1 Timothy 3

0:00 Well, good morning again. If Greg were here, I'm sure he would bemoan the fact that UofL lost. I don't really care, so you can, yeah. OU had an off day, so I feel really, really good. Now, talk to me next week after OU plays Alabama. I don't know where Carly Sutherland is, where Lauren Warren is. Yeah, we'll see next week. But, you know, for you UofL fans, I guess I'm sorry. For you UK fans, great, you won a game. That was excellent. Good for you. There, we got the obligatory football comments out of the way.

0:34 No, all kidding aside, this is my favorite season. So fall, not just because of football, but the weather, all of it, different wardrobe, everything about this season is just my favorite. Pumpkin spice lattes, on and on and on I could go. So I'm so grateful that you are here this morning getting to enjoy this wonderful day together as a church. Friends, we're going to be in 1 Timothy chapter 3. That's in page 992 of one of those Red Pew Bibles. So if you don't have a Bible, you're welcome to grab one of those and use it. Maybe you're not a Christian and you're here with us. You'll be helped to grab one of these Bibles and follow along with us as we read through it and study it together this morning. So page 992 is where you'll find our passage for this morning. Have you ever noticed how the design of something tells you what it's meant to do?

1:26 So if you look at a sports car, you know that that's just inherently different than, say, a bus. One's meant for speed, and the other one's meant for capacity. What about a hospital? A hospital doesn't function like a restaurant. A restaurant doesn't function like an airport. They have different shapes and things they do, and it's because they have different functions. The structure about them is always going to follow along with a purpose. Well, the way something is set up is going to tell you what it exists to do. Imagine if you mixed up those examples I gave, right?

1:59 You saw a school bus that was a two-seater, low to the ground, fast, incredibly fast engine. Well, it's just not very efficient, right? It doesn't do its job very well. Or what about a hospital that tried to operate like a restaurant? It was based on kind of customer experience and presentation, and you had to make a reservation to get into the hospital. Well, of course, that's chaos. When you confuse the structure about something, you eventually lose sight of its purpose. Well, the same thing can happen in the church.

2:32 If we misunderstand how the church is meant to function, especially when it comes to its leadership, we'll eventually misunderstand what the church exists to do. So God, though, in his wisdom, has not left the organization of his people, of his churches, up to personal preference or convenience or even what the trending leadership style of the day is. know he's designed it very intentionally. And the structure he gives us reflects the mission, our purpose that we're called to do. So that's what Paul's going to help Timothy and thereby us see today in chapter 3 of 1 Timothy. This passage is not just a checklist of who can hold what title in the church. And I hope to be able to show us that this morning, that it's far more than that.

3:15 It's actually a window into what the heart of the church is. I think that's what we'll see today. But a little bit of background on 1 Timothy, we've gone through the first two chapters of the last few weeks, but maybe you weren't here with us, or even if you were, it's helpful to catch back up. This was written a long time ago by the Apostle Paul, sometime mid-A.D. 60s, so about 30 years after Jesus dies, he's writing to his co-laborer, Timothy, young co-laborer in the gospel, giving him instructions on how to address some problems that have come up in the church at Ephesus.

3:46 So that church had been planted, oh, let's say a decade or so prior to that time. And by that point, different problems have come up in the church. They've got false teaching especially, and that seems to be the biggest problem. Now, we don't know the content of the false teaching, but we can start to deduce some things that the false teaching probably said, probably proclaimed. So, for instance, in the first few chapters, we saw that there were some issues with men and women and how they related to one another in the church. Today, we're going to see how the leadership of the church needed to function, needed to be arranged.

4:19 And even next week, we're going to see what things in life can and can't be enjoyed, for instance. The false teachers went after even that. By all appearances, it seems like the Christians there in Ephesus were being bombarded with a whole long list of confusing teachings. Well, Paul spends some time in these first few chapters explaining then how the gospel actually changes the way that the church should relate to outsiders. And then how the church should relate to itself. And it says we get here then to chapter 3 where he's taking that same type of concept, how the gospel changes the way we relate to someone and turns it in on the leadership and says this is how the leadership of the church should function within the church.

5:03 And that's where we are today. So let's read 1 Timothy chapter 3, beginning in verse 1. The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must 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.

5:36 For if 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 and to a snare of the devil. Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first, then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.

6:10 Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Well, the structure of this chapter is actually just very, very simple. There's nothing really for us to guess at. Verses 1 to 7, you see it there. It's addressing the roles and the qualification of overseers or elders.

7:12 we'll talk about that in a moment. Then verses 8 through 13, it's addressing the role and qualifications of deacons. And then that last section, verses 14 through 16, really addresses the reason for why Paul writes this in the first place. So he's getting at a summary of this entire thing. So you could take those first two sections and kind of tie them back in with all that we saw last week in chapter 2, and that would make one big chunk of text. And then this last bit, verses 14 through 16 are more or less the summary of that. So the structure, that's how that's working.

7:43 It's this whole long list, chapter 2 to chapter 3, of different relationships within the church and even outside the church, and then the summary for why Paul has said those things. I think we'll see that even more clearly as we move through it. But for today, the main idea for the rest of our time together in this sermon is this. What you believe about how the leadership of the church functions reveals what you believe the church exists to do. So what you believe about how the leadership of the church functions reveals what you believe the church exists to do.

8:19 There's a connection there between the two. When we think about the leadership of the church, it's actually got something for us about what the church is to do. We'll see that as we move through the rest of the passage this morning. We've got three different points for the sermon. There are basically three different offices, yes, offices of the church. I think there are three in what they do. Number one, overseers should oversee. Very straightforward. Number two, deacons should deacon. It's not a verb, but we're going to make it one today. Put it in air quotes if you need to.

8:51 And number three, the church should, we're going to get to there, right? So just hold on to that. I'll tell you what the church should do as we get to the end. Overseer should oversee, deacons should deacon, and the church should do something. We'll get to it later on. Point number one, overseer should oversee. So some job titles out there, at least beyond the church world, are just wild, just incredibly confusing. Take Subway. Do you know what they call someone who makes your sandwich at Subway? It's a sandwich artist. I hope none of you're a sandwich artist, I'm stepping on your toes, but that's ridiculous if you're a sandwich artist. You make sandwiches, that's fine. Do that to the glory of God, but you make sandwiches.

9:34 A digital profit is an actual job. Now, I don't think it quite means like they're, you know, digitally prophesying. I think it means something maybe a little bit more technical, but that sounds absurd to me. Take this one. There's a job called an accounting ninja. You know what that person does? I think they just do accounting really well. That's it, right? I think one day I want to be a pastor ninja, right? So these are real job titles. So you can get creative and call it whatever you want, but you're not really saying much about the job.

10:10 You're just kind of being silly and creative. Well, this section, thankfully, is not like that. It's just very straightforward. It tells us what the role is. Overseers oversee, period. That's what they do. They watch over, they tend to, they safeguard, they supervise. But in the life of the church, it has a very specific meaning, yes, but overseers oversee. But did you notice, as we read through the text just a few seconds ago, that it doesn't really seem to say a lot about what they do, right? Most of what it talks about seems to be talking about what type of person should do the overseeing. Well, hang on to that. We'll come back to that in just a little bit.

10:52 Before we go a little bit further, though, I want us to talk about this word overseer. That's not a word that we use really probably ever here at Third Avenue. Well, the word is a different word that gets translated as pastor and different than the word that gets translated as elder. But they're talking, all three of those, about the same person, the same office. Why is that? How do we know that? What kind of case can we make for that? Well, there's a few different places in the New Testament that connect that all together for us. But I think the best place for us to go to, and you don't have to flip there, but you could write this down, is 1 Peter 5.

11:25 There, Peter is addressing elders, right? So he's talking to elders, and he tells them to shepherd, which is the same word that gets translated as pastor. So he's talking to elders. He tells them to shepherd and to oversee. So he's connecting all three of those together in the same person, in the same office. He's saying, elders, you pastor and you oversee, because they're all the same. so they're basically the same term. Don't get caught up on the fact that overseers differ than elder. In fact, probably for the rest of the sermon, you're going to hear me say elder more than overseer just because that's the term that we use here. That's the term that you'll be more familiar with, but don't be confused by that. So Paul has shifted at the end of chapter two from talking about men and women in the church and how they relate to one another to now talking about this role of elder, but he doesn't go right at what they do, right? We just mentioned that. He doesn't seem to say, and here's their job description. Here it is what they do. No, he spends a lot of time on what type of person they should be. Well, that's because the task at hand

12:29 for an elder, right? That noble task, as he says there at the end of verse one, that requires a certain type of person to do it faithfully and to do it correctly. Look right out of the gate, Paul wants to set something straight. Those who aspire to the office of elder, they desire a good, a noble, a worthy task. To aspire, the word underlying that is to stretch out, it's to reach for. It shows active going after something. You actually want it and you go out and try and grab it. So those who are trying to aspire to this, that's a good thing. Now we talk a lot about elders here at 3rd. Part of that's because the Bible talks a lot about elders, but also we talk a lot about elders because we have many men here in our church who aspire to the office of elder.

13:21 Look, that work of eldering, it's a good work. It's a noble work. It's a wonderful work. The thing that is desired here is called a good work. And even though the text doesn't say that aspiring itself is good. Notice that. It doesn't say that aspiration is good. It says the work is good. The way it's all phrased, I still think it's fair to say that if you meet those qualifications, you're encouraged to aspire to this. It is a good thing to aspire to it.

13:52 Brothers, do you aspire to the office of elder? I know, as a matter of fact, that many of you do. You've told me. You've told the other elders here at Third. That's great. That's wonderful. Maybe it'll be here or maybe it'll be at another church someday that you'll serve that church as an elder. May it be so. I think that would be a wonderful thing for those churches. I hope that all of you who aspire to the office of elder, that the Lord gives that gift in his timing either to this church or to another church. But here's what's interesting for you brothers in particular.

14:27 Paul doesn't outline a process of how to get that office or how to obtain it. That's just not his focus. No, he focuses on the type of person who's qualified for that noble task and that good work. The qualifications of that man are what Paul is interested in, not the process of how to get it. Like so much of the time, men aspiring to the office of pastor and younger men in particular, They want to know what's the next step, what do I need to do, tell me the next thing that I can go work on, what do I need to know so I can be more prepared for this. Well, look, there's certainly elements of ministry that you can grow in, yes, definitely, absolutely, but the main place that younger men, that you younger brothers should set your focus on, is on the type of man that you should be, not what skill set you can develop. Like younger brothers aspiring at this point, take note. Take note of this. If you're not focusing just as much effort and just as much

15:31 time on developing these characteristics from this section in your life as you are on developing your ability to exegete a passage or to rightly counsel in difficult situations or to lead a meeting, then you don't understand what it means to be an elder. Like these character traits, are not optional. They're mandatory. Run after these just as hard as you run after those skills that you'll need to do the task as well. But there's a good word in here for the 17 men, 16 other men besides myself, who currently serve this church as elders as well. Brothers, the 16 of you kind of scattered throughout here. Eldering is a noble task. The work that we get to do is noble. It's hard and frustrating, yes, but it's also delightful and fulfilling. It's a wonderful good work. Don't let that get drowned out in your heart. So when we're sitting downstairs, for instance, at 11 30 on Wednesday night and we're all dog tired, when we're facing yet another

16:36 difficult situation, don't forget that. Remember, this is a noble task. When we're working on financial decisions that seem purely administrative and we wish we could just kick them to mic, let's say. Brothers, it's a noble task. Don't forget it. When we're trying to track down wayward members yet again because they won't answer our texts and our emails, that's a noble task. When we're preparing to teach lessons and sermons, wondering if anyone's even going to come listen, it's a noble task you're doing. Of all the things you could be doing right then, right in that very moment, you're doing what the Bible calls a noble task. Don't lose sight of that. Look, the work we get to do in serving our Lord and serving this church is wonderful. It's fun even often, but let's set our eyes on the noble task as hard or easy as it may be and do it for God's glory.

17:33 So what about these qualifications? Why does Paul list them here? What are we to make of them? it's this long list. Well, I think they're actually just very straightforward. Look back at verse 2. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach. That seems to be right there the headline and the summary of the rest of it. Overseers, elders should be above reproach, and by that I mean da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and he goes on and gives the rest of these. But let's talk about a few of them, because I'm sure a few of them will catch your eye. So, husband of one wife there in verse 2. Excuse me, verse 3. Verse 2. This does not mean married men only. So, if you're a single brother, aspiring to the office elder. We just do not think this means married men only. Instead, it's the rule, right, that men would be married. Generally, men would be married. It's the exception when they're not. And so he's speaking to the majority of the men saying, if you're married, be faithful in your marriage. That's what he's aiming at. What about the rest of that list, right? It's just one character trait after another. Sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, not

18:35 drunkard, not violent, not quarrelsome, not greedy. Well, those are all self-explanatory. Guess what? You don't have to know Greek to know what those mean. They mean exactly what they say. It's very, very simple. They're painting a picture of a man who's mature, a man who's mature in mind and has self-control. What about verse 6? He must not be a recent convert. That's just so that he won't be prideful, right? A man who's just recently been converted thinks he knows all things. We call like cage stage, right? And he's going to be prideful. What about verse 7? Well, he's got to have a good reputation with unbelievers, showing that he's still got a distinction. He's different than them, but he can still relate to them as well so that he can proclaim the gospel to them.

19:18 But we skipped over a few there. What about the one at the end of verse 2? Able to teach, and then really all of verses 4 and 5, managing his own household well. Well, able to teach. Elders must to be able to teach. You've heard that dozens of times in this church. But you know what that doesn't mean? Do you know what being able to teach does not mean? It does not mean that every one of your elders must be able to stand up here on a Sunday morning and preach a sermon to you. That's just not what the word means. No, the words teach and teacher and teaching are mentioned over a dozen times in this short letter of 1 Timothy, right? There's a huge emphasis on false teachers and on false teaching. That's what Paul's going after, and so it makes sense that he would combat all of that with right teachers and right teaching. And he doesn't just mean preaching here in the main gathering of the church. He means in all the ways that the church would need to be taught, they need to be taught by those who are able to teach. What about managing his own household?

20:22 Well, this is actually getting a little bit more to the heart of what Paul means, I think, here in this entire section about elders. Elders must be able to care for their own household before they can be entrusted with caring with something like God's church, right? It's an argument from lesser to greater. You got to be able to do this or you can't do this. I mean, the thinking is just if you can't care for your own household, which presumably should come far more naturally to you if you're a father and a husband, than caring for a bunch of people who are your peers, you have no business even trying to do that. This is far more difficult than this. A man must be able to do this, care for his own household, before he can become an elder. That's all he's saying there. But why all of this?

21:02 Why this whole list? Why not just, I don't know, give a much clearer job description? Why does he give this list? Isn't it sort of random? Well, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. In fact, there are three helpful ways to consider that. Number one, there's a warning wrapped up in all of this. Did you catch that? Look at verses 6 and 7. I said it, 6, 7. Like half of you, if I don't acknowledge it, half of you are just going to chuckle for the next paragraph. So there I said it. The other half of you have no clue what that means. No one in the world does. That's fine.

21:36 Look at verses 6 and 7. If a man doesn't have these qualifications, these certain qualifications, What does it say? He might very well fall into the condemnation of the devil. He might fall into disgrace. He's going to fall into a snare of the devil. Brothers, this is serious business. This is not a joke to be an elder. This is not a joke to have elders. In fact, that's why Paul's laying this out. He's saying, you don't want to put men in this role who don't meet these qualifications because guess what? They're going to fall into sin and bring reproach on themselves and on you. This is serious business. Beware. That's number one. Number two, I think the main function he's driving at in this list is that elders should care for God's church. Well, surely if you're to receive care from someone, you want it to be something like this list that he lays out here, right? Imagine for a second just receiving care for your soul from someone

22:38 the very opposite of this list, right? A guy who cheats on his wife, he's unrestrained in his lifestyle, he's unfriendly, he's a drunk, he's violent, he picks petty fights, he's greedy, he can't control his home, and to top it all off, he can't teach. Well, of course not, right? Of course you don't want that. It should go without saying you don't want that, but Paul just makes it abundantly clear by stating it here. This is the type of person you want, obviously. But number three, and I think most importantly for this part, is that I think we can begin to connect some dots here in the context. We can begin to piece it all together and see why he's writing it. In the context of this letter, we see that elders care for God's church. How? By teaching. They care for God's church by teaching. Paul's writing to Timothy, remember, to encourage him to oppose these false teachers. Those false teachers have been tripping up the saints there in Ephesus for some time now, And what do the elders need to be able to do to care well for the people there?

23:35 They need to be able to teach. So he says you've got to have faithful teachers to do the primary function of fighting against this false teaching. Well, you can put that whole list together then, verses 1 to 7, and you can see that overseeing, that eldering, really is done by those who have a teaching-centered approach. It's a teaching-centered thing with the goal, finally, of caring for God's people. It's not teaching to give data. It's not teaching to give information. It's teaching in order to care.

24:06 That's what elders do. So fellow elders, the other 16 of you, that's our aim. That's what we do. And all the other things that we do, that's the one that sits above them. We take up the Bible, we speak it, we teach it, we preach it in whatever context the Lord gives us. Week in and week out with the goal of caring for God's people. If you can dumb it down to something, that's what it is that we do according to 1 Timothy 3. But church, this means a few things for you as well. Number one, it means this.

24:38 It means that you need to be taught. Not because you're dumb, not because you're ignorant, but because this is how the Lord will care for you. You can work the logic out this way, right? the Lord intends for you as a church to have shepherds who will care for you. Yes, I think everyone wants that. And it'll be shepherds who are skilled at managing their own family and their own household and have all these other qualifications. Yes, but in the context of the letter, the dangers that the Christians there in Ephesus were facing didn't just call for some sort of nebulous, relational, warm, affectionate, ooey-gooey care. It didn't not need that, but that just wasn't sufficient. What they needed were men who met these qualifications who would teach God's Word to them.

25:30 Look, don't take lightly the gift that it is to sit under the teaching of God's Word. That noble task that elders do necessarily involves teaching you, the church. So ask the Lord to care for you. Ask the Lord to care for you through the teaching that you receive over coffee meetings, and over fire pits, and over informal gatherings. Look for ways that the Lord cares for you in phone calls, and text messages, and emails, and every time an elder gives you some type of biblical wisdom. Come each Sunday to this gathering praying that the Lord will show his incredible infinite care for you through the teaching of his word so what's the noble task that the elders do what why do we have them why do we need them why does paul put this here well we need them because we as god's people need to be taught and the lord is caring for us through elders whose

26:32 job it is to teach us and that's point number one point number two that middle section deacons should deacon. Well, think about the last big family meal you had together. You've got, you know, living with roommates, maybe the last big kind of roommate meal that you had together. Someone had to cook the meal, maybe some ones even, but people had to be engaged in preparing the meal. People had to maybe be engaged in, you know, getting the others rounded up to come to the meal. Others had to set the table, get everything ready. There were lots of different roles, but all of it was needed if the meal was going to be pulled off successfully, right? If Thanksgiving dinner is going to be pulled off, for instance, here in a few weeks, it's not going to be because one person does it. There's going to be several people involved in that. In some ways, that's how God designed His church, right? It's similar to that. Elders make sure that the meal, the Word of God, is prepared correctly and faithfully, and then deacons make sure that the table's set, that people are ready and able to hear the Word of God.

27:33 So if overseers prepare, deacons set the table. It's as simple as we can get it. The service of deacons helps the family of God enjoy the feast of God's Word week in and week out. That's their role. But much of what Paul says here in these verses from 8 through 13 is really already said about elders. Did you notice that as we read through it, a lot of it feels very, very similar. That's why it even begins with likewise there in verse 8, deacons likewise. In other words, these verses 1 through 7, a lot of these same things are true of deacons.

28:06 Well, it's important for us to understand both with elders and deacons that we are talking about Christians. Christians par excellence in some ways, yes, model Christians, but not some other category of humanity, right? Your elders and your deacons are Christians, and that's what Paul seems to be getting at here. The main trait for them, in fact, is fairly easy. It's that they should be dignified. They should have some sort of honor about them. That's verse 8. They should also, deacons, not be mastered by their tongue or by alcohol or by greed.

28:40 They should be in control of themselves. They have to hold fast to the truth of the gospel. And importantly, just like elders, they have to be tested first. You see that there in verse 10. That's not a separate testing. That just means they need to pass this test of qualifications, and then they can serve. as deacons. But what is it that they do? If deacons deacon, right, if we're trying to coin a new term, what does that actually mean? Well, the word just means servant. The underlying word there is servant. So those who are deacons are servants. They serve and meet the needs of the church. And in their service, what does Paul say? Verse 13, those who serve gain a good standing for themselves and great confidence in the faith. There's serving with a purpose. When you think about it, this makes sense, doesn't it? If elders, the overseers have been charged with teaching God's people, if they're going to devote themselves to the ministry of word and prayer, there are going to be things that come up in the life of the church that they simply can't do. And so, Paul says, yes, there should be deacons who meet those needs. They're going to take care of those physical

29:42 and practical needs of the church. But notice, if you're a close, if you're reading the same ESV that I have here with footnotes and numbers above them. There's a massive elephant sitting in the middle of this room that we just haven't addressed yet. Look at verse 11. Their wives likewise, and mine has little number four, and you go down here and says, wives likewise, or women likewise. Well, what about, are these wives of deacons? Is that what Paul's meaning? Well, then what about women deacons? After all, we have women deacons here at Third Avenue. I hope you as members of Third Avenue know that. If not, you're learning that right now. So is this wives or women? And why would one matter over the other? Well, I actually think it should be women, and I think there's a very strong case for that. So I'm going to take some time here to actually kind of detour into some technical stuff, but I think it's going to pay off for us in the end. So stick with me.

30:40 There's three different ways I think you can support a translation of women over and against wives here. Most of this, just for the record, I'm getting from Matt Smether's book, Deacons in the Nine Marks Building Healthy Churches series, a little purple book. I think we've got copies even in the bookstall. I'm happy to talk to you about it afterwards if you're more interested. But here they are, the three ways to support a translation of women. Number one, Scripture does not explicitly forbid women deacons, but it does explicitly forbid women elders.

31:12 So as we saw last week in chapter 2, and then even as you connect the context into the beginning of chapter 3 this week, it shows that women may not serve as elders. That's just very explicitly clear, but that's nowhere said of women deacons. That's number one. Number two, the evidence of Phoebe, who's mentioned in Romans chapter 16. You don't have to turn there, but in Romans chapter 16 verse 1, a woman by the name of Phoebe is called a deacon. And that word underlying that is diakonos. Diakonos is the same word that's used here in chapter 3 of 1 Timothy, and it's used of Phoebe in Romans chapter 16. More to the point that that same word is masculine, which in Greek these genders would have mattered if you know your language. It's masculine, whereas she, her name is feminine, so it doesn't match there, which implies this is probably pointing to an office. It's attached to her, but it's the wrong gender, so it's probably pointing at least a head nod to something beyond just her. And most importantly with Phoebe, she's called a diakonos of this very specific

32:15 church of Synchria. She's not just a diakonos of the Lord Jesus Christ in general, she's a diakonos of that church, which seems to imply title or role. But this is where the third way is lengthy, and it's all right here in this passage. So again, just kind of warning, I'm going to start throwing out some things that are grammatical, structural, syntactical. I think they're very, very helpful, so stick with me on this. So the linguistic issues here of this that I think make a case for women over against wives. So the Greek word gune is what's translated as woman or wife, and it shows up in the letter nine different times. Arguably, all of them, all of them, all nine times in 1 Timothy could be translated, probably should be translated as women and not wives, but at least five times that's absolutely the case. You just won't find an English translation that's reliable that does it otherwise. Two of those other times, though, appear right here in this chapter. So go back up, verse 2, you'll see it, the husband of one wife. Verse 12, husband of one

33:21 wife. But even there, that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have to take that translation of wife. It could be a one woman man, right? A man of one woman. So it doesn't have to be wife even there. But one of these other instances where it shows up in the letter, you'll have to flip back over to chapter 2, verse 9. So 2, verse 9, just a little bit back up in the argument. Paul uses a nearly perfectly parallel construction as this instance here in verse 11. So look at it. Chapter 2, verse 9, likewise also that women, so those words are like back-to-back in Greek, likewise women, and then go over to 311, women or wives, likewise. So he's, that's one of those instances there in chapter 2 where we know it's women, it's the same construction, a few verses down, it seems like that would be women. Stick with me, in that same paragraph, back in chapter 3, verses 8 through 13, you've got verse 8, deacons likewise must be dignified. Verse 11, women likewise must be dignified. Seems to be putting them on parallel ground as the same office. And

34:27 then even within, if you blow it out to the whole chapter, 8 and 11 function identically together. So the women and wives is not contra deacons. Women is contra elders. So look at verse 2. An overseer must be. And then you've got this parallel construction. Deacons likewise must be. Women likewise must be. In other words, the distinction that Paul's drawing is not between women and deacons, it's between women, male and female deacons, and elders. That's the distinction he's drawing. It's not between female deacons and male deacons, it's between deacons writ large and elders. That's why the language overseer must be, and then parallel language in verses 8 and 11.

35:12 Two more things on this. The character traits demanded of these women are basically exactly the same as those demanded of elders and male deacons. And we know in context, and that's important, in context, we're talking about an office. No one's disputing whether or not we're talking about offices when we're talking about the overseers in verses 1 through 7 or verse 8, deacons. Everyone knows we're talking about an office. It's the exact same type of language and the exact same type of character traits that are talked about, these women here seeming to put them on the same level. And then finally, there's no reference to elders' wives in this entire passage or anywhere, which is strange at best. Why in the world would deacons' wives be addressed, those who serve the church, but not the wives of those charged with the public teaching of God's Word? It just doesn't make sense instead the far easier way to translate this would be that these are women well what about

36:13 all the back and forth right if so if you just stay within that paragraph it feels like you're flipping back and forth you're talking about male deacons and female deacons now back to male deacons well i think you can actually look at it a different way a better way so look at verses 8 through 10 these would be general qualifications of deacons all of those could be true of both male and female. Then verse 11, specific qualifications for women deacons. Verse 12, specific qualifications for male deacons. And then verse 13, a summary of all the deacons again. So I think that makes sense of it all. It doesn't feel so flopping back and forth between men and women deacons. But the question in all of that, let's just assume that's true and that maybe I've convinced you of that if you weren't already convinced. Why would Paul turn our attention to deacons. What is even his point in bringing up deacons here? Well, it's because deacons were going to be needed to address various practical and physical needs of the church.

37:13 We'll see that in just a few chapters with the widows. The widows have needs, and Paul's probably sending the deacons to lead the charge to care for them. Well, here at Third, we do the same thing. And we have deacons who help us as a church address our needs. I referenced it earlier in the prayer, but we've got 12 deacons. I wonder if any of you could name them. I'm not asking for your input right now. But we have 12 current deacons. Macy Devite is our deaconess of hospitality. Philip Golden is our deacon of services.

37:44 Sarah Cook, our deaconess of women's events. Peter Westerfeld, our deacon of sound. Larson Gelman, our deacon of safety. Brittany Lind, our deaconess of foster care and adoption. Austin Gideon, our deacon of records. David Richeson, our deacon of treasury. Debbie Scheller, our deaconess of welcome. Aaron Warren, our deacon of member care and, sidebar, man of the year at 3rd Avenue Baptist Church. That's not an office of the church. Stephanie Stiles, our deaconess of missionary care.

38:18 And Ryan Saul, our deacon of local outreach. So in many of the same ways that these elders, these 12, excuse me, in many of the same ways as elders, these 12 that I just named should be examples of godliness and of faithfulness to the Lord. But where elders are said to have a noble task, right, in verse 1, this is a noble task that they do, deacons are told what? They're at verse 13, that they can gain a good standing for themselves and great confidence in the faith. So deacons, the 12 of you, those of you here in the room, listen up. Essentially what verse 13 means for you is that you can have progress, that you can have confidence in the faith, that your serving isn't just a thing to be checked off. The work you do, whether it's up there running sound or, you know, in a million different ways, it's not just something to be checked off. You're not just doing a task. You're not just orchestrating the next meal. You're not just helping with the finances. You're not just planning the next outreach. You're not just making sure that the elements are ready for the the lord's supper whenever we serve it

39:21 here no when you serve when you serve well the text says you're growing in the faith your service has direct immediate implications on how you mature in the faith and not only that but it's going to cause others around you to want the same thing so deacons serve faithfully Keep giving yourself over to that service that basically no one sees you doing. It all happens behind the scenes, which is how often you want it anyway.

39:54 Serve with joy in the knowledge that your service is actually doing something, and it's not just checking off. It's actually gaining for you maturity in the faith, the text says. Keep serving. But the job of the deacon isn't to oversee, right? They don't handle the Word. They don't teach the Word. That becomes really clear here. But their office is no less important. These needs of the church, they're real. They're not imaginary. We're not making up stuff for them to do. They're real needs. But what the passage does show us is that the eagerness and the skill with which they serve should model to us what it means to count others more significant than ourselves.

40:33 So if elders then care by teaching, deacons care for the church by making sure the needs are met so we can receive that teaching. But there's one more, one more role, one more even office, I would argue, of the church, and it's the church, the church members. So point number three, the church should proclaim and protect the gospel. The church should proclaim and protect the gospel. You ever sign up to be a part of something or agree to do something and you basically had no clue what you were getting yourself into?

41:09 Maybe it was a subscription, maybe it was a gym membership, and you show up and everyone's way intense. And you're like, this is not what I signed up for. The craziest example I can think of for myself was years ago, before kids, Cindy and I lived in Fort Worth. And a man happened by our house and somehow I got talked into giving him a ride. I don't remember how that happened, but I got talked into giving him a ride. Okay, great, I can give this man a ride to wherever he needs to go here in town, except I'm not so certain that we didn't commit a few drug deals along the way.

41:41 We ended up in some very shady parts of town, and he told me, it'll be just a few minutes, hang on right here, and I'll come back out. And at this point, I'm just too far in, and this is not what I signed up for, but I don't know what else to do. So he came back out, we went to the next place, came back out, and then I dropped him off wherever he was supposed to go. So, I guess that's me confessing that. Don't do that. I'm guessing that for many of you, maybe you've had a similar, hopefully not as extreme, experience with the church.

42:16 Maybe when you first joined a church, you had no clue what you were getting into. Oh, yeah, you thought this is what Christians do, they join churches, but you didn't really know what that meant. Well, in this section, I think Paul's going to give some clarity on what the church exists to do and why you should join it. So why do Christians gather themselves into churches? What are we doing when we gather and we become a church? Well, that in part is what he's reminding Timothy of. He's saying, look, this is what the church should do. So at the end of the chapter, we get one of these just beautiful moments here in this passage in Scripture that we wish happened all the more often, where the author just tells us, this is what I mean.

42:54 This is why I'm doing this, right? Verse 14, look at it. I hope to come to you soon, talking to Timothy, but I'm writing these things to you so that, and here's his purpose statement, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God. He just told us, just flat out said, this is why I'm writing this to you, so that you'll know how to behave in the household of God. Well, if you look again, all the way back to the beginning of chapter two, this whole section he's been explaining to us, this is how people should relate as Christians, both with the outside, outside the church, as well as within the church.

43:27 and he's saying now with leadership within the church, it's not negotiable. This is how the leadership has to relate to one another and you to the leadership. Well, that seems really strong, doesn't it? I mean, that seems kind of random. Why would he pick on leadership? Why does there have to be a certain type of leader in the church? Well, he builds out a case for that. He tells Timothy, or yeah, he tells Timothy that I'm telling you this, Timothy, so that you would know how to act within the church because the church is the church of the living God, right? It's not man's church, it's the church of the living God, and here's the clincher, its role is to be what?

44:08 What does it say there, verse 14? Its role is to be a pillar and buttress of the truth. Friends, the church proclaims and protects the truth. The church proclaims and protects the gospel. In fact, what Paul is saying here is that understanding then and caring about how the leadership of the church functions is really an important matter. It's an issue that was going to affect the entire church. The way it's going to affect the entire church is by shaping what we think about what the purpose of the church is. So, for instance, if you believe that the purpose of the church is simply to do some good deeds, then you're probably not going to care about how church leadership functions. If you think that the purpose of the church is to be a safe place, well then you don't want leaders who are going to confront people with teaching when they're wrong.

45:05 You want leaders who are going to confront hard doctrines so that it will continue to be a safe place for people. Or if you believe that the purpose of the church is to be filled with a good feeling, some endorphins when we sing songs like Living Hope really loudly together, Well, then you're not going to be as concerned with proclaiming a doctrinally correct truth as you are with experiencing an emotional buzz every time we gather. Friends, our role as a church is clearly outlined for us here. We are to be a pillar and a buttress, a support and a foundation for the proclamation of the truth.

45:44 And what is that truth? What is that truth that we proclaim? well, he doesn't leave that up to us. He spells it out here. That's what that last hymn, that last little bit of poetry is about. Look at verse 16. It's this mystery. It's an eternal truth that's now revealed for all of us to see. That whole mystery has an outward motion to it as well. There's an expectation that we as Christians would take this truth and advance it, that we would proclaim it. So what does it say there in verse 16? It's Jesus who was manifested. He's the one, the Son of God, who became flesh and dwelt among us.

46:17 It's Jesus who died on the cross for the sins of his people and was vindicated as the Son of God by the Spirit when he got up from the dead. It's Jesus who was seen by all the cosmic heavenly beings. That's what that means there. He was seen by the angels. It's Jesus who's proclaimed as the Savior to all the peoples of the world. It's Jesus who's been trusted by countless millions for the forgiveness of their sins and for eternal life. And it's Jesus who, after all of that work was finished to save his people from their sins and to bring him to himself, returned back to heaven and now sits at the right hand of the throne of God in glory.

46:58 Friends, this is what Christians have always confessed. These things are not optional for us. The incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, the exaltation of Jesus, these aren't optional beliefs for Christians. But Paul puts them here to remind us that, look, we can have a right ordering of the church. We can have the perfect structure of elders and the perfect structure of deacons in our church. And that alone is not going to do a thing. We do those things because we've been commanded. Yes, we should do them, definitely.

47:30 But ultimately, we do them because of our belief that Jesus is Lord. Friends, surely there are many of you in here who are not Christians. Surely there are many in here who, maybe you've come with a friend, maybe you walked in off the street, maybe you think of yourself as a Christian or have for years and years, but you know deep down inside you're not. Whatever the case, for those of you who are not Christians, this is what you need to understand about this passage, is that all of this talk on leadership is not because we're a corporate hierarchical kind of organization. No, we structure ourselves this way because of the gospel because we believe that Jesus is Lord and has authority to speak to us about these things. And friends, more importantly than that, we are Christians, those of us who have placed our faith in Jesus. And if you're not one, this passage I'm sure is just blurry to you for a lot of different reasons. But the main reason it is is because you've not repented of your sins and trusted in Jesus. Look, maybe that sounds mystical. It's not, but it is supernatural. It is something

48:38 you need to do. So if you're not a Christian, here's what it means to become one. You look at this message of who Jesus is, of what he's done, you say, yeah, I believe that, and I'm going to turn from my life of sin and trust this. That's it. There's no magical formula other than to place your faith in him. And that's actually what you must do. So if you're not a Christian, that'd be our encouragement as a church to you this morning. We plea with you, in fact, to trust Jesus. But for the rest of us, look, this is why we care about church leadership. This is not a boring, sterile topic. No, the reason we talk about church leadership and how it's organized and how it functions and who the leadership should be is because we as a church are engaged in a battle to protect the truth and to proclaim the truth.

49:28 We've been entrusted with the truth and now we have to faithfully hold it out to the lost world. We have to defend it against enemies who want to water it down and want to take our eyes off the truth and put it on the world instead. We have to see ourselves for who we are. Church, we are the church of the living God. And because he's given us this task, we have to conduct ourselves, We have to behave in a certain way and order ourselves accordingly in order to faithfully go about that task.

50:00 So what's the purpose of this whole chapter? What's the purpose of this discussion about elders and deacons? Why does Paul put it here? Well, he's teaching and reminding Timothy that God's people should conduct themselves within the church in a certain way because the church is the church of the living God whose job it is to proclaim and protect the gospel. In other words, friends, a discussion about elders and deacons is not just a discussion about leadership. It's not even a discussion about how we organize. No, Paul ties that directly to how a church will either faithfully proclaim and protect the gospel or will fail to do so.

50:40 Look, to care about these things, to care about church leadership and how it's structured, how it functions, is to care about how the gospel is rightly defended and rightly proclaimed. Look, there's a right way to behave. There's a certain way we are to conduct ourselves in relation to the outside world and in relation to one another as well. And the big part of that is these offices of elder, deacon, church member, and church together. These offices exist for a reason. The Lord's given us these offices so that we can go about our task.

51:13 So imagine if we didn't have overseers, who would teach us? If we didn't have elders, how would we understand God's word? Imagine if we didn't have deacons, who would meet our needs, who would help us so that we can come and hear God's word and be taught. And if we didn't have the help of those offices, how would we as a church ever faithfully hold on to our task to protect and proclaim the truth? Friends, praise the Lord for his wisdom. Praise the Lord for his kindness in giving us as a church elders and deacons so that we might faithfully protect and proclaim the gospel let's pray our father this morning we thank you that you care about details that in our human minds we would simply overlook we wouldn't connect these dots we wouldn't think of how we need such things and yet you and your infinite wisdom have given us elders to care for us by teaching you've given us deacons who would serve our needs and meet our needs so that we can receive your teaching.

52:13 Oh God, you've made it clear what our task is as a church. Help us, Father, to faithfully proclaim the gospel. Help us to see the message of even verse 16 of who Jesus is and to proclaim that to the world. Oh God, we pray at the end of the day you would make us a church that is a pillar and a buttress for the truth. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.