1 Timothy chapter 5, you can
go there. Now understand that the word
elder, presbyteros, means older person, mature person,
wise person. And it's also the word that is
used for overseer. Timothy was an overseer. He was
younger than everybody. So there is not a requirement
of age. Because I've had somebody say,
well, all the older men in the church are elders. No, they're
elder in their age. But it doesn't mean, and they
should be elder in their maturity and wisdom and spirit. But there's
also the office of elder. Just like everybody's a deacon,
diakonos, doulos. Everybody's a slave, a servant
to one another. But there is the office of servant
and slave as well. And so there's different roles
there. Paul is telling Timothy this, as well as he does Titus
and some others, so that they can put into order the churches
of their region by appointing elders so that the church can
be governed according to the way God has commanded it. But
what happens when you have an elder who has gone cuckoo, cuckoo
for cuckoo pups? Verse 1 of chapter 5, we'll just
read this. Do not rebuke an older man. but
encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older
women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity." And
I'm not going to go any further in that. I just wanted you to
hear that. Because there is the relationship that we have inside
the church. When we see Paul teaching the
Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, he says what? Have
patience with everybody. And he tells Timothy, endure
suffering, endure false teaching with much patience. Be kind and
gentle, respectful. He also talks about to admonish
the idle, strengthen the weak, things of that nature. So that
when we are working together, even for people who are just
flat out wrong, we're patient, we're gentle, we're seasoned
with grace, we have saltiness in our words. Never should there
be a time where I beat this pulpit or come up and shake somebody
or verbally cause them to feel fearful. when they're being corrected. The fear would come from them
being fearful of God through church discipline. What happens when the pastors
do this? Verse 17, chapter 5. Let the
elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially
those who labor in preaching and teaching. So that shows us
that there is other areas, though all elders must be able to teach,
there are other roles that elders play. For the Scripture says
you must not, well that's not what I'm, do not, verse 19, here
it is. Do not admit a charge against
an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As
for those who persist in sin, you see that? Persist in sin.
What could the sin be? Could be that gambling thing
I talked to you about. It could be sexual sin. It could be public
sin whereby it's immediate disqualification and sometimes permanently. It could be doctrinal sin. It could be verbal typos. It
could be whatever. But as for those who persist
in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand
in fear. Of all what? Yeah, but what does it say? Who's
all there? Rebuke them in the presence of all. The church. Alright, rebuke them in the presence
of the church. In the presence of God, Christ Jesus, and the
elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging,
doing nothing from partiality. And then he goes on to say, don't
be hasty in laying on hands, nor take part in the sins of
others. Keep yourself pure. No longer drink water, but for
the sake of your stomach, use a little wine. for your ailments. I mean, can you imagine the garbage
that he had to go through being an elder of elders, an elder
of multiple congregations in first century Palestine? First
century Ephesus, that's where Timothy was. I mean, they almost
rioted because believing craftsmen weren't selling and buying idol
worship memorabilia. in Ephesus. They almost burned
the whole city down and killed all the apostles. Imagine what
it would be like to be in charge of all that. Drink a little wine
for your stomach. So back to the question. If an
elder is in sin, there will be witnesses. And what is happening
here is that Timothy as an elder brings the charges to the elder.
That's what happens there. So for example, I mean, as my
brothers and sisters, you see a personal sin in my life, you
see something that might, you know, we don't have to walk around
like police officers going, you got drugs in your pocket? I mean,
you know, do a search and all that kind of stuff. We're not
supposed to be like that. When things are obvious, We don't
need to be suspicious. But when things are obvious and
we see them, we go, hmm. The best course of action on
these things that aren't really serious. Now, you might say,
well, what sin is not serious? I mean, no sin is not serious.
For every sin of the elect, Christ had to die for it, even if it
was only one. He would have had to die for that one sin if it
was just the sin of rolling your eyes because of a haughty spirit. But we know the difference in
someone who has just a bad day or a bad moment or has a little
bit of an issue with a personality that just is unbecoming versus
someone who's in sin. There's a difference, y'all.
There's a difference. Humility, a lack of humility
in a pastor would be something. Being aggressive would be something.
Not giving to violence, not being a drunkard. You know the qualifications
that we've already gotten. So when we see those things not
happening as it's prescribed, You can just say something to
an elder. Is everything okay? Why? Why would you say anything
anyway? To catch him? No, to correct it. That's the
point. We correct each other because
if I'm watching you and we're having breakfast and you've got
a big egg running down your face, some people don't say anything.
I'm like, hey bro, you've got egg. betrays beards real long. I'm
sure there's many times that his wife has to go, honey, you've
got like a hot dog in your beard. I mean, you know, you've got
a hot dog in there. There's a bird too. I mean, we say, we're okay
to say something's in your teeth. It's okay to say, I've noticed
that you're off. Is everything okay? Or I've noticed
that you've had a sinful attitude about this. Kind of pray for
it. We want to correct it. We don't want to catch them.
I got it now. All right, so that's the first thing is to be sensitive
to something that's just maybe a pet peeve of yours versus a
true sin. And if you need to know, ask.
If you need to know. If it's an issue of error, we
have the Scriptures and then we have a confession that we
use to measure what we believe the Scripture says on doctrinal
things of grave importance. So if I begin to teach about
the sanctification issue, if I begin to teach that sanctification
is an issue of perfection and required for salvation, you can
go, that's not what we believe, is it? I don't think. Then you
can look in the confession, you can see it's not there. It actually
says it's not possible to have perfection and permanence. But let's just say it did happen
and you notice it. You need to go to another elder.
That's why it is unbiblical for a church to have one pastor.
And I believe it's dangerous for a church to have two pastors
because there's probably a good chance they're really close.
But if you've got three pastors or more, then you're pretty safe. Planting Grace Truth Church,
we had five elders, counting myself, and none of them were
in the body. We had to have five elders. And
even one of my mentors said, son, you don't need that biblically.
I said, yes, I do. You must be crazy. You don't
know me. I have a mega church in Claxton if I'm not careful.
I know me. I need that account. I need somebody
to watch what I'm doing and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This
is looking like a circus, not a church. Calm down now and straighten
up. So when the charge comes, it
comes to another elder. If you don't have another elder,
you're in trouble. Because what happens if there's something
in my life that you think is a sin and you stand up in a meeting
and you say, Pastor, I think you're in sin. Now everybody
who's not seen it goes, maybe he is. You see? Now the whole
congregation is thinking there's some undercurrent of wickedness
going on in the pastoral leaders. And so the witnesses, so in other
words, if somebody goes, if it's on me and somebody goes to Jesse
or to Dave and says, Pastor Tim has just really had this, and
all of a sudden somebody else comes and then somebody else
comes, they'll go, okay, that's two or more witnesses, we're
going to go see James. And then James would either be held accountable
for it and correct it or be disqualified for a season or forever. And
if it isn't corrected, then we what? We take it to the whole
church. And that's immediate. It's immediate. There are some
sins that Matthew 18 don't qualify for and those sins that are public
don't qualify for the Matthew 18 tenderness. If I lose my temper and kick
over this music stand, I'm out. I'm out. For how long? Until
you as a church deem that I've had enough humility for enough
time to stand back up here. You see? That's how that works. But if there's some sins that
are there, you bring the charge to the other elders, they bring
it to the other elder, and the elder corrects it, and then the
other elders can go back in private and report it to the ones who
brought the charge. And then the ones who saw it
can continue to look. And if it's serious enough, I
think the man needs to step down. But what you don't do is what
I think I think, I wrote about this last year, actually a year
ago in March. I think that this preacher of
mine's got something going on. Don't know what it is yet, but
I'm going to find out. And we go to Trey and we say,
hey Trey, go to Josiah, hey Josiah, watch this preacher now. And
next thing you know, I see it too, hot dog. And then we've
what? We've gathered up false witnesses. We've gossiped, murder,
murder, murder, liar, liar, liar, pants on fire. I mean, you know,
we're all just stirring division. That happens all the time. It
happens, I mean, your father's a pastor, I'm sure he's had that
happen to him. It happens all the time. to which
we either stand there and take it patiently, or we stand there
and stomp our feet and go, touch, not buying an ointment, you know,
like we were somebody, which I have yelled out in a church
building before. Twenty-two or so, I don't know how old I was,
it was stupid. But that's what you do when you're
not qualified and then you're given a church of a couple of
thousand people to pastor, because it's the right business move.
But I think that that's what we have to understand, is that
we do not just accuse, and we do not accuse continually. And not only should we not do
that to an elder, we should not do that to each other. We should
not do that to each other. I mean, what laundry list of
sins could we all come up and confess today? Get the microphone. We would never go home. We'd
all be sitting here in the same clothes Sunday morning and the
rest of the congregation comes in, what y'all doing? We've been
confessing sins since Wednesday. The kids are asleep, one of them
just wet the floor. I mean, you know, it would never
stop and I'm not downplaying the severity of sinfulness. But
what's more important is the reality of the gospel, the reality
of grace. knowing that we are indeed forgiven. And we have to be careful because
charges against an elder can ruin the entire fellowship. It
can ruin the entire fellowship. Charges against anybody heinously
and erroneously can ruin the whole fellowship. But imagine
if all of a sudden a seed was planted in the entire church
against one of the elders of this church. How hard it would
be. So that's how the scripture would
answer that question. That's how it would work. And
keep in mind, too, that what we believe is a sin and what
the Bible teaches is a sin is not necessarily sinful. Some people think it's a sin
not to wear a suit. Some people think it's a sin to drink a beer.
Some people think it's a sin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera, and that it's a holistic list of things
that you should and should not do. Some people think it's a
sin to play anything that's not in the Trinity Hymnal. I've got
friends like that. Some people think it's a sin
because I use this version of the Bible. It's wicked. They
don't want their kids to hear it. Okay, but it's not something
to divide the church over. It's not something like that.
But anyway, any other thoughts, questions? Let's say it after.
It's been an hour.