Qualified Elders and Falsified Teachers (Part 1)

As you know, we are studying through Titus, which is, again, one of three pastoral epistles.

! And why do we call them that? Well, they are epistles that are written to give instruction about church order and how to deal with issues in the church, not just because they were given to pastors, written to pastors. Timothy, first and second Timothy and Titus, Timothy and Titus being pastors, church leaders, not just because of their vocation, but because of the substance content of these three letters. So Titus is a pastoral epistle. And also, as we have noted, Titus was led to faith in Christ by the apostle Paul. But even beyond that, we know, we're pretty sure, though we don't have really any definitive record in the book of Acts about it, but we're pretty sure that Titus traveled with Paul, if not every one of his missionary journeys, at least some of them. And so we can also add to that that Paul discipled Titus. Really, even more than that, I think a stronger word might be mentored as a young man, as a young pastor.

And he trusted Titus with a great deal, as we're going to begin to learn as we look at chapter one. Trusted him with the welfare of the churches in Crete. And not just their welfare, but actually finding and appointing pastors for, we don't know how many churches there on that island, that very large island. So Titus was a key person. And, you know, as to, by the way, as to how and when all of this happened, you know, in relation to Paul's life, we don't really know. Because there's no record of it in the book of Acts. And Titus is not even mentioned in the book of Acts. And we only learn what we learn about Titus from this book, as well as references to him in some of Paul's writings, some of Paul's other letters. And so we don't really know. We'll talk a little bit about that when we get to a certain point in this chapter tonight.

And I think this is where your notes begin. The subject of Titus chapter one. You know, really, we can kind of neatly divide the book of Titus into three subjects. And they're neatly compacted or organized for us in the three chapters in the book. So it's not one of those things where you really have to work hard and try to figure out, you know, what he's talking about here and then here and then here. You can pretty much outline the book. And so I would say then the subject of Titus chapter one is in two words, church leadership. That's the subject in the entire chapter.

Church leadership. And so we can say that first, Paul addresses the right kind of leadership. The right kind of leadership or what I am calling qualified elders. This is the part that we'll focus on tonight. Qualified elders. That's the right kind of leadership in the church.

Second, then Paul addresses, as you might guess, the wrong kind of leadership, wrong kind of leadership in the church and the churches or groups of believers who are meeting, whether you call them bonafide churches or not. And I'll mention a little bit about that a little later, too.

But apparently there were false teachers in these churches or groups of believers, assemblages of believers. And Paul deals with that in the second part of this chapter. So right kind of leadership, wrong kind of leadership, qualified elders and what I've called falsified teachers.

All right. So there you have the two parts of this chapter, again, under the theme of church leadership. So looking at it, then, first of all, what does Paul say about qualified elders?

Qualified elders in the church. And what he says is contained in verses five through nine. So I want to begin by reading verses five through nine. I think I gave them, gave those, that text in your notes. But if you want to look at your Bibles, you certainly are free to do that. So starting with verse five, for this reason, I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination for a bishop must be blameless.

By the way, you know, you have the word elder. Now you have bishop. Those are two completely different words, obviously, not only in English, but in Greek as well. But the two words are used interchangeably, not just here, but many places in the New Testament to refer to the same person, same office in the church. So, so Paul kind of uses the words interchangeably. All right. So for a bishop must be blameless. There's the word blameless again. As a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict, contradict the sound word, sound doctrine. All right. So that passage will be our focus tonight.

Now, we can learn a great deal, I think, from this passage if we'll answer four questions, four kind of investigative questions, and in this order. What, where, why, and who. All right. So now I've heard kind of give you a clue on the blanks to fill in there. First of all, what are elders?

To be a good place to begin, though I don't think that, you know, we're ignorant of the definition of an elder or what an elder is, but that's what we need to discuss first. What are elders? And here's the answer. Elders are one of two ordained offices in the local church. One of two. There are only two ordained offices for the local church elders and what's the other one? Deacons. Deacons. All right.

So elders, what are elders? They're one of two ordained offices in the local church. Now, verse five, the second part of it, Paul commanded Titus to do what? To appoint elders, appoint them. Actually, the King James uses the term ordained, which is the kind of the preferable term. I mean, we, we, we use the word ordained primarily because of the influence of the King James version, ordained, and it's a perfectly good word. Other translations, I think nearly all of the modern ones, more modern, modern's kind of relative term, and it's some of the, what we call modern translations really still quite old, not as old as the King James, but they use this word appointed. So appoint elders.

Now let's then talk about the definition of elder. And I'm talking about a dictionary definition, or I guess really the more appropriate word when you're talking about a biblical language, be the lexical, the lexicon, the lexical, which is just a scholarly word for dictionary. Okay.

The Greek dictionary defines the word elder, which is in the Greek presbyteros, presbyteros. I mentioned this Sunday morning, presbyteros, the elder, that we get our word presbytery or presbyterian from, from this, this word. And the dictionary defines it as one who is advanced in years, an aged man, a senior. All right. So the word does have a standard definition. Elder means exactly what we would often think when we hear the word elder. And there are a few elders by that definition here in this room. I won't point you out. I might go far as to say as most of us in this room are elders. There are some exceptions. And if you want to be one of the exceptions, that's your, that's your prerogative.

All right. For some, it's quite obvious that you're not elders. But that's just simply the definition of the word presbyteros. And it is used that way in scripture some places to just simply refer to an older person. I put a quote down here. I don't think I put it in your notes, but this is a quote. And I didn't write down the name, but there's a young, young person who said this.

It said, old age is a time of great usefulness with accumulated knowledge and experience, but is unfortunately wasted on some old grouches. Pretty good. Pretty good. Little quote. Of course, there are none here in this room. Old grouches. Now, as is the case, by the way, with many theologically significant words, and the Bible's full of them, theologically significant words.

I mean, even the word faith has a secular meaning. I mean, you hear the word faith all the time. In other words, salvation. I mean, there are a number of rich theological words that have a secular meaning. But the Bible, based upon the Bible's usage of the word, it has become something much more significant. And that's the case. So with a few exceptions, the New Testament uses the word elder, presbyteros, as a technical term, a technical term signifying office of leadership in the church.

So sometimes, by the way, as I've already said, the word is used to signify an aged man. I don't know why presbyteros, other than it's masculine, I guess that's probably why. Why we never have it referring to an aged woman. You know, it's just, I guess it was just not culturally right to do something like that, even in Paul's day. But, so sometimes it's used that way in Scripture. Other times also, and you probably, maybe you've already thought of this, the word is used to refer to a position of leadership in the synagogue, the Jewish synagogue, the chief elders. Usually it's referring to someone who's in charge of organizing, leading in the synagogue. You know, there'll be a synagogue in nearly every major city in the Bible days, New Testament days. All right, so it's used that way, both ways in Scripture, but it is also used, especially in the epistles, it is used to refer to a, an office of leadership in the church. Then, second, designations of leadership in the local church. So we can kind of put all this together. The Bible models some specific designations for leadership in the church. And I've given you kind of this little model, and it's, you know, it's tended to kind of show you how, how God ordered things. Really, you can say that there are two entities in, in, in, in the local church. There's the head and the body, right? The head and the body. Who's the head?

That's right there in your notes. It's Jesus. He's the chief shepherd. The chief, the Greek word is poimen. He's the chief shepherd. He's the pastor. In that sense, that's what poimen means. It means pastor, shepherd.

And so the head is Christ. And by the way, just throw this in. I don't know if I put that in there parenthetically. The only one called pastor in the Bible is Jesus. Did you know that? Now you call me pastor. And that's perfectly fine. But what's interesting is in the New Testament, every time you have the word poimen, or a form of that word, in relation to a man, it's always in the verb form. That is what, what I do.

I pastor. But I've never called a pastor. Isn't that kind of interesting to you? Because we call, you call me a pastor. And indeed, I am. But I'm called that not, not because that really should be my title, but because that's my function. Shepherd, pastor. The only one who's called pastor, poimen, in the sense of poimen, using that word, is Jesus. Where it says he's the chief shepherd. Remember, when the chief shepherd shall appear, you know, that's a reference to Jesus. That's chief poimen, chief pastor. All right, so he's the head. I'm not the head of the church. Thank the Lord. I'm not.

So Christ is. Then you have the body. That's the congregation of which I'm a part. I mean, I'm a part of the congregation, membership of this church. So those are the two, primarily the two entities in the church, the head and the body. All right, that's, that's how the Bible kind of describes the church. Then you have really within the congregation, even though as far as responsibility and authority is concerned, you know, there's, you know, different maybe diagram to think of, different model. But then you have within the congregation, two offices, two places of leadership in a sense. That's elders and deacons. All right, so as an elder, and that's what I am, I'm feeling that way in two ways, you know, office as well as age. And some of you are thinking, well, you've got a long way to go, pastor. Don't worry about it. But as I'm an elder, all right, so I'm, I am pastor, but I'm, I'm only a pastor in the sense of an under pastor, under shepherd, not the head, but I am a shepherd. I'm the under shepherd. And because we hold to a plurality of elder, eldership, we have others. We have three right here in the room here who are serving as elders, under shepherds of the chief shepherd, the head of the church. And, and, and so what's the elders relationship to the congregation? Well, we have a relationship of leadership.

In fact, the Bible even uses the word, especially when it uses that word bishop, translated bishop, episkopos, of oversight, oversight of the congregation, even to the point of a sense of the word rule.

All right. But it's a two-way, two-way street there. Congregation follows the leadership of the pastor, elders, rather, elders under the headship of Christ. But the elders are accountable to the congregation. And then where do the deacons fall in there? I know we've got them at the bottom there of the diagram, but that doesn't mean that they are somehow insignificant. They're, they don't rule. There is a sense in which there's leadership, but it's primarily what? Service.

Servants of the body. And so that's how the diagram kind of works. These are designations of leadership in the local church. And as we're going to talk about a little bit here in a minute, it's absolutely crucial that that leadership be in place in the church. Otherwise, it's really very difficult to define that assembly of believers as a church without this leadership in place. All right.

So, and then I, I think I threw in there the word elder is always plural when it appears in its technical sense. It's always plural, which adds, I think, credence to the idea that the church should have a plurality of elders. All right. So that's what now be where, where are elders needed?

Where are they needed? And the answer to that is elders are needed in every local church in every city. I guess it should go without saying that we need local churches in every city, but every local church must have an elder, at least one. And we understand that. I guess we could say by way of command, because Paul is commanding Titus. And so verse five says, for this reason, I left you in Crete that you should, what? Appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. So every church should have elders. All right. And this, this is what the task that was assigned to Titus. All right. So as I mentioned earlier, Titus was in Crete. All right. So this is the letter was sent to Crete. He was in Crete when he received this letter from Paul. Where's Crete? You know, your geography there in the Mediterranean, pretty large island, actually, off the coast of Greece and kind of in that area.

Pretty, pretty good size island, actually. Anybody been to Crete before? Been over the top of it? Did you, were you able to see it or you just knew your track went that way?

Okay. All right. So Paul and Titus, and we, you know, we get this by implication. We don't have any description of this, but Paul and Titus had worked together in Crete, preaching the gospel, apparently, obviously, obviously. Organizing small groups of believers. I'm very careful to say, you know, did they actually plant churches? That was their goal and desire. At what point did they become actually churches? We'll talk about that here in a minute. So they're involved in this, preaching the gospel, leading people to Christ, forming groups of believers in the various cities in Crete, begin to come together for Bible study and worship. And the only thing they lacked were elders.

And Paul, I'm convinced, Paul and Titus both were working on that. When at some point, Paul departed, departed from Crete. By the way, it's kind of interesting. I found this in one of the commentaries because Crete, you know, when we look at the map, it looks pretty small. And indeed, it is, but for an island, pretty good size island, but it was quite populated. In fact, populated by a lot of people from Palestine, a lot of Jews in Crete. But it had a lot of cities. Well, cities, that's a relative term. I don't know how large they were, but pull this quote from Homer. Not the guy who runs the, you know, the auto garage somewhere here. But Homer, way back, the Greek, you know, who, poet and philosopher and such. And he said this about Crete. He said, Crete of the hundred cities.

So in his mind, there were at least a hundred cities in Crete. And I think we can assume that Paul and Titus on one of the missionary journeys, we're not sure which, probably two of them.

One that we have described in the book of Acts. One that probably came after the book of Acts. Some have called it the 29th chapter of Acts. Probably after Paul's first imprisonment. You know, not everyone agrees with that. Some scholars say there was just one imprisonment that led to his death. Some say there were two. So in between the first and second imprisonment in Rome, visited Crete. In fact, some even say there's a 30th chapter of Acts that Paul actually took a missionary, fifth missionary journey, went all the way to Great Britain, around Spain to Spain and around the Great Britain. Of course, you know, we don't know, don't have anything to substantiate any of that. But anyway, at some point, Paul departed from Crete and he left Titus behind. How do we know that? Well, that's what he says, you know, I left you in Crete. So Paul left, left Titus there to carry on the work, the work really as his apostolic representative, which would give him authority.

So the work was not complete. Of course, it never is. It'll be complete one day when Jesus comes again. But the work was not complete in Crete when Paul had left there, whether he had to or desired to whatever the plan was. There were groups of believers. They had many of them had no elder to lead them. Titus was to work with these various groups of believers and churches and ordained elders.

And again, I just want you to know there's no record in Acts of any ministry in Crete at all. Nothing in Acts about that. That's why some have said, you know, there were other missionary journeys afterwards. Paul would not refer to this. Why did he send the letter to him, by the way? Well, the letter was sent to Titus, I think, to serve as Titus' authority to do what Paul commanded him to do.

It was all right while Paul was still there, you know. Titus is kind of with Paul and Paul's an apostle and had authority that came with his office as apostle. And he could lead churches, plant churches, appoint elders and such, because by virtue of his office as an apostle. Titus didn't have any of that and he needed that authority and it seems pretty clear that that's why Paul sent the letter to Titus.

Then he could just show everybody, you know, the letter, read it, and then it's okay. You have Paul's authority. But not just for that, obviously. There's a lot of instruction in the letter that helps even us today in relation to church ministry. All right, next, why do we need elders? Why do we need them? Here's the answer. The local church is not complete without elders.

Can you imagine? And, you know, we, perhaps it's the word elder that keeps us from thinking the logic of this.

But can you imagine not just being a church in between pastors, but a church that has no pastor? Can you imagine that? Well, I mean, the minute you don't have one, you'd be praying and looking for one.

Because a church is not complete without a pastor, without an elder, even if it's just one. Right? I mean, can you imagine that? I can, because I have come across many churches in Ukraine, first of all, that have no elder because they can't find one or haven't found one. Deacon is leading their church. You can see how this is instructive, not just for Titus a couple thousand years ago, for churches today. All right, so why do we need elders? Because the church is not complete without elders. Verse 5, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, something lacking. So we've got all these groups of believers that may even have called themselves churches, themselves churches, but they're really not churches in the biblical sense because they have have no elders and no leader. And so this is a great work. It's lacking. Appoint elders in every city as I command you. And so I thought I might just throw in here what qualifies as a local church?

I mean, can we just call anything a church? I mean, there is a tendency to do that these days. In fact, I get a little irritated sometimes just because I'm such a literalist. But go to some conference and, you know, or some Bible study kind of event and, you know, the guy will get up there to lead a little music and he'll say, all right, church, let's sing. Well, that's not the church. The church is Highland Park Baptist Church, First Baptist Church, Eastern Heights Baptist Church. Church is, has a definition.

It's not just simply a loosely kind of coming together of born again believers. Now, I understand that there is a church, there is the church in a universal sense, even though you don't know who they are.

Do you? The church in a universal sense is invisible and it won't be something we'll ever see until Jesus comes. Then there'll be one church. Right now, the way God works is the local church.

That's the identifiable church, the local church. And it has some distinctives and some things that make it qualify as a local church. All right. It's not a building as we'll see. But here are four things that I think you have to have to be a church, a local church. Number one, an assembly of professing believers that have accepted the apostolic testimony concerning Jesus Christ, that is, his person and work. We could say, in a sense, who believe in the New Testament.

I mean, you can't, you can't separate, you know, can't say, well, I believe the New Testament, not the Old Testament, they go together. The Old Testament qualifies and substantiates much of the New Testament. New Testament fulfillment of everything said in the Old Testament.

But a church must be defined as an assembly, all right, assembly of professing believers. That's what we are, an assembly of professing believers. What are we believing in? The gospel, the truth, the word of God. The apostolic testament, that's another way of saying it's been handed down to us. What God spoke through his apostles and his prophets, we have and we believe it.

That's, that defines us. Now, that's not enough to qualify as a church because, you know, I've, I've sat in with groups of people, again, in China and they, they believe that. But I wouldn't say that that group is a church yet because really all they have is that they all have a common faith, faith in Christ and the word of God. That's number one. Number two, an assembly of professing believers who meet regularly in one geographical area.

One geographical area. I don't think that, that if, you know, you tune in on the internet, that's, let's say, you know, kind of some kind of live chat kind of thing or Skype with people all around the, you know, groups of people, a group of people from all different parts of the world that can't just sit in your pajamas at the computer, you know, and say one of those will do the preaching and we're all Skyping together. That's our church. That doesn't define a church. Local church is just that. It's, it's, it's, it's that same assembly of professing believers who meet regularly in one geographical area, be it in a multimillion dollar sanctuary, or be it in the living room in an apartment in China, be it under a shade tree, some remote village in Africa, churches who meet under trees places. That's a geographical area.

By the way, you know, all, all of those can exist in any country. I mean, there are churches that meet in houses here in the United States, house churches. As one preacher put it, a church can meet in the back room of Joe Blow's garage, you know, and still, that's a good church.

All right. So third, an assembly, a church, what qualifies a local church? An assembly of professing believers who observe the ordinances.

The two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Son. In fact, that kind of backs me up to the very first, first point I made, made the, this, this assembly of professing believers are baptized believers.

That, that defines a local church. A body, an assembly of baptized believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And those who observe the Lord's Supper.

These ordinances, these are commanded the church to observe. And if a church is not observing these, baptism's not important, Lord's Supper, not important, not part of our worship, or part of our practice, then you're not, not a church, not a New Testament church.

And the last one is, and this is the reason why I even list these, the last qualification, I'm not sure if it's the last one, there might be some others that we can talk about, but an assembly of professing believers who are under the oversight of elders and under the service of deacons.

The two offices of the church, two offices given to the church are functioning. And I know that there are some churches that don't have deacons. I even heard one recently that church decided not to have deacons.

Well, that's not a New Testament. That's not a New Testament. Now, I can understand if a church has no qualified men to serve as a deacon. So they don't have any, but that's a different matter altogether.

But those are four things that qualify, qualify a group of believers, qualify them as a local church.

All right, so then finally, who can be an elder? I left the biggest part of it for last. And I'm going to breeze through this real quickly. There's not a lot of explanation needed, but who can be an elder?

And the answer is an elder can be any man. And I don't apologize for that. It's not my idea. That's scripture. Any man who qualifies according to the standards given by God in scripture.

That's the answer. Similar to what Paul did in his first letter to Timothy in chapter 3, he lists there here in Titus, chapter 1, qualifications for the office of elder.

He doesn't list any for deacon. But here are the qualifications. And they're not, you know, a verbatim match with what's recorded in 1 Timothy 3, but they're very close.

And I don't think any of the differences ought to make much of it. But anyway, so prospective elder must be tested in three areas of qualification.

We can divide these into three areas. First one, qualifications concerning the elder's familial life, his family life. Verse 6, if a man is blameless.

All right, so, you know, ladies, not one to offend you, but he said a man. If a man is blameless.

And the word man is deliberate. It's not cultural. You know, some have tried to explain this way by saying, well, it was just the culture of Paul. But it's very deliberate.

In 1 Timothy 3, the set of qualifications there, Paul says, if a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.

It would be impossible, other than to just palm it off as Paul's culture, Jewish culture, masculine culture. It would be impossible to read Scripture and try to work in there that the office of elder is for anyone other than a man.

Now, the word blameless, this is important. Blameless here does not mean sinless. We've got three, well, four now elders in here.

You know, that's good news to the four elders we have in here. Blameless does not mean sinless. Otherwise, not anyone would qualify, male or female. The word refers to a man's public reputation.

That's what the word means. In fact, I think other versions like the New American Standard and ESV, probably the NIV too.

I didn't check it. We use words like above reproach. Those are words that refer to a reputation. So, the question is, the test is, is he unchargeable?

Can he be charged for some indiscretion, some sin, some ongoing sin, some rebellion against God, whatever it may be?

Is he unchargeable? He must be to qualify as an elder. Or does he have an unblemished reputation?

And it's still a pretty stringent requirement because you could have something in the past. Well, I've repented of that. Committed murder, but I got saved after that.

I'm sorry for it. But a charge can be brought against a man that he doesn't qualify as an elder. X, the husband of one wife.

And Paul said, husband of one wife. Not wife of one husband. Or generically, person of one spouse.

I guess in our day it would be or a man of one man. Husband of one husband. Wife of one husband. Wife of whatever. Scripture says what it says.

So, you know, the idea here is Paul, I meant one wife in a man's lifetime. Not everyone would agree with this, by the way, but I think this is correct.

One wife in a man's lifetime. Not one wife at a time. Nor, by the way, does it refer to moral failure or infidelity. That's something that should be applied to every believer.

But this test is about a man's marital record. One wife in a man's lifetime. By the way, why this requirement?

Well, and I want to be very careful and I'm trying to be ugly anymore, but divorce does reflect a point of failure somewhere there.

I mean, it does. On one side or the other, more often than not, on both sides, there's some failure there. And there's nothing that God cannot surmount and God does not give sufficient grace for and healing for.

We're not talking about that issue. We're talking about what God requires of those who would be elders. Paul said in 1 Timothy 3, 5, for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, of course, he says that in relation to the children, but it applies to the marital relationship even more than it would to children.

If he can't rule his own house, then how will he take care of the church of God? The word faithful, pistos means loyal.

There's the other part of that verse, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination. And the word faithful is not there used in the sense of saving faith.

It's used in the sense of loyalty. And the word dissipation, by the way, is from the word from which we get our word saved. Soter.

It's the word asotia. So it means unsavedness, which is really not a word, technically speaking, but that's what it means.

Not saved. You know, a child that acts unsaved, you know, it's dissipation or debauchery is another word that's used. All right, now qualifications concerning the elder's personal life, number two.

And so first, we have five vices, and then they are counteracted by six virtues. For a bishop must be blameless, there's that word blameless again, as a steward, as a caretaker of God.

Caretaker. Not self-willed, meaning not arrogant, in the sense of seeking to please himself above all.

Please myself rather than others. Not self-willed. Not quick-tempered. Easily angered. Short views, you know, kind of thing. Not given to wine.

And there's a lot of debate about that passage, and it just says what it says, regardless of my position that I can go elsewhere in regard to what I think the Bible teaches about drinking of alcoholic beverages, and I believe that we all should be teetoters.

But this passage now talking about that, it's talking about drunkenness. So it's literally not given or being absolutely overtaken, controlled, not by wine, not a drunker.

You ought to remember, though, here, kind of the overarching qualification is blamelessness, okay? That covers a lot of things. So if, you know, if, you know, I'm an elder and I, you know, like to drink some beer and I go to the grocery store and, you know, put in my shopping cart big case of Budweiser and don't care, I don't care what others might think of that.

And then, regardless of my position on whether or not a believer can drink beer or any kind of alcoholic beverage, I'm not blameless. I'm determined that I don't care about, you know, the fact that someone might bring a charge to me.

The pastor's a drunkard or the pastor drink beer and I don't think it's right. So blameless is the overarching, I think, qualification here. Not violent, physical violence, you know, kind of a person with a short fuse and it always leads to, you know, knock your lights out kind of thing.

You've met people like that, haven't you? Well, an elder can't be that way. And not just once he becomes an elder, he can no longer be that way.

This is a test for whether he's qualified to be an elder. And if you know someone in the church, man, you're thinking about signing him, nominating him as elder, but you know he has a little problem with anger, has anger issues, then he's not qualified.

Not qualified. And I don't know of anybody like that in the church, okay, not trying to suggest anything like that. Not greedy for money and the idea being his whole ministry, you know, everything he does, whether it's in the pulpit or whatever it's done with this motive to get money.

You know, whether it's, it could even apply to a man who wants his church to grow so his budget will grow so his salary will grow. That's greedy. Greedy for money. And then we have six virtues, but hospitable, you know, care about the welfare of other people.

Lover of what is good. By the way, good, and then there's, it's, it's blank. You kind of fill in the blank grammatically. Be good things, good people, all of that.

Sober-minded, serious. That doesn't mean he can't joke around sometimes, say, do funny things or whatever, but when it comes to, you know, you know, the, his work, the ministry, that the need of the people, need to be sober-minded, serious about the work.

You know, I've met people, some who are deacons even, in past churches that, I mean, they're just so flippant about everything. They're just joking about even things that are very serious.

So, be sober-minded. Just committed to what's, to doing right, what's right before God. Holy, holy means separated, so, the very word means that, you know, so committed to a separated life, devoted life to God.

Self-controlled, as disciplined in the mind as well as the body. And then finally, qualifications concerning the elder's doctrinal life, and in verse 9, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, because it's been handed down, right, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict, contradict that doctrine.

And so, really, we can say this is the seventh virtue, seventh virtue of a man who would qualify as an elder, and it's, and it's absolutely crucial. I mean, I mean, you take this away, you know, this qualification, then without that, you really have little more than just a great guy, you know.

and we know great guys, but they don't know beans about the word of God. So, this is very important, isn't it? So, just four things real quick.

The secret, holding fast, this guy must hold fast, proven to hold fast, hold firm to the word of God, and that assumes a good knowledge of it. I mean, you can't hold firm to something if you don't know it.

All right, so this is part of the test. So, the secret is holding fast. The source is the faithful word as he has been taught.

Faithful word of God, that's the source of his ministry. The strength of it is that he may be able by sound doctrine, he may be able to do what he's about to describe for us here.

So, the secret, the source, the strength, the success. both to exhort, is to give instructions, and convict, you know, that's what we, or rebuke, I think, is the word in some versions.

This is speaking of the goal. What's the goal, the desire of that guy that would be an elder, and that is that, you know, through the sound doctrine that he knows, he would seek to give instructions to people who need to grow in their faith, and also to convict, convict, to rebuke, to restore those who are contradicting it, to restore them back into doctrine, sound doctrine.

And that's a very good kind of segue into what Paul was going to be talking about in the latter part of that chapter, he's going to be addressing those who are teaching false doctrine in the church.

music Thank you.