Not Many Should Teach

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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March 7, 2019

00:00: Well good morning fellas.
00:01: Good to see everybody.
00:05: Looks like a smaller group today.
00:07: Everybody out on work? Everybody busy? Well that's good.
00:11: Alright, well we're going to turn our attention to James chapter 3.
00:16: We have made it through the first two chapters.
00:18: It only took us about six months to make it through the first two chapters, so we'll now move on to chapter 3.
00:25: And we're going to make a big stride today.
00:29: We're going to make it through one verse.
00:34: Yeah, instead of one word, we'll get through one verse, maybe.
00:38: Yeah.
00:42: I do want to read it, and then I want to pray, and then we'll begin the sermon.
00:49: Alright, so James chapter 3, verse 1, and it says, Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers.
01:04: For you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
01:12: Father in heaven, I thank You for the Word.
01:16: I thank You that You have given us the Word.
01:18: You have saw fit to not only see that it be inspired, but that it be preserved down through the ages, where when we read now what it says, we know we're reading the very Word of God.
01:33: And Lord, we thank You that You care enough about us to give us Your Word.
01:39: We thank You also that You care enough to raise up within Your church pastors and teachers, those whose job it is to rightly handle the Word of truth, those whose responsibility it is to study, to show themselves approved unto God as workmen, who needeth not to be ashamed.
01:59: And Father, I know that this is not something that any man can do in and of himself, but it requires a grace from You.
02:09: So I pray today as I teach that You would give me Your grace, that You would keep me from error for three reasons, Father.
02:17: For the sake of my own heart, for the sake of the hearts of those who will hear, and for the sake of Your great name, Lord, keep me from error.
02:26: And I pray, Father, that You would open hearts to believe Your truth today, show us the great responsibility that there is in teaching the Word, and let us not presume upon that responsibility, but take it only after a time of great and sincere and passionate prayer, knowing that You have been the one who have called us and not we who have called ourselves.
02:52: We pray this in Jesus' name and for His sake.
02:55: Amen.
03:00: If I were to ask the average person to provide a list of the five most dangerous jobs in the world, a Bible teacher would probably not be on that list.
03:16: Maybe somebody might say a fireman, or a police officer, or an electrician.
03:22: A fisherman, a snow crab...
03:25: Yeah, like I said, five would go quick if I said give me the five most dangerous jobs.
03:30: In fact, you might even say a surgeon has a dangerous job because he holds the life of someone else in his hand.
03:37: He can't afford to have any type of shakiness in his hand.
03:43: He can't afford to have any type of blanks in his brain.
03:46: He's got to keep himself on point all the time, the whole time that he's working.
03:51: That is a very dangerous job because he holds literally life and death in his hand.
04:01: But when we consider the role of a Bible teacher, such concern is often not the focus.
04:10: People look at it as being not very serious at all.
04:14: In fact, years ago I saw a cartoon.
04:17: You remember in the newspaper where they'd have caption cartoons, like Garfield and those things? It had two pictures.
04:26: It had a person who was applying for a job as a school teacher.
04:31: And under it, it said, okay, you're applying for a school teacher.
04:34: Do you have a degree? Do you have experience? Do you have references? Do you have a pedagogy? Do you have all these things that are necessary to be a school teacher? And then in the next frame, it moved from a principal's office to a preacher's office.
04:51: And he said a little cross over the man so you know it's a preacher.
04:53: And it was a woman applying to be a Sunday school teacher.
04:56: And he said, oh, you want to be a Sunday school teacher.
04:58: Do you have a van? That's all that's required.
05:03: You got to be able to pick up the kids.
05:05: That's it.
05:06: And so it was a joke.
05:08: It was a joke cartoon to sort of show the difference between we put such great importance on school teachers.
05:16: We put such great importance on professors and college teachers.
05:21: But when it comes to teaching God's Word, very little importance is placed.
05:31: In fact, Jerome, when he was writing in the 4th century, wrote to a younger elder named Napatian, and he wrote this.
05:41: This is, again, remember, about 1600 years ago.
05:44: And he wrote this.
05:46: He said, many build churches nowadays, their walls and pillars of glowing marble, their ceilings glittering with gold, their altars studded with jewels.
05:54: Yet to the choice of Christ's ministers, no heed is paid.
05:59: We pay a lot more attention to how we decorate the church than who's teaching in the church.
06:05: We spend a lot more attention to how we adorn the church than what comes out of the mouth of the person who's proclaiming the Word.
06:14: The Bible teacher is entrusted with the most precious thing in the world, the human soul.
06:26: I remember this conversation with my father.
06:29: I was riding along with my father in our car, and it just sort of struck me.
06:34: I took my pastorate at the age of 25 years old.
06:45: And now I'm 38, fixing to be 39.
06:49: So it's been a long time, right? But I was young.
06:52: Most 25-year-olds are not ready for that.
06:55: I'm not sure I was.
06:56: But I took that job, and it was a while after I took that position that it kind of dawned on me the weight of what was involved.
07:06: Because I began to realize, you know, a surgeon, he's working on something that's going to die anyway.
07:16: I don't know if you've ever seen the television show Scrubs with the doctors and stuff.
07:21: I remember one specific line from that movie or that TV show, the older doctor talking to the younger doctor.
07:28: He said, look, all we're doing is kicking the can down the road.
07:32: He said, as surgeons, as doctors, all we do is kick the can down the road.
07:35: He said, because they're going to die eventually anyway.
07:37: All a doctor does is fix what's eventually going to die anyway.
07:43: They can't keep you alive forever.
07:46: But when it comes to the Word of God and the soul, the soul is what is going to last forever.
07:55: And thus, the person whose job it is to minister to the soul has a responsibility in a sense that's even greater than a surgeon.
08:11: Now again, I'm not putting myself up on a pedestal, and please don't anybody ever think that.
08:17: But what I am saying is that anybody, anybody who thinks that this is something that they want to do, anybody who...
08:27: In fact, when somebody comes to me and they say, and I've had many people come to me and say, Pastor Keith, I think I want to be a preacher.
08:33: You know what my response always is? If you can do anything else, do it.
08:44: If you can do anything else, do it.
08:49: You say, that's mean, that's hateful, that's harsh.
08:52: You know what Jeremiah said? He said, the Word of God is like a fire in my bones, and I cannot help but to proclaim it.
09:06: That's what I mean.
09:08: If it's not a fire in your bones, if it's not something that forces its way out of you, if it's not what you think about in the morning when you get up and before you go to bed at night, if it's not what you want to do with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, if it's not the driving force, then you don't need to be there.
09:27: If you can be happy cutting grass, go cut grass.
09:30: If you can be happy laying sheetrock, go lay sheetrock.
09:34: If you can be happy as an electrician, go be an electrician.
09:38: And all of those things bring glory to God.
09:40: You can bring glory to God cutting grass.
09:42: You can bring glory to God hanging sheetrock.
09:44: You can bring glory to God as an electrician.
09:46: You can bring glory to God in any profession, as long as you do it to the glory of God and it doesn't bring shame upon His name.
09:52: You can't bring glory to God as an abortion doctor, Just so you know, that brings shame to his name.
09:57: What I'm saying is there are certain professions that would be wrong.
10:00: But there's nothing wrong with having a solid job in a career that men's shoes, that, you know, fixes shoes.
10:10: A cobbler.
10:11: You know, we don't have those anymore.
10:13: But if that was, you know, Martin Luther said that, he said a Christian shoemaker does his job not by putting little crosses on shoes, but by making good shoes.
10:22: So if you make good shoes to the glory of God, praise God, you're doing God's work in whatever He's called you to, and you can do that.
10:30: But if you think God is calling you to preach, you need to take a step back and ask yourself, can I do anything else and still fulfill the will of God for my life? Because of this passage.
10:46: In fact, this passage has rightly kept many men out of ministry.
10:49: It kept me out for a while.
10:54: Again, I wasn't that old when I got called into ministry.
10:56: But I kept going back to this passage because it says not many of you should become teachers.
11:03: It very clearly says not many of you should do the job of teaching the Word of God.
11:11: And again, I can't help but to think of over the years how many times this passage has been proven right.
11:19: I had a young man come to me.
11:21: I was at a church carnival.
11:23: It wasn't at our church.
11:24: It was at another church.
11:25: But it was like a fall festival type of event.
11:29: And I'm just walking around, and I've been a pastor for a few years, and I'm there with my wife.
11:34: And this young man comes up to me, and he says, hey, I want to talk to you about being a preacher.
11:41: Can I talk to you about being a preacher? Sure.
11:43: So he came up, and we began talking.
11:47: And I said, well, young man, I think if you really desire to be a preacher, you should get an education.
11:55: And let me just stop right there before I finish the story.
11:58: I do believe that's true.
11:59: I don't believe you have to go to seminary.
12:01: I believe you can get an education through the church.
12:03: But I don't believe any man should step behind the pulpit who doesn't have an education.
12:08: And here's the reason why.
12:09: I wouldn't get on a plane with a guy who didn't have an education in flying.
12:13: I wouldn't go under the knife of a surgeon who didn't have an education in cutting people open.
12:17: I wouldn't stand behind somebody who didn't have an education in dividing the word of God.
12:21: I wouldn't sit under their teaching.
12:24: You understand what I'm saying? It's important.
12:27: And so I told him that.
12:28: I said, I believe you need an education.
12:30: I said, I went to a seminary.
12:32: It wasn't anything prestigious.
12:34: It wasn't any kind of fancy school.
12:36: I said, but I would recommend it to you because the men love God and they love His Word.
12:40: I said, and they teach you good theology.
12:42: That was the key.
12:44: And he looked at me and he says, well, I hate theology.
12:50: I'm like Fred Sanford.
12:52: I'm like, I'm coming, Ethel or whatever.
12:55: I'm grabbing my heart.
12:56: What are you saying? You hate theology.
12:58: What is that? I said, son.
13:00: And I called him son.
13:02: I wasn't much older than him, but I said, son, theology is what separates the false teacher from the man of God.
13:12: Theology is what separates truth from error.
13:17: Don't tell me you hate theology.
13:18: If you love the Word of God, you must love theology.
13:22: If you want to know the Word of God, it is theology.
13:27: So to say to me, I want to be a preacher, but I don't like theology, makes no sense.
13:37: But again, what did he want to be? He wanted to be a preacher, but he didn't want what goes along with that.
13:46: Preachers have many responsibilities.
13:48: First and foremost is that of theologian, scholar.
13:52: The scholar pastor has been replaced by, well, the entertainer pastor.
14:00: More pastors learn.
14:02: Pastors today learn more from stand-up comedians than they do from solid theologians.
14:08: Because they're concerned with making themselves good to listen to, rather than making what they say important to hear.
14:17: They want to be funny and witty and relevant, rather than being truthful and saying that which is difficult.
14:31: And again, so I look at the church today, and I say we have plenty of Jerry Seinfelds, but where are our Martin Luthers? We have plenty of comedians, where are our theologians? And again, it goes back to this passage, not many should become teachers.
14:49: Not many should become teachers.
14:52: Now I want to say this, I want to clarify something.
14:55: I'm not saying not any should become teachers.
14:58: So if I came here today and God is calling you to ministry, I'm not here to step on your heart and smoosh it into the ground.
15:07: This passage says not many, not any.
15:10: That's important.
15:12: Because there is a call that God places on the heart of the man.
15:15: But accompanying that call are some very important responsibilities.
15:22: Some very important requirements.
15:25: Some very important demands.
15:29: And so what we're going to look at today, as part of this lesson, is what are the requirements of somebody who's going to teach the Word of God? Is that a good question? Alright, so we're going to say, what are the requirements of a teacher? Now, when I say teacher, you understand I'm talking about a Bible teacher.
16:01: Right? Because that's the subject.
16:02: I'm not saying any, you know, I don't care if you teach, you know, metallurgy or sheet rock hanging or whatever.
16:09: We're talking about Bible teachers today.
16:11: The requirements for a Bible teacher.
16:12: There are three focus requirements.
16:15: The first is moral.
16:18: There is a moral requirement to being a teacher of the Word of God.
16:21: The second...
16:23: Go ahead.
16:24: Ethics.
16:25: Well, yeah, I was going to say, the word is maturational, but I was just going to say there's, in the area of maturity.
16:35: And you could say ethics goes with that.
16:38: But it really, ethics is under moral, if you really, you want to say morals and ethics, I would put that together.
16:47: And yes, the maturity here is spiritual.
16:49: Who said that? Spiritual maturity? Yeah, yeah, it'd be spiritual maturity.
16:53: I'm not, you know, obviously I was 25, you know, so I'm not necessarily talking about age.
16:58: And what did Paul say to Timothy? Don't let any man despise your youth, but be an example in faithfulness, right? So that's the, so you can be young and be mature.
17:07: I know many people in our church who are younger, but who have, by God's grace, matured in their faith and are able to even minister to older folks who might not have had that same level of maturity.
17:21: So it's not always about age, but there's a spiritual maturity.
17:25: And the last one is motivational.
17:27: So we have the three things, right? Requirements of a teacher.
17:32: You have moral requirements, you have maturity requirements, and you have motivational requirements.
17:38: Let's look at the requirements.
17:41: They're not in James, but this is built on what we're learning in James.
17:45: So we're going to actually go back to 1 Timothy.
17:48: So if you would hold your, or actually you can just turn over to 1 Timothy, we're going to spend the rest of our time there.
17:55: As we understand what James is saying, not, he didn't say not any, he said not many should become teachers because teachers are held to a higher standard, a stricter judgment.
18:06: Because we have to give an account for the souls that we minister to.
18:10: Hebrews tells us that.
18:12: Hebrews tells us that the person who teaches is a shepherd of the soul and he has to give an account for that.
18:19: That's right, and the church should respect and not make him serve in grief.
18:24: Absolutely.
18:24: Absolutely.
18:25: So going back to 1 Timothy 3, we have the requirements for someone who aspires to the office of overseer.
18:34: Now I want to quickly clarify something.
18:38: In set free, where you guys live here, overseer is not this.
18:44: Overseer is a person who has a responsibility in the group to manage whatever level of authority he's been given.
18:52: But in the in the Bible, the word overseer and the word presbyteros or elder are synonymous with one another.
19:05: They both refer to the position of pastor or elder.
19:09: Everybody understand? And the word episkopos is the word overseer.
19:13: Epi in Greek is over, skapos is to seen.
19:17: So episkopos is episkopos, where we get the word episkopos.
19:21: That's the word overseer.
19:23: That's the Greek word here.
19:24: And presbyteros is the word for an older or more mature or an elder person.
19:30: And those two go together because normally the person overseeing is the person who's more mature, who has more experience, right? And so those two words in Titus 1 are used interchangeably.
19:40: The overseer and the presbyteros are the same office.
19:44: At my church, there's five elders and I'm one of them, right? And every one of the elders has to go through this qualification.
19:54: They have to qualify here.
19:56: The primary qualification that is seen in 1st Timothy chapter three is that he be.
20:04: I'll write it up here above reproach above reproach.
20:16: Let me let's read it together.
20:18: Listen, it says the saying is trustworthy if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.
20:26: Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach.
20:29: And then it lists what that looks like.
20:34: Just so you know, that's really where the that's that's the requirement.
20:38: That's the moral requirement above reproach.
20:41: What is above reproach look like? Well, it goes on.
20:45: It says he's the husband of one wife.
20:46: Sober minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
20:55: He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive for someone does not know how to manage his own household.
21:02: How will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into condemnation of the devil.
21:10: Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
21:18: All right.
21:18: So after the word above reproach, I don't want you if you don't write your Bibles, it's fine.
21:24: But if you do, you could put brackets and say, what is above? What is it? What is above reproach? It's everything that came after all the way down to verse seven.
21:33: That's what above reproach looks like.
21:35: Now, here's the thing.
21:36: What above reproach doesn't mean above reproach does not mean perfect.
21:40: If somebody had to be perfect to be a minister, no one would be a minister.
21:47: You understand that, right? Because I am not perfect.
21:50: My fellow pastors at my church are not perfect.
21:53: Pastor Mark here is not perfect.
21:56: Neither are any of the other pastors who come and preach here.
22:00: All of us, I hope, would affirm our own proclivity for failure.
22:07: I usually say it in my opening sermon.
22:09: Lord, keep me from error because I have the capacity to err.
22:15: Right.
22:16: And so above reproach does not mean perfect, because if it did, then no one would qualify.
22:25: So if it doesn't mean that, what does it mean to be above reproach? I have an analogy and sometimes sometimes analogies help.
22:35: My analogy is simple.
22:36: I tell people, I say, if you want to be a pastor, your life should be a flagpole, not a coatrack.
22:45: So what are you talking about? I say you should your life should be a flagpole and not a not a coatrack.
22:53: And so what what is that? OK, well, here's the example.
22:58: A flagpole looks like that and a coatrack looks something like that.
23:17: All right.
23:18: And the difference between the flagpole and a coatrack is you can't hang nothing on a flagpole.
23:24: You say, wait a minute, you hang a flag, stay with me, because the flag is actually connected to a rope, not to the pole.
23:31: All right.
23:31: The pole is up there, but it's it's on a wheel and all that stuff.
23:34: The pole itself, you can't take your jacket and go hang your jacket on a on a on a on a flagpole.
23:41: You can't go you can't even tie something.
23:43: It'll just slide and fall right off.
23:44: Right.
23:45: It's smooth and there's nothing hanging off of it.
23:49: Right.
23:50: The difference between that and a coatrack, if you walk into like some places, businesses and churches, they'll have a thing there and it's got all these like it looks like antlers sticking off of it.
23:59: And it's intended for you to take your jacket off and hang up there and it'll hold all kinds of stuff.
24:04: All right.
24:05: You say, what's the analogy, Pastor? Well, some people's lives have all of these things that you can hang accusations on.
24:15: The way they treat others, the way they behave, the way they talk, the way they drink, the way they eat, the way they do a lot of things are just areas of their life that are not smooth.
24:29: There are places that you can accuse them and the accusations stick.
24:34: Now, anybody can be accused.
24:36: The difference is whether or not the accusations stick.
24:38: Right.
24:41: The pastor's responsibility, the Bible teacher's responsibility is to be as this command is to be a person of integrity, a person that even when the accusations come, they slide right off.
24:56: You remember Billy Graham? You know what Billy Graham would not do in his ministry? He would not ride on an elevator with a woman by herself.
25:08: Now, you might say nobody's going to accuse Billy Graham of anything.
25:13: You better slow down.
25:16: There are people just waiting to accuse Billy Graham.
25:19: There are people just waiting to accuse John MacArthur.
25:21: There are people just waiting to accuse anyone.
25:26: And I'm not saying we have to live our lives in fear, but as a Bible teacher, our lives should be lived with integrity.
25:33: Integrity.
25:35: Integrity means that we are willing to stand against the accusations and say that ain't going to stick.
25:41: That dog won't hunt.
25:43: I live my life in the closet the same way I live my life in the pulpit.
25:51: Do you understand what that means? When I'm at home, I try to live the same way as I live in the church.
25:59: Now, my family does have a joke.
26:00: We talk about OBO.
26:03: OBO means our business only.
26:06: And what that means is there are some things in the house we don't talk about outside, but it's not because it's sinful.
26:11: It's because it's private.
26:13: The pastor's lives tend to be an open book and not everybody needs to know every little thing about how often I clean my tennis shoes or whether I watch this week's episode of Scrubs.
26:26: All those things might be a question.
26:28: You know, I mentioned Scrubs earlier.
26:30: So what I'm saying is there are things that we say are our business only because it's not anybody else's business.
26:35: But that's that's just the idea of living as a pastor.
26:38: You sort of live in the public eye.
26:40: Most people don't know why most people don't care, but the people who sit under me care.
26:45: And so we do have you know, my kids go through a lot of really difficult things.
26:50: I mean, is anybody in here a pastor's kid? Is anybody in here daddy a pastor? Let me tell you something.
26:58: What my kids have to deal with.
27:00: My kids have to deal with making friends with people and becoming dear friends with them.
27:06: Their parents get upset with me and they leave.
27:08: They lose their friends.
27:10: Their parents get upset with me.
27:11: They say something to their kids.
27:12: Now their kids are saying something to my kids about me.
27:16: You know, people don't even think about that as part of the minister's life.
27:20: The minister's children.
27:22: My son, we adopted him when he was four years old.
27:27: He wore to a funeral one time.
27:29: We went to a funeral and he wore slacks that were just that much too short.
27:33: So it looked like high waters.
27:35: You ever know what high waters are? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:39: Well, he wore high waters to the funeral.
27:41: And this older lady came up to my wife and she said, you know, the sign of a of a poor mother is a woman who doesn't have her son's clothes fit right.
27:59: Now, that's just foolish.
28:01: And I told my wife, I said, let it roll off, you'd be a flagpole.
28:06: Don't let that don't let that stick, because that's it.
28:08: That's a that's a bad accusation that has nothing to do with your motherhood.
28:11: That's everything to do with her judgmental attitude.
28:14: It's nothing to do with you.
28:18: My point being a person who says they want to preach and teach the Bible does nothing for the word of God by living their life constantly in a way that can be accused.
28:30: We are called to live before men as men of integrity, not men of perfection.
28:36: When we fail, what do we do? We repent.
28:39: We confess.
28:40: We repent.
28:43: And I've confessed before the church, I've repented before the church, things that I've taught that were incorrect, things that I've said that I've hurt people.
28:53: Thirteen years in the same place, you're going to have people that you hurt their feelings and it happens and you repent, you move forward.
28:59: I'm not I'm not saying I'm up here and everybody else.
29:02: I'm saying I am called to live a life of integrity.
29:05: If God is calling you to ministry, the first thing he is calling you to is a life of integrity.
29:12: Because and some of you have told me some of you come to me, I think God's calling me to preach.
29:17: Is God calling you to live a life of integrity? I know many men who will spend their week being scoundrels and then go and preach powerfully in the pulpit.
29:30: You say, what do you mean, powerfully? I mean, emotionally.
29:34: Oh, Lord.
29:37: And then the rest of their life shows nothing of holiness, nothing of integrity.
29:46: They don't study.
29:48: They don't submit themselves to the word, they don't submit themselves to the authority of the church, they don't submit themselves to anything but their own vain opinions.
29:59: And then they call themselves preachers.
30:03: Not many of you should be teachers.
30:08: Not not any, but not many, because the first step is understanding you're submitting yourself to a life of integrity.
30:18: Some people, some people would hear this and not like what I'm saying.
30:21: Some people may hear this recording and say, oh, you're a legalist.
30:23: I'm not a legalist, but I am saying this.
30:29: There was a there was a pastor.
30:32: Everybody, everybody thought this guy was the man, everybody thought this guy was just the best.
30:37: He was out and out in Seattle.
30:39: He had a huge megachurch and he really did preach well.
30:46: I mean, I listened to him.
30:48: He was interesting to listen to.
30:49: His theology was pretty good and he was willing to to call out sin where a lot of people aren't and in a place that a lot of people, I don't know if you know it, but Seattle is one of the least churched areas in the United States, meaning least amount of people actually go to church.
31:04: It's very liberal.
31:05: It's very ungodly.
31:08: And people just don't want anything to do with God.
31:10: And so he had a megachurch in a place where people don't go to church.
31:16: So it's an amazing thing, right? And everybody's looking at this guy saying, how is he doing this? He's amazing.
31:21: God must be on him.
31:22: There must be this hand of God on him.
31:27: Years go by, we start hearing rumblings of scandal.
31:38: What's the scandal? Has he cheated on his wife? No.
31:44: Has he has he committed adultery or done drugs or alcohol? No.
31:52: The scandal was this from the very beginning of his ministry, it began to come out.
32:00: He was a bully.
32:04: And a hurtful man.
32:07: And his words to his congregants and his workers were very hurtful and hateful.
32:14: And you say, well, is that really serious? It was a pride issue.
32:20: What's the greatest sin of man? Pride.
32:23: And that causes all other sins, right? That's what caused Eve to eat the fruit.
32:26: That's what caused Adam to eat the fruit.
32:27: This is the heart of all sin can go down to.
32:30: I put myself up here and everyone else down here.
32:33: Right.
32:34: But here's the here's what he did.
32:36: And this was what really caught the problem.
32:39: He wanted his book.
32:41: He wanted his book to make the New York Times bestseller list because he had written a book.
32:48: So he took church money and bought thousands of copies of his own book to make the list, to make the list.
32:57: And that was ultimately what led to his downfall.
33:03: What's the downfall of the man who wants to stand before people and preach God's word but not live God's word? It's pride.
33:12: The downfall of the man who wants to proclaim to others what you ought to do, but not preach to himself what he ought to do is pride.
33:24: That's right.
33:25: That was the Pharisees, wasn't it? The Pharisees would tie burdens too hard for men to carry and lay them on their shoulders, which they themselves were not willing to carry.
33:39: You see, preaching is easy, especially if you have a charismatic persona, if you're a person who's slightly funny and maybe a little good looking, which I'm neither, but it's OK.
33:50: As he says, it's not about me, but I'm saying those guys who come up, they're good looking and they are a little funny and they're charismatic and they're whimsical and they're winsome.
33:58: Those guys can really succeed in the world standards of success.
34:07: But God's standard of success is different.
34:09: God's standard of success is this.
34:11: Preach to yourself first and then preach to the people.
34:16: Every message I preach, I have to preach first to me.
34:19: Yes.
34:22: Am I listening to this? Am I obeying this not perfectly and where I'm not doing what's right? Am I willing to confess? Am I willing to confess to my wife where I'm failing her? Am I willing to confess to my children where I'm failing them? Am I willing to confess to my elders where I'm failing them? Am I willing to confess to the church where I'm failing her? That's being a man of integrity.
34:47: And that is the prelude to ministry.
34:50: It must be because that's the call.
34:54: Now, we could go through this list, each one of these one by one.
34:58: We really don't have time.
35:01: But there are a few here that a lot of people have questions about.
35:04: The first one, of course, the husband of one wife.
35:06: And they say, well, does that mean a man can never have have been divorced? And there is debate about that.
35:12: I really don't want to get into it, but I want to say this about that.
35:16: What it does mean, at least everybody agrees with this.
35:18: Whether or not somebody could have been divorced in the past is where the question comes up.
35:24: But here's what everybody agrees with is that if you are a man of integrity.
35:29: You will have your wife as the only person in your life that is where your heart resides.
35:39: You will not divide your allegiance between her and other women in your actions or in your heart.
35:48: That's the hardest thing for men right away.
35:53: You know what the term here? It's actually Mion Gounikos Andre, Mion Gounikos Andre is the Greek and Mion means one.
36:03: Gounikos means woman and Andre means man.
36:08: So a husband of one wife is actually not the literal translation.
36:13: That's what we call a dynamic equivalent.
36:14: The literal translation is that a man of integrity must be a one woman man.
36:24: A one woman man, not a man who finds his joy in checking out the other women in the church.
36:33: Not a man who finds his joy in checking out the other women at the Wal-Mart.
36:37: Not a man who finds it.
36:38: I'm not going to do that.
36:39: I'm just saying anybody, right? We look at anywhere, right? And I tell you, that's the downfall of many ministers right there.
36:49: They come to a position of authority over other people and they use that authority to manipulate women.
36:59: People, but women specifically into sexual misconduct.
37:05: Right now, in one of the largest denominations in the United States, there's a huge scandal going on because several hundred ministers have been found to have been engaging in illicit sexual behavior and all of this under the radar.
37:26: Now it's coming out.
37:29: Well, that's the Roman Catholic.
37:30: That's the other side of that.
37:31: I'm thinking of a different one.
37:33: In Roman Catholicism, we can go a step further.
37:36: See, here's the one thing that really bothers me and I don't want to go, you know how I am when it comes to Roman Catholicism.
37:41: I can take a right turn real quick.
37:43: But in Roman Catholicism, they produced the doctrine of celibacy for their past, for their priests, even though the doctrine clearly states that a man who teaches the word should be a husband of one wife, should be a one woman man, should be a man who has a wife.
37:58: They say, no, pastor, priest can't have a wife.
38:01: And so now they have these men who are taking vows of celibacy and they end up engaging in horrid acts as a result of that, which is shameful.
38:11: And that by itself is not even to be mentioned as far as how horrible it is.
38:16: But the point is, a man of integrity begins in the home, how he treats his wife, how he treats his children.
38:25: It goes on to talk about being one who manages your household well.
38:30: For if you cannot manage the household, you can't manage the household of God.
38:35: And so there's responsibility in the home first.
38:38: I will say this again, if God is calling you to ministry, He's calling you to be a man of integrity.
38:42: He's also calling you to be a man who manages his home first before you try to manage the church.
38:49: If you're having difficulty managing your home, if you're having trouble managing that part of your life, get that part right first.
38:59: I'm not saying get that part right before you come to Jesus, but I am saying get that part right before you get behind the pulpit.
39:08: We understand what I'm saying? I didn't come in here with a hammer to hit people today, and I certainly didn't come to lift myself up.
39:13: I'm just trying to understand what James is saying here.
39:16: And to me, James is saying, if you're going to do this, you better take it with the seriousness with which it comes.
39:21: You are dealing with the souls of men.
39:23: You need to take this seriously.
39:26: Take this seriously.
39:28: Not be a drunkard, not be violent, not be quarrelsome.
39:32: In that word in Greek, amakos, where we get the word macho.
39:36: All right.
39:37: You've seen pastors who kind of throw their weight around, right? Yeah.
39:42: Macho man.
39:44: Now, it ain't calling you to be a wimp, but it's also not calling you to be a bully.
39:49: That's the idea here.
39:51: Not a lover of money.
39:53: One who manages his house well.
39:55: But finally, I want to finish with just the we've looked at the moral requirements.
40:00: We sort of looked at the maturity requirements.
40:02: And again, just because of time, I just want to quickly look at the motivational requirements.
40:06: Look with me very quickly at 1 Peter 5.
40:12: I'm just going to jump over there real quick.
40:17: 1 Peter 5, verse 2.
40:31: Actually, let's start verse 1, get the context, and then we'll read verse 2.
40:37: It says, So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ.
40:43: By the way, that word presbyteros, Peter, the disciple who was the mouthpiece of the apostles, if you will.
40:51: Peter calls himself elder here, which I think is an amazing thing.
40:55: He doesn't call himself apostle.
40:56: He calls himself elder.
40:58: He calls himself presbyteros.
41:00: That's just interesting that he's putting himself on that plane because that's the leadership in the church.
41:05: And he's putting himself there.
41:06: He says, As a fellow elder, witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that's going to be revealed.
41:12: Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly.
41:22: Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.
41:27: What's the motivation for a man of God? The motivation for a man of God is that he willingly desires to shepherd what is God's.
41:38: Notice it says shepherd the flock of God, not shepherd the flock of Keith, not shepherd the flock of Mark, not shepherd the flock of anyone else.
41:51: When a man stands behind the pulpit, when a man stands to teach the word of God, he is ministering to God's sheep as a shepherd to God's sheep.
42:03: So what must be our primary motivation? God's will.
42:11: We want to do what God would have us do.
42:15: So we focus on what does God want done with his sheep? So many people, so many people make it about themselves.
42:27: So many people make it about shameful gain.
42:29: It says here, not for shameful gain.
42:31: Some people make it about domineering over other people.
42:34: It's not that either.
42:35: The goal of anyone entering the ministry is this, that we shepherd the flock of God, remembering that it's His flock.
42:44: He purchased it with His own blood, says the book of Acts.
42:48: It's God's church.
42:51: And that's the responsibility.
42:53: If you don't understand that, what you are doing is you are a manager of that which is God's, then you'll never understand the responsibility that you have when you stand behind the pulpit.
43:06: Now again, I know today's message may not be for everybody.
43:09: In fact, some it may not be for anybody in this room.
43:12: None of you may want to preach the word of God.
43:15: But if you do, if you feel God is calling you to that, understand that first, He's calling you to a life of integrity.
43:23: He's calling you to be a man who manages his own house well.
43:26: And He's calling you to be a man who when you enter the pulpit, you understand that now you are the shepherd of God's flock and that His will is primary.
43:39: Let's pray.
43:41: Father, I thank you for this time to study.
43:43: I pray that it's been encouraging, that it's been fruitful, that it's been something that maybe one man in here needs to hear.
43:50: Or maybe one man that is in here has been thinking about ministry or maybe several men have been thinking about what you're calling them to.
43:57: And maybe this has been to them a wake up call.
44:01: Lord God, I'm not trying to discourage anyone from serving you in the pulpit.
44:06: But I am saying that with that comes a responsibility greater than surging, greater than any other job in the world in the sense that we are dealing with the souls of men and we're dealing with the word of God.
44:18: May we not ever, even in our own personal studies, even in our own personal times with you, may we not ever take with any less seriousness than utmost grave seriousness the responsibility of handling the word of truth.
44:36: We pray this in Jesus name and for his sake.
44:39: Amen.