Book of Titus - Ch. 1, v. 6b (Pt. 3)

If you guys would like, you can actually turn to Luke chapter 15. This will be the last

Sunday that we will camp out in Titus 1 .6. That is still the overarching theme we're talking about.

Of course, the verse itself, we are specifically honing in on having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.

We're talking about the qualifications of elders given to Titus by Paul. And we've been talking about, this is the third

Sunday now, we've talked about this particular qualification. We talked about the qualification that precedes that, being a one -woman man, which is in the same verse for a couple of Sundays before that.

So we've been in verse 6 for a long time. Now the reason why we've spent so much time on this one, and I think

I mentioned this either last week or the week before last, is this is, I heard it referred to as the neglected qualification recently.

And I was like, well, that makes a lot of sense given that cliche that we've talked about a number of times at this point, of the pastor's kids or the preacher's kids typically being kind of wild, being kind of crazy.

It's just become this casual thing that people kind of laugh at, kind of chuckle at.

And the reason why that is the reality is because, in fact, this is a neglected qualification.

This is one that many people in the church, at least in America, perhaps all throughout the West, neglect and put kind of at the bottom of the totem pole with regard to how important the qualifications

Paul gives are. And so having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly, this is one that's neglected, that's ignored.

We've been talking about this for a number of weeks, and I'm actually going to pick it up kind of where we discussed.

I'm going to do a little bit of review. We discussed some of this at the end of last week. I'd like to pick it up, cover a little bit of what we've already covered, and finish the thought, the idea.

And one of the things we were talking about at the end of last week was the fact that there are going to be some scenarios that aren't so crystal clear when it comes to, let's say, you're on an electing council, or you're on the ordination council of a local church, and you're one of the elders.

You have to make the decision of who you ordain, who's going to come on board as another elder serving

God's church, the household of God. He's going to be a shepherd. He's going to be shepherding God's people.

Obviously, starting with these qualifications is where every ordaining council should start, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get a guy that fits the bill as cleanly as Paul lays it out here, and I'm about to demonstrate what

I mean by that in just a second. Now, we've already addressed some black and white scenarios when it comes to sexual promiscuity.

Obviously, that guy's out. When it comes to a guy coming in saying, hey, I want to be an elder, I feel called to preach, and his household is just a wreck.

All of his kids that live under his roof are just—they're unruly. They're rebellious.

They're slow to obey if they're obedient at all. They are disrespectful to those around them.

All of these things, these are all signs that the man does not have what it takes to rule God's household well if he can't even rule his own household well.

So there's some black and white scenarios like that where the ordaining council should be able to look at these qualifications from Paul and say, we would be disobedient if we were to ordain you as an elder in this church, and so there you go.

But there are going to be some scenarios that aren't as crystal clear, and those must be considered as well.

If you are a godly ordaining council and you believe that the

Holy Spirit can guide you in your discernment using his words as the foundation, then everything needs to be considered, and it's actually the exceptional scenarios.

It's the scenarios that are a little bit different than the clean -cut black and white ones that have to be weighed the most carefully.

They have to be carefully discerned by the church, especially its elders, using, of course, the scriptures that we have as the foundation for any approach taken.

So an example that we used at the end of last week, and I'll just revisit it really quick and look at another passage that we looked at last week as well, is let's say that the pastor has five faithful kids.

He has five kids that have all been raised well. The parents have been very diligent in raising their kids in the

Word, admonishing them in the Word, and five of their kids—and these are all biological kids—five of their kids are very faithful.

They are very respectful, obedient, reverent, all of the things that a

Christian child should be. They live lives that can be models for all other kids in the congregation all the way around, but they have one, quote -unquote, black sheep in the fold.

So they have six kids. Five of them are very faithful. Five of them live exemplary lives.

One of them is the, quote -unquote, black sheep, and this kid is a little bit questionable with regard to his faith, with regard to his concern for spiritual things, maybe with regard to honoring those things that his parents hold so dear, that being their faith in the

Bible, the Word that backs it up. So the question now is, is that pastor disqualified?

Because remember, it doesn't matter if we're talking about, in this particular context, it doesn't matter if you're talking about an elder candidate or a pastor that is already ordained, but all of his kids are still living under his roof, and so he still has to be ordering his house well.

In real time, it's not just the same thing with the sexual sins.

I mean, you may ordain a guy that has been faithful to his wife leading up to his ordination, and then ten years later commits an egregious sin.

Well, it doesn't matter that he's already been ordained. He's now disqualified. If you were ordained maybe before you had any kids or when all your kids were so little they couldn't be all crazy just yet, and he's been a pastor for a number of years, they're all living under his roof, and then all of a sudden they're all disobedient, rebellious, rambunctious in the bad kind of way, not having fun, but just all over the place, again disrespectful.

They disobey their parents. They don't honor anyone in any position of authority. That would be disqualifying if the pastor didn't handle it the way that he should.

So again, the question is, is the pastor disqualified in this scenario? Five faithful kids, one questionable kid with regard to their spiritual walk.

Well, the Bible, I believe, actually gives us an idea of what the father is. The shepherd of his own family is the family shepherd, first and foremost, before even the household of God.

I believe we have an idea of what the father should do in this particular scenario, and that brings us to our passage in Luke 15, if y 'all want to look there.

Luke chapter 15, starting at verse 4, and again we read this passage last week, and this is more of a thought experiment than anything.

This is taking some of Jesus' words here and applying what we sometimes might call the echo principle in a particular fashion.

I think it can be applicable here. And again, this is more of a thought experiment than anything, and at the end of last week,

I'm not sure if Brian Christopher is still on, or if he's on this morning. He was on last week. I noticed a couple of questions in the chat that I didn't see until after Sunday school was over, but at some point when we were addressing this section, he asked, are we conflating those that are being considered as elders or those that are already elders?

And the answer is yes, and I'm doing that on purpose, Brian, mainly again just to cover our basis here and see how these things can be applied across the board.

So let's read this passage together really quick. Luke 15, look at verse 4. Jesus says,

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety -nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it?

And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them,

Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. Now, Jesus here is obviously giving us a parable.

He's talking about himself. I believe this is a parable referring primarily to Christ as the shepherd, bringing in all of his flock, not losing one of them.

I think there could be a parallel here between this and John 6 as well. But when you think about the fact that pastors, as shepherds of God's house, as well as their own house, are a type of Christ himself, then

I believe you can make an extrapolation here and say, what is a pastor to do if one of his own goes astray, if one of his own sheep goes astray?

Because remember, and I believe this can be substantiated throughout a number of New Testament scriptures, the primary focus of the pastor should be those in his own home, even above those in his congregation.

I believe you can make a very sound argument for that. There may be some out there, I suppose, that disagree, and maybe that's why they neglect this qualification, because they don't believe their own kids are as important as their ministry, quote -unquote.

I believe quite the opposite is true. And so if pastors are the type or the picture of Christ as the ultimate shepherd, and I would say even

Dad's fatherhood in general, to a degree, is a type, is a shadow of Christ as the ultimate shepherd, then

I believe this passage can be applied in the scenario that you have five great kids, but one of them that is just struggling in their spiritual walk.

Maybe they don't have a spiritual walk yet. They haven't been converted yet, for whatever reason.

Of course, salvation, as we've talked about in detail at this point, I feel like I don't need to throw all these qualifications in at this point because we have addressed it.

Salvation is obviously in the hands of God, but he uses his people as the means to evangelize and bring people to a saving faith.

In fact, at the very beginning of this book of Titus, Titus 1, verses 2 and 3,

Paul emphasizes that aspect of his ministry, that often he is the one that is used to bring people to a saving faith.

And so that can't be neglected either. So let's take this in two steps. I want to talk about the veteran elder and the pastoral candidate.

So to answer Brian's question last week, yes, we are conflating on purpose. We are combining both phases of a pastor.

Let's talk about the veteran elder first. Let's talk about the one that has been an elder for who knows how long, 5, 10, 20, 30 years.

Number one, let's say he has the five great kids. By great, I'm talking about in the spiritual context.

They have great relationships with the Lord in their own right. As individual human beings that are morally culpable themselves, morally responsible, they have great relationship with the

Lord, whereas his sixth kid over here doesn't. It could be a boy or a girl. It doesn't matter. I do not think that the elder is disqualified in that context.

I don't think he's disqualified from the ministry outright. However, what

I do believe is that he has a responsibility to go try to get his lost sheep, and the other elders can actually help him do that.

Again, we're reviewing a little bit. We talked about this at the end of last week too, but how can the elders help him do that?

I think, by the way, just as a quick side note, this is another great example of why you see throughout the

New Testament a plurality of elders. I read a book recently that was somewhat hard to get through, and one of the things that it talked about was the necessity of the local church being a democracy with a single pastor over it.

You have so many issues with that. It's crazy. His argument for the fact that we no longer need a plurality of elders is because, well, the church was just busy back at the time of Acts, at the time of the early church.

The church was just busy, and churches were growing fast, and so therefore they had to have a number of elders, but we don't need that anymore.

Okay. Yeah, if anything, exactly. Or you just put the responsibility on a bunch of committees.

That is the antidote to growing fast even without elders is you just create a bunch of committees out of thin air, pulpit committee, making sure the preacher's preaching good, the committee for church growth, the welcoming committee, so on and so forth.

And so I believe one of the great examples of why the plurality of elders is so important is because you can have help in situations like this.

If you have multiple elders overseeing a church together and the pastor finds himself, and again, let's say he's been a pastor for 15 years already, and he finds himself with a wayward child, that he has a heart to go out and give a lot of dedicated time to to bring him back into the fold, these other elders can oversee his flock at the church, the household of God, the congregation, while he goes and does that.

So the elders can actually help him do that. The other 99, it's not that they're totally by themselves.

They have other shepherds that can be watching over them while the senior pastor, the main shepherd, if you will, goes after the one that's missing.

He needs to try to get that sheep that can't take care of itself for whatever reason. At this point, he's having trouble, or she.

Now, for the pastoral candidate, so that's how I believe you could approach a veteran elder in that context.

It's not that he's disqualified, but perhaps give him some time. The congregation would need to be okay with this.

The other elders would need to be willing to take on other responsibilities if he feels led to go out and bring the one back to the 99.

Let him do so. And don't—there are a lot of local congregations that may try to pressure their pastor into not doing that because they want their needs met.

If he feels called to do that, he needs to do it. Now, let's go back to pastoral candidates for a second. So now this comes back more to the immediate context of Titus, where Titus is to appoint elders and ordain them.

I do think it would be rather prudent for the elder council, prior to ordaining an elder candidate, to do everything that they can to ascertain why there is a black sheep in the family in the first place.

So if you have a man who's been called, but he's not yet ordained, he's not yet in the ministry, there's no reason why the elder council couldn't encourage him to figure out, you know, maybe what went wrong.

Is this literally a matter of you have done everything that you can and the child just has not been enlightened by the

Holy Spirit yet? Or perhaps there were some mistakes that were made in the child -rearing phase that you need to get on top of and fix prior to you becoming the shepherd over our flock.

Now, I heard a testimony just this past week of a family. And interestingly enough, the testimony actually came from one of the kids.

It didn't come from the parents. One of the kids talked about the fact that their parents were as biblical and as sound as you can imagine.

The kid giving the testimony, this is an adult at this point, but he's talking about his childhood. He said, in my opinion, they couldn't have done anything better.

We were in the Word. They were instructing us. They were loving. They were patient. They were meek. But they also disciplined us in love.

They raised us in the Word. We never missed church. They did everything that you could want in a godly family.

But my oldest brother, he rejects the faith.

And so there's an example where, again, salvation is of God. And so if you have been faithful and responsible to conducting yourself and being the means that you have been called to be to evangelize, to give the

Word, to preach the Word to your kids first and foremost, and the kid is still wayward beyond that, there comes a time when, yes, you just need to bathe it in prayer.

It gets to a point where that may be your final mode of spiritual warfare, praying that the

Lord opens up the eyes of this, at this point, adult child. And, of course, every opportunity you have to be salt and light, you are that.

But prayer, prayer, prayer is the name of the game at that point. And so it would be very prudent for the elders to, again, ascertain, is it one of those situations?

Because if so, then they may be able to legitimately make a call that this man meets all of the qualifications and is suitable for the eldership.

If the reason he has maybe one or more black sheep in the family is because of his irresponsibility as a father.

Maybe he put everything else before his kids, making sure he was going to seminary, making sure he was out doing hospital visits and visiting the widows and the orphans, and he put everyone before his own kids.

And that neglect led them to a point where they don't even know what it's like to be in an appropriate relationship between kid and father.

That is troublesome. And it's the local church's call. But it may be prudent for the elders to encourage him, this elder candidate, to go make things right prior to bringing him on into the eldership.

And so, of course, there are all kinds of questions that the elders could ask. Is this wayward child, is the black sheep in the family, is he an adopted kid maybe that you adopted later in life?

Is he a foster child? Is it a stepchild? Or perhaps it is simply a kid that's having a rough go at everything.

He has struggles in a few areas that the other five kids simply don't. All of those would be really important considerations for elders to consider any new candidate, any new candidate.

But let's assume the latter for a second. Again, it's a biological kid. He's just having a rough go at life.

In a situation like that, I believe it would be more than appropriate, again, I kind of alluded to it already, for the pastoral candidate to take a season prior to ordination to dedicate the majority of his time going after that lost sheep, especially if it's in the context of him having some failures as a father.

I think in that context it's a necessity, but even in the other context where it's just he did everything he could, why not?

It's your own child. Go and spend a little bit of dedicated time, do what the

Lord put on your heart, and then go walk away in peace after that, and let the Holy Spirit do his job.

You plant the seeds, as we have been called to do. The Holy Spirit does the watering. So the obvious takeaway from this parable, which of course most people would notice, is that that of going out, finding the one lost sheep, of course there's a whole other element to it, and that's often not considered, leaving the 99 in order to do it.

If you have other elders that can back you up, that is possible. But it's worth considering even in a situation where you may be the lone pastor.

I mean, again, it's your own kids that we're talking about. In this scenario, with these considerations, the potential disqualification would not necessarily be that there is a sheep wandering in the first place.

Pastors' kids sin too. We're not striving for perfection here. We're not striving for a sinless progeny so that we can say we have the perfect pastor.

The potential disqualification comes in the shepherd not going after the wandering sheep, if it is in fact one of his sheep.

If he was born into his family, it's one of his sheep. Now, of course, you could say, well, you don't know whether or not he's a spiritual sheep.

You don't know if he's of the elect. I understand that. Nobody knows any of those things. But we are called to evangelize.

We are called to plant the seeds that the Holy Spirit will later water. This is mainly emphasizing the point that we need to ensure we have done everything that we possibly can do within our means as the

Holy Spirit leads us, and not just neglect all of it. And you're thinking, Ben, why are, this all seems like a given.

Who wouldn't do it this way? Well, look around us. Look around our culture. Even look in our local communities.

We see it all the time, the kids of ministers being neglected. This is a very big problem in the mission field.

I'll leave that aside because it would take up too much time. But it's a big problem in the mission field. It's a big problem among men that have felt the calling, the neglect of their own family, the neglect of their own kids.

Oh, man, there's a devastating story happening right now with a guy that, it is so obvious.

I don't know if any of y 'all know Stephen Anderson. He's a cult leader, basically.

He's an IFB guy, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist. And the writing's been on the wall forever.

He's absolutely crazy. But now that his kids are older, he has 12 kids.

His four oldest kids are all coming out telling the horror stories of being raised in this family, being neglected, but also his anger issues.

I mean, his anger issues are obvious from the pulpit. But his anger issues, his abuse, all the, you know, just verbal, and maybe even some physical, it's just an absolute horror story.

All for what? All for his quote, unquote, ministry. I don't believe it's a real ministry, but you get my point. This is something that pervades all denominations all throughout

America, maybe all throughout the West, the neglect of the minister's kids. So that's the whole point of me covering all this is to emphasize.

Let's ensure. I need to ensure as a minister. I'm talking about all these things as the one that needs to meet these qualifications.

But anyone listening to this 20 years from now even, these things need to be remembered with regard to how important they are.

The primary issue here is not found in the fact that a pastor's kids, that a pastor's kid can sin, and sometimes severely.

A pastor's kid can obviously sin grievously and not disqualify his or her father from the ministry.

The question comes in asking, what happens after that? What happens after the kid sins grievously?

It's not a disqualification for the minister in and of itself, but rather a calling to even more deliberate ministry on the part of the father.

Think about it. It's actually an opportunity for the minister to step it up and be a greater minister than he ever was before in a context like that.

And so there needs to be grace from the congregation if they ever find the pastor's kid smoking behind the Walmart, like we talked about last week.

That does not mean the pastor's disqualified, and it doesn't mean the kid is a bad kid either. Everybody sins, everybody slips up.

But, so the congregation has to show grace there and be willing to give the elder an opportunity to step it up and see what is really, whether or not his ministry has any backbone to it.

And so it's a great opportunity for that. Now, there is a book I mentioned at the beginning of this kind of mini study of this verse, of this qualification, that I had dove into more commentaries, lexical sources, sermons, than I have for any study

I've ever done, all for this one phrase of this one verse. And I'm going to explain why in just a second. There's one word that I want to hone in on to end today's lesson with.

But before I do that, I want to give you all a case study, one more thing to consider before moving on.

Among all the commentaries I've read, the lexical resources I've looked at, the word studies, all of it, the sermons

I've listened to, there was a book that I read as well called The Neglected Qualification. That's where I learned that term that I think is very useful.

And it was written by a pastor that I admire very much. It was a very, and the entire book is on this one phrase of this one verse.

The importance of, and he also, of course, talks about the parallel passage in 1 Timothy chapter three.

But it's a wonderful book and very biblical, very balanced. It was great, it was super helpful.

And a quote from that book, he says, the answer of knowing when to leave the 99 to go save the one is when you recognize that there's only 99.

So how do you know when it's appropriate? How does the pastor know when it's appropriate to go and maybe pause his ministry, take a little bit of a sabbatical to go see what he needs to do for his child?

When he knows it's time to do that is when he looks around and he realizes there's only 99 sheep, a missing one.

So that's when the time comes. Now I want to give you guys a brief case study from that book, directly from the book,

The Neglected Qualification, just to give you one more example of how interesting this can be when it comes to ordaining elders, or maybe even elders that have been ordained already and have been serving the ministry for a while.

Now, just to revisit this idea of using the discernment of the elders of an ordination council in conjunction with the

Bible, because let's remember that is the foundation here. The foundation is the Bible itself. There's a wise principle that was talked about in this book that I think is aptly applied here as well, and that is that exceptions, the exceptions should test the rule, not supersede the rule.

So in other words, there are times when you may have an exception, kind of like the one we just talked about, where he has five great kids but one black sheep.

If you take a very, as we've talked about before, kind of wooden, rigid interpretation of these passages, you might say, oh, not qualified, get him out of here.

Or maybe, again, like the previous qualification, oh, he's not married, get him out of here. Oh, he was divorced when he was 19 years old, or 20 years old, before he got saved, and he wasn't a good husband then, he didn't know better, but since then he's got saved, he's been in a faithful marriage for 25 years, but get him out of here because he's been married more than once.

That's what it looks like when you interpret these in a way that I don't believe

Paul intended. And so there are going to be times where you have exceptions, but you have to ensure that the exceptions don't supersede the rule where you're like, ah, yeah, this is a great guy, bring him in, you know, ordain him, let's get him ordained.

That would be superseding the rules. What you want is for the exceptions to test the rule and ensure that you are being as meticulous as you need to be with handling the word of God accurately, and so forth.

So say that you have an ordination council of elders considering a pastoral candidate, and it comes out in the interview that when he was 19, shortly before he became a

Christian, he had been living with a girl. And by the way, this actually, I'm about to answer a question, Brian, if you're out there, that you asked like six weeks ago,

I'm finally going to answer it for you. So let's say he's been living with a girl, and shortly after that, she got pregnant under these circumstances.

But because she was an antagonistic atheist and hated that the man, hated that the man she's with is now moving into a more spiritual direction, she leaves him.

Now, he has had no legal recourse, and his son from that union was born and brought up as an atheist and is now a very messed up older kid, as messed up as you can imagine.

Now, after the pastoral candidate was converted, after he was saved, which came after this relationship, he finished college, he went to seminary, he met his current wife while studying for the ministry.

They married. It's been a wonderfully faithful marriage. They now have five kids, all of whom love

Jesus, love their parents, love the church, serve well, are great all around. Now, in this example, this is an example of the exception testing the rule, because what it does is it makes the elders think really hard about the rules in the first place.

What are these qualifications? What are these standards set before us? The framework that Paul gave us, what is it?

And it makes them see how the rule still applies. You're checking to see how this man manages the kids that he has in his home, not the children that he never even had the opportunity to father in the first place.

Again, you could have, it's not superseding the rule, it's testing it in the fact that he does have a kid that is an atheist and that has lived a rebellious and unruly life his entire life.

But the point is, the kid was never under this man's rule, and the man never had the opportunity to have that even as an option, because the girl that hated his spiritual leanings all of the sudden ditched town, moved to a different state, he doesn't even know where they live now.

He knows he has a son, he knows it's a rough life, maybe he's gotten some through the grapevine information about it, and he's devastated about it because it's still his son, but does that mean he's disqualified?

Well, in this particular case study from that book I referenced, I don't believe he is. The conclusion of the book is that he wouldn't be.

The conclusion of most of the sources that I have referenced throughout doing this study would agree that he wouldn't.

And it's an exception. Paul doesn't specifically lay out this exact scenario and say, yeah, don't worry, he's okay.

You still have to use the rules that Paul gave us and make sure that this exception tests that we are, in fact, applying the rules appropriately in understanding, yes, this man does still rule his house well.

He is a faithful husband. He has faithful kids. They are trustworthy. Does all that make sense? So there are exceptions in the local church, specifically the elders, have to rely on the

Holy Spirit's guidance to make sure they are not overstepping their bounds and doing anything in disobedience and bringing on an elder that may actually not be qualified.

Yeah, Matt, do you have a question? Would you say this is a good example? Because I would assume this isn't the only case that this would apply, but with anything that we can pull from the

Word where there's qualifications or a command, we don't get all the situations laid out on the page.

It's like the framework in God's Word to the best result, the best way, just like with everything he tells us.

And then it's up to upholding those commandments or those qualifications above all the scenarios that could happen, and then the

Holy Spirit working with you to discern each situation and what might be an exception or not.

Like this situation happened, and it's not really in here, but I do have these starting points.

Would you say it's kind of that way with a lot of stuff, and this is a good example? Absolutely. Let me give you an example.

And by the way, this comes back to the topic of understanding, affirming, believing in the sufficiency of Scripture.

Some people will mock that idea because they'll say, well, XYZ isn't in the Bible. But that isn't how the sufficiency of Scripture works.

So you may have a young guy come up and say, hey, looking at inappropriate magazines or stuff on the internet isn't in the

Bible. I was never told that that's not in the Bible. I don't see that laid out anywhere, and so who are you to say that I can't do that or go look at those things?

So the way you would handle something like that is you would say, well, in fact, what we do have is a well, thoroughly displayed demonstration of how dangerous and evil the lust of the flesh is, how dangerous lust is in general.

In other words, lust, as it applies to all categories of life across all ages, across all centuries, it doesn't matter that the internet didn't exist at the time

Jesus talked about this in Matthew 5. The fact still applies.

Lust is dangerous. Lust is still a sin. So, yes, there is a sense in which you're, well, okay, that example is pretty black and white because,

I mean, that's the kind of thing you slap the kid across the face and say, look, this doesn't get any clearer. But you kind of get my point.

You kind of get my point with regard to how sufficiency works. It doesn't say it word for word, this particular 21st century thing.

But it's still there. The principle is still there, and it still very much applies to it. Going back to your question, though, be a little bit more specific is discernment, things that are a little bit less black and white, a little bit more,

Lord, how do I handle this? I have the qualifications here, this particular guy before me that I have the responsibility on the ordination council to say he is worthy of shepherding your flock.

But he has a son. He has a son that's out there that is rejecting you in public fashion.

He is an enemy of you. And what do I do about this? That's where it comes into play.

If the case is that, well, this was a child, that the pastoral candidate never had the opportunity to father because his partner, prior to being converted, left him and moved to a different state, and he didn't even know that he had a son, perhaps, until later in life.

Then he gets saved after all that happens, and then he has a faithful marriage, and then he has five kids that are all faithful.

And you can see that he rules his house well. The Holy Spirit would bear witness with the person that's praying that prayer and giving them the conscience to say, yes, he meets all the qualifications.

He still fits the bill. He still fits the rules. There could be other circumstances. We could talk about every hypothetical we could think of where he may not have that clarity.

He may not have that clear conscience because maybe there were some other factors that do come back on the man's character post -conversion and how he would rule the house of God.

Like, he might have bitterness towards his wife and the child. Stuff like that. Who knows.

He's concerned that it's a problem. To answer your question, yes. There are going to be times in Scripture where we have framework given to us, and then the

Holy Spirit guides us through how to apply that. And this is a prime example of it. I believe that the most important aspects of life,

Scripture couldn't be clearer, couldn't be more cut and dry, and I think that's a grace that it is that, like that.

And I think it's also a grace that we have the more, I'll just, for lack of a better term, I'll say the more ambiguous passages, where there's room for a local church to work with regard to their relationship with the

Lord and not be under the iron fist of maybe another local church elsewhere, or Rome, or something like that.

Did you have a thought, Mimi? Would you think it would make a difference if the man knew where his biological son was and knew that he was out of the fold of God, and he had a way to go and share the gospel with him and perhaps bring him into the house of God?

Would that make a difference, if he knew how to go and make something correct or reach after that family?

In that context, what I believe is that it would make a difference insofar as if he thinks he could go evangelize his biological son that he may have never met, may not have known.

Maybe there's an opportunity. I think that's kind of your question. What if there's an opportunity? It would make a difference insofar as he should take the opportunity, but is it disqualifying?

I would say no. So there's a little bit of a difference there. I wouldn't say it makes a difference with regard to his qualification as a minister of the gospel, but it could be a difference in that maybe, kind of like the scenario

I laid out earlier, maybe he says, guys, talking to his other elders, guys, I just found my son, and I'm going to go to him.

I'm going to go introduce myself and apologize for the way his life transpired because of the sins of my youth, even though they happened before I was saved.

Take responsibility for that as he should. And he goes on a sabbatical, leaving the other elders to oversee the flock, while he goes and he does what he can to bring that son, that lost son, into the fold.

But with regard to his qualifications as a pastor, I would say it doesn't necessarily apply in that because the son was never under his rule, and he's now an adult.

Did you have a thought, Ash? Yeah. Just the character. I think that's pretty gritty.

I could picture those conversations among the other elders that have the discernment and ask some questions.

Maybe, have you ever considered reaching out to this now adult son?

And I think if he was just like, oh, well, every excuse in the world and not taking responsibility, even though it was before he was saved, not saying my sin hurt my biological child, and that's my responsibility and that's my fault.

Yeah, you would love... See with questions where his heart's at.

Is he trying to pretend like none of it is my fault? In my opinion, if you're the congregation and you have a pastor that finds himself in that scenario, and he tells his congregation, guys, listen,

I fathered a kid prior to my conversion, and my girlfriend at the time left.

I never had an opportunity to father him. She took him away from me. She raised him in atheism. He has been a rebel against God his whole life.

Let's say he's 32 at this point. But I have an opportunity to go make things right. In my opinion, the congregation should look at that and think, man,

I'm glad to have a pastor like that because he's willing to not only take responsibility for the sins of his youth, but he has a heart to go out and evangelize that kid even if he knows it's going to be a very tough thing to do because the kid may be angry at him.

Again, there are so many nuances to a hypothetical like this, but the kid could be angry at him. He could be putting himself in a very tough situation in order to do that, but he's going to do it anyway.

To me, going back to what Ash just laid out, if you're the congregation and you see that, you think, wow, we're very blessed to have a guy like that leading us.

Yeah, he's going to take a sabbatical. He's going to leave the 99, let's say, and go after the one in that context, and they're totally okay with it because they realize how amazing it is that he wants to in the first place, that he is willing to take that kind of responsibility.

I think too often people, we all do it at some point or another, feel like because we are forgiven of our sins, they are in the past.

They are cast as far as the east is from the west, and God says, I will remember them no more. Then we tend to lump the responsibilities for those sins in with the sin and say, it's forgiven,

I don't have to deal with it. But you still have to deal with it. You have to deal with the ramifications of the sin.

Well, you touch a great point because, yeah, it's not really a question that forgiveness has already taken place, but rather understanding that there are consequences to sin and taking responsibility for it, even if it's already forgiven.

Think about it just in the context of just two people in their relationship. Someone messes up and he apologizes.

The other one forgives him, but he still takes responsibility for whatever the consequences are of him messing up in the first place.

We wouldn't think anything of that. But when it comes to our relationship with God, to your point, sometimes maybe our forgiveness can be used as an excuse to just, you know,

I don't need to think or address any of this. It's all behind me. It's all my past. Well, maybe in some cases,

I'm not going to say in every case you need to go out and just look for things to take responsibility for.

That's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying in an exceptional case like this, where you do have the opportunity to take responsibility for something that affected the lives of many people, even prior to your salvation, even though it's been forgiven, that is an admirable thing, an honorable thing, and something that I believe will be blessed by the

Lord, too, because even though he lives outside of time, talking about the Father, and our sins are forgiven, we're still living in time.

We can't forget that. We don't get to act as if we're outside of time, too. That's not how it works, which is what you're touching on, and I would fully agree.

Matt, will you do me a big favor and go see if there's any questions in the chat? Because last week, I didn't think to ask anyone to do that, and we had a few.

And while you do that, hoping that Brian Christopher is on today, Brian, I wrote your question down that you asked like six or seven weeks ago, and the reason

I didn't answer it then, I wanted to wait until we got to the end of this particular qualification. And Brian asked this question when we were still talking about the qualification of being a one -woman man, faithful to your wife, and all that kind of stuff.

And Brian asked, and everything we just talked about kind of touches on this. He says, I have a question that can perhaps be saved for another day.

Do the qualifications have any limitations based on a day of notification? What about when they sinned prior to being saved?

So in the context that Brian asked that question, it was we were still talking about sexual sin. So let's say a guy was promiscuous prior to being saved.

Or maybe he fathered a kid that is now engaging in dissipation and is unruly in adulthood because he had inappropriate relations and a kid was the product of that before being saved.

I think that is kind of the nature behind Brian's question here. And so the answer, I believe, is that, and I can give a few anecdotal examples of this, but I think the

Apostle Paul is also a great example of this. And that is, the Lord uses very interesting individuals to expand

His kingdom through their ministry. And the Apostle Paul comes to mind first and foremost. The murderer of the church.

The persecutor of the church. Obviously, the sins that he committed prior to his conversion experience were enormously egregious.

And yet, he was the preeminent apostle. And yet, he was the one by whom the torch was passed to all of the first century bishops, the first century pastors.

And so there's one example there. Another example, if you want one of the anecdotal ones, is Brother Rocky, Dad's mentor.

He was literally in the mafia before he was saved. You wouldn't believe, I'm not even going to go into some of the things because they're in his testimony.

If you all have an opportunity to ever go listen to his testimony, you should. Because he talks about some of the stuff he did prior to his salvation experience.

He was in the mafia. And yet, he was saved. He was transformed.

All of that, it's like all of it just fell off of him. The moment the Lord, the moment he called upon the

Lord's name, when the Holy Spirit regenerated him, he was quickened. And look at his ministry.

Look what came out of that. And so the answer to your question, Brian, is I don't believe sins prior to conversion should come into play with regard to qualifications because those are sins that have presumably been repented of, confessed, forgiven, obviously, to Mimi's point, all these things.

Of course, it changes a little bit if you want to start looking at really egregious sins post -conversion, but your specific question was prior to their, the day of their notification.

So, yes, Pop -Pop? They'd look at post -conversion sins. You'd have to look at David. Well, sure.

David had his post -conversion sins. And because of that, he was not allowed to build the temple.

Right. He couldn't build the temple. So, he still had ramifications. So, he was not qualified to use the term we're looking for here to build the temple.

That's an interesting parallel, Pop -Pop, because you used it a lot differently than most people do. A lot of people want to make David as if he was, you know, some people use

David as an example of why a pastor can commit sexual sins and still be a pastor. Because, look, David wrote the

Bible. He was the apple of God's eye. And he had a million wives, or whatever, and terrible kids.

Well, no, because he wasn't a pastor. He wasn't called to be a pastor, and he would not have qualified for that. You used it as a different parallel, though, in that because of his sins as a murderer and as an adulterer, mainly the murderer part, he was a bloody man, the blood of many on his hands.

He was not qualified to build the temple because he committed all those after he was already converted and in a pretty tight relationship with the

Lord. That would have been more of a pastoral type office than the kingship.

Perhaps so. I mean, certainly, yeah. I mean, building the temple was absolutely an aspect of the spiritual connection between God and His people at that time, more so than the kingship.

Was there anything back there? Well, first off, I don't see Brian on today. Ah, too bad.

I'm probably going to be catching the recording, but we do have, Sarah said that she, so she said that 20 years ago, and this is something we might bring up again for her request, but 20 years ago, she was baptized, and she said there's been a lot of hard times in between then and now, and in her own words, that she was baptized 20 years ago and today she is rededicating her life to the

Lord and she feels so called to do so in the midst of all the stuff that happened.

Yeah. That's really a praise. For sure, Sarah. Yeah, she said that. I appreciate you sharing that with us, and we'll definitely bring that up in our praises and prayer requests shortly, and I think that's a great example of, you know, the way that the

Lord can use certain things, even the sorrows, even the hardships, a number of things we'll be talking about later today, actually, and in the coming weeks, to revive us.

You know, a lot of people talk about revival. If you think about it, revival only works if you have something to revive. So if you're a saved person, in other words, people, revival takes place in the hearts of believers when they are feeling the weight of the sorrows around them.

So that's what Sarah just experienced or has experienced recently in her personal life, which is wonderful. So thank you for sharing that,

Sarah. Let me, we got to end, because we're, at this point, late. There's one thing that I will address shortly at the beginning of next week, and then we will be moving on to verse 7.

But there's one more word we need to look at prior to moving away from verse 6. We just don't have time at this point, and that is the word faithful, when he says, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruly.

That word is translated, I'll just leave this as food for thought for y 'all. We'll address this next week. In most translations of the

Bible, that word is translated as believing. So it would read this way, having believing children, not accused of riot or unruly.

Think about the implications of that a little bit. Think about what that could mean. Think about how that may come into play with regard to the doctrine that we affirm here, that being that, well, the doctrine of unconditional election, that we are saved by grace through faith, that salvation is of God.

It's not something that goes through a godly line of people. It's never worked that way. Certainly doesn't work that way with pastors.

So what could it mean? What are the implications of it reading, having faithful, or excuse me, having believing children, because the

Greek word there, it's pistos, which is often translated belief or believing.

And so think about that a little bit. We need to talk about that. We'll do so briefly. I will say I had to get some help.

I had to get some backup on that particular, on this particular portion, but we don't have time to cover it today.

So just think about it a little bit. Maybe do, you know, look through the Bible. You can use something like blue letter

Bible, or Lagos, or something like that. Do a word study. See all of the times, go and look at other times that word is used in the context it's used in, and think about that a little bit.

And next week we'll open up our lesson with that before moving into verse seven. So let's see here.

Pop Pop, would you mind dismissing us in prayer? Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we come to you today rejoicing that you've given us this opportunity to come together and to study your word.

Lord, we just thank you for that opportunity. We thank you for a country that allows that. Lord, we just ask that you work on each and every one of our hearts and work on our country.

Continue to be able to do that. Lord bless us today. Amen. Be with us as we go into our service.

with us as we go into service. In Jesus' name. Amen.