Amen. All right, Acts chapter
14. I'm going to start at verse 21. We'll just look at a couple of
them and we'll just start working through our outline. Again, tonight,
the title of it as we work our way through is the work of the
gospel strengthened and confirmed. This is something now that we'll
get a chance to kind of make our way through fairly quickly
because we spent so long dealing with the concept of the kingdom,
which was introduced to us in verse 22, verse 21. And when
they had preached the gospel in that city and had taught many,
they returned again to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch,
confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them to continue
in the faith and that we must, through much tribulation, enter
into the kingdom of God. And when they had ordained them
elders in every church and had prayed with them fasting, they
commended them to the Lord on whom they believed, and after
they had passed throughout Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia. And when
they had preached the word imperator, they went down to Atilia and
then sailed to Antioch. And from whence they had been
recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. And when they were come and had
gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had
done with them and how he had opened the door of faith unto
the Gentiles And there they abode a long time with the disciples.
Under our first point, the continued preaching and establishing of
the churches is really where the Arthur Luke is calling our
attention. As I had shared with you, this
is Paul's first missionary journey. He's returning again from the
northern part of Syria back to Israel. He's passing through
all the local churches that were established. And now he's establishing
a pattern, a custom, a practice, a model that we have to learn
from. This one thing to be used of God to evangelize and bring
about a saving experience in the life of the people of God.
And that's a marvelous, marvelous experience when we can be used
to see people converted to Christ. I would say in our present generation,
we don't see that a whole lot. raw, unsaved, virgin territory,
men and women who've never heard the gospel, never trusted Christ. You don't meet or see situations
where large groups of people are converted, are brought to
a saving knowledge of God. That is rare in our days. A lot
of what goes on in our churches, and this is just true in general,
it's not an indictment, it's an observation, is transitioning
of people groups from one church to the next who have already
come to know some basic doctrines or some ideas about God. In that
vein of thought, that's not what we would call evangelism, where
you meet somebody and they have already said they knew the gospel,
I've heard the gospel, I've been part of church, but now they're
gonna start coming to your church for whatever reason. That's not
what we call evangelism. That might very well be part
of the support system that Paul gets into when he talks about
strengthening the church And we certainly could sort of categorize
that as a symptom of our present culture as well, where an individual
finds themselves really struggling with the environment that they're
in theologically and spiritually and have a need to transition
to an atmosphere or a place where they can go deeper into Christ.
All of those kinds of longings and desires are natural. In many
cases, unavoidable, particularly when our churches don't make
it an ethic or make it a mandate for the local church to continue
growing. The local church should continue
growing, not numerically, but spiritually. Obviously, you want
to grow numerically, but you certainly want to grow spiritually
because you can be massive in your numbers and be very deficient
in your character. You can be massive in the numbers
of those who are part of that church and yet be very deficient
in your personal walk with Christ. And that can actually hallmark
the whole of the church. So the phraseology is you can
be a mile wide and a half inch deep. It's very true when the
emphasis is on numbers and not on quality. One of the things
we're learning as we're dealing with the whole concept of rewards. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, we
talked about how the works of some will be esteemed as gold,
silver, and precious stone versus what? Wood, hand, stubble. And
for the ministry, for the ministers of the gospel, for those who
say they are called to the task of preaching the gospel, they
are really obliged to make sure that the people who come under
the sphere of their influence theologically become richly,
richly deep in their knowledge of God so that they bear all
the fruit that is possible in the lives of every member of
the congregation. In other words, pastors ought
not to find themselves standing before God, having given a very
careless approach to the edification and growth, maturity, development,
and usefulness of every member in the body of Christ. So again,
I like to use the phraseology that Dr. Campbell has stated
many times. You guys heard this recently,
but I'll state it again because it's apropos. It's not about
counting your sheep. It's about weighing the sheep.
The difference between counting and weighing has to do with that
which is seen versus that which is unseen. When you can weigh
your sheep and see that they have gained spiritual growth,
spiritual maturity, and we'll talk a little bit about that
tonight when we deal with the term strengthened. then you can
be very confident that God is actually working in you as a
group, first person plural, in you the will and to do of his
good pleasure. You're gonna have a problematic church where that
church is not growing in the grace and in the knowledge of
Christ. And so we have the epistles that give us examples of congregations
that may have been popular, such as Corinth, but they were problematic. So a popular church is not necessarily
a mature church. It can be popular, but it can
be problematic. And those churches will have
the struggle of dealing with growth outwardly, but not dealing
with growth inwardly and deeply. And we have in front of us a
model of how this works out. And this is what we want to look
at tonight. Paul wasn't He wasn't content with just establishing
local churches because he knew this, this is what he knew. He
knew that just as fast as a local church could be established,
it could be blown away and become nothing in less than a decade.
He knew that because he understood that the goal of the adversary
is to come behind every word that is a say to be in the name
of the kingdom of God and to destroy it. The goal of the enemy
is to kill, steal and destroy. So there's not going to be any
institution that bears the name of Christ that's not going to
be assaulted by the hordes of hell in order to destroy its
testimony, because the implications of a gospel church in any community
is the revelation of the glory of God and the impact of that
revelation on that society. And that hell will not let occur
real easily. So teaching and strengthening
and confirming the believer is critical to a lasting, vital,
authentic, fruitful, and productive testimony. And that's what we're
dealing with here. Point number one, they continue
preaching and establishing churches. We see again then in verse 21,
and when they had preached the gospel to that city and had taught
many. So you see two things taking
place in lines one and two of verse 21. They preached and they
what? Taught. They preached and taught. So you see the term preaching,
kerygma, that is the authoritative proclamation of the word of God
that underscores the lordship of Jesus Christ. That is the
proclamation. That is them actually doing what
Christ had told them to do. Proclaim the gospel, declare
the message of the gospel, preach Christ, to them and then back
up that preaching with the gift of and function of teaching. So preaching and teaching, as
you guys know, in the 21st century in a Western church are a tandem
calling. Preaching, teaching, preaching
and teaching are a tandem calling. They are unique and distinct
in themselves, but they go hand in hand. There are some communities
of the faith that spend more time preaching than they do teaching. There's not a lot, but there
are some. There are some communities in the Christian church whose
emphasis is purely on preaching because preaching fundamentally
is designed to actually target the will, your volition, your
motive. That's what preaching is fundamentally
targeted at. Preaching is targeted at creating
a verdict in the heart and moving people towards submission to
Christ in terms of the imperatives of the gospel. So preaching is
a powerful tool by which the auditors are apprehended by what
largely is a monological approach to declaring some truth about
Jesus Christ for which the soul then is inclined to inwardly
capitulate. prostrate itself to receive as
the very truth of God's a very, very powerful tool that when
done right with the right emphasis can bring about an internal conviction
and commitment of the believer to Christ. That's what preaching
is supposed to do. So understand that preaching
is not like having merely a talk or a discussion. Because in a
talk or a discussion, it becomes much more dialogical and analytical,
and there can be, you know, some back and forth in that. But with
preaching, when preaching really is done from a charismatic standpoint,
charisma, to proclaim as an ambassador for Christ, thus saith the king,
then we're all simply subjects listening to the king's decree.
And as we hear the King's decree, what he wants us to do, our hearts
are now inclined to receive it as a commandment to walk in.
And that's really what preaching is about. And that's how you
discover whether or not people are Christians or not. Because
a Christian is one who tolerates preaching. The non-Christian
doesn't. Because the non-Christian doesn't
have an allegiance to Jesus. And because he doesn't have an
allegiance to Jesus, there's no category in his soul by which
he is willing to subject himself to an authoritative presentation
of some truth claim by some Lord or some ruler. But the people
of God are. The people of God are already
predisposed to listen to Jesus as Lord and King. You gotta follow
what I'm getting at. We're predisposed to listen to
Christ. as Lord and King and receive
his teachings as yes and amen. And the Spirit of God works through
that powerfully to move us in a direction that we ought to
be going. For example, if you look at 1 Thessalonians 2.13,
this is a model of it just to remind us of the importance of
preaching. This is a good fundamentals class
on the whole concept of preaching because even that is under attack
today on many levels. Why is there a distinction between
preaching and teaching? Which, even right now, what I
am doing is teaching, it's not preaching, properly speaking. Unless, of course, the Spirit
of God is working through what I am saying right now and driving
home imperatives mandates a sense of urgency in your own heart.
That's a whole nother, um, experience itself. But in preaching, we
find the apostle Paul explaining it this way to the Thessalonians
in verse 13 of chapter two for this cause. Also, thank we God
without ceasing, because when you received the word of God,
which you heard of us, you received it as not as what the word of
men. So stop for a moment. See what
Paul said was he discovered that when he met with the Thessalonians,
which we'll be doing in the next couple of chapters, that they
were people who were predisposed to the Lordship of Christ. So
that when the kerygma, the preaching of the gospel took place, they
weren't offended by the authoritative nature of preaching. You guys
get what I'm saying? There are people today, and we
have a cultural sort of consciousness today that pushes back on authoritative
proclamation. Because we know psychologically
that authoritative proclamation Has a way of getting past your
intellect not around it But through it to the volition and drive
you to act it demands a verdict it demands a verdict which means
this when you hear what the preacher says and If that preacher is
telling the truth, you know within yourself You are obliged to actually
respond if you call yourself a Christian you're obliged to
respond. You can't say yes or no to Christ. Right, that's, and so Kerygma,
our preaching is authoritative. It's the ambassador of the king
speaking for the king by the spirit to the people of God.
And the people of God are really the only ones who are capable
of receiving the word of God, not as the word of men, but as
it is in the truth, the word of God. Do you see that? Now
watch the last line, which effectually worketh also in you, that what? So the two operative words in
that last clause is effectually and believing, effectually and
believing. And what that means is as Jesus
gave the parable of the sower and the seed in the gospel of
Matthew, Mark and Luke, the seed will fall on several different
types of soil. And each type of soil represents
the condition and predisposition of the heart. So some hearts
are so hard that they have no place or category or space for
the authoritative proclamation of the word. They come to church
to be entertained. They are not coming for charisma.
They're not coming to be told to be quiet and listen to the
King speak. As the old writers used to put
it coming out of the Psalms, The Lord is in his holy temple.
Let all flesh keep silence before him. That's not the mentality
nor the atmosphere of your churches today. They're largely entertainment
oriented. There's not a sense of solemnity
anymore where we are sitting before the king of heaven and
God is speaking and the angels and the saints are trembling
before God. us by gone today. That doesn't happen today unless
there's a real special anointing taking place. Largely today it's
entertainment. So when we talk about the difference
between preaching and teaching, this is what Paul means when
he says, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. What
is working in them that believe? The word of God. So when the
word of God is preached and they have been given ears to hear,
because you know, God has to give you ears to hear, does he
not know? Now, if God gives you ears to
hear and your ears are designed to hear his word, you're going
to hear his word. The assumption of ears to hear
is also a heart to believe. Like those are two sides of the
same coin. Are you following me? Like you're really not given
ears to hear if you don't have a heart to believe. ears to hear
are connected directly to a heart that believes. So when truth
comes, you are moved by that truth. That truth has a way of
working itself into your thoughts and into your mind and getting
a hold of your volition. That is your motive and driving
you in a direction of obedience to Christ. That's the inward
working of the spirit, moving you and me into a direction of
response to Christ. It's called a verdict. And those
of us who are born again raised from the dead spiritually. We
love that experience We love the sovereign power of God Taking
a hold of our heart through the preaching of the word and moving
us towards him Because we will not move towards him without
that power working. We will sit there like a dead
cadaver Unmoved by the preaching if the Spirit of God doesn't
do it This is what he's talking about in 1 Thessalonians chapter
2, 13. Again, this is radically different than teaching. Teaching
comes in a whole different space. Go back then to our text, 1 Acts
chapter 14, verse 21. And let's consider this a little
bit more. When he says in Acts chapter
14, 21, that they went through the churches preaching and teaching
many He says the net result is they returned again to Lystra
and to Iconium and to Antioch, and they were doing the same
thing there. That's verse 22. They were doing the same thing
there. So under your first point, there were just a couple of things
we need to look at. The witness through teaching,
the witness through teaching. They went through, they preached.
There was a group of people that became believers. They came back
and then they were teaching as well as preaching. And this is
confirmed by Matthew 24, 16. And you just need to see that
too. Because one of the things that's remarkable about the book
of Acts is the obedience of the apostles at length to the explicit
commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me see here. Matthew 24,
16. This should not be it. That's not it. Let me see here.
Why do I have 24, 16, 24? Okay. I'll leave it alone. Okay. Verse
16, verse 16. And this gospel, verse 14, I'm
sorry, verse 14. And this gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in all the world for a what unto them? a witness unto all nations and
then the end shall come. So what Paul and Barnabas and
Silas and all those of his team are doing is now bearing witness
to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ through preaching and
through teaching. And according to verse 22, which
is where we wanna go now, going back to your text, they are confirming
the believer. And this is going to be a very
important aspect of what we are doing now. And when they had
preached the gospel to that city and that taught many, They return
again to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch. Again, they're making
their way back down to the central part of Palestine. Verse 22,
confirming the souls of the disciples. Do you guys see that? Confirming
the souls of the disciples. So that's the work that we're
getting into now, the concept that we're getting ready to deal
with now. So proclamation of the gospel
calls people to Christ, teaching then works to confirm. to confirm. Now, in your English
lexicon or English dictionary, to confirm something means to
establish it. That's what it means to confirm.
When you confirm something, it's like saying, I'm going to do
this. And then once you do it, you confirm it. The thing is
confirmed by actually doing what you say. I'll often make the
distinction between confirmation and affirmation so that you know
that there's a difference between the two. Affirmation is what?
It's echoing something, or saying the same thing that someone else
says. To affirm something is to agree with it. To confirm
it is to bring it to pass. Tomorrow it will rain. Tomorrow
comes, it rains. That word was what? Confirmed.
All right, so when we talk about confirming the saints, the souls
of the disciples, We are talking about really strengthening them,
strengthening them. That's what the term really is.
And in some of your Bibles, it's translated that way, isn't it?
To strengthen, that's really the best term. And we wanna talk
about that for a few minutes. Now, do the believers need strengthening? How critical How critical is
the strengthening of the believer personally and subjectively and
then objectively in terms of purpose? It's very important. It's very important. So when
you think about something needing strengthening, then you also
think about its vulnerability, don't you? That it's vulnerable
if it is not strengthened. So the idea of strengthening
here for Paul And for Barnabas, as they're going about preaching,
is to make sure that the souls of these disciples who are new
believers are established in the faith of the gospel so that
they don't have to look back five years from now and see them
having fallen away from the faith because of the trials and the
winds that are surely going to come at them to overthrow their
faith experience. And we wanna just talk about
strengthening the believer here for a moment. And there are actually
four verses in the book of Acts that are in the exact same Greek
construction that affirms this. It's in verse 22 here in our
text, confirming the souls of the disciples. And then again,
it's in Acts 15, 32. Look there for a moment, because
I'll just use these as our context. So in Acts chapter 15, verse
32, where Paul and Barnabas are still working together, it says
in verse 30, So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch.
And when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered
the epistle, which when they had read, they rejoiced for the
consolation. And Judas and Silas being prophets
also themselves exhorted the brethren with many words and
what? Confirmed them. Again, we'll
look into that more fully when we get there. But right now,
if confirm means to strengthen, what these men did by way of
reading the letter, and then preaching and encouraging. That's what the word exhort means.
It means to urge towards your calling. Then these people were
confirmed and they confirmed them. So if you look at the last
line and confirm them is what we call the Aries verb form. That means that it actually happened.
So they were confirmed. So the spirit of God is giving
us insight into at least the work of Judas and Silas. that
they actually confirm these believers. And you and I appreciate that
more as we work through this. The next usage of it is in chapter
15, verse 41. Look at verse 41. Let me start
at verse 40. And Paul chose Silas and departed, being recommended
by the brethren unto the grace of God. And he went through Syria
and Sicilia, doing what? Confirming the churches. Now
this is their second missionary journey back up to Syria. So
they're going to churches that were established already, but
these are young churches with young believers. But remember,
believers don't live in a vacuum. We don't live in a glass house.
We live in a battle zone. Do we? We live in a battle zone. If you don't know that now, you're
not, you're, you're not, you're not alive in Christ because one
of the things you learn quickly when God actually opens your
eyes to the reality of the kingdom of God is that hell has broken
loose long time ago. It didn't just start with you
long time ago and battle lines have been drawn and strategic
points of attack have been long time established strongholds.
and methodologies and wiles have been employed long time now. And the believer has to learn
how to negotiate and navigate the kingdom over against these
strongholds, strategies, methods. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? You won't last in the kingdom if you don't. This is
why we have a lot of brothers and sisters who are actually
outside of the church. Are you guys hearing me? There
are a lot of brothers and sisters who are outside of the church
because they don't know how to negotiate the kingdom of God
inside the church with all of the battles that are going on
on the inside. For them, they'd rather be on
the sidelines because they just don't know how to negotiate it.
Well, that is indicative of not having been strengthened in your
faith. and taught deeply the ways of
the Lord and your calling and how to actually operate in your
calling successfully in the midst of the church, because the warfare
is by design in the church. And so here they are strengthening
the believers. One more time, I'll share with
you exegetically, or at least by way of definition, what this
term really means. Acts chapter 18, verse 23. These
are the four times they are used in the book of Acts, though it's
used a few more times throughout the New Testament. Acts chapter
18, verse 23. Here's how it's used. I'm gonna
start again back at verse 22. And when we had landed at Caesarea
and gone up and saluted the church, he went down to Antioch, and
after he had spent some time there, he departed and went over
all the country of Galatia, Phrygia, and Ardor, doing what? All the
what? See the word strengthening there?
I don't know why the King James decided to change it to strengthening
now. Same word. Often there's some kind of, you
know, this, this kind of arbitrary thing that goes on, but that's
okay. You and I are called to study to make our, to, you know,
make our calling. Sure, anyway, so strengthening
is the word and notice this is the Apostle now going back up
to Galatia and Phrygia These are the farther regions up past
Syria in his second missionary journey and the emphasis that
I'm getting at is that the goal of the ministry of the church
is to strengthen the body So that it can actually do the work
of the kingdom What's that word right there? steroid And I've
talked about this many times. Ostinato is the Greek term that's
used in Romans five when it says that, and when you were without
strength, Christ died for your sins. That when you are an unbeliever,
you have no spiritual strength. You cannot, of yourself, do anything
for God. Otherwise, an unbeliever, even
when I was one, you might fancy wanting to serve God, but there
was nothing there. You wouldn't move to go to church.
You wouldn't move to listen to the word of God. There was nothing
there. You were without strength. You were like the lame man. That's
the very same term without strength. You were paralyzed in your spirit. So you couldn't move in obedience,
even though in your mind, you fancied maybe, you know, one
day I think I'm going to serve the Lord. But until God comes
in by his spirit and raises you from the dead and actually gives
you life. And that's what all those miracles
are about. in the gospel they are all symbolic of spiritual
life that comes when the power of the gospel comes to weak and
dead and spiritually blind and lame sinners and then quickens
them infuses into their body miraculously healing virtue now
you and i all know about steroids don't we If you have lifted weights,
are you trained? You may not have ever taken any,
and I hope you haven't. They have very horrible negative
side effects. But steroids are synthetic drugs
that are designed to build muscle. That's all that is and that's
what's being stated here in this Greek word to strengthen and
to build Spiritual muscles in the body politic of the church
so that the body of Christ can be strong in the Lord and in
the power of his might Does that make some sense? in other words
the body of Christ should not be weak any feet or and unable
to stand or function to do the will of God. We are to be strengthened
with all might in the inner man that we might be able to actually
accomplish the will of God and largely collectively. You know,
I would take more time to actually deal with the lopsided or distorted
view of Christians today who operate fundamentally in a very
singular, autonomous, individualist mindset. You guys know what I
mean by that. That really, when you read your Bible carefully,
very seldom do you read anywhere where the Lord is working with
one individual. And very seldom when you read
the imperatives of scripture and you understand the language
carefully, when God uses the term you, largely he's saying
you all, not you individually. You all, which means that the
objective of the spirit of God working through the ministry
of the gospel is to strengthen the body collectively so that
you don't find muscle fibers in the arms or in the legs, separating
themselves individually, receiving steroid or strength. They connect,
they connect, the muscles connect and grow together. And so there
is a large emphasis in the New Testament around being strengthened
and confirmed collectively as a group. When you lift weights,
there's very seldom on any part of your anatomy where you are
working to build muscles that even when you isolate your forearm,
do you know how many muscles are working in your forearm to
actually execute the lifting of that barbell? You're using
muscles all the way up to your shoulders. And more to actually
help work out your forearm. Even when you do this, you're
using dozens and hundreds of muscles. Very seldom is one muscle
working on its own. And I would actually venture
to say none. And what that means then is that
the work of strengthening is a collective work. Am I making
some sense? Very important to know where
you meet believers who are really, really strong in the Lord. You
meet believers who understand the providence of God, having
worked within the framework of the body to build their character,
to shape their character, to give them discernment, to actually
augment and strengthen their gifts. It happens in the body,
not outside the body, where you meet people who absent themselves
from the church. You meet weak Christians, weak,
Christians So our term steroid is the root Noun that's used
in this text and in these four verses that I've shared with
you So now let's consider our second point. We've considered
they continue preaching and establishing the church now We're going to
deal with not only now the function but the methodology by which
they did this and this is going to be quite interesting and necessary
to develop when you notice In verse 22, it says in chapter
14, confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them
to continue in the faith and that we must, through much tribulation,
enter into the kingdom of God. See verse 22? This is where we
went off on a tangent for several weeks, isn't it? So because what
we saw in verse 22 was a context that was necessary to acknowledge
as the sphere and rim of all this work that God is calling
us to do. Here's the context. Tribulation. Look at the verse
again, cause I'm getting ready to leave it. But here's the thing
that I think Christians miss out on. When Christ calls you
out of darkness into his marvelous light, and when he calls you
out of the world into the kingdom of God, when he calls you out
of self into him, he calls you into a kind of tribulation that
is part of his providential purpose of strengthening you. There is
an aspect of the tribulation of the saints that's designed
to confirm the authenticity of who you say you are in Jesus,
and then to build you up in the midst of it. In other words,
believers are made for trouble. True believers are made for trouble.
God made us for trouble, right? Because trouble is not always
a bad thing. What if, The whole school of
fish are going in the wrong direction. And you're rolling with them.
And then this mysterious GPS system kicks into your little
brain, your salmon now, and you turn around and start going in
the opposite direction. You're going to start bumping
into those other fish, aren't you? You know what you're going
to be creating for them and yourself? Trouble. Then imagine a whole
bunch of salmon turning around, going the other direction. And
you're bumping into all of those other fish going in one direction,
and you're going in the other. Well, God made you to swim upstream. I've told you that before. Right.
And so when you get a handle on the fact that as Peter said
in first Peter chapter one, do not think it's strange. The fiery
trials that you are going through, they are designed to affirm your
faith and to bring praise to your faith in that day. This
is what we're learning about rewards. God is going to praise
the faith of the people of God on that day. You guys follow
what I'm saying? But if you and I are like water
seeking the path of least resistance, We're always trying to avoid
the trouble. We will never make our call in
an election short, and we will never ever bump into people in
the right way to cause them to see their need of Christ. Am
I telling you the truth? So like people that you love
and care about, wanna see them to come to a saving knowledge
of Christ, you trouble them initially. And that's right. Cause they're
going in the wrong direction. They may even intuitively know
it, but they don't want to be told, but you got to tell it
anyway. That's right. And if you negotiate that, that
conflict carefully, as we're learning in the life of David,
and we're going to learn more, um, you're going to be used by
God as we're going to learn on Sunday to be able to recover
that which was lost. because you were willing to actually
enter into conflict with it, going in the opposite direction.
Do you guys follow the logic? Very important to understand
why God created you for tribulation. And notice, confirming the souls
of the disciple, exhorting them to continue in the faith, that's
a warning, and that we must, through much tribulation, enter
into the kingdom. And I'll share with you, continuing in the faith
that's holding to the gospel, we say we believe, Go through
much tribulation, the condition and context of the life we live,
of faith, and then enter into the kingdom of God. I said that
that was eschatologically the realization of the kingdom of
God, ultimately when we die and go be with Christ, right? That's
the way that I set it up. Others interpret it comprehensively,
entering in, occupying, and then finally seeing the kingdom of
God in its full-orbed expression. But I see this as entering into
the kingdom of God is when you finally breathe your last breath,
and the angels of the Lord take your soul into heaven, And the
Lord Jesus says to you, well done, my good and faithful servant.
That's entering into the kingdom. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? That's when we're done. That's when faith becomes sight.
Hope becomes reality. And everything we're hoping for
now will be realized in that moment that we have finished
our course. And this is a very critical point. So now watch verse 23. This is
gonna lead us into our study for tonight. If in fact, we are
called to preach and proclaim the gospel authoritatively, and
then explain that gospel didactically through teaching, what are the
tools that God is going to use to bring that about is what we're
gonna be dealing with now for the rest of the hour. Verse 23,
and when they had ordained them what? Elders in every church
and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord
on whom they believe. So now I want to talk to you
about the, um, instrumental means of people coming to know Jesus
and then being strengthened in Jesus by virtue of the ministry
of preaching and teaching the instrumental means is the institutional
church where God raises up gifted people to serve and to manage
the affairs of the kingdom of God so that the gospel is successful
at reaching people. So an individual comes into a
church. If that church is orderly and biblical, what they will
find in that church, if it's mature enough, they will find
leadership in that church, leaders, in that church. They won't find
the church as a group of grassroots people doing whatever they want
to do. That's not an expression of a
biblical church. Leadership is the place or the
situation where someone or persons are what? Leading. Where leading
takes place. So then the first thing that
people discover when they come into the church is that there's
a structure and that there's a government and that there are
people who have positions of authority by which the kingdom
now is operating. That not anyone willy-nilly is
occupying a space of influence or voicing that that's taken
very seriously with the objective of being able to confirm the
souls and strengthen the soul. So what we're going to talk about
now is establishing biblical leadership. That's our second
PowerPoint. You come into a church and typically
And this is not so easily affirmed today, but typically in your
church, you will have three offices that are functioning in your
biblical church. And those three offices of a
church leadership will be that of pastor slash elder, and then
that of deacon. Deacons, pastors, elders, you
can slash those in that of deacon or deacons. And when it says
biblical as possible, these are in what we call the plural form. Both offices will function in
a plurality of elders. Not always. You will have some
churches where they're small. The community is small, 10 or
20 people. maybe a little bit more, and this gets into what
we call ecclesiology, where you might have one person who is
the pastor, and there is no other offices in the church, and that
pastor basically is the leading person there. We would call that
a very deficient form of leadership, albeit its leadership. That person
might call themselves pastor, they might just call themselves
elder, they might call themselves brother, And our brother in churches,
if you ever know anything about brother in churches, you know,
they might use the term elder, but they never use the term pastor
because they always view pastor as a preeminent position of which
they feel that the scriptures don't really support. I'll demonstrate
that demonstrate here in a moment why it's actually very wise to
make a distinction between pastors and elders. But if you'll notice
in our texts, this is what they did. verse 23 and when they had
ordained them elders in the plural you guys see that in some of
the churches what did it say right so what you see happening
here is now structure being implemented in the midst of a divine work
that God has established the work is established is organically
alive but it doesn't have structure Like when you plant something,
onions, tomatoes, grapes, what have you, what you have to do
in order to make sure those plants are healthy is establish structures. parameters and boundaries. And
you often put staves down so those plants can grow up healthy,
reaching the highest level of growth and fruit and productivity.
It appears like those plants are being encumbered by elements
that are imposing them. But really what's happening is
those plants are being guided so that they can grow straight
and grow healthy. Am I making some sense? I remember
years ago in a debate with someone years and years and years ago,
who was basically an anti-authoritarian type of person. And they were
opposing the idea of leadership in the church, leadership everywhere. You see that today, folks oppose
everything today. We call it the postmodern sort
of disease of being against everything. I don't believe in anybody having
authority over me. And I said to that individual,
because his argument was, I could grow without the church. I can grow just fine with me
and Jesus without church government, our church leadership. And I
said, yeah, you might grow, but you're going to grow lopsided.
You guys hear what I'm saying? If you know anything about horticulture,
if you want a plant to grow straight, you got to stave it. You got
to bind it. So it grows straight. So some
believers grow very distorted and lopsided. And where you grow
distorted and lopsided, your usefulness is diminished because
you can't see clearly growing lopsided. Are you guys hearing
what I'm saying? You can't see clearly. And this
is where people who are growing lopsided end up getting involved
in cults and schismatic groups that are myopic in their thinking,
who miss the centrality of Christ's Lordship, and therefore they
are unproductive. These are people who are growing
the wrong way. That's a consequence of an absence of leadership or
an absence of good leadership. So in your outline, here's how
we say it. And we can talk this through if I have enough time.
Establishing biblical leadership is fundamentally the call of
elder and deacon, although I'm gonna talk to you about this
in a moment, three Greek terms that actually underscore that
those offices are viewed almost in three categories. One of them
is the Greek term episcopate, And the word episcopate is literally
the word for overseer, overseer. The other word is presbyter. And the term presbyter is the
literal term for elder, elder. And then there is another word
called poimena. And poimena is the term for shepherd. or pastor. Now, none of these
terms are distinguished in your English Bible. You'd have to
know the Greek language to know this, but I'm gonna show you
here in the text, how these offices work, both in terms of function
and their role. The first thing that we mark
in point two, part A is that in the church of God, Only men
are called to be pastors elders and deacons The gauntlet is thrown
down now and the war is on boom The gauntlet is thrown down and
the war is on and it's only that way because the church has been
affected by the culture So let me go ahead on and establish
this and show you here in a biblically in a moment Why I I throw the
gauntlet down have done it for 20 years. I You don't have any
place in the New Testament where God establishes women as pastors. Nowhere. Pastor, but there's
women all over planet earth. Yeah, but not in the word of
God. So how is that the case? Well, we won't get into that
at length. What we're gonna do now is just work through the
few texts of scripture that underscore what's taking place here in Acts
chapter 14, verse 23. And when they had ordained them
elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting. They commended
them to the Lord on whom they had believed. So when we talk
about an elder, we're talking about first Timothy chapter three,
verses one through 13. Let's look at first Timothy chapter
three. We won't exhaust this, but I will call your attention
to it because this is where we have to go to actually deal with
what we call the qualifications of leadership in the church,
which is essential to the strengthening of the church. So in first Timothy
chapter three, verse one through 13, which is really a very important
model, as we'll see here in a moment, the apostle Paul now is telling
Timothy to do exactly what Paul and Barnabas had been doing,
establishing elders. And here's what he says in verse
one of chapter three. Are you there? This is a true
saying. If a man desired the office of
a what? Bishop that word bishop in the
English is our Greek word Episcopate in the Greek Okay, that's what
a bishop is a bishop is an overseer. That's our Greek term Episcopate
just to let you know if anyone desire to be a bishop and then
we're gonna tie these together with one New Testament verse
in the book of Peter to show you how it works to be a bishop.
He desires a good work but now mark the qualifications of the
bishop a Bishop then must be what a This is a character qualification. In other words, when you hear
people say, I think I'm called to be a pastor. Well, let's test
that call. And when we test that call biblically,
we have to examine your character. Every hoodlum is not called to
be a pastor. And I'm going to share with you
why before we're done tonight. But today you hear everybody
say, I think I'm called to the ministry. Well, you don't have
to think you are called to the ministry, but it may not be to
the ministry of pastorate. Are you guys following what I'm
saying? Every believer is called to the ministry, but now watch how
the language works. A Bishop then must be blameless.
The wife of one husband. Is that what your Bible said?
What does it say? Very important. So now when you
get into what we call indicatives and details of instructions,
If we actually say we believe the word of God, we actually
have to take heed to these qualifications laid out here, don't we? Right.
So right now we're being constrained by a divine guidance on the part
of God through Paul to actually determine who will be qualified
leaders in the church in the area of Bishop, episcopate, or
overseers. This would be the model for the
pastors. Ordination services, preparation for ministry is always
a deep, exhaustive exposition of 1 Timothy 3 for any pastor. A bishop then must be blameless,
the husband of one wife, vigilant. Do you see the word vigilant?
So now vigilant is a term that means that he has the characteristic
of watchfulness, and discernment of his culture, of his environment,
and of the things of God. When you meet a man who is a
sane to be called to the ministry of pastorate, he better be blameless
in his character. And what that means is he cannot
be legitimately charged by others as living an immoral lifestyle
or an unethical lifestyle. You guys see that? I want to
make sure that we press this home tonight so that you can
see why our churches are messed up today. So the leader in the
church must be blameless. This is not what we call impeccable
blamelessness or morally flawless. It means that he cannot be lawfully
blamed by the culture in the church or the world as being
a crook, as being a manipulator, as being a con, fraudulent, as
being a whoremonger or drunkard or anyone for whom even the normative
qualities of a good person are now questioned. Are you guys
hearing me? Right. He cannot have a checkered
history up to the present. He cannot have people who will
come up and say, you know what? I know him and I know over here,
his life is a mess. He would not pass ordination
and enter into service in any of our conservative churches
because he would be a questionable man. Are you guys following the
logic? And we'll talk about that here
in a moment, the implications. It says a bishop, they must be
blameless. The husband of four or five wives. Is that what it says? Right. And again, the second cloth has
given the church a tizzy because of the momentum and drive of
the world in the opposite direction, still mandating to be part of
the church. When God says if the common membership
in the church has to swim upstream, how much more so the leadership
of the church? If every believer has to swim
upstream, how much more so leadership? And if the common believer is
struggling like I don't know what to swim upstream, what the
hell it goes through. If it doesn't have leadership
swimming upstream in front of them, will they have any confidence
to make it to their desired goal? That's not a rhetorical statement.
That's a question. Will they make it? Will the believer
make it if he's trying to swim upstream and every time he turned
around, he see a leader falling? Will he be encouraged to make
it? He wouldn't be encouraged, right? Right. So, you know, as
a general rule, this is not true for everyone, but this is a general
rule. As the leaders are, so are the people. That's why children
don't hardly ever rise higher than their mom and their daddy.
Because examples really do affect us. And it takes the grace of
God to overcome the low ebb of those who influenced us as our
elders. And this is why in the church
of Jesus Christ, it is critical that leadership have the characteristics
to which others then are seeking to aspire, or that you can depend
upon. What if your pastor was a pathological
liar? Could you trust me? Rami, could
you trust me if you found out that I was just lying out of
both sides of my mouth week in and week out? You couldn't trust
me, could you? Right. But then I'd be a temptation
to you, would not? I provoke you to be lying and
manipulating the economy. And even if you were struggling
with that, when you got a pastor, you know, is consistent. He's
going to be an encouragement to you to work to overcome that. Is that true? Right. This is
what this is talking about. And then because we understand
the three major covenant models of the Bible, don't we? The first
covenant model is what? Father, son. Second covenant
model is what? King servant. The last covenant
model is what? You can't get away from it. You
can't, not when you know the gospel. The husband-wife paradigm
is the reason why leadership in the church must not capitulate
to the world. You can't have leaders in the
church who capitulate to the world system, who despises a
heterosexual marriage paradigm. Are you guys following me so
far? So if your churches are doing what the world is doing,
then your churches have abandoned the biblical protocol. You guys
follow what I'm getting. We're getting ready to see because
we have capitulated on leadership. We've opened the door for anybody
to be a pastor who feels like it. And we failed to understand
that God operates in covenant because it's a, it's God is bearing
witness to his own character and nature through the church
so that the world can get right with God through the image bearing
witness of the church. Y'all follow that, right? So
the text says, He is not only to be blameless, the husband
of one wife, vigilant, an individual who actually can speak to you
discerningly about the traps and snares and gins and pits
of our culture, who he has a very sound and healthy biblical worldview.
He can actually help you understand why the trends of culture are
going in the direction that they are and show you biblically why
it's dangerous. He can show you that. and he's
the kind of person that you're not going to find constantly
inebriated by the culture's ways. You're just not going to find
that with a healthy pastor. Because his job is to watch. That's what
a bishop is. If a bishop is an overseer, if
an episcopate is an overseer, and the root term episcopate
is the word scope. You see that word scope? S-K-O-P-E. You know, we use that in our
common vernacular to see, right? He's scoping you out. And ephe
means to be upon or around, and therefore his job is to actually
oversee the welfare of the flock. Now to do that, he's got to be
doing what? Watching. He's got to see things other
people don't see because he's a watchman. But as we learned
on Sunday, Saul's men were sleeping dogs, weren't they? Sleeping
dogs, loving to slumber. And that's why his sword and
his water was taken. And our churches, a lot of our
churches have pastors who are just as bad. And the congregation
is always in detriment when our leaders are not vigilant and
not sober. And what kind of behavior? Good behavior. Do you guys see
that? Good behavior. Good behavior. Given to what? Hospitality and capable of what? Right. If your pastor doesn't
know how to teach, if he's not a hospital person, the term hospitable
means that he is approachable. Pastor has to be approachable.
I'm going to show you that if you bear with me, that that is
an a non-negotiable role given to the shepherd. The shepherd
cannot be non-approachable. It's not possible. Now you don't
get to live with him. You ain't living with me. I know everything in my passive
refrigerator. No, you don't. No, you don't. I don't wanna
know what's in yours. You're not gonna know what's
in mine. But if you ask for something, I'm gonna give you something,
but you're not gonna know every detail of my life. Right? So
they're often extremes. People go to, you know what I'm
talking about? Extremes. And those are ridiculous. They
wanted a role of pastor is to help the congregation strike
what we call common sense balance in life. You don't get to know
everything about everybody. Now, if you want to know everything
about everybody, pull your whole life story out and lay it on
the table, let them see it. And then maybe somebody will,
um, will reciprocate with you, but it won't be me. Are you guys
hearing what I'm saying? But now if you do the work carefully
of being a shepherd, just like we learned in the life of David,
the reason why Israel loved David was because David went in and
out among the people, didn't he? He didn't go hide up in his
castle and didn't come down and be with the people. He didn't
get on his high horse and call himself the anointed man of God
that couldn't be touched. Right? And so the qualifications
here fit fundamentally a really well-balanced man who understands
his moral ethics and spiritual values, who is also bound by
covenant. It's very important that your
leaders are bound by covenant. And the most personal and profound
covenant to which he is to be bound is the covenant of marriage.
Because in the context of marriage, your leaders are going to have
to face realities that he would not have to face outside of it.
Like some of our churches tolerate single men. That's utterly ridiculous. And thus your scandal goes, right?
He's getting with this chick and that chick and the other
chick and everybody in the church knows it. And that's not a Bible
church. Just understand it now. That's
not a real Bible church. It doesn't work. It just doesn't
work. The pastor who's supposed to
be the shepherd don't get to play with all the hens in the
hen house. You don't get to do that, but
it goes on, doesn't it? Right, and it's a real terrible
thing when that happens. And I love to cast this vision
around that just in case you guys have been affected by it,
because our churches are often so contaminated. When I actually
speak aside about things, there's always several people who have
been affected by the very things I talk about. So you might be
a person here, a woman or a man who has been accosted by, controlled
by an abusive leader in the church and they have touched to the
wrong place and you have heard the reputation of them getting
with this person or that person very, very bad is far more prolific
than we want to be honest about. It's an iceberg that really needs
to be exposed. So when it doesn't get exposed,
darkness prevails like that. But it's very important for us
to know that those things should not be tolerated. because they
actually cause people to blaspheme God. Remember I told you there's
a lot of people on the outside of the church because they see
all that crap going on in the church and they figure what the
heck, right? Why should I do it? And so when
our text says he should be the husband of one wife, what that
means is when a man is occupying both the role of being a leader
in the church and also a leader in the home, those tandem roles
are designed to keep him humble. because being married is hard
enough. Can I get a witness? Now watch
this. It's hard enough. I told you,
you're deceived, brothers, when you say yes, deceived. But God means that to actually
strengthen your character in the context of humility. Because
if you do marriage right, you got to depend upon God's power
because you can't force anybody in your family to do right, you
have to influence them. Am I telling the truth? You have
to influence your wife, don't you? You can't force your wife.
It ain't gonna happen in America, no way. I keep telling people,
you're not forcing American women to do nothing. No, black women,
Latino women, I didn't discover it even with my Asian sisters.
You're not forcing them. You're not going to force them
in the West to do anything because they know their rights. So you
have to be able to influence them. And what that requires
is the grace of God operating in you to actually get to know
them, right? It's called rules of engagement,
right? One, two, and three. Without
that, you're not going to be a good model. And a pastor who
doesn't have a really healthy relationship with his wife is
going to be a miserable pastor and be very limited in his capacity
to work in the church. It's just true. So this is why
Paul says this. And I'll tell you why in a moment
as we work through it. So he says here in verse two,
a Bishop, there must be blameless. The husband of one wife, vigilant,
sober, good behavior, given hospitality, able to teach verse three, not
given to wine. Do you see it? He can't be a
drunkard. He can't be a partier. Look at
the next one. Not a striker. Do you see that?
You can't find your pastor throwing down every weekend on somebody. Did you see something there?
That was my pastor at 7-Eleven, man. The dude just looked at
him in the wrong way. He just went straight off on
him. That's called a striker. In other words, he's ready to
fight at the drop of a hat. And you and I are going to deal
with the warfare language in the rules of engagement three
in May because you and I know that the language of warfare
is so endemic in our, uh, in our speech patterns and in our
interactions that we find ourselves fighting with the people we love
because we don't actually discern that we are operating in levels
of defensiveness that are so intensified that we are constantly
misunderstanding each other and don't know how to reconcile because
we are in a warfare mode. Right? Is that true? Right. And
that warfare mode operates with husbands and wives and parents
and children and children and children and vice versa. Cause
we don't discern that we are in a hostile battle that we have
to learn how to fence in and control. But the pastor can't
be the fellow that's always throwing down with somebody. So he can't
be getting high. He can't be throwing down and
he can't be greedy, a filthy Luka. I saw King James term for
giving to a bunch of money. Most of your pastors are disqualified
right now, right there. Is that true? They're all jacked
up. Ah, I was laughing with one of
my deacons last week after we did our brother's funeral. And,
uh, cause in front of my car in back, my car was a Rolls Royce.
He's telling me it was a past the pastor duty. No, What's this
dude driving a Rolls-Royce? He's a pastor driving a Rolls-Royce.
What, he got 5,000 people in his church? No, he got about
50 people in his church. How the heck he driving a Rolls-Royce?
Right? It's all lopsided. See, even
if he had an inheritance from his great, great, great, great,
great granddaddy, just because he has a small congregation,
he shouldn't be operating that way. because it's a threat to
the congregation. It becomes incongruent because
of his role as a shepherd. Am I making some sense? Right,
he's causing them to stumble, being distracted by his gaudy
expression. That's a lack of wisdom. And
Paul taught us that Paul said, hey, I ain't gonna do nothing
to cause my brother to stumble. God has given me all things,
but I ain't gonna do nothing to cause my brothers to stumble. You know,
if they drive in a Volkswagen, I'm gonna roll with a Volkswagen
too. That's called love, isn't it? All right, and so this is
what is being stated here in terms of qualification. Here
it is, verse four, watch this. I'm sorry, latter part of verse
three, not given a wine, not a striker, not greedy, a filthy
looker, but what? Patient, not a what? And not
what? And these are reiterating the
same things that we've been dealing with in terms of these particular
character and attributes. Verse four, he's one that rules
well his own what? having his children in subjection
with all gravity. That is his kids are not running
around like, you know, hail razor, ruffians, Tasmanian devils. Cause that would be indicative
of him not having a healthy relationship with his kids. So, you know,
years ago, you know, I taught this years ago around the qualifications
of leadership and we're getting ready to have another leadership
class. And these rules are coming right back up once again, because
if the pastor doesn't know how to handle his children, particularly
when they hit teenage years and hormones and all kinds of other
things are happening, he's not gonna be able to advise the congregation
when their families have kids that are going through those
same pitfalls too. Are you guys following that logic?
How can a pastor who either doesn't have kids or doesn't have control
on his own kids counsel you who do? That's a recipe for disaster. Are you guys hearing me? That's
a recipe for disaster because you are looking to your leaders
to have been a little bit further along than you to carve out a
path so that you can take some of their tricks and work with
it. Right? This is why I never ordained
single men to the ministry. Never. Never ordain them. They'll
never, at grace, be elder or deacon or pastor until they meet
these qualifications. Because they may be a good teacher
in the Word of God, but they can't actually teach extensively
because they don't have the experience that these texts are mandating.
Are you guys following that logic? Right. And then God won't approve
of them in that regard either. You always have these problematic
issues going on. There are always what we call
little exceptions to the rule, both in the Old Testament and
New Testament that we could think about. But here's what we call
the general rules. Having his own children in subjection
with all gravity doesn't mean they have to be saved. That just
means they have to respect him and be able to demonstrate a
cordiality of fidelity to dad, where people know he has a healthy
relationship with them and them with him. Very important. You guys follow that? Now watch
this. Here's the argument in verse 5. For if a man know not
how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church
of God? Do you see the parallelisms?
We call these parallelisms. So the husband-wife paradigm
is Christ in the church, is it not? That's Christ in the church. Christ in the church. But if
the leadership doesn't actually follow that paradigm, then it
can't reinforce the marriage of the church to Christ, can
it? because the leadership is not actually operating out of
what we call the final covenant paradigm. And that's very important. If you have in your outline point
number two, men only are to be called, they should be married.
You see that, right? They should be married. This
is what we call the husband-wife covenant model. The home should
demonstrate a what kind of rule? Right. Kingdom rule. That's what
the home should model. A kingdom rule. That's first
Timothy three, five, 15. You see in your outline, Titus
chapter 1, 6, that's because Titus is a pastoral epistle too,
and he's reiterating the same thing. We don't have to go there.
He reiterates the same thing in that text. So that becomes
the model. In our text, I want to just go
to one more verse to affirm the status of deacons. The parallelism
between the deacons and the elders, or the pastor, is critical because
character is needed just as seriously with the deacons as with the
elders. They don't get a chance to get away from character qualifications. So now watch this. Notice what
it says, verse eight. Likewise, must the
deacons be grave, not given to double-tonguedness, not given
to much wine, and not greedy or filthy lucre. You see the
same qualifications there? Watch your mouth. Deacons. Don't
be a drunkard. Deacons. And don't be given to
greediness. Now, I want to just talk briefly
about those three categories for a moment and show you something. Loose lips do what? That's right. Right. And this is true in every
kind of relationship on the planet. Let's take a husband wife relationship.
If a wife doesn't understand the principle of discretion and
confidentiality, when it comes to her husband and her kids,
where she got girlfriends, where she lets her slip show every
day, that's old Southern language for letting your private parts
be exposed. It's metaphorical to your own
home. where you got people that you
just undressing your whole family in front of, where everybody
knows, where those persons know everything about your family's
business and nobody in your family gave you permission to tell them
you are an indiscreet, unprincipled person. You actually are betraying
your family's trust. Are you guys hearing me? I'm
going to say it again so I can come home. The wife doesn't have
the right to undress her husband. Because when you undress your
husband, you undress yourself. You might as well pull your slip-on
up. Because the twain become what? Is that true? The twain
become what? The twain become what? So you're
not out there telling people about how bad your husband is
or how bad your wife is. Also, don't do it with your kids.
Don't do it with your kids. Don't talk bad about your kids
to everybody. If your kids are going through
different struggles and challenges, if they want to tell somebody
about it, let them tell it. Don't you tell it. Am I making
some sense? Don't you tell it. Cause you
know, you know how parents get parents will act like they can
tell everything about the kids. Is it true? Then is it embarrassing
when you get around your mama and she got to tell him, yeah,
I remember when he was mama, shut up. You know, Right, so
you guys remember that, so you young people be careful not to
do it. Think in terms of your kids as a safe deposit box or
treasury notes. You're not gonna leave that box
open for anybody to go in and take out those notes. If you
practice that kind of value towards your kids, watch this, they'll
do it in return. That was good whether you know
it or not. So now watch this, watch this. So like when you bring your kids
to church and you send them to Sunday school, if y'all talking
about your kids, guess what your kids doing in Sunday school?
Telling all the family business to miss Sunday school teacher.
And it works its way all the way up the pastor. Now we know
all your business cause you letting all your business out there.
Does that make some sense? Right. So it's not that we're
being secretive. Remember the term secret and
private are two different words. Did y'all get what I just said?
Secret and private are two different words. Private means we know,
but we don't what? See, see, we, we know we all
jacked up. Right. Can I get a witness? and tell the truth, but we don't
see it because you're not just opening the doors like, like
Noah's son did and letting everybody in the tent. No, keep that tent
shut. Shut. What, what they do in behind
that tent is their private business. All right, that's their private
business. So what Paul is doing here is he's regulating the moral
ethical framework for leadership so that it's modeled in the church
so that over time, here's what you have in the community of
the saints. When new people come in, they'll notice that saints
won't go down certain roads of dialogue with you. When you start
going down certain roads, you'll notice a spiritual distancing
taking place, or if the saint is strong enough, The saints
will say, hey, you know what? This is the wrong word. Let's
back up and go down this road. Are you following what I'm getting
at? Otherwise, you're talking about all kinds of scandals in
the church. We're learning something tonight. Are we learning something
tonight? Right, right. And see, these are just part
of what we call biblical leadership qualification rules, that if
you don't have them, you're asking for a mess if the leaders don't
model it. Going back to my deacons, because this is the challenge
with deacons and some elders, But I was all of them the deacon
stands between the elder leadership and the congregation And he gets
volleyed like a tennis ball by the congregation all over the
place the deacon volleyed Because the congregation is just as manipulative
and cunning and slick as all get up They'll work their way
up to the deacon and handle him They will handle the deacon Because
the deacon is the most wonderful person in the church. He can
do no wrong. They will flatter the deacon
and build a relationship with the deacon. And if the deacon
is stupid, he will actually think that he knows more than leadership
because they will have gotten to his head and the deacon will
end up exercising loose lips. That's called the double tongue.
He'll say one thing to the people, another thing to his upline.
Now the people got him because now he's catering to their attention
and they're working him because they've been saying to him for
years now, we wish you were the pastor. And the pastor keeps
telling the deacon, boy, you don't want this job. I'm here
to tell you, you don't want this job. And that's just what goes
on in the church, isn't it? Is this what goes on? This is
why the rule is given here in verse eight. Let your deacons
be grave Is that what it says you shouldn't be able to tickle
him that easy Have you ever met those kids growing up because
I'm a person I get tickled real easy physically you touch me
I'm allowed And I'm gonna touch you back because I like making
you feel like I feel right so stay with me for a moment but
have you ever met that person you go to touch and they just
don't move and Just don't move. Like, what's wrong with you?
Can anything make you funny? Laugh, too? Right? Do you guys understand what I'm
saying? I used to really wonder about people. You could just,
I mean, you could do all that, get at their feet. You know how
you get everybody get? Well, I think that's overkill. I think, you know, I think we
should all be able to laugh and be tickled, but not easily. Not
easily, because once you are tickled, you are vulnerable.
You get that? Once you're tickled, you're vulnerable.
And when deacons are, when they enter an office and they have
those longings to be accepted and those longings to be approved,
and they can be tickled by the flattering ears of members, then
they can be isolated and manipulated to commit espionage against the
leadership of the church. And that's a problem. That's
why our text very plainly says, do not be double tongued. not
given too much wine, and not greedy or filthy looker. All
of these will set leadership up at that level for problems. He must be holding the mystery
of the faith in a pure conscience. That is deacons who are dealing
with a lot of the problematic elements in the church, and then
conveying them to eldership to help negotiate working out those
problems. He, they need to have clear consciences. and you can't
have a clear conscience when you are a double agent. You have
to be a sociopath when you're a double agent, right? You guys
follow the logic, right? And so a clear conscience is
a person who has boundaries and have principles of ethics by
which they just won't cross certain lines so that they can answer
to the upline authentically and deal with the downline effectively. You guys got that, right? So
healthy deacons will check you. And when you get checked by their
authority, now you wake up to the reality that God gave them
divine authority to stop you when you're crossing lines. That's
what leadership is supposed to be. Now watch this, and then
I'm going to open the floor for a few questions just so I can satisfy
them if you have them, and I hope you do. And let these also first
be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon being
found blameless. See, they have to be blameless
too. Again, it's not impeccable, flawless sinlessness. It just
means that they've lived a legacy of a lifestyle that the culture,
the community in the church and out the church knows this due
to be upright. Verse 11, even so must their
wives be what? Not slanderers, sober and faithful
in all things. Now this is true both for the
pastor's wives and for the elder's wives, as well as for the deacons.
There must be a compatibility factor between the leadership
that is male and their spouses who are female, right? There
must be a compatibility there. Are you guys going to learn this
in our first Abigail class? Why it is that God exalted Abigail,
you're going to see that there's a compatibility principle that
she was qualified with that led her to her place of prominence. What this also means, ladies,
is that If you have husbands that are aspiring to ministry,
your job is to aid in a bet and advance their qualifications
by your cooperation and by your developing qualities too, that
are consistent with his. Because if you don't, he may
never ever attain to the office. And if he does, his life is going
to be miserable because of your low living. Does that follow? Very important now again, and
I'm gonna stop here for the night. We'll pick this up a little later
If you don't understand the trend of our text, I want you to get
this now Here's the trend of our text. The trend of our text
is the formation of the body of Christ Starting from the head
down and when that formation is established what you have
is the proto evangel and foundational covenant objective of God in
the model of a husband and wife who point to Christ in the church.
I'm going to say it again. When the formation of the body
is established correctly, the heterosexual binary relationship
between a man and a woman, which is the only gender specificity
that God acknowledges. Are you guys hearing me? Male
and female in the context of covenant where they compliment
each other and serve each other is the overarching paradigm of
scripture that points to Christ in the church. Are you guys hearing
me? Watch this. So when leadership
reinforces that paradigm by every leader operating out of that
model, you strengthen a local body of believers to follow that
same paradigm and it doesn't so easily fracture into the cultural
corruption that you and I are experiencing all over our world.
Are you guys hearing what I'm saying? Right. So now again,
I want to say one more thing and then I'll open up the floor.
If we violate the rules here and we open up leadership to
women and homosexuals and single persons, because everybody got
a gift, you will not have the biblical covenant model. Do you
hear what I just said? We can talk about that, but you
will not have it. And this is where your churches
are collapsing. They're collapsing because they don't have the authority
instituted in leadership as a model of Christ in the church. This
is called a biblical worldview, essential to reinforcing what
it means to be a new creature in Christ. See, God is restoring. He's not affirming the brokenness.
He's restoring the brokenness. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? And that's critical for you to understand. As you'll
learn on Sunday, restoration is what God is up to. And that
restoration has to be exhibited in leadership. Without it, the
enemy will have its way in the church and it will lose its witness.
Questions? Anybody got questions? Raise
your hand if you got a question. Let's run one or two. One or
two, two or three. Anybody got no question? Yes.
Going once. OK. Anybody else got a question? Raise your hand if you got one.
I have a friend that mother is a pastor at the church she goes
to. And I was telling her about Titus and Timothy. And they came
back with Romans 16, 3 through 5. And the argument was, well,
Priscilla and Aquila had church in their house. And how should
I respond to that? Or what would be a good way to
respond to that? Mm hmm. Yeah. So there's a whole liberal
theology around that. If any of you guys know the battles
that have been going on in theology and what you would say is that
if you actually believe that Romans chapter 16 verses five
and following is actually dealing with church government, then
everything you read in first Timothy three and Titus chapter
one and first Timothy chapter two has to be thrown out. So
now follow this logic. And this is where hermeneutics
sound interpretation comes in. You can't interpret one passage
one way and that interpretation militate against clear and explicit
passages over here. This is what we call the analogy
of scripture. The Bible harmonizes. This is
God's word. So if in Romans chapter 16, it
talks about Phoebe, the deacon. And then it goes on to talk about
Aquila and Priscilla having church in their house. What we know
it can't mean is that it overthrows 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 and 1
Timothy 2. So we have to conclude that what's
taking place in Romans 16 is not an official church, but a
gathering of people into their house, Priscilla and Aquila,
and other leaders actually leading, if that's an official church
or a Bible study taking place. The Aquila, who is the male,
is actually the pastor, while his wife is a teacher. But they're
not going to actually be operating contrary to what Paul under the
Holy Ghost is teaching right here. Does that follow you guys?
Right. You can't interpret one passage over here in a way that
violates another passage over here. That would be contradicting
the scriptures. And that's the problem with liberal
interpretation today. They just isolate the text. Okay? And so what they're doing is
isogenically reading into assumptions that are not there, not regulating
their interpretation by the larger scope of scripture. Does that
make some sense to you guys? It's very important for us to know
that. You can never draw a conclusion in the text of scripture that
you're at, that militates against other clear teachings of scripture.
The plain things always regulate the difficult things. Otherwise,
you can just pick and choose in your Bible what you want to
believe, what teaches what. And now your Bible is a bunch
of disjointed precepts that can be interpreted any kind of way
you want to. So you can give them this CD and that'll help
them with that. But that's not going to change
people's desires to be pastors, okay? So anybody else got any
other questions? Right here, here's one. any any
any questions from any of my sister's you are okay there you
go said he can run it over a my actual not like you got a question
uh... if that's not the subject of
uh... autonomous economy uh... christian
promised christian uh... what would be a good example
of of being more uh... involved with the body of Christ?
Is it meeting brothers and sisters
at designated places? Or is it coming to the church
in fellowship with the church? What would you suggest on that? I don't know what you mean. If
I'm going to be presumptuous to reframe your question, I'll
do that, OK? All right. The nature of the church today
is that it's already set up for a collaborative interaction among
its members. We're not in the first century.
We're in the 21st century. Y'all may not know that, but
we haven't done 2100 years of church. So we actually do integrated
church life. Well, it's just that we're not
doing it often from a crystal centric Bible based approach.
And so we're losing the power. When we talk about autonomy,
we're talking about people who are not willing to grow into
the body so that they can benefit mutually from the members of
the body so that they can actually be more authentic in their fruit
berry. This is the, this is the, to the undoing of the individual
Christian. Cause your own personal sanctification cannot be healthy
without other people. It cannot be healthy without
other people. You cannot be a healthy Christian
by yourself. But the work of the gospel is
virtually never done singularly. Like from the top down, we are
fully integrated in the work. What I do requires what everybody
else does. Does that make some sense? It
requires all of the parts working together. So whenever we come
together, we are functioning collaboratively. So we come to
here and then we go to speak. We come to here and we go to
speak. And even when you go, we're going
together in one sense. So then when you meet up with
people saved or unsaved, you are now influencing them as a
consequence of the collective gathering of the saints, which
is frequent enough in the course of a week to where now you're
not going by yourself. But we're talking about those
cases where individuals do not fellowship in a healthy way on
a consistent basis so that they can actually have a barometer
of determining, are they out of kilter? Are they lopsided?
Or are they getting it straight? And so I hope that helps with
you. We're not stating that there are times when you have assignments
where God is using you to deal with an individual. Obviously
that would be the case, right? But even then you're not really
doing it by yourself if you're part of a healthy body, because
you should be telling somebody, hey, God has given me an assignment
to deal with this person, that person. Can you pray for me?
Or do you have some guidance? Or do we have some material?
Am I making some sense? That's how that gets done, right?
That's how that gets done. Couple things I'll say about
that and I'm dealing with that right now because I'm about to
get into a debate over this issue of the cessation of the works
of the Spirit or the gifts of the Spirit versus a continuation
of them the language is That that language is volatile It's
volatile language. I mean if we actually believe
in words, it's volatile language for you to say the Holy Ghost
said to you to say to somebody else, you better be very careful
when you use that terminology. God doesn't play. Church folk
love to act like they sleep at God's elbow. No, they do. They love to act
like they got a special interest into the oval office in heaven.
And God got a mat where they can lay down and just, they can
get in special personal conversation with God all day long. And the
Lord told me, right? It's best to actually couch your
language so that the Lord doesn't prove you to be a liar. This
is one of the things I may be talking about, the danger of
the Holy Ghost, this, the Holy Ghost, that, the Holy Ghost,
this. Jeremiah chapter 23, God said, plainly, if you have a
dream, tell them it was your dream. When you speak my word,
then tell them that was my word that you're speaking. But warn
to him that says, thus saith the Lord, and the Lord has not
said thus. That's Jeremiah 23, just in case
you didn't know. God doesn't like for you to take his name
and attach it to your unctions and say, the Lord told me. Now,
let's say that you are a spiritually mature Christian. And the Lord
lays on your heart concerns about a brother or a sister, okay? And he's gonna do that. He's
gonna just do that. And you know things about them
or what have you, and you are compelled to wanna share with
them the burden you feel about what they're dealing with. There's
nothing wrong with saying, I feel like I'm being compelled by God
to share with you what I'm about to share with you. Does that
make some sense? I feel like I'm being compelled
by God to share this. That's much more guarded language. Cause now I say, if you decide
to say, you know, you know, an individual is committing fornication
and you, you, you, you, you have a way with that individual. It
doesn't do any good to say, you know, sister, such and such,
the Lord gave me a revelation about what you and him are doing.
No, no, no, no, no. He didn't give you a revelation.
He gave you a Bible verse. Just tell him what the Bible
says. Cause see, when you, when you
go, when you do that, you are actually exalting yourself. You're
exalting yourself. And this is one of the defaults
of the hyper charismatic movement, self exaltation. And when you
do that, you create all kinds of breaches with people. I'd
much rather you tell me, you know, pastor man, you know, I
got some issues with you. And I think this Bible verse
supports that. Can I share it with you? Absolutely. But don't
tell me you stayed up all night long and the Lord gave you a
word for me because now I'm going to actually be very critical
of that because you didn't need that false authority to tell
me something that you explicitly know about me. Now, if you just
stepping out there on the carpet to assume you know something
about me, be ready to be corrected. Because we shouldn't be rushing
up on our brothers and sisters ever to talk about fixing their
problems like that. Ever. Do you guys hear what I
just said? You don't rush up on your brothers
and sisters assuming it's your job to fix their problem. You just don't do it. You have
to have an assignment to be at that person's life. God has to
give you an assignment And then you better do some real checks
and balances as to whether or not that's your assignment. With
people who are healthy about ministry, they will come pastor,
you know, I've learned some things about this person and I actually
know them, I have a way in their life. Do you think this is a
good approach? I was dealing with that today, the very thing
today. And I might say, yeah, do that. Do you have another
person that actually can go with you? Now we're actually being
biblical and approaching our brother or sister in a carefulness
that is accountable and walking in the light before it turns
into he say, she say, and then it's straight gossip. Do you
guys hear what I'm saying? Any other questions? Is Jesus
sovereign? Yeah, of course he is. Of course
they are. Of course they are. Right. Now,
you guys, this is Cal Days on a whole nother subject. You ain't
even close to this subject, okay? But I'm gonna just deal with
it while it's here, just because that's what I do. So people struggle
with the doctrine of the Trinity. They shouldn't. It just requires
humility and submitting yourself to the scriptural testimony.
So the Bible is clear that there are three persons in the Godhead,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Bible is very clear about
that. And there are individual persons. They're not one person
that operate out of three modes. It's just nonsensical. Are you
guys following me so far? So we don't believe in a unipersonal
God. We believe in a tri-personal
God. This is what makes him distinctly different than you and me. You
and I are unipersonal till we get loaded and then our other
alter ego comes out. All right, so I'm gonna leave
that alone for a second. You know how the other person
comes out? And you might even be talking to him. Right, so
no, God made you as a unipersonal being. You are you. That's what
makes us different than God. He didn't make us dual personalities,
bi-personalities or tri-personalities or what. But in the mystery of
this one God is three persons. And they have a object-subject,
subject-object relationship where they know each other. This is
what we call indexing. When you are a real person, you
are able to say, I am Jesse. That's called indexing, and he
made every one of you. I am ego. I mean, Jesus is an
ego. I mean, the father is an ego.
I mean, the Holy Ghost is an ego. I mean, they know themselves
and they know each other and they communicate with each other.
Are you guys hearing me? This is called community in unity. He is the revelation of what
we're supposed to be as a community. This is why he said, let us make
man in our image. Are you following? Right, so
then within the ontological nature of the three, there is a hierarchy,
father, son, and Holy Ghost. This can't be denied, even though
it is argued. And within that hierarchy, What
the church has understood is that the son of God is eternally
begotten of the father from all eternity. That means he never
had a beginning, but his relationship with God, the father is filial. That's why he's called the son.
You guys got that logic. The Holy ghost does not have
a filial relationship with the father. He has a spiritual relationship
with the father. That's why he is not called the
son. Filio is when you have a begotten relationship where now we have
the father and we have the son. Does that make sense? So hierarchically,
the father will always precede the son. Are you following the
logic? Right. So, but when we're dealing
with God, we're dealing with an eternal reality. So we're
not dealing with chronological order. We're simply dealing with
relational order. and that's inherent in their
personal properties as God the father and God the son. Inherent
in the personal properties of the triune God is a father-son
spirit relationship. It's not chronological. It's
relational. But whenever the son speaks of
the father, he always says the father is greater than I. He
is not speaking in terms of the qualitative or quantitative nature
of his deity. He's speaking in terms of the
character of relationship. Y'all follow the logic? Like
my sons bear all the same qualities of humanity that I do. They are
equally men as I am. No distinction, equality of persons,
but I am their father and they will never have that equality
with me. They can never ever say they
are the father and I'm the son. Follow the logic. They will always
say I'm daddy. That's why I tell them I'll get
in your case any day. Even when I'm a hundred years
old, I'll still get in your case. Kidding. But my point is that
what Carol Dare speaking to is, Is there a sense in which only
the father has sovereignty? Well, no, they're all God. And because they're all God,
they're all sovereign. And every predicate of the Godhead
is attributed to all three persons because of their deity. And thus
you see within the demonstration of scripture, the sovereignty
of Christ. His power, his rule, his dominion,
his exercising right to do what he will when he will do it. But
in his exercising right to do what he will when he does it,
he never ever violates his own father's will because their unity
is impeccable. His will is individual, but it
never conflicts with his father's will. Do you guys follow that
logic? In other words, they don't have
the same will as if their wills are confused together. They have
individual wills because one of the predicates of personhood
is volition. How many of y'all getting that?
I came not to do my will, but the will of him that sent me.
But then he said, father, I will that those whom you have given
me be with me. Individual wills. but their wills
never conflict like our wills conflict, the father's will,
the son's will, the spirit's will never conflict, even though
they're individual. So first John five says there
are three that bear record in heaven. And these three are what
one distinct, but unified. Does that help? All right. One
more question. If we have another question,
no more questions. All right. Let's stand for prayer. Father,
thank you for this time. Thank you for the saints that
came out tonight. Thank you for just the introduction into these
studies around leadership in government and qualifications
for a healthy church. May no one stumble. May no one
be offended by these things. May we all learn what the mystery
of your will is and why you raised up the church to be that institution
by which the breadth and length and height and depth of the love
of God in Christ would be seen by the world and how your wisdom,
the manifold wisdom of God would be manifested through the church
that is obedient to your gospel. May we all grow gradually into
obedience to the gospel because we can't do it by ourselves.
Without your grace, it's not possible. Send us all home now
safely tonight and prepare us to worship you on Sunday, we
pray in Jesus' name, amen. God bless you guys.