So we're in 1 Timothy 3, let's just read it again. You're gonna see that most of these qualifications relate to character rather than ability. There was only two that relate to ability. And even if you don't aspire to be an overseer, you're not off the hook. These character qualities should be true of every Christian man. This should be your goal. And I said to you, single ladies, this is what you should look for in a husband. These character qualities, right? So you got a standard here. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. So you could kind of see this as the Proverbs 31 for men, right here, yeah. We got through some of those last week, and what we're gonna start on today is the seventh qualification. It's at the end of verse two, and that's one of the two abilities that he's got to have, and that is the ability to teach. So let's talk about that. How can you tell when a man lacks the ability to teach? What does that look like? People fall asleep. That's right. Now why do they fall asleep? What's the problem? Okay, they're not engaged. They're still single. Somehow it's not getting across. And a lot of times that's because he's boring. Andrew Carnegie said, if you don't strike all within 20 minutes, stop boring. Okay, sometimes the content's the problem, but let's talk about his ability. Maybe he doesn't have the ability to help people understand why that content's valuable. Somehow he hasn't learned how to surface felt need about it. Now, other people aren't boring that are bad teachers. They flail their arms and they shop and they hoop. They're not boring, but yet they're still incomprehensible. You don't know what they're talking about. There's a lot of things. If a guy has run on sentences, if it's like drinking water out of a fire hose, And he mutters. How can he be an effective communicator? You might remember that movie, The King's Speech. Now, he was qualified to be the king of England, but he wouldn't have been qualified to be pastor of a church, because the man had a speech problem. This whole movie is about that, helping him with that. By the way, talking and teaching aren't the same thing. We can all talk, but to be able to teach, define that. What does it mean to be able to teach? I appreciate that. There's the gospel coalition that teaching is the ability to communicate and apply the truth of scripture with clarity, coherence, and fruitfulness. Those who have this ability handle the scripture with fidelity, and others are edified when they do so." That's pretty close to what you said. All right, now, I went to Georgia Tech. It's a research institute full of brilliant scholars who are there to research and think. They forced them to teach classes, and it shows. Now they are geniuses, but oh my goodness, it's a cross to bear to be in a class with one of these guys. They're terrible teachers. So merely presenting information is not the ability to teach. You have to be able to cause other people to learn. If you haven't caused people to learn, you haven't taught. You see this typically with little kids. We just assume when you teach little kids, you gotta do things to cause them to learn. You do hand motions and songs and used to be flannel graphs. Whatever it takes, you cause them to learn. And yet, as the audience gets older, For some crazy reason, that responsibility is lifted off the teacher and they just become spouters of information. That's not teaching. Okay, Gerald. So is this need for the elder to be able to teach only speaking in the aspect of teaching with your mouth? And I'm thinking about how Jesus taught his disciples. He did use his mouth, but he also used his actions and he taught them by the way, by demonstrating to them the way to live. So is it just teaching? Yeah, it's not just one thing, is it? Obviously, if you're not modeling what you're teaching, that's a problem. There's a disconnect. So yeah, it's both. So in a sense, there's a difference between teaching and training, merely teaching and training, and leading by example. So that's very true. But you've got to be able to cough it out in some way that information is transferred. And so it's not simply modeling it. It's not simply training. It also involves teaching. Was that you, Robert? In Ephesians 4, we have those five gifts. And one of them is a teacher who's to equip the saints for the work of the service. Is it possible for anybody to be trained? Ah, you hear what he's saying? The purpose of these gifts that Christ has given to the church is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. One of the gifts is evangelism. Well, evangelists do evangelize, but one of their duties is to equip the rest of us to do it. And what do teachers do? Teach others to teach. So if you'll look in our verse, which is in the verse two, it doesn't say he has the gift of teaching, which is what Robert's referring to. It says he's able to teach. That's a skill that can be learned. And especially people who are supernaturally, spiritually gifted to teach should be able to teach other people the skill of teaching. So that's right. And just as a follow-up to that, I don't know that we can make this full connection, but, you know, because it talks about his character at the end, but not being a new convert, not putting people in front who maybe can communicate, but they're not, they don't have life experience in the Word to do that. So kind of be careful on both sides. Oh yeah, that's one of the many qualifications. The whole enchilada is what we gotta look at here. That's right, of course. Alexander Strach said that the ability to teach has three elements. A knowledge of scripture, the readiness to teach, and the capacity to communicate. So there he's talking about information, ability, and opportunity. And so going back to a knowledge of scripture, that means a guy that doesn't know the Bible well is not qualified to be an elder. A guy who doesn't know doctrine is not qualified to be an elder. A guy who doesn't understand what's happened for the past 2,000 years and the things the Holy Spirit has led the church through in fighting heretics and why these things are important is not qualified to be an elder. P.T. Forsyth said, one man who truly knows his Bible is worth more to the church's real strength than a crowd of workers who do not. Now, the second thing in Strack's description was the readiness to teach, and that's the opportunity to do it. A guy's got to have the time free. to study and to prepare. Now, if you've never taught before, you might not appreciate how much time is involved with that. I didn't appreciate how much my wife Sandra did around the house until she passed away. And then I had to do it. And I thought, oh my goodness, I just didn't have any idea how hard that was. If you're not given to teaching, you just probably don't appreciate the hours and hours you have to spend behind closed doors to get ready to do it. Now, many men, because of their work or their family, are not in the season of life where they should serve in church leadership because they just don't have time to study. And that is so important. One commentator said, incomprehensible preaching is not an indication of too much study, it is an indication of too little study and prayerful meditation. So, you've got to consider that, especially since in the first century, the vast majority of church leaders were bi-vocational. It's rare to have a full-time local church leader. So those guys had to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. That's what he's saying. But you really have to fight for that time. And third, he said, was the capacity to communicate. Now, that's ability again. So a lot of people just have not mastered the skill of communication. He's got to have good delivery skills. If he's not a good teacher, he might be a great deacon, might be a great guy, but he's not qualified to be a church leader. An ineffective speaker, game's over. Delivery matters. Now, Robert said the ability to teach is different than the gift of teaching. And some people do have that supernatural gift. You don't have to be an elder to teach. In the early church, they would let non-elders teach. But you don't have to have the gift of teaching to be an elder. You just have to be able to do it. That's the ability. Now let's talk about the teaching itself. It doesn't say preach. What's the difference between teaching and preaching? Preaching is actually proclaiming the word of God. It's not what we think in modern Christendom of preaching because we have all these so-called preachers, but that is not what they're actually called. They're supposed to be elders, which is equivalent to pastors, but preaching and preachers, preaching is proclaiming the word of God, which is more on the side of evangelism than it is to Well, you've said it. So in the Bible, now not convention, in the Bible, you don't see preaching in a church meeting. It's always outside of church and it has to do with evangelism. The word consistently used for church meetings is teaching. And that's didosco, didactic comes from that. Often the word that's used is diligami. which transliterates dialogue, which translates discuss. You don't see monologue lectures develop in church meetings until hundreds of years after the New Testament was written. And that's really when they went from home churches into these big basilicas, they went from dialogue to monologue, and they incorporated Greek and Roman rhetoric. And we have kept right on with that today. So yeah, there's a big difference between the two. So teaching is seen as more dialogical. It can be questioned, interrupted. Comments can be added. And it's not so much of a performance. Now, if you're speaking to thousands of people, like John MacArthur does, you're going to give a sermon. But it's insanity to give a monologue in a small group. A monologue is the least effective form of causing learning that there is. If you can get people involved in the discussion, it's much better. What's the word that is used in the Greek in this passage? It's the dosko. It's the standard word for teach. Teach, the word for teach, didosco. And that, again, is a discussion? No, no, I'm just saying. Dialogami is often the word, but here is didoscoleia, which means teach, and so we're touching on the difference between teaching and preaching. I mentioned last week a lot of things have evolved by way of convention that are extra-biblical, like a distinction between a pastor, an elder, an overseer, and a bishop. It's all the same guy in the New Testament, but we've made artificial distinctions. And so, too, this thing, preaching, has come into churches, which you don't see in the New Testament, but that's because we've gotten each congregation bigger than you see in the New Testament. Instead of meeting in a Roman villa-sized church, now we've got basilica-sized churches, or even cathedral-sized churches. And that's great for a ministry meeting, but for a church meeting, it should be small enough you know everybody there. Do you think it's significant that the work here in this passage a specific requirement for an elder, it appears that they have to be able to organize a message. Yeah. Preaching can fall under the umbrella of teaching. Okay, let's change that. A monologue presentation can certainly fall under the umbrella of a teaching. Yes, that's right. It doesn't have to be dialogical. But preaching is usually only a monologue and it's a performance and it's a different field than is teaching. So to answer your question is it doesn't have to be dialogical, no. So MacArthur clearly is a teacher, clearly. But it's a monologue, so absolutely. Now, why does that matter that he's being able to teach? Give me some reasons why it's important that a church leader be able to teach. I'm really asking why is teaching important in a church? Well, it keeps the crazies away. It really does protect the flock when you're teaching good sound doctrine. learning, which means you're growing the knowledge base of the congregants. So people, if you're teaching, people have a tendency to learn and to grow in their knowledge, increase in their knowledge. Right. Now, when I was a Methodist and I went to church, I heard a sermon on the Vietnam War and Martin Luther King. And one time, I'm not making this up, how to buy a used car. So we were taught, but it wasn't doctrine. It wasn't scripture. And so teaching sound doctrine, It suppresses heresy. It repels heretics. They don't want to be around that. It's like darkness runs from light. It equips the saints for ministry. It matures the saints. All those things, right? So imagine you got a Lamborghini. Wow, what an amazing piece of engineering. But if you don't have gasoline to put in it, it ain't going anywhere. So I think I would depress that. Teaching is to the life of a church what gasoline is to an engine. I had this fun guy. He used to work for me. What would you rather have? Somebody shoot you in the kneecap or poke you out with an ice pick, you know? And every day he'd come up with something like that, you know? Anyway, so if I had to choose, let's say you're gonna move to some far off city, and you had to choose between a church that had great doctrine, great teaching, and no body life, versus a church that had great relational body life and absolutely no teaching. Oh, what a terrible choice. But if I had to choose, I believe I'd go to the one with the teaching because there's hope there. At least you got some gasoline to work with and might blow something up. So anyway, it is important. Yes, sir. And Jesus said a student is not above his teacher in that sense. Yeah, that's good. Amen to that. Alright, well Martin Luther was asked how he accomplished all he did during the Reformation and he said, I simply taught preached and wrote God's word, otherwise I did nothing. The word did it all. So that is important that we have teaching in a church. It's also critical for making disciples. Jesus said, make disciples of all nations doing what? teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. Titus 1.9, a parallel passage to ours, says, an elder must be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Titus 2.1, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Now, you know what orthodoxy is? What's heterodoxy? They used to have super heterodyne receivers. What's heterodox? It's other than orthodox. That's a nice word. It's heresy is what it is. So if you got an elder who's ignorant of doctrine or he holds to some falsehood, the whole church is likely to be led off into error. So to name a few things that are popular today, I've gotten a number of phone calls from potential visitors wanting to know if our church was Torah compliant. I said, thank God, no, it's not. And they didn't come. The Torah is the law of Moses, and some Christians mistakenly think we're under the law of Moses and you should be following Mosaic law. Martin Luther doubted the salvation of anybody who thought they should observe a Sabbath day. He was that far away from being hung up on Moses. Anyway, some people believe in baptismal regeneration. What's that? Yeah, if you ain't dunked, you're sunk. They think it's not enough to believe in Jesus. You've got to be baptized. That's not different than saying you've got to be circumcised. A lot of y'all are victims of the prosperity gospel. We had a guy come through one time teaching Protestant purgatory. The Catholics weren't wrong about everything. Another one, this is kind of a red light on the dashboard, but we've had people who think the King James Version of the Bible is an inspired translation. And they judge the Greek by the Elizabethan English. Obviously, work salvation is a false gospel. You've got people like the Mormons who appear to be such sincere believers, but it's another gospel. Unitarianism is a false gospel. Women pastors, that's kind of a problem. The biggest of all around here is theological liberalism. I don't know how many churches you passed to come here today, but I guarantee at least half of them were eaten up with theological liberalism. They deny all the basic cardinals of the Christian faith. Even right here locally, Mercer University, the Mercer brothers were very strong Christians and started churches all over Georgia. But now that institution is anti-Christ. I knew a brother, some of y'all know him too, he was faculty there. They fired him because he would share the gospel with the students. They said they wanted Mercer to be a safe place. Okay, I saw a hand over here. Yes, sir. Yeah, there you go. That's right. And related to that is liberation theology. The communists use that to great effect in the Latin American countries, but it's still among us. The other extreme, though, it sounds spiritual, but it's not. It's a just Jesus reductionist approach to theology. And one guy told me, doctrine divides, but Christ unites. Well, that's overly simplistic. Well, which Christ are you talking about? The Christ of the Mormons? The Christ of the Jehovah's Witnesses? The Christ of the Unitarians? Which Christ? Now you get into doctrine. And another guy said this. This is a church leader. He said, I don't know their beliefs and they don't ask me about mine. In fact, one church planter, when he starts a church, he tells people to leave their Bibles at home. And he's going to bring them Jesus. Head for the door. So when we talk about orthodoxy, that's an orthodontist. Gives you straight teeth, right? So orthodoxy is straight doctrine. To be an elder, you ought to hold to historic Christian orthodoxy. Now that's stuff like the Trinity. and Jesus is God, and he died on the cross to pay for sins, and he was born of a virgin, and he bodily rose from the grave, and he's coming back one day bodily, and there's gonna be judgment, and it's gonna be really bad for some people. There's gonna be universal resurrection followed by heaven or hell. That's basic Christian orthodoxy. Then, since those creeds have been written, we've had to fight other battles. He should believe in the full inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of the scriptures. And other things have happened. He should hold to the Danvers Statement on biblical manhood and womanhood. He should hold to the National Statement on sexuality. Man's a man and woman's a woman, right? The Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy. These are statements that people who believe the Bible have been forced to write up because of all the crazy stuff that's going on out there. Anyway, now, depending on the local church, it can get even more specific. We had a brother in our church that had been a Methodist minister. Problem was, he believed the Bible, and they got rid of him. He was a great guy, loved the Lord, but he believed in infant baptism. Well, he wouldn't have been suitable as an elder in our church because we believe in believers baptism. So even though he's a great guy, it wouldn't fit us. Okay, now what's unique to us, of course, we go by the First London Baptist Confession of 1644. So if a guy doesn't believe that, he's not qualified to be an elder in this church. It's been that way for 30 years. We also hold a New Covenant theology as opposed to dispensational theology. Well, I mean, you can be dispensational if you want, but in leadership, we ask you to be New Covenant. And so, too, in your understanding of salvation, you can be Arminian or Calvinist. We ask you, and have been for 30 years, to be Calvinist. I went to the Greater Atlanta Baptist Network meeting, and they had started these two new churches, and when they ordained elders, But they get them up front, do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you believe? They go right down the row and get them to affirm it. And then they say, will you commit to resign if you ever change your thinking about any of these things? Because however the leadership goes, that's where the church is going to go. So you just got to decide what's important to each local congregation and what's not. Proverbs says, if a ruler listens to falsehood, all his officials will be wicked. Now, some of you sitting there today are probably heretics. You just don't know it. All right? So Paul said to the Ephesian elders, he says, from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples. So these are elders who, they've met all these qualifications that Paul wrote about. He and Timothy were right there pointing them to be elders, and he knew some of them were gonna go bad. And when you look at the history of the denominations, it's constant, people defecting and going bad. And of course, sometimes the whole denomination goes with it. It's just constant. Paul said he left Timothy in Ephesus for this reason. He says, instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines. Second Timothy, it says, the Lord's servant must be able to teach, correcting his opponents with gentleness. There are going to be opponents. So, able to teach. That's a pretty important qualification. And that is the main difference in qualifications between elders and deacons, right there. The next verse we learn, this is verse three, church leaders have to be not-heads. Not drunk, not violent, and not quarrelsome. That's what it says. So the first one is not a drunkard. That's three Greek words jammed together, not, and the word beside, and the word wine. So he can't linger long beside a bottle of wine, but it means in the Greek to be drunk. You might say he can't abuse alcohol. The NAS says not addicted to wine. So why would it be important for a church leader not to be a drunkard? It's a sin for one thing. There's an extra spirit. I like that. Good. The wrong spirit. OK, so you remember I said last week the first qualification for an elder was what? The very first one. What was it? It drives all the rest of them. He's got to be blameless, above reproach. And all these things he talks about are what it looks like to be above reproach. It's not above reproach. To be drunk, that's scandalous. So that's one of the qualifications. I mean, he's filling it out here. So it's sinful, as you all have already said. It's scandalous, as we've talked about. And also, frankly, if an elder has a drinking problem, the church is not going to be managed well. It's just not. No more than a drunk drives a car down the road in a good way, he's not going to manage the church in a good way. Yes, sir? Yes, it will drive a man to drink, I understand that, yeah. If he's already tempted to do that, that's a problem. Okay, so Proverbs says, it is not for kings, you could say church leaders, to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. That's a good verse. Thank you. I was just going to say, but in our culture, it's so passe, right? If you remember not very many years ago in the Supreme Court, one of them stepped down as being nominated because he had admitted to not drinking, but And I shouldn't say it, but I will. Hang on to that, Ben. There's a difference between not being a drunkard and total abstinence. Because of prohibition and what happened back then, Christians bought into being teetotalers. He doesn't say he's got to be a teetotaler. He says he can't be a drunk. I don't want to be legalistic in the other direction. I just thought about the Lord's Supper was originally done with wine, so it's a balanced day. Oh, well, that's a good point. Thank you. Okay, now the next not-head qualification is that he is not violent but gentle. Don't say Gentile, gentle. All right. Why don't you want a violent man in church leadership? Tell me why. Oh yeah, tell us what did Saint Nick do? He's your death. Aside from Saint Nick, Chris? Okay, he's lacking self-control. And Jace was teasing about dealing with people will drive anybody to drink. And so too, when you're dealing with people, if you're hot-headed, you don't want a guy's an elder who's prone to punch people in the nose. Because you're going to be tempted to do it. I won't name any names. I had the Greek word for violent right here, and it's this. What's that? This is a plectrum, or a pick, but plectase is the Greek word, and it means to strike, and that's what you do. You strike the strings with the plectrum, but that's what it means. It's to hit, and you don't want to do that. Applied to elders, one commentary said this. A violent man uses his strength to bully people. We may not be tempted to hurt people physically, but we may be tempted to use our intellectual abilities or even our theological expertise to overpower people by mental force. We must meet pressures with a trust in God that avoids anger, drunkenness, and violence. I think it's the one about being gentle with those who oppose. Yeah, it says, this is 2 Timothy 2.24, the Lord's servant must be able to teach correcting his opponents with gentleness. grant them repentance. but you're gently laying out the word of God and letting the word of God change them. Sorry for taking so long. Amen. Michael? It feels like a teacher is trying to win his student through love and thoughtfulness. It seems more compelling, you know, if you are slow to anger, quick to listen, and you draw people in with a compassionate word. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You really do have to love people enough to put up with them. That's what it comes down to. We're like a bunch of porcupines coming together to get warm. Quills hurt. We're going to offend each other. But the love hopefully holds us in orbit. that we love each other enough to put up with each other. Yeah, but especially true of a church leader. Now, he says, so not violent, but gentle. And that Greek word means not harsh, not stern, not violent. One lexicon said it means reasonable, mild, and patient. Proverbs says a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. And then also it says he must be Not quarrelsome. So to be above reproach means you're not quarrelsome. There used to be a wrestler, he called himself Macho Man. Y'all remember that guy? The Greek word for quarrelsome is the Greek word not, and the Greek word mache, which means to fight. So he's not a fighter. He's not a macho man. He's not a luchador. King James says he's not a brawler. An elder's got to keep his temper under control. He can't always be insistent on his own rights and stirring up trouble. Uncontentious might be the idea behind that, not quarrelsome. So what's it going to look like if you put a quarrelsome man in leadership? What's that look like? Yeah, it's going to be constant agitation and stirring up trouble. And when you say a fight, of course, we're thinking about not fist fight, but other kind of fight. Yeah. So he's going to needlessly stir up controversy. Proverbs says an angry man stirs up strife and a hot tempered man abounds in transgression. A guy that's quarrelsome is lacking in judgment. He's likely to be unkind, impatient, not gentle in how he deals with people. And so 2 Timothy 2.24 says, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, macho man, but kind, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. There's our word, all right. Qualification 11, not a lover of money. So if you are a lover of money, you're not above reproach. The parallel passage says not greedy for gain. Now, why is it important that a church leader not be a lover of money? Oh boy, you don't want to offend your customers. Let's hold back on the truth. You pull your punches. We're all human. That's a huge temptation right there. Okay, what's another reason you wouldn't want a guy that's a lover of money to be in leadership? Now there we're back into the prosperity gospel again. That's a big one, isn't it? So common. He might be tempted to steal from the offering. Yes, sir. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Like Laodicea, that's good. Thank you, brother. So if you do love money, and some of you might, that's a sign of spiritual immaturity. 1 Timothy 6, 8, if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. Wow. Jesus said you cannot serve God and money. First Timothy 6.15 warns of people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. 1 Timothy 6, 9, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith. Now, we've already mentioned that in New Testament times, most church leaders were bivocational. Even if he doesn't steal from the offering plate, if he's known for being greedy in business, That's a bad reputation in the community. It's a bad witness, probably not above reproach. Paul, who of all people had the right to be supported in his ministry, voluntarily made tents. He was talking about his right to make his living from the ministry. He and Barnabas, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. That man was not greedy for money. It looks like in the New Testament, the elders did handle the church's money. A lot of times churches today say that elders shouldn't have the ability to sign the checkbook. It does have nothing to do with it. And that's probably wise stewardship. But in the New Testament, for example, in Acts, it says, The owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds to what was sold and laid it where? at the apostles feet and it was distributed. And then another place in Acts, it says the disciples determined to send relief to the brothers living in Judea, and they did so sending it to the elders. So anyway, if that's the case, again, he's got to be known for being trustworthy, fiduciary responsibility, able to handle money, not tempted to be greedy with it. And I mentioned earlier, a previous week, There's also the temptation just to envy. If you give up a lucrative career in business to go into church work, you're probably going to have a whole lot less money than you would have had had you stayed in business. So if you're given to envy, that could cause problems. And there was an American missionary who was working back in the day with the Vietnamese boat people who'd come over here after the debacle in Vietnam. And he quit his job to work with him full time. And as they got saved and disciplined and learned biblical principles for finances, they started driving the fancy cars and living in the fancy houses. He gave up to work with them, and he admitted to being Envious. So you just got to watch that. All right. So we're going to stop there for today. So that does take us through verse three. Next week, we'll go to the next ability, which is management ability. And hopefully we'll finish it out next week. This message was produced by the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, reforming today's church with New Testament church practices. Permission is hereby granted for you to reproduce this message. You can find us on the web at www.ntrf.org. May God bless you as you seek to follow Him in complete obedience to His Word. May your faith in the Lord Jesus be strengthened and your daily walk with Him deepened.