Ecclesiology 2 - Only Two Offices

Ecclesiology and the Meaning of the Church

Everybody take your Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 14, if you would. We're going to begin tonight with a pop quiz.

Well, it was good to be here.

I want to start by asking a question. Last week we began our study of ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church. And last week I taught a lesson on the question, What is the church? That was the title of last week's lesson.

Now, if you were not here, you are exempt. But if you were here last week, I'd like to know how much you remember. What is the church? What is it? We talked about the etymology of ecclesia, meaning called out, but we said that's just the etymology.

There's more to it than just the idea of being called out. What else is there? Yes, Jackie? The assembly of God's people. That's right. It's the assembly of the called. That's the key, is that when we talk about the church, we are talking about the assembly of God's people.

And in the first century, when the word ecclesia was used, it was referring to coming together. It was referring to coming out of your homes and into the square, coming out of your homes and into the assembly.

And that was the idea behind the idea of the word ecclesia. And, of course, the church was the assembly. And one thing we didn't talk about last week is the concept of what theologians have come to identify as what's known as the universal church and the local church.

When you hear me talk about church, sometimes you'll hear me refer to the universal or the big C church. And by that, I'm referring to all believers all around the world. Every Sunday morning, we come to the communion table, and oftentimes before communion, we'll make the point that right now, all around the United States and all around the world, there are people doing the very same thing we're doing.

They're taking a cup, and they're taking bread, and they're taking communion, and they're showing that we are all, as the Bible says, baptized into one spirit, baptized into one body. And so there is a sense in which there is an assembly of church.

All around the world.

You might not know this. It's where the word Catholic comes from. The word Catholic means universal. That's why the Nicene Creed and other creeds refer to one, holy, apostolic, Catholic church. The Catholic there means universal.

It's all believers make up the universal church. But we are not part of the universal church by gathering. We're part of the universal church by being in Christ. But there is the local church. And might I say this, the term church in the Bible almost always refers to the local church.

Yes, it does.

The idea of universal church is really not a biblical idea. It's more of a theological idea. Because, yes, everyone that's a Christian.

Is part of the universal body of Christ.

Therefore, we can say there's a universal church. But when the Bible uses the word church almost in every place, it's referring to the gathering of the saints in a place. The church in Ephesus. The church in Corinth.

The church in this or that. It's always, like I said, with rare exceptions, referring to that local body. So when we say, what is the church? It's the local assembly of the body of Christ gathered together with the structure that the Bible commands.

And that's the part that we're going to talk about beginning tonight. We're going to talk about what is the structure that the Bible commands the church to have. Because, as we noted last week, not every gathering of believers is a church.

I mean, if I went over to your house and Brother Brian came with me and a couple other guys and their wives came over, we come over to your house, that's not a church. Now, we can be believers. And, again, the whole two or three are gathered.

Christ is still with us. But the concept of church requires more than just gathering. There's structure involved. And that's why when somebody says, I'm in a house church, I don't have a problem with house churches.

The church began in homes in the first century. But those house churches, if they do not have structure, if there are no elders, if there are no deacons, if there is no ministry of the gifts within the body, I would say you're a Bible study, not a church.

And I don't say that to be ugly, and I'm not saying that to be judgmental, but the church has a biblical structure that the Bible provides for us. And 1 Corinthians 14 .40, is everyone there? Alright, 1 Corinthians 14 .40.

Order in the Church and the Need for Structure

Now, I don't have time to give a long exposition of 1 Corinthians, but just know this, the whole book is about a church with problems. I preached like 18 months through 1 Corinthians a few years ago, and that was the title of my series, A Church With Problems.

From the beginning of 1 Corinthians, it's problem after problem after problem. Paul's just dealing with problems, whether it's favoritism or misuse of fellow believers, treating them wrong, and divorce and remarriage, and all these things, all these problems that he has to deal with.

And when he gets to chapter 14, he's dealing with the problem of people misusing their spiritual gifts. Some of them are speaking in tongues, and they're misusing that gift of tongues. Some of them are misusing the gift of prophecy.

Some of the women in the church had begun to usurp the authority of the men in the church. That's where we got that point in 1 Corinthians 14, where it talks about women being silent in the church. That's all part of this context.

But when we get to chapter 14, verse 40, he says something very important. He says, but all things... And remember, all always has a context. In this, the context of all is in the church. All things are to be done decently and in order.

Decently and in order. Those two words are very important. The word decency there in the Greek means, get this, decently. Okay, just so you understand, very difficult to grab ahold of the context. It's seemly.

That's another word that you could use, but it's just a synonym for decently. All things in the church are to be done in a way that befits the character of someone who names the name of Christ. There is to be no shady business.

There is to be no backdoor politics. It's to be above board. It is to be done decently. And it is to be done in order. Now that's the word I want to focus on because that's really what gives us the concept that we're...

A charley horse. Sorry, my arm started hurting.

It's still hurting.

I didn't eat before I went swimming,.

I promise, Mom.

I don't know.

They say don't eat before you swim. Okay, the word that in the Greek for the word order is... Now, when we look at that, we think of like a taxi or taxis. The word is taxis. And it's the concept of an arrangement.

And if you are familiar with science, you'll know that the heart of all science is something called taxonomy. Taxonomy is the concept of putting things into categories. Science is the study of categories.

This is not that. Therefore, this is this. Think about how when you were in school and you studied the animal kingdom versus the plant kingdom, and you broke them into categories, and then you break down different types of animals into categories, and you break down these different things.

I don't know what's happening. I have the worst charley horse in my arm.

It hurts really bad.

This is the oddest thing.

So I'm just going to...

I'm going to try to slow down a little. The idea, though, is the idea of order. The idea of systematizing what's happening. Think about the early church. Think about the day of Pentecost. How many people came to faith on the day of Pentecost?

Anybody remember? 3 ,000 souls. And then the Bible says the number reached 5 ,000, and then there were those who were daily being added. What was the first problem in the church? People weren't being treated right.

The women weren't receiving the daily allotment of food. Remember chapter 6? The Hellenists, which were the Greek-speaking Jews, were not receiving what they thought they were needed or what they required.

And the Hebrew Jews and the Hellenistic Jews often didn't get along, and so there was sort of already a division in the church between those who spoke this language and those who spoke that language. When you've got a church of thousands of people, you've got to start managing things.

So what do you see early on in the church? Well, the apostles, not elders, but we'll see that transition come. But the apostles come out and they say, Look, we can't spend all of our time serving tables.

And you might say, Well, are you too good to serve tables?

Yes.

You didn't want to think.

I was going to say that, did you?

But no, the point is that's not their job. It's not a matter of being too good or not too good. It's not their job. You know, so the elders say we have a job. It's to study and to pray and to teach.

That's our job.

And if that's my job, then I'm not supposed to be doing the other job. Because I can't take away from this job which God has called me to do that job. Therefore, we're going to structure a new thing. Choose from yourself six men of good repute.

Was it six or seven? It's six, right? I'm sorry. I'm still on the 3 ,000 thing. I'm just making sure. Because sometimes numbers get mixed up in my brain. Was it seven? Seven men? I'm sorry. I was wrong.

See?

See there?

That's why I have Andy. Andy is the other half of my brain.

Oh, no.

Made a mistake.

My arm hurts.

It really is bothering me.

It is.

I think I bumped it somehow. Maybe I need some go juice here.

I'll drink a little Diet Coke.

Okay, so choose these men. And what do you think those first men... What do you think that became the prototype for? The deacons. Those men became the prototype of the deacons. I would say the apostles gave way to the office of elder.

And we'll see that in a minute. But the idea was you had men in the church who had a role of teaching, preaching, praying, leading. And you had a problem within the church. So the elders, the apostles, say, Choose from yourself these men.

They need to be good reputation.

They need to be full of the Spirit. And we will lay hands on them. We'll commission them to this task. And they'll go about being the ministers of the church. Did you know that the word deacon is translated as minister?

Oftentimes, people call me minister. You know, I'll go somewhere. My mom likes that term. So when she says, This is my son, he's the minister at the church, Sovereign Grace Family Church. But really, my job is not minister.

Because minister is the word given to the deacon. The idea behind minister is one who administers. One who serves. Concept diakonos is the idea of servant. And so that was the first structure set up in the church.

And again, we're following this sort of a historic thing. It wasn't the only one, though. We'll see later that there was another structure set up. And that is when the apostolic age came to an end, It gave way to another structure in the church.

And that is the structure of the elders. Now, there were elders before the end of the apostolic age. That's what Paul did. He went from town to town planting churches and appointing elders. So it's not as if there weren't elders before then.

But there are no more apostles today. Sometimes you might go to a church and you might see, We're here, this is the apostle Jim. Or this is the apostle, sometimes the apostle Missy or Sarah.

Now, that's no good at all.

And we'll talk about that later, too. But the idea is when they're using the word apostle in a way that, I think is, in my opinion, is not the right way. Because I think the apostles were those men in the New Testament who were particularly chosen by Christ.

Or they filled that 12 role. Judas died, he was replaced by Matthias. And then along comes the 13th one. Some people believe Paul was the rightful 12th apostle and Matthias wasn't. I don't agree with that.

But there are some people who believe Paul is the rightful 12th apostle. But either way, you have those men. One time, I think in Scripture, Barnabas is called an apostle. But there is an idea of the little a apostle.

Apostle means one who is sent. And so the concept of a sent one. And so there is a functional use of the word apostle. But the big A apostle, and I don't know why I did the YMCA A, but you understand, the big A...

What's wrong?

There's my elbow, that's what it is. The big A apostles were limited. And we see in the Scriptures that after the time of the apostles, and we see through church history, after the time of the apostles, that term was not used very much.

That's why when I hear somebody calling themselves apostle today, it just doesn't ring to me accurate. I think the proper term is elder. And the synonym of elder would be pastor. So a person who is an elder is ordained a pastor.

That's the synonym there. And there are other words. The word overseer. The word is episkopos. Episkopos is the Greek. Epi means over. Skopos means see. So the word episkopos means overseer. It's where we get the word episcopal.

So the idea of an overseer, an elder. Elder comes... Actually, it's a derivative of presbyteros. Presbyteros is the word for elder, shepherd, and pastor. All those are the same office. So the Bible only gives us two offices.

Now on your sheet, I'm ahead of myself. On the sheet, I'm on part two. Because I violated my notes and my elbow caused me to go straight ahead into part two. So in a minute, I'm going to go back to number one.

But just so you know, the two offices of the church are the office of elder, and the office of elder is the office of teacher, and I will say this, overseer. Overseer. The word presbyter, episkopos, all of those, it either is elder, pastor, overseer.

All those are one office.

Elder.

In our church, we call it elder.

Now, I typically get called pastor.

But when I am in session, what does that mean? Well, that's just a churchy word. When the elders gather, we call that the session.

Right?

The session of elders is more than one of us. And when we get together as the session, we speak as one voice as elders. And we say the session made this decision. It's language for all of us. And at that point, I don't say I'm the pastor and they're the elders.

I say we're all elders and we're all the session. My title as pastor really rolls to the point of I'm the only one who this is my primary vocation. That's really the only difference. And the only reason for the difference in title is there's a little bit more expected of me in regard to time.

Because Brother Andy works for Penske. Brother Mike owns his own business. Brother Jack is married to Sister Shirley. No, you understand that you two gentlemen, Brother Richard and Brother Jack, are both retired.

But I'm the only one who is this is my job. And the Bible does make a distinction there. The Bible says to give the honor to the elders and especially, and this is talking about money actually, especially those who give their lives to the preaching and teaching.

And so there's a certain set apart that not all elders are going to be vocational elders. Not all elders are vocational all the time. There may come a time in my life where I have to do a second job to take care of my family if the church can't support me.

And that's fine. But in general, that's how we make that distinction. But it's all one office. Therefore, if I'm gone, Brother Andy preaches, or if Brother Mike preaches, there is no distinction in the authority of the one who's preaching.

Because all of us derive the same authority from the Word of God. There's no distinction, and I would say this, even in quality. Because we're all called by the same God. We're all used of the same Spirit to preach the same Word.

So there is unity within that diverse group of elders. And then the deacons, I believe, again Acts 6 gives us the example of men who are to serve. And I'll say it like this. Whatever need the church has.

Because it's always going to be different. If the church were all elderly people, and the church were all older, that would be a different ministry than if it were all young people that had little babies.

Because financial things would be different. Needs at home would be different. Ministry of gifts would be different. And therefore, the deacons really do have to become almost like the Boy Scouts, where they're always prepared.

You know, the Boy Scouts, what is it? Always ready. It's hard to nail down exactly what a deacon must do. Because they must do what the church needs. In the 6th chapter of Acts, the church needed men to serve tables.

And so that's what they did. But we see other men throughout Acts and into the epistles, dealing in other ways and doing other things. So, when we talk about the two offices of the church, like I said, I didn't mean to jump ahead, I just was on my mind.

That's a structure thing. Think about how that's a structure. Remember we talked about taxes, the idea of creating categories. So when we come into the church, there are two categories of offices. And what's funny about the church is we've created all kinds of offices that are not biblical.

Think about the Roman Catholic Church. They created the office of Pope. Vicar of Christ. One who stands in for the Lord.

That ain't biblical.

That is an unbiblical office. They have a magisterium, a teaching magisterium, which is made up of bishops. Again, the word bishop is another word for overseer. That's in the King James. In 1 Timothy chapter 3, if anyone aspires to the office of bishop, that's translating simply the word episkopos or overseer.

It's elder. But you see, they distinguish between the elder and the priest. They make priest an office. When there is no office of priest in the New Testament except for Christ Himself. All believers, we talked about this last week, all believers are part of a royal priesthood.

But there is no priest in the church because I'm not performing a sacrifice when I come into church as the pastor. I remember years ago having a conversation, some of you have heard this story, but I was having a conversation with a lady in the church and she said, well, so and so is on the altar.

And I said, what are you talking about? She said, that thing, I think we're talking about a cloth. So let's just say it was a cloth. She said, the cloth is on the altar. And I said, what are you talking about?

She said, that cloth is on the altar. I said, you mean the communion table? And she said, yes, that's an altar. I said, no, ma 'am, that is not an altar. Because Christ's sacrifice was once for all and we are not re-performing the sacrifice of Christ on this table.

This is a memorial feast, not a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ. That is a false teaching of Rome. And yes, in a Roman Catholic church, they'll call it an altar. And that's not right. It's not an altar.

Well, the Baptists usually talk about that little place to go...

The little stairs.

Yeah, they call it the stairs. They'll say, come to the altar. And again, I think it's a miscommunication of terms. The altar has been done away with because the sacrifice has been made. We no longer have an altar in the church.

And you know what that little bench is? That bench actually came out of the Methodist church. It's called a mourner's bench. Charles Finney saw the Methodists using that and what they'd do is they'd get people to come forward and cry at the end of the service on those benches and they called them mourner's benches.

And he liked the idea.

And he incorporated that into his crusades, his evangelistic crusades and they became very popular. Now, any Baptist church will probably have a place to go up and pray, especially your holiness Pentecostal churches.

They'll always have a place.

A lot of times, there's tissues.

Because if we don't get some serious praying done, they'll call it the altar, right? Or the anxious seat. Yeah, it's a place to come to cry. It's a place to come to have an emotional catharsis. But again, it's not an altar.

It's not an altar. So, I kind of went off a little bit there. My point is to simply say this. If you read Timothy, 1 Timothy, I realize there are two of those. If you read 1 Timothy, chapter 3, there are only two offices that are given qualifications.

If anyone ascribes to the office of elder, overseer, bishop, whatever word,.

These are the qualifications.

Husband of one wife, that he be above reproach. And what does above reproach mean?

And it gives you a list.

Of what it means to be above reproach.

All the way down.

Then it says. The same goes for deacons.

If you want to be a deacon,.

You've got to be above reproach. And here's what it means for that. So, you have two lists of qualifications. And you want to know what the big difference is between an elder and a deacon as far as qualifications go?

It's real simple. Teaching. The elders must be able to teach. The deacons do not have to have that ability. However, the Bible does say that deacons are to hold the doctrine with a pure heart. That they are to at least be knowledgeable.

You don't make an ignorant man a deacon. But he doesn't necessarily have to be able to teach. So there is a distinction between what we would call.

The teaching office.

And the ministerial office or the teachers and the servants of the church. And that's the two offices that the Bible gives us. Now, does that mean it's wrong for a church to have other offices? I want you to really think about that.

Because I think one of the biggest problems that we have done in the last 2 ,000 years is that we have turned the church into a business and we have created offices that the Bible never calls for. For a moment, I'll talk practically.

The offices of the church are elder and deacon. In our church, we also have a finance committee that is trustees. They are people who are the legal signatories of the church. But we often try, as best we can, to put deacons in those positions.

But those are positions that are required legally. We have to have legal signers for paperwork for the church. Once a year, we have to send paperwork to the state and those different things. It's just part of what is required of us.

I hate to call the church a business because it's not a business in the standard thing, but we still have a license. Not a license, but we have a corporation that allows us to do things to receive offerings and things and do it the right way, at least the right way now.

Somebody might come to me later and say, well, you shouldn't do that.

Well, that's a conversation for another time. So we do have that office. But again, we try to use the deacons as much as possible in that role because it's something needed. It's part of the service of the church.

Jesus had somebody who carried the money bag. It just happened to be the worst one. But you understand, the role of the need was there. And so, as I said, I jumped ahead and we looked at number two. But I think that that's important for the structure of the church.

The Qualifications of Elders in 1 Timothy 3

Now, I don't have a whole lot of time left and we have two other points to get to.

In my mind,.

I often do this when I'm preaching is I'm figuring out how much time I could either squeeze or can I get another lesson out of this. Should I come back later and talk about the other two. Well, don't hurry.

Okay.

Well, let's do this. Let's just tonight talk about the two offices. I'll spend another few minutes and then we'll close. And next week, we'll come back and we'll do number one. Who is the head of the church?

Christ.

Not the pastor.

So that's when it says there's only one head of the church. It's Jesus Christ. And that's important. But next week, we're going to talk about... I have more to say on that issue. But since I jumped ahead to the second point, let's turn to 1 Timothy 3 and let's actually read the qualifications for these two offices.

Because by the way,.

If you're ever thinking that God has called you to these offices, one of these offices, you ought to know what the Bible requires of you. I think one of the most detrimental things is to choose men for these offices that are not qualified.

It is, I think, better to have fewer elders than to have many unqualified elders. I do think a plurality is required because the Bible always refers to the elders in the plural. This is why I worry about churches that are single-pastor churches because often a single-pastor church becomes like a little Protestant pope and nobody can question him.

He's the end-all, be-all of knowledge and there's no one to hold him to account. That's often very dangerous. At least among elders, there are checks and balances within the eldership about what's taught.

And there are times, and I think I've told you this, there are times when I go to teach and I'm looking at a passage and I'm thinking this could go one way or the other and I know where my heart is directed.

But I say, you know what, I wonder what Brother Andy thinks about this. I wonder what Brother Mike thinks about this. I wonder what the other elders think about this because I want to make sure that when I'm done preaching, I don't have four eyes, well I guess there would be eight of them, eight eyes looking at me saying, Brother, you went the totally wrong direction on that.

Now, there have been times,.

And I'll be honest,.

There have been times where there's been disagreements and generally when there's disagreements and I'm preaching, I will simply say, there's two views on this and I'll give both views and explain why I hold the view that I do.

But at that same time, that's a part of the checks and balances. Imagine you were in a place where all you ever got was one man's opinion all the time and he's never got anybody to question him. I think it's a very dangerous thing.

So, anyhow, 1 Timothy 3, the saying is trustworthy, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Number one, know this, it is something that God will put a desire in your heart to do.

Nobody should have to be forced to be an elder. If anybody is forced into the job, they shouldn't be there because the Bible says that they should do it because they want to do it. They aspire to it. They have that desire in their heart.

It goes on to say, therefore an overseer, and if you look at the ESV, it comes down, it says bishop. There's a little superscript there and it takes you down to the bottom and it says bishop.

So remember what I said earlier.

Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach. What does above reproach mean? Well, that's what the rest of this is. Husband of one wife, literally one woman man. This is a man who's faithful to his wife.

He is to be sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable. Now stop right there on hospitable. The elder's house, well let me say this, all of our houses should be open to one another. The gospel, there's a good book that came out a few years ago called The Gospel Comes with a House Key and it's about how we should open our homes to one another and often we don't.

The elder is to be hospitable. Lover of outsiders is what that means. It's philo-xenos. Lover of outsiders. 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? And I think this also says something.

About the man being a family man,.

Somebody who has demonstrated his ability to lead his own family. I think this would preclude a very, very young, again the idea of elder, I think a very, very young man would have a difficult time proving that he has managed his home well if he hasn't had a home.

If he's still living with mom and dad, maybe 20, 21, 22 years old, still living with mom and dad, I think that would be difficult to qualify. You understand what I'm saying? I'm just giving you some thoughts.

To think about with this.

So this is narrowing down the pack of who qualifies, right? And it says, 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.

That last one's often had, I've had issue with that one. Not that I ever take issue with Scripture,.

But what I mean is issue with myself.

Because I make outsiders mad all the time. Because preaching the gospel makes people mad. And so people write me letters and I get comments and stuff. So I wonder sometimes, how does that apply? I do think what this is referring to, based on my study of this, and I don't know if you know this, I wrote a book on biblically functioning church and I went through this passage specifically.

So if you want to know more about this, the book is out there. And I think that this refers specifically to your relationships outside the church should be honest and fair. No one outside the church could call you a cheat or a sneak or an underhanded person.

I think it'd be really hard for somebody who is an underhanded car salesman to also be a pastor. You understand what I'm saying? And I'm not saying all car salesmen are underhanded. That's why I said an underhanded car salesman.

Somebody who cheats everybody in town and every time a clunker breaks down, they know they bought it from Brother Jim or whoever, Brother John or whatever. And they say, that guy's a sneak. He's a snake, but yet he's the pastor of Jerkwater Baptist Church.

Or whatever.

I think that's a problem. You should have a good reputation. And so at least, hopefully my reputation, and again, not looking just at myself, but in this regard, when I think about it, at least the things people hate me for generally are for the gospel.

And with that,.

It's just going to have to be.

Because the Bible says the world will hate us in that regard. But no one should be able to say, Keith cheated me out of money or Keith took advantage of a situation with this or with that. And then, of course, deacons.

Deacons, likewise, must be dignified, not double-tongued. And that word double-tongued means devious. Not addicted to wine. Not greedy for dishonorable gain. Again, almost same language, but just a little different, but almost the same concept as what came with the elders.

They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience or as I said earlier, with a pure heart. And let them also be tested first and let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.

That's why, by the way,.