Current Issues in Evangelicalism (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

00:08

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

00:16

Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

00:24

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

00:30

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

00:40

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. This is

00:45

Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host today. Today is part two, Karl Truman at Bethlehem Bible Church, Friday night leadership conference, talking about men and leaders and getting the right kind of leaders.

00:59

Very, very insightful. Dr. Truman is a friend and a great spokesperson for evangelical

01:07

Christianity, and we had him address leaders here on Friday night at the church. You can pull up the segments, if you'd like, also on bbchurch .org.

01:16

But today on No Compromise Radio, part two, Karl Truman talking to leaders. Don't forget, soon enough, we won't be on 760

01:23

AM at 3 .30 in the afternoon, iTunes only, website only, Facebook only, tune -in radio only.

01:30

So my name's Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio, and we're hearing from Karl Truman, part two at Bethlehem Bible Church leadership conference.

01:40

I preached a couple of months ago through Timothy, and of course, you come to that great passage on ladies' dress, and as I'm preaching that women should not wear pearl earrings,

01:54

I think is the term, I look out, and I see at least half a dozen of the young ladies in my congregation wearing pearl earrings.

02:03

Should they not be wearing pearl earrings? Well, no, because I think what Paul's getting at here, I mean, yes, they can wear pearl earrings.

02:09

Sorry, don't go away and say, Truman told us we can't wear pearl earrings. What Paul is getting at here is that this was the uniform of Roman women who were sexually promiscuous at the time, and what

02:23

Paul is really saying is don't come to church dressed like a prostitute.

02:29

That's bluntly what he's saying there. So there's worldliness and there's false teaching, exactly the same two basic categories of problem that the church faces today, and what is

02:41

Paul's solution to this problem? His solution is appoint office bearers, appoint elders in the church.

02:53

The church, I think, we need to understand, will always be the primary area of struggle for the church.

02:59

We tend to think of problems for the church as coming from the outside. What happens if the government do this?

03:05

What happens if they pass laws on that? What happens if they take away our tax breaks?

03:11

Paul himself, I think, spends a lot more time talking about problems within the church than ever he does talking about problems that come from without the church, and there are a lot of problems without the church for Paul.

03:22

He's living in the Roman Empire. He's going to be martyred, but he doesn't spend so much time talking about that as he does talking about issues within the church.

03:31

Listen to what he says in 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self.

03:40

Listen to the description of these people. Lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self -control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

04:01

You might listen to that and say, well, you could not give a more accurate description of the city of Boston or New York or Philadelphia or London than the one

04:11

Paul has given there. That's the problem. These are the people outside the church we struggle with, except, of course,

04:18

Paul doesn't end his description there. He goes on in verse 5, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

04:28

Paul is not talking about them out there. He's talking about us in here.

04:36

Paul's talking about the church. In the last days, there are going to be times of difficulty.

04:42

Why? Because the church is going to be full of people who are just like this.

04:50

I preached also through the book of Judges a couple of years ago. There is, of course, at the end of the book of Judges, again, pardon my raising this, but it is in Scripture, there is a terrible gang rape and murder of this young girl.

05:05

Interestingly enough, we go away and look at the text and you'll see that we're not actually told when the girl died. We don't know if she died as a result of the rape or whether her boyfriend dismembered her and killed her in the process of dismemberment.

05:18

The text is that sinister. That is the people of God behaving that way.

05:25

And when you cross -reference that passage to the sins that take place in Sodom, a third, a third of the language in the

05:33

Judges passage is taken from the Genesis passage. The writer is definitely trying to make a point that you hold these two incidents in mind.

05:42

And the writer of Judges is making the point that by the end of the book of Judges, Sodom isn't out there on the plains, it's right here in the

05:51

Promised Land among the people of Israel. That's kind of what Paul is describing here. So Paul is saying the first thing, if you like, the first thing one needs to realise is the problem for the church is primarily going to be within the church.

06:05

Paul is not saying, you know, let the outsiders judge themselves. We're not interested in them. I'm interested in what's going on in the church.

06:10

So the first thing we need to realise is that our primary task in terms of reformation is the reform of the church.

06:20

Yes, we should be good citizens. We should cast our votes in appropriate ways. We should be good citizens.

06:26

We should make sure that we use our civic influence for good, but the church is to be preoccupied in terms of struggle with the struggle that takes place within the church herself.

06:40

And that's why Paul then, Paul talks about, I think, the appointment of overseers.

06:46

It's because the church is going to be the scene of this conflict that Paul says, you've got to have a solution to it.

06:53

You've got to come up with some mechanism or something that helps you address this. And Paul's answer is, appoint men to do the task.

07:04

Of course, at this point, we instinctively think, well, yes, we need to look for that grace of a straight guy. We've got to look for the square -jawed, all -American boy, you know, who's got a deep, booming voice and can come in and sort the problem out.

07:17

We need that alpha male. What is interesting, of course, is that that is not what Paul then goes on to describe.

07:24

Paul, if I can summarise in a sentence or two what I'm going to expand on over the next 20, 30 minutes,

07:33

Paul essentially says, find a bunch of the blandest, most nondescript, most reliable men you can find and put them in charge.

07:46

Paul's solution to making sure, or half of Paul's solution to making sure that the gospel is transmitted faithfully from one generation to the next is to put steady, bland, nondescript guys in charge of the church, the kind of guys that, you know, even in Philadelphia, you wouldn't pass them and think they were necessarily that good -looking.

08:11

Nondescript, fade -into -the -background types. Paul wants these men to be the ones who protect the church from, obviously, from external enemies, but primarily from internal problems.

08:30

This, I think, is because, if you read the New Testament as a whole, Paul sees the church as growing into maturity, and therefore, the men who lead the church are to provide examples of Christian maturity, doctrinal examples, they are to have knowledge to which others should aspire, and they are to live the kind of lives that set out a pattern for others within the church.

08:56

That's why I find it very problematic, the emergence over the last, even four or five years,

09:02

I've been in America now 11 years, and really over the last four or five years, suddenly, the megachurch has become okay, because certain megachurch pastors are using the same kind of language and making the same kind of noises that okay people make.

09:18

But they often do it with a swagger that is problematic and runs counter,

09:24

I think, to the message that they bring. The church is the temple of the

09:32

Holy Spirit, the primary place of God's presence and activity through the word today, and elders and deacons are to be those who have been schooled in the church and have come to develop the virtues that Paul outlines, particularly in 1

09:49

Timothy and also in Titus. And I want you to notice four things about these individuals, and they are four things, some of which are very countercultural and are becoming countercultural even within the church,

10:06

I think. First of all, these people are to be moderate in temperament.

10:16

It's vital. If the church is to be led well, you need moderate leaders.

10:22

You need a man who knows that not every hill is worth dying on. Not every issue raised is the

10:28

Reformation. All over again, I had the privilege earlier this week of being at another seminary and giving some lectures on Martin Luther and how his theology connected to his practice of being a pastor.

10:42

It's interesting, for all the work that's been done on Martin Luther, very little time has been spent studying his pastoral work, which is interesting because most of his life would actually have been pastoral work.

10:53

Most of his time, even as a mature Reformer, would have been involved in pastoral work.

10:58

One of the fascinating things about Luther, who is this volcano of a man and quite prepared to slap people around when he has to and break heads, is how concerned he was for ordinary people.

11:14

It takes eight years from 1517, when he first blasts his

11:20

Reformation trumpet, it takes eight years for the celebration of the Lord's Supper in German in Wittenberg.

11:28

He does it bit by bit. Why? Because he's worried that if he rushes too fast, it will disturb people.

11:35

We tend to think everybody is just desperate for the Reformation to come along. I think that on the whole, people then as now are on the whole desperate for things not to change.

11:46

Use this example many times. If you've ever been involved in a church where you've tried to change the Bible translation from one that people find hard to understand to one that people find easier to understand, you'll notice that people don't want a

11:59

Bible that's easier to understand. They want the Bible they grew up with, that's kind of familiar to them.

12:05

Luther understood that. Luther, of course, and this, I'd not noticed this really until I was preparing these lectures, but Luther produces these beautiful catechisms that use the old -fashioned

12:17

Roman Catholic language but put Protestant content into it. And also very, very simple, and suddenly the penny dropped.

12:23

Luther was the first man to write a catechism, a question and answer catechism in the history of the church who'd first been a father.

12:33

He was the first man who actually had firsthand experience of teaching his kids to speak and of explaining stuff to them very simply.

12:42

And that affected how he acted as a reformer. So moderate temperament.

12:48

We don't want a loud -mouthed, brash person. You don't want somebody who's landing themselves on the front page of Time magazine for their outrageous statements.

13:01

What you want is somebody who's moderate in temperament. I read this, I think it was

13:06

Terry Johnson I read said this somewhere, and I've been trying to impress it on students at Westminster more recently.

13:12

You know, when you get called to a church, don't change anything for five years. Okay, if there's a heresy involved, you gotta change it.

13:20

And if you can move faster than that on some things, maybe you should. But don't go in with the idea you're gonna change anything.

13:25

Go in with the idea that you're gonna earn people's respect and trust before you change anything.

13:32

I've had the privilege of being in the church that called me. I was in the church for nine years before they called me. I know where all the bodies are buried.

13:38

You know, I have a great strategic knowledge of the landscapes. It's slightly different for me. But by and large, people going to churches are strangers.

13:45

Don't change anything for five years. Secondly, these individuals who are called must have personal integrity.

13:56

Not greedy. Trustworthy with money. It's fascinating in the pastoral epistles, the language that Paul uses of household management.

14:07

And how he sees the ability to manage a domestic, earthly household is vital to, well not vital, well,

14:16

I don't wanna say that Paul says you've gotta be married to be a minister. So don't read what I'm saying now along those lines.

14:23

But Paul certainly thinks that if you're married and have a household and your household is chaotic, you can't be called to the ministry.

14:32

The same kind of skills that are important and character qualities that are important in running a household are vital for running the church.

14:41

And remember, all the time when I say running the church, what I'm thinking of is making sure that the gospel can be preserved and communicated effectively to the next generation.

14:53

In a sense, I think the household management thing clarifies Paul's emphasis on moderation.

15:00

Man who manages his own household has inevitably had to stand up to his own kids at some point.

15:06

He's had to take the lead. He's had to make difficult decisions. He's had to shoulder responsibility.

15:13

Same kind of things are gonna be necessary in church leadership. Thirdly, they must have a solid grasp of the gospel.

15:23

And we're gonna return to this in the second lecture when I give you my list of priority points. To give you a sneak preview now,

15:31

I am a big opponent, and I don't know if your church fits into this, Mike, I'm a big opponent of churches that only have 10 -point doctrinal bases.

15:42

I think churches should have elaborate confessions. Not that people joining the church need to, what we say in Presbyterian circles, need to subscribe to the elaborate confession.

15:55

But I think the office bearers should. Because the office bearers model in life and doctrine that which the members should aspire to.

16:05

And if you believe 10 points when you come in and the office bearers are only required to believe 10 points, guess what? You'll believe 10 points till the day you die.

16:13

I think office bearing, there should be a definite higher standard set, both in terms of practical character and in terms of doctrine.

16:23

A good grasp of the gospel doesn't simply mean that you know that Jesus died and rose again for your sins.

16:29

That's what gets you into the church. That's the basic Romans 10 confession. An elder, a minister, has to have a much more elaborate grasp of the gospel for reasons that I'll talk about in the second part.

16:46

Now here we come to one of those that really rubs today. They must not be new converts.

16:55

Too much too soon, Paul says, can prove too great a temptation. One of the reasons, of course, is that the sin of leaders is much more public and much more catastrophic than the sin of individual church members.

17:11

I grew up in a non -Christian home. After I was converted, my parents, they loved my parents to bits.

17:18

My dad has since passed away, but loved my mom to bits. And even today, though, if somebody who professes to be a

17:24

Christian does something, my mom will never fail to point it out to me.

17:29

Oh, X did this, and they're supposed to be a Christian. If X is a minister or an elder, the criticism is much sharper.

17:40

My mom, as a non -Christian, knows that ministers are meant to behave especially well, and that the fall of a minister is that much more catastrophic.

17:52

And I think in Paul's mind is, you don't want to appoint somebody who hasn't been proven because if they fall, it's going to be that much more scandalous for the public reputation of the church.

18:02

Think of Ted Haggard. I'm guessing that Christians in this country are professing Christians, commit adultery and take drugs every day, get busted by the cops every day.

18:13

Very rarely makes the primetime news. President of the National Association of Evangelicals does it.

18:20

It's on the news for night after night after night. So there must not be new converts.

18:26

And that's a hard one to swallow in our culture, I say, which tends to think that youth has all the answers and old age is irrelevant.

18:34

It's why people spend so much on plastic surgery, trying to make themselves look young. Tempted to say it's why guys grow soul patches.

18:43

No, that's a low blow, Mike. I'm sorry, I should... Michael Hakin tells me it's not a soul patch, it's an imperial, and John Bunyan had one, so you're okay.

18:55

As long as you claim Bunyan and not Justin Bieber as your reason for doing it, that's the...

19:03

But it's very counter -cultural, isn't it? Should not be a new convert. Should be a mature person of years.

19:13

And following on from that, should be somebody of good reputation with outsiders. Love that bit that Paul sticks in there, that elders are, yeah, they're meant to be different, they're meant to have obvious, principled walks with the

19:29

Lord, they're meant to have a theological grasp that surpasses that of the new church member, but outsiders should take them seriously as well.

19:40

It's one of the things we wrestle with. I'm on the, what we call the Candidates and Credentials Committee of the

19:45

Philadelphia Presbytery, the OPC, where we, essentially what we do is we vet young men who are coming through for the ministry.

19:52

It's a very serious and awesome responsibility in many ways. And as with so many

19:58

Presbyterian churches, our focus is very much on the doctrinal stuff. You come in, you do exams, you're examined on the floor of presbytery about your theology.

20:08

What's tougher to get a handle on, of course, is reputation with outsiders. Yet Paul includes it here.

20:15

You want somebody with good reputation with outsiders. I think that's one of the reasons why he says should be the husband of one wife.

20:24

Paul is not saying that the unmarried cannot hold office. Don't think Paul was married himself.

20:30

It's certainly not clear that he was married. What he means, I think, is that he shouldn't be somebody who's got a reputation for womanizing because that's gonna bring the church into disrepute.

20:41

Should be somebody who's known to love and to care for his wife.

20:46

He should not have multiple girlfriends on the side. In short, the elders, and indeed the deacons as well, are to model in their life and doctrine that to which all

20:58

Christians should aspire. It should be visible to all, those in the church and those outside.

21:07

One could boil all of this down and say that for Paul, the answer, the primary answer to the church's problem, it has two sides.

21:15

One, there's a doctrinal side. And that's the one often we're hottest on in conservative evangelical quarters.

21:24

But equally important is the character of the men who lead the church.

21:33

Given how Paul writes to Timothy about the church in Ephesus, I think we can infer a number of things from this.

21:40

One, we can understand that the problems that affect the church in Ephesus are not ultimately technical in nature.

21:46

If they were technical in nature, Paul would suggest a technique to solve them. Oh, you need to rearrange the time or order of your service.

21:54

Or you need to restructure things in this way. What Paul does, in fact, is say, you need to get men of good character in place.

22:02

This is a moral problem. The church's problem is ultimately a moral problem.

22:08

False teaching and inappropriate behavior need to be countered by true teaching and appropriate behavior.

22:15

And that is guaranteed by putting the right men with the right knowledge and the right character into office within the church.

22:23

And I'm aware that office in the church is countercultural. We're gonna come back to that in lecture two.

22:29

Secondly, we need to understand that in the church, at least, character is crucial to competence. Again, the wider culture routinely separates character and competence.

22:43

It is very interesting to me, in terms of the church, how in the last 12 months, when certain high -profile mega -pastors have been criticized, their response has always been, well, how many people are converted under your ministry?

23:00

That is an interesting response. One could boil it down to saying, the

23:05

Lord's blessing my ministry, so I must be okay. First person

23:11

I ever heard that from was somebody who was stalking young women. First person who ever said to me, look, my behavior has gotta be okay because when

23:22

I preach, people are moved by my preaching. This person was living in terrible sin.

23:30

Couldn't see it. I think it is no response at all when you share a platform with a modalist or a prosperity doctriner to turn around and say, well, effectively, your church is so much smaller than mine.

23:44

Who are you to criticize me? That is not to say that there are not plenty of ministers of small churches who criticize ministers of big churches.

23:53

Out of envy, there are. We have to be aware that that's always a danger and a possibility. But just because you're the pastor of a big church doesn't mean you're only answerable to pastors of equally big or larger churches.

24:07

That's not what Paul says. You're answerable to the gospel. You're answerable to God as revealed in the

24:13

Lord Jesus Christ. There has been a dangerous reverse,

24:27

I think, in our culture where competence has supplanted or even become character.

24:35

We must be careful that it does not become so in the church because somebody writes, if you think of a wider culture, somebody's good at their job, paints a beautiful picture, writes a beautiful poem.

24:47

We assume that whatever character flaws they have must be okay too. I forget the lady's name, but I think it made the news over here.

24:55

There was a very plain lady a few years ago, won some sort of talent competition in Britain because she had a very beautiful voice.

25:02

And one couldn't help but look at the looks of surprise on people's faces when they heard this beautiful voice coming out of what was really a fairly nondescript or plain lady.

25:14

And it really, I think, revealed something about the wider culture. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

25:24

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

25:33

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

25:41

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

25:49

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.