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

Luke 15 and the Lost Sheep as a Model for Pastoral Responsibility

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. 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.

We've been in verse six for a long time. The reason why we've spent so much time on this one, and I think I mentioned this either last week or week before last, is this is, I heard it referred to as the neglected qualification recently.

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. 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.

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 were.

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.

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 and your discernment using his words as the foundation, then, you know, 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, 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 shepherd of 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 in 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 he, 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 bases 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 chapter 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 chapter 1, verse 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, could be a boy or a girl, 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? And 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. And 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, I'm talking, 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 look, 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. He, at this point, he's having trouble, or she. Now, for the pastoral candidates, 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 maybe what went wrong. Is this literally a matter of you've done everything that you can and in 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.

Like that is, 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, quote unquote, 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 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's 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.

Man, there's a devastating story happening right now with a guy that is, it is so obvious, I don't know if any of y 'all know Steven 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 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 gonna explain why in just a second. There's one word that I wanna hone in on to end today's lesson with. But before I do that, I wanna 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 is 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 3.

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, I'm missing one. So that's when the time comes. Now, I wanna 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, not qualified, get him out of here, or maybe again, like the previous qualification, he's not married, get him out of here.

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, cuz 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 gonna be times where you have exceptions, but you have to ensure that the exceptions don't supersede the rule, where you're like, yeah, this is a great guy, bring him in, 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 gonna 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 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 the 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, and the local church, specifically the elders, have to rely on the Holy Spirit's guidance to make sure they are not overstepping their bounds in 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? Cuz I'm assuming 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 Right. And then it's up to you to discern if there might be an exception or not. This is where you say it's kind of 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 cuz they'll say, well, X, Y, Z 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 chapter 5.

The fact still applies, lust is dangerous, lust is still a sin. So yes, there's 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. In others, there could be other circumstances. We could talk about every hypothetical we could think of where he may not have that clarity, 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?

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. Again, 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, do 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?