy was to be an example in speech and in conduct.

And those are observable behaviors. The next three are not always so obvious. Timothy also had to be an example in love.

This word, of course, is agape. And there's only one way that one can have this sort of love.

It is a gift from God. 1 Timothy 1, 12 -14 says this,

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.

Verse 14, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 1, 7 says, For God gave us, Paul writing to Timothy again, says,

For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self -control.

Love, God -given love, agape, has two objects.

First, God himself, and secondly, other people. Now we think and we sing songs about this.

We love you. But when you think about it, it really is just a little bit hollow.

We do fall short. How do I know that? Because in John 14, 15, when Jesus said, If you love me, you will keep my commandments, do we keep his commandments?

Showing our love for God or pursuing our love for God means to put off sin. We can't say we love

God if we don't strive, if we don't push ourselves to be done with sin.

If we do not pursue holiness, how do we show our love for God? Not by singing songs, not by saying we love him, but by obeying him.

Our love for others is shown in the attitude that we have and the way we treat other people. Philippians 2, 3, and 4, that we're to count others more significant than ourselves.

We're to look out not for our own interests, but for the interests of others. It's easy, just as it's easy to say,

I love God, to say that I love someone. It's more difficult to live that out, to put them in front of me.

Timothy was called on to demonstrate his love of God by pursuing obedience and his love of others by pursuing the good of others above his own self -interest.

Timothy also had to be an example in faith. This isn't in doctrine. This isn't the truth about the faith.

This is faith in God, reliance upon God. How do

I know that? Well, because I consult with the experts. Faith and love, but it fits here.

Faith and love appear together about ten times, or ten times exactly in the pastoral epistles.

And almost every time, as it does here, it refers to confidence in the

Lord, in what He can do. One man wrote this, One cannot possess true faith without having come into contact with divine love.

True faith will always show itself in the life of one whom

God has loved. In other words, Timothy was to give evidence of his reliance upon God, because God had loved him.

A man not given to trust in God cannot possibly adequately proclaim Him. He couldn't command and teach the things that he was to command and teach, namely the

Word of God, if he didn't trust Him fully, if he didn't have absolute confidence in the

Lord. There is really nothing quite so disturbing when you're in the ministry as a

Monday after a Sunday, where you don't like the message you preached on Sunday. It's a lonely feeling.

Nobody can make you feel any better about it. I think one man once said,

Don't ever ask a man if he likes being in the ministry on Monday. And I think that's probably true.

Probably shouldn't also ask him if he likes being in the ministry during a church split, or after a family leaves the church for non -godly reasons.

It can be difficult to be a pastor, but ultimately, if you have a full reliance upon the power of God, you can do that.

Timothy also needed to be an example of purity. That's moral purity. Timothy was going to call men who were above reproach, and the husband of one wife, to be elders.

He needed to hold that same standard. If he was married, no one should doubt his faithfulness to his wife, or his love for her.

In fact, these five areas, speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, these are areas where false teachers, they all failed.

With their speech, they taught different doctrines. In their conduct, they practiced and taught false asceticism, which we talked about a few

Sundays ago, being the idea that somehow you could just give up foods, or you could give up physical pleasures, and that God would be pleased with that.

In terms of loving others, false teachers were willing to argue about words. They wrangle about words, and all manner of insignificant things.

They follow myths and fables, and they also, of course, fleece the flock. These are not loving people.

In terms of faith, they had made shipwreck of the faith, Alexander and Hymenaeus had.

In terms of purity, they went after weak women, and often pursued a licentious lifestyle.

Can you imagine a pastor so lacking in these areas, that an unbeliever finds out what the man does for a living, and then the unbeliever says to him,

I never would have guessed you were a pastor. That would be disturbing.

Now let me ask you this. Would somebody be shocked if they found out you were a

Christian? If they really got to know you a little bit? If they listened to your speech? If they watched your life?

If they saw how you treated other people? If they saw how you worried and fretted?

Didn't trust in God? Then you said, well, they said, what are you going to do on Sunday?

You know, you're going to watch a Patriots game, and you said, well, no, I go to church, I'm a Christian. Would that person look at you and say, seriously?

I never would have guessed that. You don't seem like that sort of person. It's not about outward appearances alone.

Merely looking the part of a pastor is not sufficient. He has to be a man of proven and demonstrable character.

If he is to preach, as it were, the very oracles of God, and say, thus saith the Lord, if he is going to command and teach the church, he has to be a man whom the church can respect and even emulate

Christ. Or even emulate as he emulates

Christ. It's not the tie that makes the pastor. It doesn't really hurt. Timothy sent in by Paul to the church at Ephesus to fulfill a very difficult mission.

Paul knew it was going to be difficult. Paul told him not to let anyone look down on him and then said, listen,

I want you to go in, command and teach these things. Don't let anybody look down on you, because that's going to be their tendency.

But instead, you live in such a way that they will not look down on you. They will think,

I can follow that man as he follows Christ. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the loving counsel given

Timothy by Paul that we can look at now and just think the wisdom of that, the challenge of that, not only for Timothy then, but for men who would be in leadership now and for our own lives.

Father, there's not one of us who can say that we are perfect in any of those areas. And yet we need to be.

If we are going to love you as you have told us to love you, we need to pursue holiness.

We need to pursue proper speech. We need to put off everything that would stop us from demonstrating our faith and our love for you.

Father, would you increase us in our faithfulness, not because of who we are, but because of who you are?

Would you make us trophies of grace that no one could look down upon?

Again, not because we are good, but because you are great and worthy to be praised.