I would imagine that there are
very few of you who are here for the first time in the brief
days of this institute. I know we've lost some since
this morning, and so any kind of an extensive review of what
we've thus far covered will not be necessary. Of course, we did
indicate this morning there is an organic unity in the lines
of thought that I have been seeking to trace out for you in the sessions
allotted to me. With our attention focused upon
Paul's word of command and exhortation to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4.16,
we are considering what it means to take heed to ourselves. And I had hoped by this third
message to get into the second area of the command, take heed
to thy teaching or to the doctrine. There's something my mother used
to bark into my ear constantly. that has worked its way into
the bloodstream of my consideration with regard to many things, whether
I was scrubbing a floor or washing windows or doing dishes, she
would say to me again and again until it came out my ears, son,
a job worth doing is worth doing well. And then she would usually
attend it with the second admonition, doing things you don't like to
do develops character. Well, I started out on this matter
of what it means, in a very practical and pastoral sense, to take heed
to oneself as a Christian minister. And at the outset of tracing
out some lines of application and amplification, I suggested
that we would consider three areas. Take heed to ourselves
that we are in a state of grace, Secondly, that we ourselves are
growing in grace, and thirdly, that we ourselves are manifesting
the reality of grace. Now, I hoped to finish that this
morning, and I didn't. And I think to do the job well,
I ought to complete that, but I'm torn because I want to move
into the area of take heed to your doctrine. So in spending
my remaining time today on this matter of taking heed to ourselves,
There's a sense in which I'm doing something I don't want
to do. I hope it develops character and is, in some measure, a blessing
to you in the process. Take heed to yourself. Take heed
to yourself that you yourself, as a minister, not only grow
in grace, but that you constantly and increasingly manifest the
reality of grace in your conduct. Notice how the Apostle sounded
this note earlier in this same paragraph when he says to Timothy,
let no man despise thy youth. That is, let no one think less
of you and subsequently regard with less submission and respect
your ministry. Let no man think lightly of you
because of your youth. Let no one say of you, Timothy,
oh well, what can you expect? He's still wet behind the ears.
Don't let anyone do this, Timothy. And it's as though Paul anticipates
Timothy's response, but how, Paul? How am I to overcome some
of the deficiencies of my youth? And Paul's directive is very
clear. But, be thou an ensample, a typos, a type, a pattern to
follow. Be thou an ensample to them that
believe in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith and in
purity. What is he saying? He's saying,
Timothy, the most powerful counteraction for any tendency to disregard
you because you're young is the overpowering impetus of a balanced
godliness. That's what he's saying. Let
no man think light of you because of your youth, But be an example
of balanced, practical godliness. Let the truth come through you,
though you are a relatively young man compared with others. Let
it come through a light so manifesting the power of that truth that
your youthfulness will not negate its effect in the minds and hearts
of your heroes. Take heed to yourself, Timothy. that you yourself are displaying
and manifesting the reality of grace. Don't overcome the disadvantages
of your youth by trying to be clever, by trying to be cute,
by accommodating yourself to men. But Timothy, seek to be
more godly. Seek to be more consistent in
your godliness, in the practical expressions of godliness, and
this will pave the way for the authority of the word you speak,
as men see the embodiment of that word in your own life. Now,
in the light of that, what I want to do this afternoon is to establish,
or to underscore, the principle found everywhere in Scripture
which lies behind Paul's directive in this area. The principle is
that there is generally a direct relationship between the quality
of life lived by a minister and the power and effectiveness of
the truth coming through that life to men. There is generally
a direct and almost mathematical relationship between the quality
of life lived by the minister and the power and effectiveness
of the truth coming through that light. Now, granted there are
exceptions, but the exceptions only underscore the validity
of the rule. Listen to the Apostle Paul as
he himself speaks of this principle with reference to his own ministry.
In 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, Beginning with verse 4, knowing,
brethren beloved of God, your election, how that our gospel
came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the
Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, even as ye know what manner of
men we showed ourselves toward you for your sake. I confess
that that verse troubled me for years. It seemed like Paul was
mixing up things that ought to be separated. He says, we're
convinced that you are the elect of God, not because God has allowed
us to peek into the role of his elect. No, no. But because we
see the effect of election in your lives, namely, your effectual
calling. He said we reason back from your
effectual calling to your election. Knowing, brethren, beloved of
God, your election. Why? Because our gospel came
not unto you in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit
and in much assurance. And then he goes on to say In
some way, this was directly related to the kind of lives we lived
amongst you while we were the instruments through which that
effectual call came, even as ye know what manner of men we
showed ourselves toward you for your sake. Here we see that principle
illustrated, a direct relationship between the quality of life lived
by the minister and the effectiveness and power of the truth coming
through the minister. Turn down to chapter 2 in 1 Thessalonians,
verse 10. and righteously and unblameably
we behaved ourselves toward you that believe." Is he bragging
on himself? Can this be the same man who
says, O wretched man that I am? When I would do good, evil is
present with me. I am what I am by the grace of
God. Is this some kind of sinful boasting? No. It was the witness of his
own conscience that in spite of all the actings of his remaining
corruption, in spite of his own painful awareness that in his
flesh dwelt no good thing, he had that assurance borne to him
by his own conscience in the presence of God that his life
was in the main a constant and powerful embodiment of the power
of the gospel that he preached to others. You find many allusions
of this nature in the writings of the Apostle. I'll only refer
to one other. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, in
that section dealing with the glory of the Christian ministry,
the Apostle declares, and I read now 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and
verse 1, Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, even as we
obtained mercy, we faint not. But we have renounced the hidden
things of shame. That is, secret things that should
be an occasion of shame, either before men, or probably, more
likely, in the presence of God. We've renounced the hidden things
of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the Word of God
deceitfully, but by the manifestation of the truth. That is a full
and unfettered declaration of the truth. Now get the last phrase.
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God. Paul says, when we preached,
we preached in such a context that we not only opened up the
truth of God and gave a full display of that truth, but then
we commended ourselves to your conscience. And what does he
mean? I think this is what he means. He says, having delivered
the truth, We then dare to say, and you people who hear us know
that this is true, not only because we speak in God's name and in
the authority invested in us as apostles, but because our
very lives are a living embodiment of the transforming power of
that truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in
the sight of God. So if we are to take heed to
ourselves, certainly it involves this aspect of self-watchfulness,
We must take heed to ourselves that we ourselves are growing
in grace and then in turn manifesting the reality of grace in our conduct. Apart from this, the longer we
are resident with a congregation, though we may be more and more
masterful, in the basic elements of effective communication as
far as sermonic structure, as far as exegesis, application,
illustration, and all the rest, the longer we are with our people.
Unless there is this display of the reality of grace in our
lives, there will be a negation of the effectiveness of our pulpit
ministry. Stalker in his excellent book,
The Preacher and His Models, one of the reprints that Baker
is doing on the Yale Lectures on Preaching, states this principle
in a very succinct manner and so perceptively. I want to read
just a paragraph to you. We are so constituted that what
we hear depends very much for its effect on how we are disposed
toward him who speaks. The regular hearers of a minister
He's speaking, then, in a pastoral context, not the fly-by-night
speaker, not the conference speaker who comes and dumps his load
and goes his way. The man who's living amongst his people, the
regular hearers of a minister, gradually form in their minds,
almost unawares, an image of what he is, into which they put
everything which they themselves remember about him, and everything
which they have heard of his record. And when he rises on
Sunday in the pulpit, it is not the man visible there at the
moment that they listen to, but this image, this image which
stands behind him and determines the precise weight and effect
of every sentence which he utters. That's man's statement of the
principle that the Apostle mentions in 1 Thessalonians 1, 1 Thessalonians
2, 2 Corinthians 4, and in many portions of Scripture. The longer
you live amongst your people, the shadow of your own life is
cast across that pulpit, either to augment the effectiveness
of your preaching or to negate and to dilute it. And so it is absolutely necessary
that we take heed to ourselves that we manifest the reality
of grace as we live amongst our people. Now I hope that those
words and a brief look at those scriptures has established the
principle. Now I want to move from the principle
in the abstract and flesh it out in the concrete. And I know of no better way to
do this than to consider the perspectives of the Apostles
found in 1 Timothy 3 and in Titus 1, with reference to the biblical
requirements for the office of an elder. Be he a teaching elder,
laboring in the Word and in doctrine in that sense, having what we
call the office of the ministry, or whether he be a ruling elder,
putting blood on his table by some other means of employment,
but sharing in the administration and oversight of the family of
God. And even a cursory reading of
1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus chapter 1 illustrates that the
primary, the primary, the overriding requisites for the office of
the ministry are not academic or intellectual Or do they lie
in the realm of a man's gifts? In the passage in 1 Timothy 3
concerning the requirements for the office of the bishop, we
have the little phrase at the end of verse 2, apt to teach. That, of course, means an apt
and able teacher. No man is to be set apart for
this office who has not demonstrated some God-given and personally
cultivated ability to communicate the truth of God. But if you
extract that one phrase from the list of requirements here
in 1 Timothy 3, there is not another which touches doctrine
in the abstract or his gifts. Not a one. Look at them. If a
man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. The
bishop therefore must be a five-point Calvinist with an ability to
articulate a thoroughly biblical and reformed world and life view." That isn't what Paul said. The bishop therefore must be—it's
a divine imperative—he must be without reproach. That's putting
his life into the area of the nitty-gritty. His ethical, his
practical life must be without reproach. No just cause of censure. And then he tells us what it
means to be without reproach. And isn't it interesting that
he moves immediately into the domestic sphere. the husband
of one wife. Self-controlled. That doesn't
mean just with booze, it means with food. Some men who forfeit the right
to preach and call believers to a life of discipline, whose
big pouch hanging out in front of them is a travesty on the
gospel they proclaim. The Bible has as much to say
about gluttony in some areas as it does about drunkenness. Shelf-controlled, the man whose
appetites are brought under the discipline of the Holy Spirit.
That's pretty practical, isn't it? Especially when there's lots
of fried chicken around. He must be sober-minded. It's
amazing how some people have great theoretical minds, but
they're not sober-minded. And the best I've been able to
do with this word, in trying to trace out its precise meaning,
it has the idea of a man who has all his wits about him, so
when he sees a situation, he's not shooting before he aims,
he's not pushing panic buttons, but he has that kind of practical
wisdom and discretion spoken of so often in the Book of Proverbs.
Again, this is not the theoretical, we're in the realm of the practical.
orderly, the ability to line up his priorities and follow
through in the discharge of them, given to hospitality, what's
that mean? He's a lover of people. Some
people love to preach, but they don't love people. You see, the ministry does not
exist, but the church does not exist for you. Many young men
have the idea, you see, the church That structure out there exists
as a place within which I can exercise my gifts. No, no, the
church doesn't exist for you. The great head of the church
has seen to it that there should be pastors and teachers who exist
for the sake of the church, to serve the church. And so he says,
if a man's to be a bishop, he must have already demonstrated
that he's a lover of people, and the proof of it is the open
door given to hospitality. Let's omit the act to teach.
We mentioned it earlier. No brawler. He must evidence
that he's not a scrapper. He doesn't like to mix it up.
Though he may be embroiled in controversy, it's always with
pain. He's no brawler, no striker,
but gentle, not contentious, no lover of money. Then he comes
back to the domestic, one that ruleth well his own house. He's
able to assert headship with love over his wife, over his
children. He's able to demonstrate that
he does not abuse authority as a tyrant and therefore alienate
his wife and children, nor is he one of those weak-kneed creatures
who feels that love and law are part of an antithesis never to
be reconciled. He's learned to rule, and to
rule well, which demands the proper sense of authority mingled
and mixed and discharged and permeated with love. having his
children in subjection with all gravity, then parenthesis, but
if a man know not how to rule his own house, if he doesn't
have that capacity to fuse love and authority in the smallest
sphere of the home, how shall he take care of the Church of
God? Not a novice, even if he seems
to demonstrate all these characteristics, let a little water go over the
dam, there may be yet a major breakdown. Not a recent convert,
Lest, being puffed up, he fall into the condemnation of the
devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony from them that
are without. He pays his bills. When the credit card thing comes
due, it's paid up. He keeps up his payments on his
car and at the local grocery store. A good report of those
that are without, lest he fall into reproach and snare of the
devil. What have we done? Just gone over, very briefly,
the requirements for the office of the ministry. And there was
one phrase which dealt with a man's gifts. Just one. All the rest had to do with a
balanced, consistent life of practical godliness. Isn't it
amazing how this thing's gotten all out of whack in our ministerial
examination committees? Spend eight hours grilling a
man in his theology, his apologetics. seeing if he can uncover and
trace to its untimely death some little ant of heresy that crawled
out of somewhere in the dim past. Oh, my brethren, when will we
learn to put the emphasis where the Holy Ghost is placed? Certainly
if Paul's writing this and he's left Timothy there to help the
churches in the selection of their elders, he's not negating
the importance of truth. Everything he says is touted
in the context of the full-blown proof of God granted. I'm not
demeaning the place of truth. All I'm trying to do is to put
this passage in its proper setting and let you feel the weight of
that passage. And when you turn to Titus, you
have a similar thing, the only basic difference being you have
the phrase, he must be able to convict and to convince the gainsayers. And there you have his ability
to speak with authority and with power. And then the little phrase,
holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught. Now what
does this tell us? It tells us that the Apostle
Paul recognized this simple principle, and as a wise master builder
in the administration of the affairs of the churches, he wanted
these fledgling churches to recognize this principle. Don't set over
you men who've got the gift of gab and good clear heads. If those two things are not fused,
to balanced, practical, demonstrated godliness. Why? Because of that basic principle.
Generally speaking, there will be this direct relationship between
the quality of the life lived and the power and the effectiveness
of the truth coming through that life. And so my exhortation is
once more, take heed to yourself. ministerial brother, taking to
yourself ministerial student, and labor at godliness. That's a biblical concept. Paul
says to Timothy, exercise thyself unto godliness. If you don't
exercise this physical body, it gets flabby and fat, and there
is the process of atrophying, and you know what it's like,
and I know what it's like if we don't. You just don't sit
around and get in shape physically. You can dream about it, but that
doesn't do it. And you just don't grow in practical godliness without
exercising yourself unto godliness. And so it demands that we take
heed to ourselves, if we are to display and to manifest the
reality of grace, so that the lengthening shadow of our lives
cast over our pulpits will mean that month by month and year
by year, the longer we minister amongst our people, the greater
will be the weight and the authority of the word we speak, because
by His grace we are the living embodiments of the power of that
word. Now, I want to recapitulate as
Paul did in that list of requirements, and focus particularly upon the
domestic, because the great breakdown comes here. At least this has
been my experience as I've moved around many churches over the
past years. And isn't it interesting that
that's the one area that the Holy Spirit goes back and amplifies?
husband of one wife, ruling while his own house, having his own
children in subjection with all gravity, for if a man rule not,
how shall he take care of the Church of God? I would speak
to you young men who are just beginning to have your families,
and I would entreat you to spare no pains to cultivate the kind
of relationship with your wife that in some measure reflects
the relationship of Christ to his church. And that doesn't
come, in most cases, easily or quickly. It's the fruit of true
spiritual labor. Of prayer. Prayer together. Prayer for one another. Prayer
with one another. Judgment Day honesty. and being
willing to face yourself as the one closest to you is able to
see your warts and molds and your imperfections. If God has
given you children, labor to establish that proper relationship
of open communication so that in the administration of your
discipline And in their receiving of it, there's the consciousness
that you're acting under the authority of God. You're not
just squatting the kids because they get in your way, but you're
taking time to explain to them that God has placed you over
them, to administer His rule upon them through you. and your
discipline and your training and the general movements of
your life in that home or such, that everyone looking upon it
says, well, in the midst of a society disintegrating in the domestic
sphere, Christ is done and is doing something real in that
place. I think one of the saddest commentaries
on the state of the Church is all the snickering and laughter
and jokes about preachers' kids. I think it's a tragedy that ought
to make us weep. It ought to make us weak, especially in the
light of the Apostle's words. Having children, not accused
of riot or unruly. Ruling well his own household.
What would you think of the man who, because he really preached
well, and because he was quite a theologian in his own right, still continued in the ministry,
though he did not meet the requirement one wife's husband. He was consorting
regularly with another woman down the street. What would you
think of this man if you came to him and said, sir, look what the
scripture says. One wife's husband. Husband of one wife. You've got
a wife plus your paramour. Don't you see what the scripture
says? And suppose he would have said, well, look at the rest
of the things. I meet three other requirements. I'm ruling well
in my own house. My kids are in order. I'm temperate
in other areas, and I even limit my visits to my friend down the
street for once a week. And I pay my bills, and I'm orderly,
and I'm efficient, and it's obvious I have the gift to preach, and
I'm preaching sound often. Can't you allow a little less
to it? I mean, that's only one out of all of them that I'm not
measuring up to. What would you say to that kind of a proposition?
Well, I think your snickers are witness to what you'd say. You'd
say, of course not. That would bring such reproach
to the cause of Christ and to the office of the ministry. We
wouldn't tolerate it for a moment. With all the problems our church
has about discipline and the flabbiness in this area, certainly
our consistory or our session or our board of deacons and elders
would rise up and say, this must stop. This man must be relieved
of his responsibility. Well, my question to you is this.
Who are we to say that failure to meet that requirement demands
such radical action, but that we can do exactly the same thing
with the requirement in verse 5? This book says, if a man knows
not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the
Church of God? He must have his children in
subjection with all gravity, and if he does not, do we have
any right to reason this way and say, but look, he's a godly
man, and he preaches well. and it holds the true doctrine.
Oh, yes, his kids are kind of wild. Oh, yes, his kids aren't
in line. Oh, yes, his wife has got a long,
ragged tongue. But, you know, that's just well-earned. I ask you in the name of all
kind of, every kind of common sense and biblical sensitivity,
who are we to make those distinctions and say, if they fail at that
requirement, one wise husband, bring down the axe. But if they
fail in the other, we must show latitude. I ask you, who are
we to treat the Word of God that way? Oh, but you say, Mr. Martin,
if we started doing that... You mean that every man who is
not basically ruling his house well and who, in the frank evaluation
of those about him in the place of spiritual authority as elders
and the discerning people of the Church, feel that he is not
ruling well his own house, if such were to leave the ministry,
we might empty half our churches of their preachers? Yes, we might. But you know what else might
happen? When the announcement was made By the chairman of the
Board of Elders the next Sunday, why the preacher would no longer
be standing in the pulpit that he was taking seriously the Word
of God in 1 Timothy chapter 3. You know, it might happen. There
might be a lot of people sitting out in the pew and say, look,
if he's taking the Word of God seriously, maybe it's about time
some of us did. And we might see a sweeping movement
of the Spirit of God resulting in practical, explicit obedience
to the revealed will of God in Holy Scripture. How can you as
a minister, in Christ's name, call the people of God to obedience
if you're living in blatant, open disobedience to something
as clear as this? I ask you, how can you do it?
How can you do it? How can you do it? And this is why there's such
little power in the preaching. so little effect working itself
out into the domestic sphere, go into the average home of the
average church member, the average evangelical, and even the average
Reformed church. And if you weren't told that
they were bearing to an evangelical and Reformed church, you wouldn't
know it from the basic lifestyle. A grasping materialism permeates
their whole perspective. No discernment and judgment and
discretion exercised with regard to the use of the TV, the use
of leisure time. The only way you'd know that
they were attached to an evangelical and even a Reformed church is
if someone told you, or you happen to be with them on Sunday. As
far as the Word being taken seriously at all the levels that it touches,
there in the home, in the expenditure of our money, in the investment
of our time and energy, and all the rest, there is not this serious
regard for the Word. Could it not be that in great
measure the fault lies with the pulpit? Because men dare to preach
from a context in which their lives are a living indication
that they don't take the Word seriously. Oh, he said, Brother Martin,
you're hard on us as preachers. I trust I'm hard on myself. And I know a little something,
again, of the pressures that are there. But I trust by God's
grace I know what it is not to say, well, I'm the exception.
And to know what it is to say, look, Buster, two days have gone
by and you haven't been on the floor rolling around playing
with your kids or you haven't been out with your boys shooting
some baskets. You get out of that crazy study of yours and
get down there with your kids. All those years of building a
relationship of intimacy and openness. So my boy just had
his 11th birthday yesterday. He's embarrassed to do it with
his sister, see, and when he comes home from school, he'll
come up in the study and just come over and stand next to me.
I say, what do you want, son? Oh, I just want to love a little
bit, Dad. And I say, son, when are you going to get too big
to do that with your dad? I said, you better not, I'll
box your ears good. You don't have that kind of relationship
just because you're a preacher, or you're just a reverend, or
because you're just somebody's father. It has to be cultivated,
worked at. The price of it is transparency
and openness with your children. Telling them you've sinned. When
they've heard you have angry words with your wife in the kitchen,
you know the kids heard them? Before you ask the Lord's blessing
on the meal that night, you say, kids, You heard Mommy and Daddy
talking, and Daddy talked sharply to Mommy. That was sin. I want you to forgive us. We're
going to pray now and ask God to forgive us. Kids don't expect
you to be perfect. They expect you to be real. And if you want to have authority
over them and with them, it will only be in the context of reality
unless you're going to become a tyrant, and then you will lose
them. This is what I'm talking about, and I'm speaking very
practically, I know. But I'm doing this because I
particularly am concerned for you young men. With your lives
before you and your patterns still pliable, and I plead with
you, give the time and the energy necessary to develop a wholesome
domestic life. So that there, in the confusion
of that community where you minister, there will be at least one home.
that is a little replica of that beautiful relationship that exists
between Christ and His Church, and Christ and the family of
God. Take heed to yourself, that you yourself manifest and display
grace, particularly in the realm of your domestic life, and then
in all of these other areas that are mentioned here in 1 Timothy
chapter 3 and in Titus chapter 1. Now I want to close by making,
and I only think of the term that Cal Searvel used out at
the Minister's Institute of the Christian Reformed Church a couple
of years ago when I was there, that caused such a shaking, a
modest proposal. Well, I should like to make a
modest proposal with regard to the application of this principle
as it relates to young men preparing for the ministry. Who is there that is in a position
to see if these basic qualities of balanced godliness are evidence
to any degree of maturity in the life of a young man while
he's at seminary? It's well nigh impossible, is
it not? And in a real sense, that's not the function of the
seminary faculty. If you read the original charter
and then the original disciplines of Princeton Seminary, it's most
interesting, I have some copies of them, in which the faculty
were to try to do this with the students. And if there was a
young man who was even doing well in his classes, but was
not spending the Sabbath in fasting and prayer and in, if not fasting,
I think it says prayer and even mentions fasting, and in the
personal disciplines of piety, though there was nothing else
wrong with his life, Upon due admonition of the faculty, if
he didn't repent and begin to use his Sabbaths to spiritual
profit, he was to be dismissed from the seminary. If his life
did not evidence growing godliness, but it's almost impossible to
do it. So where is it going to be done? You come fresh out of
seminary? You go out to that little church
and they take the recommendation of the seminary, someone else's
recommendation, and all of a sudden they're supposed to receive you
as the leading, teaching, ruling elder? I say it's a form of emotional
and mental and psychological rape to commit upon people. To
say that some fella's still wet behind the ears, still very much
a novice, suddenly, because he's got the red in front of his name,
he's to be regarded with double honor because he labors in the
Word and in doctrine. Would it not be much more realistic
to think in terms of going back either to your home church or
into a church where you could labor with good conscience and
with respect of the overseers of that assembly and get yourself
a job where you're putting your 40 hours like everybody else
does? Many of you don't know what that is except for a few
months in the summer. You've come fresh out of high school,
into college, into seminary. The rest of your life, you're
going to be dealing with people who know nothing but that. Week
in, week out, month in, month out. You get yourself a job. In conjunction with the pastor
and elders of that assembly, you get the responsibility of
teaching the adult class, or some other situation in which
you must produce, week after week, over a long period of time.
If you can't invest your spare time to produce something that
is reasonably acceptable once a week, what makes you think
you'll discipline all that other time to the profit of your people? Then you live amongst those people,
and let the people see if your life commends your gospel. You
get into the life and all of the involvements of the interaction
of the people of God in the given assembly, and let it begin to
be manifest, if you are contentious, if you're a brawler, if you're
one of these pompous, opinionated young men who thinks that the
sun of truth has been setting in the West until it rose upon
your fair plate. who's a one-sermon wonder, but
don't live with him for three days. Don't live with him for three
days. Oh, the cocky, swaggering, opinionated spirit! It's a curse
to the minister. How are you going to tell if
these characteristics are there? I suggest that it's the people
of God who are best suited to discern their presence or absence,
and how are they going to do it unless you settle in amongst
them? And so my modest proposal is that the norm ought to be
that a young man looks upon his seminary training, not his terminal.
but as another part in the accumulation of the necessary disciplines
to be an accurate expositor of the Word and an able servant
of Christ. And then go out and serve his
internship in a real live situation with real live people with a
great spectrum of their problems and the needs that emerge in
the midst of the life of any congregation. And then at the
end of that time If the church feels with good conscience it
can make a recommendation to Presbytery. If it's in a Baptist
situation, if they feel they can make a recommendation to
a given church where the man is going to be called, let them
call their ordination council and then let them use as their
guideline 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. And have the elders from that
church in which he's labored be the ones who sit, and when
you start in 1 Timothy 3, has this young man demonstrated a
life of blamelessness? Has it been evident as he's moved
among the church that there's only one woman in his heart and
life and eye, as well as in his home? Has he been above board
in his dealings with women in the church? Is he ruling well
his own house? Is he temperate? Is he soul over
mind? Then you come, apt to teach,
as he demonstrated his gifts. You come to the requirement in
Titus, holding fast the faithful word, and then there can be the
doctrinal examination, the theological inquisition can go on, and it
ought to. But oh, I think it's a tragedy
that we have isolated the academic element from the context in which
we find the requirements given here. in Holy Scripture. Well,
this has been sort of a potpourri of exhortations relative to this
matter of taking heed to oneself. I didn't want to do this. This
was to have been just the third point on this afternoon or this
morning's message. But I felt constrained, and I
trust time will prove that I did the right thing in giving this
third strand of exhortation under taking heed to ourselves. that
we ourselves display and manifest grace without which, to some
degree, the saving purpose of God will not be realized in us
and through us as we minister to others. I close with that
well-known quote of McShane's, and it's well-known because it's
worth quoting and re-quoting. Otherwise, it never would have
been well-known. McShane had a ministerial friend
who was going to Germany to perfect his grasp upon the German language. He wanted to be a better theologian,
wanted to read the German theologians. In those days, they were worth
reading. And this is what McShane said.
I know you'll apply hard to German, but do not forget the culture
of your inner man. I mean of the heart. How diligently
the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean and sharp. Every
stain he rubs off with the greatest of care. Remember, you are God's
sword. His instrument. I trust a chosen
vessel unto him to bear his name. In great measure, according to
the purity and perfection of the instrument, will be the success. It is not great talents, God
blesses, so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is
an awful weapon in the hand of God. A holy man may not necessarily
make an able minister. He must have gifts of ministry.
But seldom will an able preacher be an effective minister unless
he is a holy man. Take heed to yourself.