The Call to Lead the Church--Elders, Part 1
1 Timothy 3:1
Let's open our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 3...1 Timothy chapter 3. You will recognize if you've been a student of the Word of God that this is a very very important chapter. It is a chapter that gives the qualifications for church leadership. Those people who serve in the church, in leading the church, in ministering in the church are to be qualified to do so. The qualifications are given here very explicitly. In fact, it is so important that the church understand the qualifications of its leaders that these qualifications are also repeated in the first chapter of Titus. Twice then in the pastoral epistles, once to Timothy and once to Titus, Paul listed the qualifications of church leaders.
It goes without saying that whoever leads in the church will determine what that church becomes in large measure. The life of the church, the ministry of the church, the testimony of the church, the impact of the church, the reputation of the church, the character of the church, the emphasis of the church, all of that is dependent on the leadership of the church. And you can look at a church and you can determine by the nature of its ministry the kind of leadership it has. Church leadership is an essential element of New Testament teaching. Hosea said, "Like people like priests." In other words, people are like those who lead them. That's a proverbial way of expressing the close link between the moral character of the pastor or pastors and the moral character of a person or people. There is an inseparable connection between the quality of the leadership in a church and the character of that church.
Jesus put it this way in Luke's gospel, "When a man is fully discipled, he will be like his teacher." It is inevitable. You become like the one who teaches you. Paul on the church in Corinth and said this, "Be ye followers of me as I am of Christ." He knew that people needed a flesh and blood model to pattern their lives after and he was willing by God's grace working in his life to be that model. To the Philippians he said, "The things that you have seen and heard in me, do them." To the Ephesian elders at Miletus in Acts 20 he said, "You know how I behaved myself among you," and implied, that's how I want you to behave in the church.
The writer of Hebrews calls upon the congregation of the church to establish their life style after the pattern of those who are over them in the Lord. And he says you are to follow their faith and you're to submit to them as your spiritual leaders. The place then of the leader in the church is critical to the life and testimony of that church. Now God has always mediated His purpose and His holy will through leaders throughout all of the history of redemption. You go back to Abraham whom God called out of Ur to be the leader of his nation and Moses whom God called out of the wilderness to lead His people out of Egypt. And Joshua, to whom the Lord spoke verbally out of heaven and called him to be the leader of his people to bring them into the land of Canaan.
And then there was David whom God called through the instrumentation of Samuel to be king over His people Israel. And then there's Elijah and Elisha, prophets called by God to speak on behalf of Him. And then there was Isaiah whom God called out of brokenness and confession and a contrite heart to speak and to bring about the salvation of a holy seed within an apostate nation. Then there was Jeremiah whom God had called before he was even born to be a prophet. Then there was Ezekiel who was born a priest but God called him out of the priesthood into the prophetic role to speak to a rebellious and sinful people of judgment and doom and of God's law.
And then in the New Testament there was John the Baptist whom God called and anointed from long before he was born in order that he might be sent out as the forerunner to the Messiah. And then there were the Apostles called specifically by Jesus Christ and given directly the task of preaching the gospel of the Kingdom. And of course there was Paul himself. Paul called by Christ on the road to Damascus, blinded, taken out of the darkness of religion into the light of the gospel and made an Apostle to the Gentiles on behalf of Jesus Christ.
And these are only representative of many more through all of redemptive history whom God has called to leadership in the advancement of His Kingdom. And there has always been a premium placed on the quality of that leadership. The church as representative and emblematic and an extension of the Kingdom of God in the world today must have quality leadership. And the blight on the church and the reason for so many of the problems in Chrysostom around the world is that we do not have in all cases the kind of leadership that the Word of God demands the church to have.
And so, as we look at 1 Timothy 3, we're going to see the qualifications that God has designed for church leadership. This is an essential passage. Now I want you to understand the situation. Paul is writing to Timothy. Timothy has been left in the city of Ephesus. Many years have passed since the Ephesian church was started by Paul, since he pastored there for three years and raised up a godly group of men, men who understood the faith of Christ, men who understood good doctrine, men who were so intimately linked with Paul that when he tried to leave them they fell all over his neck, wept and kissed him and didn't want him to go, men who bought into Paul's life and doctrine wholeheartedly and represented that in that church. That was a great church. It was a church God used to found all the other churches of Asia Minor.
But in the time that Paul had left and until the time he had returned after his first imprisonment in Rome, the church had been on a slide downward. And the real tragedy of it was that that drift was being led by false leaders. Paul had anticipated that. In Acts 20 he said to the Ephesian elders, he said, "I know that when I leave perverse men will come in, evil men will rise up on the inside and both from the inside and the outside will come false leaders to lead this church astray." He knew the enemy Satan. He knew the plan and the plot to work against the Kingdom of God and he knew the inevitability of such an attack. And his prophecy was fulfilled.
By the time he gets our of prison and goes to Ephesus to meet Timothy there, he discovers that the church is filled with false pastors and false overseers and false elders and those who teach lies and heresies. And so leaving Timothy there to set things in order, he goes on to Macedonia. But isn't gone long before he pens this letter, writes back to Timothy and says, "Now I want you to get this settled in that church. There are issues that have to be dealt with." And a major issue that sits right in the middle of this epistle is the matter of confronting the church about the qualifications for church leaders. The passage then is an essential one for us in understanding this important issue. And as I said earlier, if there are those of you visiting us from other churches or if there are those of you who are looking to the ministry or asking questions even about why the church isn't what it ought to be, it comes back to the fact that the church has been far too lenient on its qualifications for those who are allowed at the level of leadership and therefore the church is captive to a low‑level of spiritual leadership. The standard must be raised not any higher but to the level that the Word of God requires.
Now I need to interject at this point that one of the distinctions of ministry at Grace Community Church has been the emphasis on godly leadership. And there are some things that are perhaps wrong about our church, some things we don't do well, some things that we haven't really come to full maturity on, but we thank God that leadership is what is right about Grace Community Church. God has blessed us with a plurality of godly leaders in this church. And the church life and the church ministry and the extent of its impact is a direct reflection of the godly character of those leaders. I believe our fellowship has been unusually blessed by God because of the leadership that God has given to us and that, of course, by His grace and no credit to us at all. It is a sovereign work of God. He has brought those people to this place and we rejoice in that. Leadership then is an essential ingredient.
Now remember that I told you in 1 Timothy there is sort of a polemic atmosphere and attitude. What I mean by that is there are problems that Timothy is dealing with and Paul writes to the problem. He takes on the issue. He is attacking, in a sense, a very real problem. And when he writes in chapter 3 about what an elder ought to be or what a pastor ought to be or what an overseer ought to be, he is setting that against what the church in Ephesus has allowed to happen so that the qualifications of leadership here could be assumed to be in direct antagonism to what is happening in that church. For example, in verse 2 he says that an overseer must be blameless. That was very likely not the case in that church. He must be a one‑woman man...that is very likely not the case. He must be temperate, sober minded, good behavior, given to hospitality, goes on to talk about drinking and not greedy after money and so forth. The implication of all of those things is that this is what they ought to be and this is exactly what they're not. We know from this epistle that the leadership of this church was tragically departed from the Word of God.
Go back to chapter 1 verse 3 for just a brief review of that. He says to them, I want you to stay in Ephesus...he says to Timothy rather, I want you to stay in Ephesus in order to charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Now some had risen to the level of pastor or teacher and were teaching other than the true doctrine. They're not to give heed to fables, endless genealogies, things that minister questions rather than godly edification which is in faith. He talks about some in verse 6 turning aside to vain jangling. He talks about some leaders who wanted to be teachers but had no idea what they were saying or the things they were affirming. They didn't know how to use the law of God, verse 11, they didn't understand the gospel of God and he goes on to talk about that. Chapter 2 verse 12 indicates to me that some women had usurped the role of leadership and he has to say I do not allow women to teach or usurp authority over the man.
Furthermore in chapter 2...pardon me, chapter 4 verse 1, 2 and 3, he talks about those who come in with seducing spirits, doctrines of demons, speaking lies. And some of their lies are in verse 3 regarding marriage and abstaining from foods and so forth. And in verse 6 he says you stick with the good doctrine, the things of the faith. Verse 7, don't listen to their profane, old wives' fables. You stay with godliness. And then down in verse 16 again, stick with the true doctrine, continue in that true doctrine.
And then over in chapter 5 and verse 19 he says if an elder sins, don't receive an accusation except before two or three witnesses but if it's confirmed then rebuke them before everybody. In other words, some of these elders who were in the sin of heterodox teaching or not the truth, some of them who are in to ungodliness and evil needed public rebuke. In verse 22 he says don't put your hands suddenly on anybody, be cautious who you put in leadership. Obviously this church was having some great struggle with their leaders.
Chapter 6 verse 3, "If anybody teaches other than true doctrine and wholesome words, that person," verse 4, "is proud, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's doting over questions and disputes of words and leading only to envy, strife, railing, evil suspicion, perverse disputing," so forth and so on. Some of them were in it for the money and on and on. The end of verse 21, some have erred concerning the faith.
Now the feeling that you get when you just run by those verses is that there were people in leadership who were teaching lies, false doctrine, false religious systems and living ungodly lives. It is then essential that Paul give Timothy the fuel that he needs, or the ammunition that he needs to attack this issue of leadership. Now in chapter 2 he has dealt with the people, men and women, and their role in the church. In chapter 3, he deals with the leaders, the elders or overseers, pastors, all the same thing, and the deacons who serve under them.
Now I want to remind you that as we begin the third chapter, Paul does not tell Timothy to appoint elders. He does not tell him to ordain elders. Why? They already had them. They had them clear back in Acts 20. They were already in place. He tells Titus to do that in Titus 1:5 because Titus was in an area where they had not yet had that. But here all he wants them to do is to come to grips with the divine qualifications. The church needs to set a high standard. I am amazed, I'm literally amazed at churches all across the country that don't ever really come to grips with this and then they wonder why their church is not what they would like it to be.
I remember one pastor said to me, "I think I've discovered my problem, half of my board is saved and the other half is not." That is a problem. No one would debate that. Unregenerate eldership.
It is essential in the life of the church that it be led by a plurality of godly leaders. And he's going to give all of the qualifications of that godliness from verse 2 through 7 in reference to the leader. Now let me say to you that these are exclusively character qualifications. They do not talk about duties. They do not talk about function. They do not talk about performance. They talk only about character, virtue, morality, godliness, spirituality. The issue is virtue and spiritual character reflecting godliness. These are the standards for leadership. And if a leader does not live up to the standard in his leadership, he is subject, as chapter 5 says, to discipline in front of the whole church. It is a very sacred trust.
So, Paul then moves easily from discussing the people in the congregation to discussing the leaders in chapter 3. Now for this morning I want us just to look at verse 1. We'll save the qualifications for next time and we'll start to dig into them. But for this morning, I want to talk specifically about the call to church leadership, the call‑‑if you will‑‑to the pastorate, the call to be an elder, the call to be an overseer in the church...whether or not you are the primary spokesman, such as a person like myself, or whether you serve and lead and teach and preach in a church in another way as an elder who has another function or another role over a group over here, a group over there, or young people, or missions or whatever it might be. The whole thing is encompassed in this idea of church leadership. All who pastor in any way are involved in these qualifications.
And the question that always comes to me from young men is how do I know if I'm called? I mean, it's easy in the Old Testament, God spoke out of heaven and you were called. God sent angels and delivered a message. But how do we know? I had a man ask me that just recently on my trip to the south...how do I know if I'm called to the ministry? How do I find that out? The only objective treatment we have in the New Testament of that comes out of verse 1 of this passage, it's really the only objective treatment. And the statement that you need to know there is if a man desire...that's the key. You need to understand that all we know about in the New Testament in relation to call springs from desire. It's a question of...what are you compelled to do? I believe that where the call in the Old Testament might have been verbally from God out of heaven, the call in the New Testament might have been directly from Jesus Christ, the call in this age is the work of the Spirit of God. God the Father called in the Old Testament, God the Son called in the New Testament, God the Holy Spirit is calling today. And the call of the Spirit of God today comes through the compulsion of the heart...the strong desire. And if you desire that, that's a good thing to desire.
So, I trust that as we look at verse 1 we'll get a better feeling for the essence of the call to the ministry which is really a very strong desire. And to help you understand whether your desire is strong enough or not, we'll look at six facets of this call to leadership that are delineated in verse 1. It's hard to imagine six points in verse 1, but they're there...six of them.
Number one, we must understand in this matter of the call and the desire to minister that it is an important calling, it is an essential calling. And that is indicated to us by a formula that is given at the beginning of the verse. Notice the phrase, "This is a true saying...or, this is a faithful saying." That little formula introduces something that is of great importance, of great importance. It is attached to something of monumental importance. Paul uses that phrase five times. He uses it in 1 Timothy 1:15, he uses it here in 3:1, he uses it again in chapter 4 verse 9, he uses it in 2 Timothy 2:11 and he uses it in Titus 3:8. Five times it is used.
Several of those five times it also says this is a true saying, or this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance. Sometimes that is added. But the main idea is this is a true saying. Now what that means is it is a trustworthy statement, or to put it simply, this is the truth and everybody knows it. This is axiomatic. This doesn't need proof. This is obvious. This is patently clear to everyone. Here is a believable fact. Here is a trustworthy statement.
Now that is only a formula used in the pastoral epistles which means that it didn't come into use until late in the ministry of Paul. It didn't come into use until after the churches were already established and on their way to development. It is very apparent from any study of all five of those that it is a statement that became common in the early church as a way to introduce a very important fact. It's almost an indicator of a creed. For example, go back to 1:15, "This is a faithful saying, true saying, worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." That's a creedal statement. That affirms what the church believes about the work of Christ. This is a true saying, Christ came into the world...the church had probably developed a whole lot of those and Christians would say very often in their proclamation, in their witnessing, in their talking with one another, this is a true saying...and then they would say that saying. All five of the sayings in Timothy, Titus and...1 Timoth