1 Timothy chapter 4, beginning at verse 11. These things command and teach. Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word, this whole book of 1 Timothy, and I pray that if I give an overview of this book that You would guide my lips, help me to avoid any misstatements, and to help us all to glory, Father, in this provision, this wonderful book that You have given. In Jesus' name, amen. One of the things that frustrated me when I was studying for this sermon was how many, you could expect liberals, but how many conservatives have concluded that Paul in this book is arguing in an absolutely random and haphazard fashion that there is no direction or structure to the book of 1 Timothy. And I'm sorry, I don't take a commentary very seriously when they cannot show the flow of Paul's argument. A.T. Hansen said, the pastorals, and by pastorals he means 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, the pastorals are made up of a miscellaneous collection of material. They have no unifying theme. There is no development of thought. Jeffrey Reed more recently said, the pastoral epistles are, to put it bluntly, incoherent. Now that is an insult to the God who wrote these scriptures. These are commentaries. You get right off the shelf, a lot of people have. And really, as we've gone through these books, knowing how logical and how tightly argued Paul's epistles have been to this point, you would expect all of his epistles, you know, to have the same kind of order and logic. And I would be suspicious, you should be suspicious of anybody who says there's no order arrangement, there's no thematic flow to a book of the Bible. Now, anytime people say that, I'm thinking, OK, they're missing something. Maybe this is one of those books that is following one of the more obtuse Hebrew structures that people have discovered over the last couple hundred years. And in this case, that is true. As skeptical as I am, you know, people have gone way overboard. They see chiasms everywhere, especially one website. It's like ridiculous. Everything's a chiasm. I think 85% or more of supposed chiasms are absolutely false. There's really a rigorous seven-point methodology you have to go through before I'm going to buy into it being a chiasm. But in this case, it actually is. Now, chiasm, for those of you who are new, is a structure of thought where it's an A, B, C, D, C, B, A kind of a structure where the center of the book, really, or the center of a paragraph, if it's a mini-chiasm, is the heart of that argument. Now, thankfully, Ray Van Nest wrote a 354-page thesis on the intricately woven structures within this book, many of which are small chiasms and other Hebrew structures. Very, very beautiful. He didn't apply it to the book as a whole, but there's been a lot of work that's been done in the last decade. There was another guy by the name of Joseph Norris. He was the first one to apply it to the whole book, and he got 90% right, only missed a couple of points. I won't belabor the fine points of argument. But the most recent studies have shown layer upon layer of intricately woven structure in this book. It is incredibly beautiful. We're not going to get into it much today, but you would expect this, you know, in an inspired book of the Bible. In addition to some of the macro structure we're going to be looking at, there's a very clever interplay that alternates between addressing Timothy and his opponents, then specific church groups, then Timothy and his opponents, then specific church groups, then Timothy and his opponents. There is a reason for that interplay that we won't get into today as well. But I bring this up not to give you a boring lesson on structure, but to let you know what the heart of this book is. If you turn over your outline, you look at the back, there's a chiasm there. If you look at the point, that's the middle. you will see that the heart of the book is the doctrine of the great apostasy, chapter 4, verses 1 through 5. And typical to all chiasms, the heart of that book is then woven all through the rest of the book. So the great apostasy explains, for example, The doctrine of why church discipline is absolutely necessary for the health and survival of the church in the first century. It explains why qualifications and leadership are so important. It explains why honoring authority structures within the family and the church is important. You see, Satan and his demons will do everything that they can to attack God's authority. They hate God's authority. So Satan is really the master feminist and anarchist and rebel. The great apostasy explains the critical importance of prayer and spiritual warfare and why the law must not be pitted against the gospel or the gospel pitted against the law. Demons are so clever. They've had 6,000 years of, by that time I guess it was 4,000 years of experience, but they try using very subtle deviations from the scripture to deviate the church from God's purpose. So let me start by reading the heart of the book first, because it explains so much of the rest of the book. This is chapter 4, verses 1 through 5. Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, and this would be the last days of the old covenant on my view, that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Now, who was teaching these doctrines of demons? Well, that's one thing that both liberals and conservatives are in agreement on. It wasn't teachers that were coming from the outside. It was actually the elders of the church of Ephesus themselves who were teaching these doctrines of demons. The whole presbytery of Ephesus, which by this time had hundreds of house churches and the hundreds of elders, was rife with bad elders. Now, of course, Paul had prophesied that this would actually happen in Acts chapter 20. And I want you to turn with me, if you would, to Acts 20. We're going to refer to this a couple of times. Acts 20 records Paul's meeting with all of the elders of this presbytery in AD 54. So that's a decade before 1 Timothy was written. And I want you to notice Paul's prophetic warning in verses 28 through 31. Acts 20, beginning to read at verse 28. Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock." I want you to notice that the savage wolves would come in among you. In other words, among you elders, because it was the elders that he was talking to here. will come among you, also from among yourselves," again amongst those elders that he was talking to, also from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. Now apparently at least a couple of these rogue elders had already been disciplined. This was done by Paul. Chapter 1, verse 20 of 1 Timothy indicates that Hymenaeus and Alexander had already been excommunicated by the Apostle Paul when he had been working among them. But in the next book, 2 Timothy 2.17, it says that the influence of those two excommunicated leaders continued to spread like gangrene within the church. And there are a number of hints in this book that there were quite a few elders who had to be dealt with. So this was a presbytery-wide problem. Now here's the encouraging thing. By 8066, when the book of Revelation had been written, all of the heresies of the presbytery were 100% cleared up, there were no heretics left, and the only thing that the church of Ephesus was rebuked for was that their love had grown cold. They still loved the Lord, but they had lost their first love is what he had accused them of. But apparently Let me read a couple of verses from Revelation 2 to show that 1 and 2 Timothy were very, very successful. So, 1 Timothy shows they had previously been apathetic about their duty of discipline, but Paul and Timothy turned things around and the presbytery began disciplining heretic after heretic. There was a purge. In verse 6 of Revelation 2, Jesus says, Now, that letter of Revelation to Ephesus, chapter 2, first few verses, was written within one to three years of 1 Timothy being written, depending on how you date 1 Timothy, it's one to three years. So there must have been a flurry of activity after Paul wrote this epistle, and they were very, very successful in bringing Reformation. Now, 1 Timothy 3, verses 14 through 15, shows that the book didn't just have a negative purpose, it also had a positive purpose of being a church manual. show how the church was to function in a positive way. So let me read that, this 1 Timothy 3, 14 through 15. These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly, but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. Okay, enough by way of background. Let's go through the whole book as an overview. And what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take the two parallel points of the chiasm together. I think it'll save us a lot of time. And we'll start with the first two verses and the last verse of the book. I love the fact that Paul's always pronouncing grace upon his congregation. It's really very, very encouraging. And unless the heretics try to minimize Timothy, hey, you're just a fellow welder. We're not going to listen to you. He said, look, this is my true son in the faith. If you mess with Timothy, you're messing with me. You're messing with this letter. The next part of the chiasm. are Paul's two charges that Timothy guard against heresy. And then right off the bat in verse three, we have controversy. Here's the question people ask. Maybe you haven't thought to ask this, but here's the question. Why is Timothy being addressed rather than the church at large being addressed like he's done in his other epistles? I mean, what authority does Timothy have anyway? He's not an apostle. How was he able to deal with these kinds of problems? He's the pastor of a church. So what business does he have to be messing with other churches and other elders? Verse three. As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus, that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine." So in a nutshell, this is the thing some people puzzle over. If there were hundreds of elders by this time, why did Paul address this responsibility to Timothy? Roman Catholics say, oh, easy. He was a bishop, and bishops are over a big region. They're not over local churches. Well, no, that doesn't actually wash at all. Many problems, I'll just give you one. It's all you need. If you turn back to Acts chapter 20, I will read just a couple of verses to show that they are wrong on this. Acts 20, beginning at verse 17. from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. Now there are only elders who are there, and all of the elders of Ephesus are asked to come, and verse 8 says they all did come. Now, look at verse 28. still talking to these elders of the church of Ephesus, he says, therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, there's the word for bishops, episkopos, to shepherd, there's the word for pastor, He's saying to pastor the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. Now, there are many other scriptures we could use to prove the same thing, but it's crystal clear here amongst the elders that Timothy is working with here that the word elder, bishop, and pastor all refer to the same thing. And there were a bunch of bishops. He was not the only bishop. Gary and I and Rodney were bishops. We don't have pointy hats. All it means is we're overseers, right? Overseers of the church. And by the way, the early church, if you read the church fathers, you will see that they were thoroughly Protestant. They were not Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholics abandoned the ancient churches, the Catholic churches' view of ecclesiology, and they did of justification by faith and many, many other doctrines. So if you read these early fathers, and even Roman Catholics will agree, well, yeah, the early church had only two offices, they'll say, but we can add them later. I mean, but they agree. Early church knew only two offices, bishops and deacons, or they would sometimes call them elders and deacons or pastors and deacons, but they said there's only two offices. So there is absolutely no biblical or historical justification for the multitudinous offices that you will find in the Roman Catholic Church. But OK, even though Roman Catholics can't answer the question properly, the question still remains, why does Paul write to Timothy and not to the whole church? The modern megachurch model of congregationalism has occasionally said, oh, that's easy. He's the lead pastor. He's the CEO of the church. This is a megachurch of thousands. And I'm thinking, this is a persecuted church. They're not meeting in big, huge auditoriums. They're meeting in house churches everywhere. But anyway, they say he's the CEO, and he calls the shots in the church. But the passage we read from Acts shows, no, there was an absolute equality among the elders. You don't have this big shot guy that's over the church. At least one charismatic movement leader, Wagner, believes that Timothy had apostolic gifts. He was the apostle of the movement of the church. Problem is, there's no historical or biblical evidence that Timothy was an apostle. And Paul was the apostolic leader responsible for Ephesus. Some have suggested that Paul didn't trust the other elders. They're the problem, so why would he write to them? He's going to write to Timothy and make sure that Timothy communicates to them. The problem is, when you look at Revelation 2, you see the majority of these elders were good, and they were very zealous in disciplining, very zealous in seeking to cleanse the church. They were one of the few churches that was successful in arresting the great apostasy through church discipline. So again, if the majority were good elders, why did Paul write to Timothy and charge him with this business rather than writing to those elders? And the simplest answer is that Timothy was the moderator of the presbytery, or what Revelation 2 calls the messenger of the church of Ephesus. A moderator spoke or wrote on behalf of presbytery, received letters on behalf of presbytery. As a moderator he represents the presbytery. He has no more authority than any other elders other than the fact that he's been charged to organize the business so that they deal on their agenda with all the things that they must, and he acts as the messenger of that presbytery. The earliest church history that we have indicates that Timothy planted churches in Ephesus, he was the pastor of one of those churches, and when a presbytery was formed, he was elected to become the moderator of that presbytery until his death. So he obeyed Paul's admonition in verse three, he never left Ephesus except for brief trips, but he didn't leave it in terms of his responsibilities. As a moderator, he organized the business of the presbytery, spoke on behalf of the presbytery, was responsible to give messages to the presbytery any time that the General Assembly wrote, or in this case, the Apostle Paul wrote. So to be clear, local elders of house churches in Ephesus were only the overseers of that local church And in contrast, the moderator of the presbytery was the overseer or bishop representing the presbytery. It's just simple Presbyterian ecclesiology. So what authority would such an overseer have? And the answer is, he has no authority except for what you can show in the Bible. That's his only authority. So the book is written as a message from Christ, verse 1. And Timothy acts on Paul's apostolic authority, verse 3, to charge people to teach no other doctrine. No other doctrine than what? Well, no other doctrine than the scriptural doctrine that Paul had handed on to him, and that that included Old Testament law can be seen in verse 8. But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. What's going on there? Well, just like the Pharisees and the Gospels, who had so mishandled the Old Testament, these elders were not interpreting the Old Testament properly. They had come up with a mixture of scripture and man-made ideas. So verse four says, nor giving heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith. The Old Testament does not have fables. The Old Testament does not have endless genealogies, but these teachers did. Verses 5 through 6 says that, turning aside from the true faith, verse 7 says, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm. So it's clear they didn't understand the Old Testament, were not properly applying it. Their ministry was not a sola scriptura ministry. Now, when you look at the parallel side of the chiasm, you see that Timothy was charged to have a sola scriptura ministry. Let's look at the two C sections. C sections are the only ones that could arguably not be totally parallel because the first C-section deals with the law and the second C-section deals with the rich people. But let me explain why they are parallel. Some people in their chiastic structure, they just lump it in with the next. But if you look at the linguistics, verbal clauses, all of those things, it has to be divided there. And so here's what I think is going on. The Judaizers were using the law in ways that undermine the gospel in the first C-section And the rich people were using their riches in ways that undermined the gospel in the second C-section. But this is totally consistent with what we know about Judaism of that day, who thought if you're rich, oh, you're obviously blessed of the Lord. Come on in, you could be an elder. Or if you're keeping all of our rules and regulations, obviously you're blessed of the Lord. And God is pleased with you. So the sections are indeed parallel. They highlight the false premises of what pleases God that the heretics were teaching. In any case, I won't get into it, but both sections say that when the gospel is rightly understood, the law is valuable. That's the first C section. When the gospel is rightly understood and it's applied to riches, The riches are good. They are valuable. That's the second C section. But neither were blessings if they were used unlawfully or independently of the gospel. Now, if you look at the D sections, you'll see they deal with keeping the faith. They're both followed by a beautiful doxological poem. I'm not going to get in depth on this. Both Paul and Timothy stand before the other elders as examples of what it means to keep the faith and to keep God-focused. So I'm just going to look at the God-focused doxology from each section. Chapter 1, verse 17, now to the king, eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Second D section, chapter 6, verses 13 through 16. Ends this way, He who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen. Now What I'm wanting to point out is the closer you get to the heart of the book, the more critical the issues become in dealing with his central issue, the great apostasy. The E sections of the chiasm are a call to fight the good fight. Chapter 1, verse 18. starts the first C section saying, this charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare. And then he contrasts that good warfare with the shipwreck that these false teachers have made of their lives. And what is it? What is it that he's given to them to fight this good warfare with? Well, he says, You fight it by them, by those inspired prophecies, by the scripture. And in chapter 2, verses 1 through 7, he adds another dimension to spiritual warfare. He says, prayer for kings and for everybody else that's out there in that world of darkness. But in the second E section, in addition to once again repeating that phrase, fight the good fight, that's chapter 6, verse 12, he adds that there must be the ability to engage in theological fighting. These are wars of words. A person should not be elected to the office of elder if he is not able to verbally wage war with heretics. And then Paul adds that these elders must be adept at waging war against their own flesh. He said some of those elders had not obviously not fought the good fight. Because their greed had, as he words it in verses 11 through 12, pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. If we elders do not engage in spiritual battle on all fronts, the world, the flesh, and the devil, you're going to see Gary, me, and Rodney go down in flames. You've got to hold us up in prayer, but we have got to engage in spiritual battle, is basically what he is saying. Otherwise, we can fall victim. But in the F sections, Paul tackles some of the authority relationships that the heretics had been undermining and had sought to destroy. Apparently, these heretics were advocating egalitarianism, anarchism, throwing off all authority. By the way, to this day, this has been a strategy of demons. Let me read the whole section beginning at verse 8. 2 Timothy 2 beginning at verse 8. I desire therefore that the men, and that's the word for males. Males in contrast to females is not the generic word for men. I desire therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting, and like manner also that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing. But which is proper for women professing godliness with good works? Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control." Now, since the false teachers were overthrowing authority relationships in the family and in the church, Paul addresses that head-on. Apparently, women were acting as pastors back then, too, and Paul absolutely prohibits it, disapproves of it. Paul says that the women were not even supposed to speak out loud or pray out loud in the gathered assembly. He prohibits them from teaching or exercising two different things, not just authoritative teaching, but teaching or exercising authority over men, because both of those would evaporate the role distinctions that God had set up. And he consistently applies that to leadership in prayer during the assembly. He wants men and women to embrace their gender calling and not to wish for something else. As Elizabeth Elliott said in the title of one of Kathy's favorite books growing up, let me be a woman. That's what we need to say to these feminists. Let me be a woman, right? Elizabeth Elliot said that it is a woman's very womanhood that makes her able to do what no man can do, what makes her indispensable. She should embrace her role. Now, it doesn't mean that there won't be overlap of things that both sexes can do, but we need to be protecting what is unique to the man, what is unique to the woman. Otherwise, the glory of her womanhood is lost. It's evaporated because she's now trying to compete on the man's turf. And the beauty of specialization and division of labor is lost. Now, I do want to comment. We can't give a full exposition. I'm just giving you highlights here. But on chapter two, verse 15, a lot of people have wondered, what on earth is he talking about in chapter two, verse 15? Basically, what Paul is doing is he's picked one example of a role relationship that is unique to a woman. He could have picked other examples, but he's using one as a sample of what is unique to women. And he picks childbearing. And he says, nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, holiness, with self-control. Now, the part of salvation that we work on, that we are responsible for, is sanctification. See, salvation is not just getting justified. It's getting sanctified. It's getting resurrected in the future. It's a whole scope from election past to glorification future. So it's talking about sanctification. So what Paul is saying is, hey, childbearing is a godly activity. So long, it's a part of obedience to God. It's a part of sanctification. So childbearing is a godly activity so long as the children, and that's who the they refers to. It's not referring, because it's singular woman, And it's they, her children, so long as the children continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control. So basically he's saying, look, bearing children all by itself is not enough. We need to be raising those children in the fear and the nurture of the Lord. We do not want to raise children for hell. That would not be a blessing. We want to raise children for heaven. But honoring the authority structures and the gender distinctions and the differing role relationships was a huge part of resisting the great apostasy in their day. Demons will do everything that they can to undermine the true authority and the true role relationships that God has established. Why? Satan and his demons hate anything that reminds them of God and his plan. So the same demonic activities that resulted in the great apostasy are at work in America today. So that makes this book so relevant to the postmodern church of the 2020s. In the second F section, chapter 6, verses 1 through 2, Paul gives similar admonitions to the relationships between masters and indentured servants, bond servants. Paul clearly upholds this authority relationship as well. Here's the thing. The whole book is under attack by feminists. And here is a typical slander that feminists will bring against this epistle. They will say, it's obvious, and a lot of women will draw out this chiastic parallelism. They say, wow, yeah, we just discovered this is parallel. And since nobody believes in slavery anymore, then we shouldn't believe what Paul has to say about role relationships for men and women either, because the two are parallel. There's authority relationships. So let me respond to that. While it is true that douloi means slave, biblical slaves were nothing like American slaves and nothing like pagan slaves. Most slaves in America were the result of kidnapping, which if you look at the law of God, that received the capital penalty. It was an ungodly system, capital crime. In contrast, the law of God provided for indentured servitude as a payment for debt, for crime, or for, in cases of war, for war reparations. It was a form of restitution. So it was a very limited kind of slavery. It looked nothing like pagan slavery. And this is why a lot of versions try to distinguish, like the New King James does, and they will translate it as either bond servants, bond slaves, indentured servants. It's just to keep it separate from what the pagans think of as slavery. But it was a part of God's authority relationship built right into the law. And contrary to popular opinion, this has not passed away. We have not evolved into better Christians who now see, oh, yeah, that's for people who were primitive. Now, of course, the Bible mandated that they be treated well. In fact, Galatians 4.1 points out, slaves must be treated like your family. It says, let me quote from Galatians 4.1, now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all. Where if our young children don't differ at all from a slave, that means that a slave does not differ at all from our young children. That hugely elevates the status of slaves. In fact, it completely changes the definition. of slave that Paul is talking about. And again, this is why the new King James prefers the translation of bond servant. They were paid in the sense that they were paying off a debt. But unlike pagan slaves, these slaves were a part of the family. In fact, I should point out that they got circumcised in the Old Testament upon the profession of faith of the adult. They got baptized in the New Testament upon profession of faith of the parent, Lydia's slaves. Her household was baptized. Cornelius' slaves were baptized along with his family. Now, I'm giving this extended discourse Because postmodern Christianity is constantly apologizing for the Bible and chopping big sections out of the Bible. Women pastors like to chop out large sections of what Paul has written by saying that Paul also spoke of slavery and nobody believes in slavery, right? Okay, so it's a demonic attack on the Scripture. The law of God itself made this provision for indentured servitude, and 1 Timothy 1 says, we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Just because early America did not use the law of slavery lawfully, and they perverted slavery into grossly unbiblical ways, does not mean we can jettison the true biblical doctrine of slavery or indentured servitude. As long as there are criminals who have to pay debts, there will be slavery. And by the way, slavery is inescapable. It's inevitable. America today has far more slaves than it did any time before the war between the states. Did you realize that? We have far more slaves. They're in prisons. That is a form of slavery. In fact, it is a twisted, demonic, and horrible perversion of slavery. There's nothing biblical or good about prisons. Nothing. Just to illustrate, in modern America, a person burns down a building, he doesn't have to pay the victim. Instead, to add insult to injury, the victim has to pay the taxes to house this criminal for $80,000 plus per year out of his taxes. But make no mistake, the prisoner is a slave who has no choice of what he does, day or night. Everything is dictated for him by somebody else, but it's nothing like biblical slavery. It's more akin to the horrible slavery that went in the nations around Israel. And by the way, that is why When a slave escaped from a foreign country and fled to Israel, they were not allowed to return that slave back to that master. Why? Because of how horrible that whole system was. It was ungodly. It was not in anyone's best interest. That is not true of a slave who ran away from an Israelite master. He had to be returned. You cannot, it's a perversion of Scripture to say that that passage about runaway slaves means we do away with slavery altogether. We'll look at Philemon in a couple of weeks, Lord willing, and show this is the trajectory for slavery, is freedom. Eventually, we want to see all of that freedom happening. So let me go back to this illustration. The modern American slave is in a prison where he is discipled by other evil men, rather than being in a family where he is discipled by a good master. The modern prison slave is released with no skills, unlike the Bible, where the biblical slave was released after years of learning very useful skills. The modern prison slave does not pay restitution to the victim he has robbed, whereas that's the whole point of the biblical indentured servitude to serve as a slave until the victim was paid off. The modern prison slave is released from prison with no money, unlike the biblical slave who was provided with enough money to be able to start his own business. The modern prison slave has nothing but the clothes on his back when he gets out of prison, and since no one wants to hire him, he ends up back in crime again. The modern slavery of the penitentiary is vastly worse than any unfortunate slavery that the Bible required for criminals. In any case, slaves in the Bible, indentured servants, whatever you want to call them, learned submission, patience, restitution, self-discipline, skills, saved up money, became future-oriented, were discipled out of their criminal ways, even if it took a beating, And once released from slavery after six years with some capital, they became productive citizens. The trajectory of biblical slavery was toward freedom. It was a restorative punishment. It's a beautiful and beneficial and restorative form of criminal law. Don't apologize for slavery in the Old Testament or the New Testament. It's nothing like American slavery of the past or American slavery of the present. Now in any case, Paul insists in chapter 6 verse 1 that when a bond slave dishonors his master, he is dishonoring God's name and blaspheming God's Word. Be careful of what you say about biblical slavery or indentured servitude. If you support prisons rather than the Bible's form of restitution, Paul says, you are blaspheming God's Word. Those are strong words, but in the context of the great apostasy, Paul and Timothy could not give an inch to the enemy, and I don't think we can give an inch to the enemy today either. If you throw out this doctrine, you concede the argument to the feminists that it's okay to throw out everything Paul said about women being under authority. You can throw out Numbers 30. And what you've done, you've thrown out the protection of these women. Egalitarianism is rife in America. One of the most saddening things to happen in the last decade was to see Reconstructionist radio going egalitarian. It is playing into the hands of the enemy. Now here's the thing. You and I, any one of us, can fall into the errors that are being corrected in this book if we are not careful. This is a book that makes me fear and tremble and cling to God's grace and cling to God's Word. There but for the grace of God goes any of us. Now the G sections continue this discussion of authority, but do it in the context of elders honoring their office with good behavior and members honoring the office of the elder. The closer we get to the heart of the book, the more critical the material becomes for resisting the great apostasy. And having good elders is one of those critical factors. It can't be forced, but it can certainly be prayed in. Chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. This is a faithful saying. If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money. but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous, one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Now, as Paul will show in the central section, some of the elders in Ephesus were not qualified to be elders or bishops. Let me read the second G section. This is chapter 5, 17 through 25. Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor. That's the word that some versions just translate as double salary. It means that. Double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine, for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, and the laborer is worthy of his wages. do not receive an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses. Those who are sinning rebuke in the presence of all that the rest also may fear." So even though the elders get a double salary or more, they are also held to a higher standard. They were publicly rebuked when they messed up. Verse 21, I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality. Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people's sins. Keep yourself pure." The ordination of officers is a serious matter, and it can involve those who ordain them in the sins of those errant future elders. Again, we cannot easily put people into office. It's a serious matter to lay hands of ordination on people. This is one of the reasons why I voted against numerous elders who came before us in Presbytery in the PCA, my previous denomination. They just were not qualified. It made people mad at me, but I felt I had to, to be faithful to Christ. Verse 23, No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities. Notice it says a little wine, not lots of wine. Wine in moderation is good for your health according to both the Bible and the newest scientific studies, and it's always wine in moderation. Verse 24. Some men's sins are clearly evident preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later. Likewise, the good works of some are clearly evident, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden." So Paul's explaining why some of the elders that had really appeared to be good in Acts chapter 20 had you know, as he had prophesied, had turned out bad, had fallen away. Only God can see the heart and presbyteries can err in their ordinations of men. But knowing that some men's sins are hidden should cause a presbytery to engage in much more due diligence in their examination. And I'm very grateful for our presbytery's attempts to have solid examinations. The two H sections deal with the deacon's office and those who assist the deacons. And by the way, I didn't mention this earlier, but both elders and deacons are mandated to have wives already and to have children already and to have demonstrated that they're managing their households well. So singles don't qualify for office. They can qualify for ministry. Everybody qualifies for ministry, right? But they don't qualify for office. And newly marrieds don't qualify either. Once again, the word anare is used to make it crystal clear that women cannot hold the office. It's males. Both elders and deacons must be males who are married and who have children that are well-behaved. Now, I do want to comment on the wives in the first section. and the elderly women in the second H section because these women were absolutely critical to having well-rounded mercy ministries. The wives of deacons were very much involved in diaconal ministry. I mean, just think about it. It's logical. It would not do to have a deacon showing up at a widow's house or some single woman who's in distress all by himself. I mean, heads would turn. That would not be appropriate. So their wives are involved, and we're gonna be looking At these women in the second section, these elderly women were paid. It was not welfare. They were paid for their service. In the second H section, that's chapter 5, verses 3 through 16. Verse 3 says, honor. Same word for pay. Honor widows who are really widows. Verse 9 says, do not let a widow under 60 years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man. What number? Well, there is some kind of a role of official servants that were made up of women. And I say servants because none of these widows was simply on a dole. They were expected to serve if they were being helped out financially. So while the men led the diaconal ministries, The women served critical roles that the men simply could not serve. And this is why chapter 5, verses 3 through 16 lays down such stringent rules about what kind of women could be on the payroll and help the deacons minister to the women. They had to have the same qualifications that the deacons' wives had with a couple of extras. Let me just list out the five qualifications. They had to have good character. Second, they had to be widows. Third, they had to be at least 60 years of age. Fourth, they had to have been faithful to only one husband. Fifth, they had to have had a long history of already faithfully serving and engaging in hospitality and mercy ministries. So even the chiastic structure shows that these women, even though they don't have an office, were involved in deacon-type ministry under the authority of the male deacons. Now the I sections, and we'll breeze through this quick, the I sections of the book give both positive and negative ministry responsibilities that Timothy and every elder have in the household of God. Now I just find this amazing. Even though they're going through the great apostasy and had some of the house churches departing from the faith, Paul gives an amazingly upbeat description of the church being the pillar and ground of the truth. This is just amazing. Paul does not abandon the church just because the church is messed up. Why? Because God does not abandon the church. God is still going to entrust the truth to the church and there will never be a time when the church completely abandons the church. God just will. This is going to be the way it is. Don't think that the church died in the first century and didn't get resurrected in the Protestant Reformation. That is heresy. There has never been a time when the gates of hell have prevailed against the church. The church has always been the pillar and ground of the truth. Okay, beginning to read at verse 13. These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly, but if I am delayed, I write so that you might know how to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. So God has chosen to to make the strength of His kingdom conquer the earth through the weakness of the church. He's not giving up on it. In the second I section, Paul does the same thing. The Church is to be characterized by Scripture alone, right? Paul calls Timothy in the second section to reject anything unscriptural in the slightest degree, to meditate on the Scriptures, to give himself entirely to them. If you're giving yourself entirely to the Scriptures, you can't give yourself to other things, right? And he says, that your progress may be evident to all. And there's a lot of other things in there, but it's all colored by the battle that was placed before them in the heart of the book. And I want to read the heart of the book one more time and highlight four things, and we'll end with these. Chapter four, beginning to read at verse one. Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. It's really foolish for Christians to idealize the days of the apostles and want the church to go back to apostolic times. A lot of people just have a nostalgia for the good old days. Paul be the first one to say, look guys, it's not the good old days. These were the days of apostasy, the great apostasy. But what is encouraging about it is if the church could successfully get through the great apostasy and still be the pillar and ground of the truth, it can get through any apostasy that's happening. Don't be discouraged by the apostasy we see all around us. We do see a lot of apostasy. But you take this book together with Revelation 2, it's very, very encouraging. Second, people do depart from the faith. Okay, they do, it's a warning. Just because we are Calvinists and we believe in the perseverance of the saints does not mean we believe that people cannot apostatize, they do. The perseverance of the saints is not, let me repeat this, the perseverance of the saints is not the once saved, always saved doctrine where you get a ticket to heaven, you can live like the devil, really doesn't matter. No, that is an absolute perversion of the doctrine of perseverance. Rather, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints means if you're truly regenerate, you will persevere. And if you don't persevere, you must not have been regenerate in the first place. That's what it really means. There have been tares in the wheat field in all ages who look like good Christians, talk like good Christians, engage in pastoral ministry, and yet have hearts that are not regenerate. To me, this is just astounding. It means that it's a warning to me. Never presume upon God's grace. Cling to the cross. Cling to His grace. People do indeed depart from the faith, and it proves they weren't Christians in the first place. So 1 John 2.19 says this, they went out from us But they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us." So they were of us in the sense that they were part of the visible church, but they were not of us in the sense that they were not part of the invisible church. We've got to maintain that distinction or we get ourselves into trouble. There have been recent people who have slandered Greg Bonson's name by saying that he didn't believe in the visible-invisible distinction. I just ran across a fabulous article on baptism by him this past week where he clearly says that's an essential doctrine, and he talks about a whole bunch of other doctrines in that essay that completely distance himself from the Auburn Avenue. He has been slandered, including by his son. He has been slandered. Totally misrepresented. Third, there is such a thing as doctrines of demons. And interestingly, those doctrines often don't sound like doctrines of demons. They're so deceptively worded, they sound convincing to Christians. People will use scripture, try to sound like they're evangelical, but it is demons who are motivating these doctrines to cause the church to just slightly deviate from the truth, even if it's just 1%. If you're going from the East Coast to England, you're off by one percent. It's like you miss England by a thousand miles. Satan's very subtle how he gets people to deviate over time. Now, while he highlights just a small handful of doctrines in these five verses, the rest of the book fills out the picture. The point is that what these elders were teaching was perhaps unknown to them from a source other than God. Demons have somehow used them. This book as a whole indicates that egalitarianism is a doctrine from the pit of hell. I don't care how reformed or theonomic a person might claim to be, if he or she is a feminist, he or she has bought into a doctrine of demons. The modern Judaistic movement is a doctrine of demons. So is asceticism, Roman Catholic celibacy, mandated vegetarianism, dishonoring failing to support the elderly, the BLM movement, critical race theory. We must always be on guard against the doctrine of demons. The fourth thing we see in this section is that when people teach lies long enough, their consciences become so seared, it's like scar tissue, they have no feeling. They can no longer tell that they're out of accord with God's law. In fact, they believe their own lies. Okay, this hardening of the conscience doesn't happen overnight, but when we ignore it long enough, it becomes impossible for our consciences to be convicted any longer. It is a scary thing to have a seared conscience because anything is possible for you then. Now I'll end with one of Paul's doxologies. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Father God, we thank You for Your Word. Even when it beats up on us, we thank You for it because we want to be holy. We want to be more and more conformed to the image of Your Son. We want to be more like You and less like the world. And so, Father, we receive with gratefulness, any scowlful work that your word must do in our lives. And I pray that you would excise from us any doctrine of demons, anything that would be displeasing in your sight and help us to be as holy as it is possible for a sinful people to become. Bless this your church, I pray in Jesus name. Amen.