1 Timothy 3:1-7 Characteristics of Godly Leaders

In this conversation, the speaker discusses the qualifications for overseers and deacons in the church. While all believers should strive to be blameless and faithful, these requirements are specifically for leaders in the church. The speaker also touches on the role of women in the church, stating that there are significant roles for women, such as prophesying and serving as helpers. However, the position of overseer, similar to a pastor, is limited to men according to Paul's instructions. The speaker also mentions the laying on of hands as a possible form of ordination, which signifies the church's approval and commitment to pray for the candidate. It is emphasized that leaders in the church, including pastors, should be prayed for and supported due to the challenges they face. The speaker shares a personal story about visiting a member of the church who was disabled but had a strong faith and commitment to praying for the pastor. Well, good morning. Good morning. Well, we're glad you're here. Thank you, by the way, for the birthday cake and celebration last week. I don't feel any older. Feel any heavier? No. As a matter of fact, I weighed this week exactly what I did when we married. Wow. Now it's been relocated. It's not in the same place. Anyway, all right. Now we're starting in the third chapter of 1 Timothy. And I need to probably establish something right now. We're looking at the qualification for overseers and for deacons in this chapter. I want to ruin your nap this afternoon. Maybe you're asleep tonight. The qualifications for overseers, which is synonymous with pastor, and the average Christian are the same. Don't you think God wants you to be blameless too? Don't you think He wants you to be kind and considerate and faithful and all that? Of course. But He's not regulating all of us in this. There are some who have special assignments in the kingdom of God. And for them, this is not a suggestion. These are requirements. Now, these are not requirements for you to be saved. All you need to get saved is to be lost. But if you're going to be a leader in the church, there are certain requirements. Every believer ought to be the same as those, but the leaders have to. James talks about not many should desire to be teachers, so they'll receive a greater condemnation. Hebrews 17 talks about when it says, Obey your leaders, you think, oh, we get hung up. Why should you follow and give reference to your leaders? Because they're going to have to give an account unto God. I mean, our pastor doesn't have to please us, but he does have to please God. And he's going to be examined very carefully. All of us ought to have the qualifications we're going to talk about, but in roles of leadership, there are some requirements for a person to, and so we'll look at that. Now, I just want to pick up where Jack left off last week a little bit. He talked about the role of women in the church that he mentioned last week. The pastoral epistles, he said this, and I'll pick up there. The pastoral epistles in the entire New Testament present significant roles for women in the church. They're not insignificant. They're significant roles. The New Testament reveals they're women who prophesied, Acts 21, 1 Corinthians 11. They're roles that have undefined roles for helpers in the church, 1 Timothy 3. Paul mentioned two women as fellow workers in Philippians 4. Phoebe in Romans 16 was called a servant. And by the way, the same word for women who are servants in the church is the same as for deacon. Now, there's no Greek word for deaconess. There's no discussion of laying hands upon a woman as you would a man. There's no instructions like that. There's no description of ordination. Ordination is very obscure or very difficult to find. There's a very prominent role for women in the church. He described women in 2 Timothy 1-5 as teachers, Titus 2-3. Luke also described Priscilla as having a teaching role in the church in Acts 18. The teaching role of women, by the way, is not defined in the New Testament. We don't have any details about it. There are some detailed descriptions of teaching in 1 Timothy 2-12, but that's the description of the overseer, the pastor, and a woman is not included in that role. She's excluded from that. So the position of overseer, as I said, relates closest to the pastor, but basically it's translated sometimes superintendent, someone who takes care of day-to-day activities of the church. And Paul in Timothy limits that role to the role of men. One of the reasons is men were already doing it, and so he had no reason particularly to commend women for doing it because they were not in that role at the time. Now, there is no details about what an ordination service is. The closest thing we have would be 2 Timothy 4-14, for instance, Acts 6, where there was a laying on of hands. And we can assume, and I think accurately, that the laying on of hands is an ordination service. So we know there's some things that would be included in an ordination service. One would be a formal setting aside, but laying on of hands means that someone's been set aside for a specific purpose. And so that is the reason for the laying on of hands, and we assume that that was an ordination. The New Testament just does not say a lot about ordination. It's become much more of an issue in our day because of the legal implications of ordination. And that has kind of changed things a little bit, but in the New Testament it doesn't deal with these things. The laying on of hands, the ordination, if you will, of a candidate, is an opportunity for the church to approve the candidate and say, we believe in this person. We believe that he has the qualifications, that he meets these requirements, and we're committing him to praying for him as he does this ministry. So the laying on of hands is the closest thing to an ordination service that we could have, but there's no description or details about it. But the church, by the laying on of hands and by the ordination service, is pledging to not only approve the candidate, but also to continue to pray for them and to hold them up to the Holy Spirit and to lift them up in our prayers. We ought to pray for our pastor and our ministers every day. I had an interesting experience when I was at LifeWay. One of the things that I was supposed to do was to be a general council member of the Baptist World Alliance. Now, most of you probably never heard of the Baptist World Alliance, but it's been around a long time. And it is a loosely knit group of Baptists from around the world that the general council meets every year. And then they have a big meeting every four years somewhere in the world. We've been BWA meetings in Sweden and Germany and Argentina and all over the world. And so in one of those meetings, I got into a little bit of an argument with one of our British friends who made the statement that you didn't need to pray for the pastors, you needed to pray for the people. They were the ones who were in the field doing the work. Well, that is a nice thought, it's just not true. For every time you're tempted, the pastor has ten times that many temptations. Every time you mess up, he has many more times to mess up. Think how many times Brother John has the opportunity to mess up. Weddings and funerals and deacons' meetings and PTA meetings and board meetings and all these things and Sundays. You need to pray for our leaders. And what's happening today is unprecedented. Just think what's happened in the last year about very well-known pastors and staff members who have been accused and apparently many times guilty of sexual abuse. We need to pray for these people because God has a call upon the life of the minister, and we have a call to pray for them. That's really the value of the laying on of hands and ordination is a pledge to continue to pray for those. I've told you this before. I pastored down in Iredell. That's right on the Bosque River. Just so you know, it's just over the hill from Cranford Gap. It probably identifies it a little better for you. But anyway, it was a very interesting time for me to be a pastor. It was our second church and a small church. Had a small membership. Ran about 75 or 80. So I decided that I would visit every member of the church. And I did that, by the way, until churches got so big you just couldn't do it. So I did. I sat down. I did. I talked about it. Here's how you do it. Wherever you are, just get you a ream of paper, cut it half in two, and then put every street in your area on a separate sheet, and then you go down and put the address and who lives on that street. So I could go right down. You can zigzag across a city and waste a lot of time and see four or five people, but if you go see everybody that lives on that street, you can see 15, 20 people. And Carol Ann and I always visited on Saturday mornings. And, by the way, Saturday mornings, you can't visit at 10 o'clock every city in America. I mean, San Antonio, they didn't start stirring until noon. But Kansas City, you can start early. So everything's different. But I felt like I ought to visit everybody. Well, I had one member of the church that I did not want to see. You'll understand when I tell you. She was a widow lady who lived out on that road between Iredell and Craftville Gap by herself. She had arthritis so badly that she could not grasp anything. She could feed herself, but someone would have to put the fork or knife or whatever she used for what she needed to do in her hands. She had no legs. Her legs were amputated as highly as they could to allow her to continue to live and function. I didn't know what to tell her. I was just 20, 18, oh, we missed, 20 years old. And I really dreaded going to see Miss Houston. So I waited to the very last. She was the last member. I'll never forget the day I drove out there. I drove out there, and a mother goat was having a kid in the driveway. That's an interesting way to go to a house. But, you know, I said, you know, I keep saying, what am I doing out here? What am I going to tell her? I walked into her house, and she was in a bed in her living room. And I walked into the biggest smile, the happiest expression of any place I've ever seen. And I can't tell you how blessed I was to be there. We talked and read Scripture and prayed together and sang together. And she told me as I left, she said, Brother Jimmy, I'll never get to hear you preach. No tape recorders or anything back then, no radio. I'm just a seminary student, pastor, church. But she said, I promise I'm going to pray for you. Every time you stand to preach, I'll be praying for you. We were there two years. The last Sunday I was there, I baptized 13 teenagers. You may say, well, you must have connected to the teenagers. Well, I did. But I'm convinced I did because Miss Houston was praying for me every time I stepped into the pulpit. I made many trips out there over those two years just so I could be encouraged. We ought to pray for our leaders. It's a hard job. Somebody said, well, you preachers, you just work one day a week. Try following one of us around. It's a 24-7, nonstop, and it's draining. As a pastor, you needed to have some friends that you could just not be careful around. Just be yourself and enjoy being with them. We have some like the Lees that are like that, and the Hardins and O'Neils, that just let us be real people. So much is expected, but the Lord expects even more than we do. So it's a tough job. I love what James Robinson has said over the years. I have nothing to prove. I have someone to please. That's really the position of every preacher, every minister, is in a ministry that God is calling to. And it's not our place. If you knew everything you could know about me, you wouldn't like me at all. I don't want you to know everything. But I like to think that I'm a pretty nice guy. I think if you knew me, you'd like me. But it's a hard job being a pastor. Don't ever stop the pastor. Don't overload some of it. He's not thinking about whatever you want him to think about, and he doesn't need to think about it. Find the time to tell him some other time. But people are so strange about, you know, the pastor ought to always be available. You know, the hardest thing that I had to do as a young pastor was convince people that I needed to study. And you try telling a small country church that you can't see the pastor at 10 o'clock in the morning because he's studying. One of my favorite stories is when Jerry Falwell called me when I was here, and Marilyn wouldn't let him talk to me. He said, I just want to talk to Brother Jimmy. Well, he's studying. I can't disturb him. He came and spoke at a conference at our church not long after that. He said, I want to see that woman who wouldn't let me talk to the pastor. So, I mean, there's so many things. The passage here is that these things are required for leaders. They ought to be in everyone's life. We ought to all live that way. But if someone's going to lead, he needs to have qualifications and have earned the right to lead with the character, the disposition that God would have for him. So, we meet in this third chapter. I've already wasted half my time. Sorry about that. In this third chapter, we meet this saying. This saying is trustworthy. Paul uses that a lot. And here it is again. And it's a saying that's always followed by something that's really important for you to hear. This is worthy of your note. This is a trustworthy thing. If anyone desires to be an overseer, he desires a noble work. Now, you might think that is an unnecessary statement. But there were many of the overseers, ministers that were leading at the church in Ephesus that hadn't set a good example. That's what he was writing to Timothy about, to straighten out things of false teachers that were in Ephesus. But he wanted you to know that the position of pastor or overseer is a desirable position. It's an important position. It's a needed position. And if you aspire, if you set your heart on being an overseer, then just know that you're desiring a good thing. That's a noble work. An overseer, therefore, must be above reproach. Now, he could just stop there, and that would have covered just about everything. But he's going to be more specific. The husband of one wife, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not an excessive drinker. Literally, that means not addicted to wine or to strong drink. It speaks of an alcoholic. You're not to be addicted to alcoholic beverages. Let's see here. Where is it? Not a bully, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not greedy. He must manage his own household competently and have his children under control with all dignity. For if anyone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of God's church? Now, in that last sentence, he's managing a household as compared to how a pastor leads a church. He ministers to his family. He leads his family. He cares for his family. That's why the role of the pastor is so hard, because not only is he the spiritual guide, and he's delivering God's message to us, and that's another thing. I pray that every Sunday that I've preached in my life, God, please don't let me mess this up. Because as a pastor, you're saying, this is what God said. One of the reasons I like expositor preaching is because if you don't like it, I didn't say it, God did. That's a pastor's job. But it is a solemn thing to realize that you are speaking for God, and the devil targets people like that. Charles Stanley shared one day, a guy next to him declined the meal that was given and just didn't take the meal. Charles said, well, are you dieting? Are you not eating? He said, no. He said, I'm praying for the downfall of Christian pastors, and I'm fasting today. The devil has his sights set on preachers. And I promise you, what has happened in the last six months publicly with so many preachers is a terrible example. And that Satan will use to destroy confidence. And we need to be praying that God will overcome that. But anyway, the first thing in this verse 1 is just a description of the overseer. He's not suggesting that that's the only position in the church. But it is an important position. And the elders, by the way, elder and overseer are used interchangeably as if it's talking about the same person. My grandfather called himself Elder Keeley. I have one of his books that says Elder L. M. Keeley. The words are used interchangeably. Elder is not a nasty word. It's not a bad word. It's just a synonymous word with the overseer, bishop, superintendent, day-by-day director, whatever. And so it is a significant position for the future of the church. And those who lead the church have to have highest integrity and qualifications. By the way, in Titus 1, elder and overseer are used synonymous with each other. They describe the same person. Now, he was not telling Timothy to start a new position in the church. Men were already doing that. Some were already taking care of the functioning of the church. But he did establish the qualifications. Paul was not nearly as concerned about the description of what the minister was to do as he was what the character of the ministry ought to be. These are important positions. We had a man in one of our churches that, well, I'll come back to that later if I think about it. That's another rabbit I don't have time to chase. All right. But the bishop here must be above reproach in his observable behavior. How people see you, how you show yourself needs to be above reproach. In other words, you need to be someone that no one could bring a charge against you because you've lived such a clear and open and devoted life that no charge could possibly be rendered against you. That's a high responsibility to live like that. Both people inside the church and outside the church need to know that the pastor is a man who is blameless, who is above reproach. And the overseer must live in a way that he cannot be rebuked for how he lives his life because he lives it right. No one could be in this position if their life is not consistent with biblical character and whose life satisfied any concern that might come against him. The husband of one wife. Now, this is a sticky point, and there's a lot of different understandings of this. And it's okay to disagree, by the way. There are at least, I think, three ways, several interpretations are possible. Some say that Paul was forbidding the practice of polygamy. Well, that was not a problem in the early church, and there'd be no reason for him to bring that up. And so, doubtless, that is not a good interpretation, for it would have been unnecessary for him to deal with it. Some have concluded he was saying that a single person should not be an overseer, that he had to be married. But that wouldn't be the case because he himself was unmarried. He had been married, apparently, but he was no longer married. Don't know what all that means. But there is a word that Jesus mentioned in Matthew 119 of Matthew's gospel. Jesus, and he uses the word divorce. Now, you know, God is not typically obscure. I mean, usually what he says is easy to understand. It seems to me that if he was going to say that a divorced man could not serve in a leading position in the church, he would use the word divorce. He doesn't use it, and I don't think that's what Paul meant. Now, before you run out and call me a heretic, let me just say, I'll give you an illustration. We had a man in this church who served for decades as a deacon who was divorced. When I talked to him about it, he was drafted into the army, married, went overseas. While he was overseas, his wife divorced him and married somebody else. Was he not qualified because he was divorced? I think that you have to take each case individually. Generally, I would say that a divorced person would probably not have the character necessary for oversight. But each case has to be considered individually. Every divorced individual still needs to meet these requirements. And literally, the word husband of one wife means a one-woman kind of man. Carol Ann's mom died back in the late 70s. And years later, her dad married again. Carol Ann just made the statement, you know, I know that's right because my daddy was a one-woman kind of man. That's the intent of that. Back in the biblical times, there was not much legal wrangling over marriage and divorce. But the husband of one wife means that there needs to be... And by the way, the deacon that was here, he and his wife were married between 50 and 60 years, served faithfully. He was a one-woman kind of man. So you can choose how you want to interpret that. But it is controversial. For some who think that a divorce automatically means someone is unavailable to be an active servant in the church, I don't think that's scriptural. And I think you just have to be very careful. And great care should be given to, certainly to a person who is divorced, who is being considered for being set aside in an official way by the church. But clearly, Paul spoke of permission for second marriages in 1 Timothy 5.14 or Romans 7.2 and 3, 1 Corinthians 7.39. The issue of ordination for divorce needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed in a very careful way that makes sure that biblical teachings are not violated. But he's speaking of a strong Christian man whose morality and whose example is beyond question. Husband and one wife. To my knowledge, I don't know that I've ever been a minister. It's a serious thing, and we need to realize that the prohibition is not just, this is in such a general way that it's not intended to be some kind of a rule. It's easy to decide what to do about it. So he must be a one-woman kind of man. Verse 2 says he must be self-controlled and sensible. Actually, that is an oxymoron. Nobody can be self-controlled. Only the Holy Spirit in you can be self-controlled in you. You know, if we could be self-controlled, we wouldn't need Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. We'd just control ourselves and we'd be okay. Can't do that. But self-control and sensible means it's such a relationship with the Holy Spirit that we exercise self-control through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and on the way that we live. Sensible, it's another word that just means, it's a good word for common sense, which we don't have much of in America today. You know, every time I drive down the street, I think, what idiot designed this street? I mean, I come to a stoplight and there's an arrow and it's blinking yellow. Well, that means I can turn as long as nobody's coming this way. But then I go to another traffic light and it's red and nobody's coming this way. Why don't they have a blinking yellow light there? You know, and if you want to really see how little common sense is there, go to a city you're not familiar with and try to get around in it without getting lost. I mean, traffic signals and signs. I mean, we have lanes that if you don't get in at a quarter of a mile ahead of time, you can't turn right. But it doesn't tell you that until 30 yards before you get to where you need to turn right. So, sensible. You know, life's not complicated. It just needs people who have good common sense. Well, certainly that ought to be in the church. Now, I will give you an example from this church. When I came to this church, there was a policy that said that church had to approve the budget every year. That's a good policy. Now, what was not in the policy but was in the church practice, that no staff member could spend more than $25 without church approval. The budget was about $400,000 when I came. How long would we have to be in a business meeting to approve every purchase in the church? Well, it makes no sense at all. It's not sensible. So, to show you the mentality of that time, not mentioning names, we wanted to buy a printing press. And so, guess what the only question was when that was brought to the floor of our church on a business meeting. What color is it going to be? What difference does it make? It's going to print whatever color you put in the ink. But I'm just saying, common sense is just not very common. But now, a leader in the church ought to be someone who has common sense. Sensible. Respectable. The position of a person who leads in the church should describe dignity and consistency of behavior and it speaks of one whose outward life reflects a strong inner stability. Respectability. He must be hospitable. Now, that is a word which we really can't appreciate today. In the early church, believers were forbidden to spend the night in pagan homes, which meant that if they were traveling somewhere, they needed some place to stay. Believers needed to be hospitable and welcome in their home. The first thing that Lydia did when she got saved was to offer to take care of Paul and Silas and their troop of people in her home. She was hospitable. So, that would have a whole lot more meaning than it does today. You wouldn't really expect, you know, I might Wayne Lee, but you wouldn't expect me to call you and ask if we could spend the night with you, that our air conditioning was out. Uh-oh. I might do that with Wayne, and he would kindly say yes. But that's not common. Back then, it was. It was a concept. There was a compatibility and a compassion for one another. So, certainly those who leave the church already have a hospitality in their blood. He must be apt to teach, verse 2 says. This means he needs to communicate well the doctrines of the faith, and this is especially important in Timothy, because Timothy was receiving instructions from Paul how to deal with false teachers in the church. And so, he needed to be able to combat the false teaching and to be able to communicate the truth. It was a skill that would be invaluable as he instructed new converts and led the church in confronting the false teachers. The overseer must be alert and careful as he instructs others, and he would be quick to pick up on things that are really heretical. I love to quote Manly Beasley, and I've told you many times. Manly said, The greatest heresy is the one that sounds most like the truth. Well, you need discernment to pick up on that. And we've got lots of illustrations of this going on in the world right now. You can turn on your television and hear the crazy stuff you might imagine. In the name of God. Well, is that true or not true? That's why we stick by the Bible. It's got to be consistent with the Word of God. There's not any new revelation telling us new things that we can do that we may have thought we couldn't do. We need to be able to discern the truth when we see it and things that are not true. We need to understand that. Verse 3 talks about that he's not an excessive drinker. As I said, the word really refers to someone who's addicted to alcohol. Now, that would have been particularly... They would understand that because there were many things that contained alcohol that were medicines. Oh, by the way, have you ever used cough syrup? Alcohol. There are many things in our own medical world that uses alcohol in a medicinal way. It was true in the Bible times. But you were not to be addicted to alcohol. You could drink your cough syrup a little bit at a time. But you wouldn't want to. You're not supposed to do that. So, he's... Today's culture is so addicted to alcoholic beverages. And I'm going to make a statement. Total abstinence would probably be, and I would believe it would be the best decision for any believer in light of the misuse and the abuse of alcohol in our culture and our society today. Is a drink going to kill you and send you to hell? Absolutely not. It may make you smell like it, but it's not going to be a moral sin. But, as believers, we need to be a little bit above that. And I told you, I've never touched a drop of alcohol, of alcoholic beverages. And my reasoning, when I was a teenager, I believed that God wanted me to hear His voice and be obedient to what He tells me to do. And one glass of beer, or whiskey, or whatever you drink, impedes your ability to think as clearly as you can when you don't drink it. And I felt like God would never want me to drink anything that would impede my ability to hear His voice and to know what He wants me to do. Now, that's not necessarily a biblical thing. I'm not saying look at what I did. I just know that... Early on, and I feel even more strongly today, the church covenant that some of you grew up seeing hanging on the walls in your country church said that you would never partake of or distribute or sell alcoholic beverages. Now, that goes back hundreds of years or more. One of the concerns I have for a lot of our younger pastors now is that they are social drinkers. In fact, we got locked up in a 30-minute debate on the Southern Baptist Convention floor about five years ago over the issue of social drinking. I told Carol Ann, I said, can you believe we're taking 30 minutes to talk about this? But they feel like it's okay to social drink. Well, I'm not on a crusade, but let me just give you an example. We have a very, very dear friend whose husband was a pastor, good preacher, couldn't sleep at night, Linda, like Sam had trouble doing. So his doctor suggested if he would just have a small glass of wine every night before he went to bed that it would help him sleep. Fast forward a year later, he was a complete alcoholic, engaged in immorality, on business trips, divorced his wife, and is now selling CBD in a small store. It all started with a little glass of wine. You may be able to drink and be fine with it, but you may not. And those who watch you drink and will drink because you drink may not either. So I just kind of believe when Paul talks about in Ephesians, don't give the devil a foothold in your life. You know, it's just not a good thing to do. Now, I'm not on a crusade, but I would think he's just saying that the leader in the church does not have any strong connection with the drinking of alcoholic beverages. Medicinal alcohol, of course, it was used then and today, but our society is so addicted to alcoholic beverages that total abstinence just seems to me to be the best way for us as believers. Okay, not a bully but gentle, not quarrelsome, not greedy. The word bully there just means someone who just lords it over people, demands his way. You do this because I said so. And he said, you don't have to be like that. And by the way, there's a good reason for that. The biblical description of a leader in the church is servanthood. Ministry is servant ministry. It never occurred to me that I'll boss you around. I don't ever remember not getting what I wanted, but I never demanded it. I believe in congregational policy. I think the church has a right to make up its own mind what it wants to do. And that's why I give you a little insight into my twisted thinking sometimes. Someone says, what do you think about women preachers? I say, well, I wouldn't be in favor of it, but Baptist churches made up of people, they can do whatever they want to do. A Baptist church can do that. I have a hard time, even though I don't think it's right to have women pastors, but church ought to be what, it's going to be like what it wants. It's going to be like them, what they want it to be. That's the one thing that bothers me about our church. We don't have business meetings anymore. Oh wow, you say, yeah, we do every quarter. Well, for about 40 people who show up in a small room in another building. But you imagine, I won't get off on that. Anyway, as a church, we ought to be involved in this. And the leader has to be someone who's not overbearing, demanding his own way, my way or the highway. It not only means physical violence, but abusive in any way. And by the way, James says that the tongue is a deadly weapon that can destroy others as quickly as any other weapon. James says, so too, the tongue is a small part of the body. It boasts great things. Consider how small fire sets ablaze a large forest. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue of the world of unrighteousness is placed among our members. It stains the whole body, sets the course of life on fire. It is itself set on fire by hell, but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless, evil, and full of deadly poison. People say, well, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. That is absolutely a lie. Words can't hurt you. None of us likes to be talked about. And that's another story also. But anyway, the overseer has to be someone who's not with a violent temper. And Father, we're going to quit here in a minute because I wanted to get through verse 13. But we only have three or four verses after that. We'll get it all next week to finish up this first chapter. But the main thing that he's saying is that a minister, a leader, a pastor, a leader in the church needs to be gentle and kind and treat people with courtesy and with firmness and gentleness. He goes on in verse 6 to say that he must not be a new convert. In other words, new converts are just not mature enough to handle responsibility. They don't know enough. We had a Dallas cowboy, offensive tackle, very good, all pro. This has been 40 years ago. Some of you know his name if I mention it, who got saved. And I did a little camp of survival for the SMU BSU and he gave his testimony. And he had been saved for about three or four weeks. And it was the craziest mishmash of nonsense I ever heard in my life. He talked about how we didn't need this and we didn't need that. They didn't need him preaching. But the point was, I didn't blame him. He hadn't been saved very long. You don't want someone like that. That's one of the problems we have in America today. We take some well-known athlete or some other guy and before they even have a chance to mature, we put them on stage and have them give their testimony. You know, leaders in the church ought to be well-established, mature believers who've proven the quality of their character. That's very important. And so, he must have, the minister Paul says, must have the respect for those outside. Verse 7 says, he must have a good reputation among outsiders so that he does not fall into disgrace which is the devil's trap. And outsiders may not appreciate his doctrines or his worldview, but they should be very impressed with his character and how he conducts himself. And so, that gets us down to the qualifications of Deacon. The truth is, the qualifications for Deacons and Oversight are almost the same. And so, we'll come down through that and then the last, there's six statements made at the end of this chapter that are incredible. Verse 16 here, this third chapter, says, and most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great. He, Christ, was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in the glory. Those are six great statements that we'll look at because it covers everything from the Incarnation to the Ascension. And so, that'll be where we'll start, and hopefully, where we'll end up next Sunday. Let's pray together. Father, thank You for Your Word. Lord, thank You that sometimes it's difficult for us to understand, and yet, it's open to interpretation. And God, help us always to realize that we have opinions and we have conclusions that we can draw, but that doesn't mean others might arrive at different conclusions. So, may we disagree agreeably and treat each other with dignity and always in a way that brings glory to You. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.