Elders and Elect Angels, (Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, August 12, 2018)

Transcription

1 Elders and Elect Angels, (Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, August 12, 2018) 17 Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and, The laborer deserves his wages. 19 Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 20 As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. 21 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. 22 Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure. 23 (No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.) 24 The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. 25 So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden. PRAY We are studying 1 Timothy on Sunday mornings at Grace and today we come to the end of chapter five. In our text for today, we read instructions the apostle Paul had for Timothy, the pastor of the church in the city of Ephesus, about elders. What, or who, are elders? Elders, or pastors, are one of two groups of officers in the church (the other officers are deacons). Church officers are those who have been given responsibility in the New Testament to make sure certain necessary church work gets done. In fact our modern word officer come the Latin word officium which means to do work. Sometimes elders are called pastors both titles are used to refer to the same office, that s the title I most often use for myself, and I ll use those terms interchangeably throughout the sermon. But what is it about elders we need to know? That will be the first point in the sermon today: Paul s instructions regarding elders. I realize no one drove to Grace this morning and said, Finally, J.D. is going to explain to us what elders do in the church! This is not a felt-need. If I were speaking at a seminary chapel or pastors conference, maybe. But why should you, most of whom aren t now and never will be elders, care about Paul s instructions? What if you re here this morning and you re not even sure you believe the claims of Christianity in the first place? Hang in there because the second point of the sermon will address that: why you should care. First, what are Paul s instructions regarding elders? Let s read verse 17: Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. First of all it says that elders are those who rule the church while also preaching and teaching. Put another way, the elders are responsible for making sure the people in the church know what the Bible says about how to live your life as a Christian (that s preaching and teaching) and the elders are responsible to seeing that the people in the church actually live out their faith (that s the ruling part). ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 1

2 I know in our highly individualistic, anti-authoritarian culture, the idea of being ruled by anyone is unappealing. But this charge to rule the church does not involve an elder calling you up to say, I m one of the elders at Grace and I want you to paint my house. It doesn t involve an elder telling you what decisions you need to make with your family, career, or finances. When a religious group operates like that, it s not a church; it s a cult. It does mean, however, that you must be personally known by the elders. It doesn t mean the elders can be best friends with every member, but we need to have some idea how you are doing so that we can be faithful to the task God has given us. What does that look like at Grace? We ve decided that we will rule the church well if we can get all of our members to participate in two ministries of the church: first, attend Sunday morning worship regularly that means most Sundays out of the month. And second, be a part of one of the Grace Bible small groups whether it s one of the new community groups that will be starting in the next few weeks, whether it s the women s Bible study or men s Bible study, whether it s a college or youth Bible study. In each one of those small groups organized by Grace the leader will be either an elder or someone trusted by the elders, so we ll feel good about what s going on in those group meetings. The elders will be in regular contact with the group leaders to make sure no members are slipping through the cracks and becoming isolated. And we trust that between those small groups and Sunday morning worship the Holy Spirit will do his work and you ll grow in grace. So please, please, in the coming weeks as we advertise these new groups, make the effort to get involved if you re not already. We re going to make it as easy as we can. And if you don t get involved, we will reach out to you to encourage you to do so. That s what elders do. Now, Paul gives five instructions to Timothy about elders. First, he says to pay them well. That s what is meant by the term double honor in verse 17, and in verse 18 Paul writes, For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and, The laborer deserves his wages. I am an elder who labors in preaching and teaching, so obviously I have a vested interest in this first instruction. You do need to take that into account as I tell you what I m about to tell you. But it is right there in the Bible. I m not making it up. Paul thought it needed mentioning, so we ll talk about it this morning even if it is somewhat awkward to do so. Not all elders at Grace are paid most of our elders have jobs outside the church but a few of us get our living from the ministry. Obviously those of us who are paid are able to spend a lot more time at the work of being an elder, and while I don t have time this morning to explain why we have that division of labor there is precedent in church history for it and I think it works well for us. But it seems to me that when you do pay elders, there are two mistakes you can make. You can pay him too much. There are megachurch pastors and televangelists who through their ministerial pay have become millionaires. Some of them have mansions and Leer jets but that sort of thing is unbecoming of a pastor. Paul says, For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. 2 Corinthians 2:17. When someone has clearly gotten wealthy through the ministry, all ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 2

3 too often the wealth is accompanied by some kind of false teaching or financial improprieties. Their sincerity is called into question and the gospel is brought into disrepute. Yet I think a far greater problem is paying pastors too little. The vast majority of pastors aren t rich; most pastors struggle financially. Paul knew it was a problem and so he quotes Moses and Jesus in verse 17 in support of his contention that elders who preach and teach well are worthy of double honor. But what does it look like to give an elder double honor? It would be tempting to preach that this means double pay, but it does not. It means to honor your vocational elders with remuneration and respect due the position. If you ask, How much remuneration? the best rule of thumb I ve ever heard is that a pastor ought to be paid on the average of others in the congregation of the same age, same education, same level of experience and responsibility. Pastors should not live above or below their congregation, but I will say if you re going to make a mistake make it on the high side. And you do that at Grace. I am continually thankful for how well my and my family s needs are supplied by this church. That leads us to the second instruction: elders must not show favoritism. I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. 1 Timothy 5:21b. No matter what type of work you do, it s tempting to give extra attention to those who do have money, and that s especially true when you lead a non-profit like a church. It is all too easy to show them favoritism if you think they might have the ability to write your organization a big check. It is a great temptation. When followed through on it is a great sin, because God is no respecter of persons and neither should we. In James 2:1-4 we read: My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, You sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, You stand over there, or, Sit down at my feet, 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Elders must not treat people of means more favorably or give them more attention. And I think there s a least a chance that if the pastors of the church receive the double honor Paul writes about in verse 17 they will be a little less likely to be in desperate financial straits and be tempted to show favoritism because of money. And if you ask, J.D., shouldn t pastors be super-spiritual men and not be fazed by money at all? Absolutely we should, but the fact is pastors aren t above the temptation. In fact, some of you have more faith than we do. In the real world with real sinners, Paul says, take these kinds of precautions. Third, be slow in setting people apart for the ministry. It s not hard to be a pastor. It doesn t take any great skill or intelligence. You ve heard the phrase it s not brain surgery? It s literally not brain surgery to be a pastor. You study the Bible (which is pretty clear, after all, except for Revelation), you teach the Bible, you pray for people, you counsel people, you try with minimum organization to keep track of your people. Some guys are better teachers or better counselors or better organizers than others, but it s not that hard. What it mainly takes to do it well is character and diligence. And you just won t know if those traits are present in someone until you ve spent time around them. So Paul tells Timothy in ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 3

4 verse 22: Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure. Laying on of hands is probably a reference to ordination, the practice of setting someone apart to be an elder and the work of the ministry. Paul knew there would be a lot of men who are eager to serve as a pastor who are woefully unsuited for the task, so take your time. Our informal rule at Grace is that a man needs to be a member of the church for two years before he can be nominated as an elder. Some guys are gifted for the ministry but have serious sin issues in their lives. They re able to hide them for a time. So Paul says, The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. 1 Timothy 5:24. It s prudent for all kinds of reasons just to wait and see before you set someone apart for the ministry. Fourth, speaking of sin, Paul gives some instructions about how to deal with sin in an elders life. Because of the public nature of pastoral ministry, there will always be those who are all too willing to listen to scandalous news about a pastor. Pastors do, after all, make their living by getting in front of people and telling them how they need to live, and some people resent it. For them it is especially delicious when one of those blowhards stumble. Paul says, Don t make it too easy to bring an elder down. He says in verse 19: Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. But if a charge is proven against an elder, do not sweep it under the rug. Do not allow him to resign quietly and move on to another church where it can happen all over again. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. 1 Timothy 5:20. Few things hurt the church worse than pastors who fall into gross sin. It makes it so easy for people outside the faith to convince themselves the gospel message is a fraud. Unfortunately, it s bound to happen, because pastors are a subset of people, and people are sinners. There was more news out of Chicago just last week about the pastor of one of the most influential churches in America and his inappropriate behavior (to say the least) that goes back decades. Think about how much pain would have been avoided if churches (and, for that matter, businesses and schools and universities, in light of the #MeToo movement) had been willing, once a serious charge or charges were proved with clear and convincing evidence, to say, We love this man, but he betrayed our trust and we are going to expose all of it to the bright light of day. Not only would it have made it hard for that person to ever be in a position of trust again to hurt someone else, but it would have been a sobering reminder for the rest of us still in the ministry. When the temptation to gross sin comes along, any pastor in his right mind wants the real prospect of public humiliation to help keep him away from it. Finally, the verse you ve all been wondering about verse 23: No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. Why? In the ancient world the water was filthy. You risked contracting dysentery every time you drank it. But Timothy was being influenced by the group of people Paul rebuked in chapter four, those who said that if you abstained from certain foods and alcohol, then it made you more holy and acceptable to God. Paul told Timothy to stop that nonsense; abstinence made him no closer ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 4

5 to God and it was costing him his health, as it was keeping him from what all the ancients agreed were the medicinal benefits of drinking wine. What application can we derive from this verse for today? Not a whole lot. We have clean water in Oxford, praise God. But we can be sure that Paul did not think alcohol was inherently sinful. There are good arguments for abstaining completely from alcohol in our day, but it can t be because alcohol is, in and of itself, an evil thing, for Paul explicitly told Timothy to drink it. Those are the instructions. Now, second, why should anyone care? As I said at the beginning of sermon, I realize almost no one came here this morning hoping to learn Paul s instructions to elders. It s not anywhere on the radar of felt-needs. So why should you care? If the local church is important to you (and it should if you re a Christian), you should care because if churches followed these instructions about elders then churches would be far healthier. Churches who follow these rules are more likely to have men as pastors who are in it for the right reasons and who are prepared to work diligently in their ministry. That can only be good for everyone who cares for and loves the local church. Even if you re never an elder yourself, you want men like that serving as elders where you and your loved ones are members. Your spiritual growth depends to a great degree on them. But what if you are an elder, or aspire to be an elder or even a pastor one day? The Bible says that s a good thing, by the way. What if that s you? You need to know how easy it is to get discouraged in the ministry. When you meet someone in the community who is a non-believer or a nominal Christian, a Sunday-only Christian, and you tell them you re in the ministry, they will look at you as if you re from another planet. You re a pastor. Oh, that s nice. They wonder, Why in the world would anyone want to do that? No one in the secular world cares at all what you think about anything. In the media, when they want insight into this or that problem or issue in society, they ll interview professors, counselors, therapists, educators literally, anyone who will talk to them, but never pastors. In the church, it s different. If you have a healthy church (like Grace) you will be loved, respected, and cared for. Mature, growing Christians know it s important work. But still the work will be discouraging. Jesus tells this parable in Mark 4 about how the gospel gets into someone s heart and grows. He says, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. Mark 4: In other words, as a pastor you teach people the Bible, and they grow, but you won t know precisely how it happens and you won t know when it will happen. And just like in farming, there will be long seasons where you work the soil but you can t see any fruit. It is easy to get discouraged. And that s why Paul says to Timothy, In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules 1 Timothy 5:21a. What is that about? Whenever you officially charge someone with a task, there are always witnesses present. And the bigger the charge the more the witnesses. I used to be an attorney, and when I was sworn into the state bar I had to take an oath to conduct myself honorably and ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 5

6 with good faith to the court and to my clients. And when I took my oath there was a judge to swear me in and several witnesses. But when I got married, there was a much bigger charge: to commit my life to this woman: to have and to hold her from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, til death do you part. For this charge there were a couple hundred witnesses. But when Paul charges Timothy to do his work as a pastor, there aren t hundreds or even thousands of witnesses there are millions of angels, the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father himself. Paul tells Timothy in verse 21 that the work of ministering the Word of God to his people and ruling the church well is so important that literally all of heaven holds its breath when men take on this task. Nothing is more precious to the Lord Jesus Christ than the health and purity of his bride, the church. Men, when you re tempted to discouragement as an elder, remember the charge to be faithful and, even when you don t see fruit in the church as you d like, continue to preach and teach and pray and rule the church well because you know that all of heaven is rooting for you. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1. Now if you re here this morning and you re not a Christian, or if you re not sure you are, welcome. We are glad you re here. But do you realize what s implied in all this talk about angels? There is more going on than meets the eye. We go about our daily lives (work, school, family, even church) and we are almost completely unaware of certain events that take place all around us. Real things happening in real time, but they are invisible to our eyes. I am talking about the spiritual realm, which is as real as the physical realm and which runs parallel to the physical realm. And by the way everyone believes in this spiritual realm. I know some people claim they don t believe in it but instead say they believe that the universe is purely material, but everyone believes in it. If our universe is purely material, only made out of stuff we can measure and discern with our five senses, then things like love don t exist. After all, you can t measure love. You can t prove it s there through the scientific method. In a purely material universe what we call love can only be an experience our brains have been trained by evolution to have as a response to certain stimuli. If the world is only material, then we can t love any more than birds and cows can. We re just animals with the illusion of consciousness. But no one really believes that. Anyone who has ever loved or been loved knows it s more than just chemicals interacting in our brains. Therefore, whether we re willing to admit it or not, we all believe in a spiritual realm. In that spiritual realm there are those millions of angels, and in 1 Peter 1:12 we read those angels long to look into the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, the word used in that verse is epithumeia, which means an intense desire, an over-desire, to look into the gospel. They can t get enough of it. Why? Because there is nothing more glorious and wondrous than the gospel of Jesus Christ. We hear the gospel and we think: Oh, yeah, I know that. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Old hat. Got that. We get bored with it. But not the angels. Why? They re smarter than we are. They are the elder race. They ve been around for thousands and thousands of years. Yet they never get tired bored with the gospel of Jesus. How? ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 6

7 When you ve seen an ultimate act of love and sacrifice, it transforms you and you never get over it. If you go to Grace Episcopal Church in New York City, there is a plaque on the wall commemorating Edith Corse Evans, who was a passenger on the Titanic. When it became clear the Titanic was going down, she and another woman named Caroline Brown rushed to a lifeboat. When they got there, Edith turned to Caroline and said, You go first, you have children waiting at home. I don t. Caroline got in the boat and was saved, but Edith couldn t make it and the lifeboat left without her. She was one of only four upper class female passengers to go drown on the Titanic. Do you think Caroline Brown was ever the same after that night? But friends, angels had a front row seat for the greatest act of love and mercy ever seen, the greatest rescue ever known. They saw God King of kings, Lord of lords, who is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light become a man in Jesus. Jesus came to save, but he didn t come to save the good people with children back home. Jesus came to save his enemies us, by dying on the cross for our sins. And now Jesus lives in heaven, and one day he will return for his people. And if you just trust him, if you simply believe that you need rescuing and that Jesus did it for you, you will be one of his people and you never need fear anything again. The angels have seen all that and they never get over it. They ve always known God is good, holy, and loving. But in the gospel God took his love and grace to a new level. And the angels can t stop staring. They always learn something new from the gospel. Their hearts grow, as it were, as they stare at it in wild wonder. Yours will too, if you ll follow the angels lead. If you are here this morning and you re not a Christian, does anything in your life even claim to offer you what the gospel of Jesus Christ does? I doubt it. Even if you think it s highly unlikely that it s true, aren t the promises so great that you would at least ask about it? If you got an official looking letter from an Atlanta law firm that said, You just inherited five hundred thousand dollars from a cousin you didn t know you had. Here s a number you can call to get the details. What would you do? No matter how unlikely you think it is, the news is potentially so good you d have to at least call! This good news is what the elect angels are all about won t you at least look into it? I hope you will, and church let s also pray that Oxford would be full of churches and elders who see to it that this gospel is taught faithfully. AMEN. Father, we thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to stand amazed with the angels as we ponder the gospel and as it changes our lives. Now we pray for the elders and pastors and churches in Oxford that we would all believe the Bible, we would preach this gospel faithfully, and be outposts of heaven on earth. And I pray that all who hear would respond with joy. In Jesus name. Amen. ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 7