WWUTT 618 A Pastor Must Manage His Own Household Well?

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1 Timothy 3 -4 says that a pastor must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive.

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For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's Church when we understand the text?

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You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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And don't forget our website, www .tt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of 1 Timothy 3 -1 -7, the biblical qualifications for an overseer of the

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Church. The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

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Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach. The husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

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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.

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For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's Church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

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Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

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So yesterday we talked about how a pastor, an overseer, must not be quarrelsome.

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And I used the example of Stephen Furtick responding to something that Dr. John MacArthur said.

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You know, one of the big problems with that, with Furtick standing in front of his congregation and putting

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Dr. MacArthur down the way that he did, presenting a caricature of Dr. MacArthur, boosting himself as the hero, and Dr.

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MacArthur as some sort of sinful villain. Because as he said of Dr. MacArthur, he's never even met me and he's making this determination.

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Well, right, I'm doing the same thing. And I'm making a judgment that Furtick is disqualified as pastor, based on the qualifications that we have in Scripture.

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That is every bit our right to do that. I wish his church would do that. And they don't. They are being misled by this man.

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But when he stands in front of his church and does that, when he gets everybody to cheer for him and then,

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I mean, like standing ovation, that's what happens at Elevation Church.

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Furtick gets up in those cadences and then everybody stands up and is hooping and hollering. There's always musicians back there and they start banging on the drums and going on that organ and all this other kind of stuff.

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And that gets everybody up in the air. It's like an evening talk show. It's not at all like church, very far from traditional ecclesiology.

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But anyway, the problem with him doing that in front of his church is he sets a model for everybody else to do the same thing.

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I can put other people down and make myself into the hero so everybody will love me and encourage me.

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And it's all about me because all of his sermons are like that. He's the hero in all of his stories and his church just cheers for him.

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And they cheer for him because they want to be that character in the story. So if the pastor is doing that,

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I can do that, too. Remember, this man is supposed to be an example for his church.

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And when that's the example that he presents, that's the example that his congregation is going to follow.

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And it doesn't lead to the warm fuzzies. It does not lead to unity and working together.

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As a matter of fact, it causes division. It will cause division in the church. It will cause division in their homes.

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It'll cause division in their personal relationships and in their jobs because they have this me centered approach to living life and even going through their

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Christian walk that way, which is not the Christian walk. But that's the way they think it's supposed to be, because that's what's being modeled by my pastor.

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Not consider others needs ahead of your own, but consider me, myself and I.

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First Timothy chapter six, verse three, Jesus said, Jesus said through the apostle

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Paul, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our

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Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

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He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

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Imagining that godliness is a means of gain. They're deprived of the truth.

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And this is what ends up, what is nurtured in the hearts of the hearers who listen to this kind of teaching.

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Paul would go on to say, concluding the letter, see how far I'm skipping. I'm all the way over into chapter six, verse 20 now,

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Oh, Timothy guard, the deposit entrusted to you avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge for by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.

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And I tell you that Stephen Furtick is setting members of his congregation up for apostasy and making a shipwreck of their faith.

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So we come back to first Timothy three, beginning in verse four, as we have this example that a pastor is setting for his congregation,

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Paul says, and explains this so beautifully, so wonderfully well, first Timothy three, four, he must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

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For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

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That makes perfect sense, right? If he can't manage his own house, how is it that he can manage

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God's house? If he doesn't disciple his own wife and his children, don't you expect that he's probably going to consider discipleship the same way in the house of God?

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If he does not love his wife as Christ loves the church, laying his life down for her, then do you really think that he's going to show that kind of sacrificial love for the members of his own congregation?

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If he has not, if he is not raising up his children in the training and the discipline of the

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Lord, according to Ephesians six, do you really think that he's going to be caring for God's children that way in the house of God?

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This is crucial. Like if a man can't do these things stated here about the way that he loves his family and cares for his wife and his kids, if he is not following with this instruction, he is disqualified.

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There is no, well, he does kind of a bummer of a job with his wife and kids, but he does such a great job in the church.

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No, no, because Paul is actually going to go on to say in chapter five, that if someone does not care for the members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

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If we expect to be producing godly families in our churches, then there has to be a godly pastor at the helm.

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And without teaching any further on this, I'm going to turn it over to someone who can be way more convicting than I can be, because this subject is just that important.

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Here is Dr. Votie Bauckham. We have to adopt a biblical view of church leadership.

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I want to tell you something, there's two skills required of a pastor and only two skills.

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There are a lot of character qualities that are required, but only two skills. Number one, he must be able to teach.

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Number two, he must manage his household well. Our churches are filled with biblically disqualified pastors.

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Titus chapter one makes it clear. If you do not have faithful children, and if your children are accused of rebellion or dissipation, you are disqualified biblically.

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And you hear that, and I know we hear that and we go, oh brother that's harsh, nobody's perfect, listen to me. The same passage says, and here's what boggles my mind, same passage, same paragraph, must not be addicted to wine.

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That says he must not be a drunkard, he must not drink in excess. We say he can't drink at all.

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Listen to me, I'm not a drinker, I'm not promoting drinking, I've never had a drink. Not drinking is easy for me, and it's easy for most of you because most of you never drink.

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And you stick your chest out and pop your collar because you don't drink. It means nothing to you unless you've been an alcoholic.

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It is not hard for you to do. Discipling your family is a different story. And it amazes me that in the same paragraph, we take one of those requirements and raise it and the other one and lower it.

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You want to know why our families are in turmoil? Because most of you when you got hired at the church that you're at right now, they never even met your family.

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They heard you preach and voted on you. When the Bible says if you're not discipling your children in an exemplary fashion, you're not worthy of being called a pastor.

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From the top down, we are wrong on the family. And we are losing the culture war, one family at a time.

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And we have gotten so pathetic that now there's a euphemism in our culture called a PK. Why do we use that term as a euphemism?

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Because pastors' kids who live like they were raised by the devil has almost become the norm.

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If the church is a corporation, that's completely acceptable because all you have to do is stand at the top of a machine and make sure that people go in one side of it and out the other and that there's more of them going through the machine next year than this year.

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But if the church is a family of families, and if God is serious about families being expected and equipped to disciple their children, then the people who stand at the helm had better be exemplary husbands and exemplary fathers.

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And until we believe that, we'll continue to lose the culture war, one family at a time.

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Listen to this from Richard Baxter and the Reformed pastor. If you are ungodly and teach not your families the fear of God, nor contradict the sins of the company you are in, nor turn the stream of their vain talking, nor deal with them plainly about their salvation, they will take it as if you preached to them that such things are needless and that they may boldly do so as well as you.

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A pastor is to be a godly example for the people of God in everything.

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Colossians 3, verse 19, husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

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Children obey your parents and everything for this pleases the Lord. Fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

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Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 25, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

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In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body.

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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

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Chapter 6, children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother.

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This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

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Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. In that passage, by the way, Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 through chapter 6 verse 4 is exactly what

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Dr. Bockham was preaching on when I grabbed that particular clip and played it as it pertained to this instruction in Titus chapter 1 and also in 1

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Timothy chapter 3 that a pastor must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

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For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

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And we're going to close out the rest of these instructions on an overseer of the church here in our remaining seven or eight minutes or so.

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Two more verses, verse six, he must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

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I'll tell you, my natural disposition is not as a humble man.

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I am not humble. And if you've ever seen me anywhere and and watch me interacting with people and you thought of me as humble,

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I tell you that was the Holy Spirit of God, because that is most definitely not my natural disposition. I've known people who who just seem to have that personality of being humble.

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It's almost comes naturally to them that they consider someone else's needs ahead of their own. Doesn't mean they're sinless.

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They just have a person that considers somebody else before they consider themselves. I'm not that guy.

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I consider my own needs before I consider anybody else's. It is a labor every day to crucify myself and consider someone's needs ahead of my own.

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And sometimes I do a pretty miserable job at it. But this is the Holy Spirit of God working on my heart to die to myself and to live to Christ and living to Christ means that I consider someone else's needs ahead of my own needs.

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And so that's something that I struggle with constantly in having a humble attitude.

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And so I tell you that had the opportunity come to me earlier to become a pastor,

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I would have died a long time ago in my own pride and selfishness and made a disgrace of my pastorate and of my ministry because I was so self -centered.

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I actually had a church in the north panhandle of Texas back when I was in my mid -twenties ask me to become the pastor of their church.

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I want to say I was about 24 or 25 at the time. I cannot remember the exact year, but it was a church in the northern

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Texas panhandle congregation about 70 or 80 people didn't have a pastor at the time. I think they had been without a pastor for a year and I had to come down and preached a couple of times in that in that span of time.

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And finally, it was offered to me to come and be their pastor and I turned it down.

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And the reason I turned it down is because it's the furthest thing from my mind to settle down in one church and become the pastor there at the time.

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I was itinerant and I had a band and we traveled around. We sang and sometimes I filled the pulpit and stuff like that.

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But I hated the concept of just settling down in one single church and committed to teaching there and discipling people.

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Like I said, I was a selfish individual. It did not did not occur to me to consider their need ahead of my own.

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So if but but let's say that it did actually fill me with pride to think, hey,

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I could be a pastor here. I could be leading these people in this congregation. Like I said, I would have made a shipwreck of my ministry because I would have been so puffed up and full of myself and wanted to do things my own way.

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As it was, I came into the pastorate rather uneducated. I did not have a seminary degree when

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I was ordained in 2010 and I had to learn the languages and church history and I'm still learning those things as I go on.

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I'm making study a regular part of my day. I do it every single day. But I felt myself equipped as far as becoming a good as far as being a good speaker and having knowledge of the scriptures that I could definitely do.

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But when it came to having a knowledge of the history of the church and being able to apply some of those things that I wasn't as proficient in and I had to learn by way of study, which changed my delivery, it changed my convictions.

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It's changed the way that I pastor and disciple and all those other things, tools that I did not have when

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I first got started that I'm continuing to acquire as my study progresses.

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But these things, along with experience, have humbled me as I fill up my heart with the word of God and and yet still a daily struggle to lay myself down and consider someone else's needs.

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But because I know myself and I know in my heart the pride that I have,

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I read verse six and I understand it fully because a person can be elevated to that position too quickly, too soon and they will fall into conceit and the condemnation of the devil, making a shipwreck of their ministry.

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This passage also, first Timothy three, six is another reason why I'm not real thrilled with the idea of just anybody starting a podcast.

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If you're going to start a podcast, you need to be under the instruction of your eldership at your church.

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I don't think anybody should start a Bible teaching podcast just because they want to do it and you're not being guided or mentored by or held accountable by the pastor or an elder in your church.

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I recently had the opportunity to meet a young man who is a is the host of a popular

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Bible podcast. And I won't say which podcast this is, but you would recognize it if I told you the name.

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And he told me about some of the things that had happened to him over the course of his podcast ministry and what he was describing was very much like cage stage

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Calvinist tendencies. And he caused division in the church that he was a part of and what he does not realize.

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And I wouldn't be able to help him understand because he's still in that cage stage, unfortunately.

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But he ended up causing division in many other churches that he's not even a part of because of the young men that listened to his podcast and were influenced by those things that he did.

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And then they ended up causing the same division in their own churches. And I know that for a fact because I've witnessed it among young men that listen to his podcast.

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And so and so this is an example of somebody who was not submissive to church leadership and eldership, started a podcast and was puffed up with conceit, ended up causing division and brokenness in some other churches.

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Now, that's an example of somebody I've met face to face. I've heard of that happening in other ways from podcasts, especially among millennials who listen to a lot of podcasts, and then they go into their churches and they cause division, being more taught by the podcast that they're listening to rather than the elders and the and the pastors that they're supposed to be submitting to.

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As I've heard Dr. Albert Moeller say, the Internet is a terrible place to go to church.

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One of the responsibilities for you as a believer is to submit to your elders, to those who teach you the word of God.

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You can't do that if you're not going to church. Hebrews 13, seven. Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you, the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

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Can't do that if you're not going to church. Verse 17, same chapter, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account.

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Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

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Last verse we have here in First Timothy three, one through seven. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace into a snare of the devil.

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And I don't think that I need to speak much about that because I was talking about that when we started in on this study, as it is said in verse one, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

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He must be a man of noble character. And then furthermore, in verse two, therefore, an overseer must be above reproach.

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And when I first started talking about that, I said that's not just the character that he displays among members of his own congregation, but he must be above reproach even from the perspective of outsiders.

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So whether it's someone in the church or outside the church, they know he is a man who is faithful to his wife, who is not given over to crazy ideas, but he's temperate in his thinking.

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He is self -controlled and disciplined in his body and in his physical appetites.

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He is respectable in the way that he treats other people. He is hospitable, opening up his home to others and also willing to go into others' homes and be served by them.

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He is able to teach, helping people understand what the word of God says.

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He is not a drunkard, not addicted to much wine, just like with being self -controlled.

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He's not given over to his fleshly appetites. He's not violent, but he makes a concerted effort to be gentle.

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He is not quarrelsome. He desires to keep the peace with others and doesn't elevate himself above the needs of others.

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He's not a lover of money, desiring material possessions or even looking at his job as a pastor as a way to make a paycheck.

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But he considers first and foremost the responsibility of that office is to proclaim and teach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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He manages his own household well, with dignity and respect, keeping his children submissive.

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And he's not a recent convert. This is a person who has a history as a

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Christian and has shown himself to be faithful to the teaching and to this walk of faith.

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This is a man who models for his congregation what it means to be a mature believer in Christ.

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And so let's all aspire to maturity in the faith. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.