Okay, welcome back again.
Welcome back again.
It’s good to have you with us.
Yeah, we are continuing through 1 Timothy,
narrow,
getting sort of closing on the end of
chapter 5, but not quite there yet.
Verse 17 today,
this is really a section where I think
Paul does give some very explicit leadership tips,
leadership thoughts to Timothy.
We’ll probably just go through a couple verses today,
but let me read these for you and then we’ll have some conversation.
“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of a double honor,
especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.
For the scripture says,
‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it’s treading out the grain,’ and the laborer deserves to be paid.
Never accept any accusation against an elder,
except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
As for those who persist in sin,
rebuke them in the presence of all,
so that the rest may also stand firm in fear.” So,
a couple of things.
One of the things,
the reality of church is that a church is dependent upon its leaders,
not only at the
pastoral level, but at the elder level.
In our system, we would call them elders.
And Paul recognizes that here in sharing with Timothy,
celebrate the elders who rule well.
Let them be considered of honor,
especially if they’re preaching and teaching.
Right?
So,
this isn’t necessarily about compensation.
It’s maybe more about celebration,
but it is about lifting up those who rule,
particularly who rule well.
And the reason is very simple, that those people have a tremendous impact on the life of the church.
Their leadership directly influences the health and the well-being of the church community
and the congregation.
And Paul is just simply pointing out to Timothy,
“Make sure you commend
those who lead well,
and take
opportunities to celebrate them when you can.”
Yeah.
I actually went to seminary with someone who was a friend during that time,
who made a pretty
passionate argument that the church should not elevate leadership.
And what he meant by that,
if you pressed him,
was things like salaries and things like formal institutional commendations,
or those things, that those things shouldn’t exist,
because that has a way of emphasizing
the leaders over the whole,
over the gathered congregation.
That’s certainly a danger the church does need to be aware of.
We are not a group of people who follows a pied piper.
We are always seeking to essentially,
together,
lead one another towards Christ.
Wherever a beggar finds bread,
they invite others to come as well.
And that’s really sort of the image of, I think,
church leadership.
But here,
we’re really reminded,
Clint, that there is a special good in church leadership when there is strong leadership that is Christ-centered.
Congregations are in the midst of that able to thrive.
And every church who’s been in a season
like that, or anyone who’s been able to be part of a church community in a season like that,
there’s a gift there.
There’s also a real danger, Clint,
when you’re in a congregation on the reverse side,
where maybe there is immoral leadership,
or maybe there’s moral lapses in leadership.
Maybe it’s just not the right leadership for the right time for the congregation.
That can be incredibly
destructive in the same way.
So there is something worth recognizing,
that lifting up the right
leader in the Christian community,
training and equipping and encouraging them to whatever
task they’ve been called,
whether that be what we think of as pastors,
what I think the early church
would have thought more of what we currently call lay leadership,
the idea of elders,
the idea of deacons, the people doing the ministries of the church.
Those people should be chosen carefully.
And when they are serving the church faithfully,
I think that they should know the gratitude of the whole community.
Yeah, there’s actually an interesting line in the ordination service for pastors.
No, I’m sorry, the installation service.
When a pastor is installed in a church,
the congregation is asked questions.
And one of the questions is,
does the congregation promise
to pay the minister fairly?
And it’s an interesting thing,
living on the other side of the fence,
because I’ve been pretty fortunate,
Michael, I’ve not run into this too often.
It hasn’t really been
a part of my professional story.
But I have friends in other places who the church just kind of assumes,
well, they should want to do that.
They should want to come and open the church every time someone haunts me.
They should want to clean up on Sundays.
They should want to do funerals for free.
They should want to do weddings for free.
And there is that line there of making sure the church doesn’t
abuse its leaders by taking them for granted.
Again, I’m not putting myself in that boat.
That hasn’t been my experience,
but I know that it happens.
I know that the church
has done that.
And so Paul,
aware of that, seems to say, “Hey, this scripture,
don’t muzzle the ox.” That means,
by the way, just let the ox eat while it’s trampling grain.
If it wants to eat some of the grain,
let it do that.
That’s the least it should get.
And pay the laborers.
They deserve to be paid.
So good leaders deserve to be honored because they have such an impact on the church.
And it feels a little awkward saying that as people who sit in the pastoral office,
but that’s the idea here to avoid a situation in which leaders are not appreciated or worse,
not recognized for doing well.
And that is a danger to the church.
Then we kind of switch a little bit.
Never accept accusation against an elder,
accept on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
So this recognizes the inevitable,
but unfortunate reality that people in churches are people.
Even leaders in churches are people.
They are prone to make mistakes.
They are vulnerable to temptation.
They do get it wrong.
We mess up,
even church leaders.
We all do.
And so this is a recognition of that fact,
but it’s a balancing of that to say,
“Don’t let a single person lead the congregation to assumptions
about a leader.
Make sure those accusations,
make sure those issues are well-founded, well-documented.”
This,
I think, is fairly important that there be—it’s interesting that nearly 2,000 years ago,
the idea here is to find a balanced
way forward in the midst of possible wrongdoing,
to find a process that is fair both to those who may have suffered at the hands of a leader and to the
leader who may be falsely accused,
and that even the early church had to kind of balance these
realities.
And I don’t know that we take this as policy,
Michael.
I mean, I don’t think this
exists as sort of a guide for many churches,
but it’s interesting that it recognizes a problem
that every church is still dealing with and trying to balance in our own day.
Yeah, I think that’s fair.
And I also want to point out that we are sort of drawn to
that gravitational pull of when leadership goes really wrong,
and that tends to be the newspapers.
And, you know, we probably think of that when the pastor had an affair or when money
disappeared.
I mean, these are things that might be the first things that come to mind.
But I just want to remind you here of our context.
Look at the end of verse 17,
especially those who labor
in preaching and teaching.
Remember how much of the previous conversation of this book was revolving
around those who taught things in error,
those who Paul pointed out whose lives did not exhibit
the kind of morality that one would expect from a Christian,
that their character didn’t match
their teaching, and how they expected the congregation to essentially keep in mind
things that Paul argued very strongly weren’t applicable for Christians.
That, I think, here is relevant as we look to this idea of accepting evidence,
the idea of accusation, because fundamentally,
Paul may be speaking to a community where there are a lot of accusations and they
have to sort through which accusation of what teaching is true or false is actually right,
that they’re trying to,
you know, sift through to get to the good.
If that’s the case,
then it makes sense to us that you’re going to need to have a number of people in that conversation.
Of course, some of them need to be people of wisdom.
I think behind what may be those first things that we
think of when leadership goes wrong because they’re big and they make the news,
there are the also important accusations of,
“Hey, I don’t think that that was a thoughtful statement,”
or, “I don’t think that that is bore out in Scripture,” or, you know,
those other things that churches find themselves doing,
and the point that that should be a communal work,
it shouldn’t be done in secret with no one participating.
I think that remains wise,
and largely,
I think it is the spirit behind much of the rules that still exist,
though, like I said, or like you said, Clint,
I don’t think many are going to,
many churches or leadership structures
are going to count this as a full policy of what to do,
but it’s certainly the spirit that
would be behind all of those.
Yeah, I do think it ties,
you know, it’s remarkably modern in its own
way, unfortunately, because the reality then as now is that leaders don’t always get it right.
In fact,
so much is that assumption true that Paul continues here in verse 20,
“As for those who persist in sin,”
and those here is almost certainly a reference to leaders.
This isn’t just a general,
you could read this,
if you take this verse out of context,
you could read it to say,
“Anybody who persists in sin,
rebuke them.” I don’t think that’s actually what it means.
I think it’s tied specifically to what we’ve been reading.
“As for any leaders who
persist in sin,” in other words, if the two or three witnesses have testified,
if it’s proven that there’s wrongdoing,
if it’s clear that a leader is out of bounds and they won’t repent,
they persist in sin.
Remember the word sin means missing the mark.
They keep missing the mark.
“Then rebuke them
in the presence of all,
so that the rest may stand in fear.” And fear is a harsh word there,
but I think what we’re talking about is what we would call accountability.
Hold them accountable and do it publicly.
Very interesting,
Michael, how wise I think this is,
even in keeping with
our own policies in the 21st century,
that what does a congregation need to know?
A congregation needs to know that there’s a fair policy and that it’s implemented,
and when someone has broken it,
they are held accountable.
And it doesn’t need to be public in the sense that you smear it all over
everything and you share dirty laundry,
but a congregation does need to be aware that an issue
has come up, it’s being addressed,
and that the person who is in the wrong is being held
accountable.
And I think this is a verse that could be easily taken too far,
I suppose.
Maybe it could be misread,
but I think behind it is really some sound practice that helps a church
by letting the church know that even leaders are held accountable.
And if they insist,
then they’re held accountable publicly.
And I think there’s,
I don’t know, I find it very
interesting, and I think there’s some good stuff there.
I just want to sort of point out
where we’ve been here today,
because we’ve not gone very far in terms of the number of verses.
If you see where we started in 17 and then where we end here at verse 20,
what I think is noticeable,
Clint, is both the affirmation of the importance of good leadership combined with the recognition
of when that leadership will inevitably go wrong.
That is the kind of thing that Paul does, I think,
probably instinctively.
I certainly haven’t known him,
but as you read the writings that we have
here in the New Testament,
Paul seems to be
very realistic.
He lives in the real world,
and he can transition almost on a dime like we’ve seen today from the importance of encouragement
and the importance of good leadership in the midst of a congregation to
the reality of what
should happen when there is leadership who is causing destruction that needs to be called out.
And that, Clint, I think does help us to see that the Christian life requires wisdom.
And it’s interesting when there are matters of civic life in the church,
when there are communal
matters that need dealt with,
the spirit of how it’s handled,
the wisdom of those who
recognize when’s the time to speak,
when’s the time to listen.
These are things that I think are
really, really intangible, but when in practice they’re essential.
And so I think we even see here
in our scriptures a recognition of that.
And whether or not you consider yourself a church leader,
maybe there’s a temptation to think,
oh, this is all about them,
whoever you might think
them is.
I think this
may not be directed at
every Christian, as you mentioned in verse 20, Clint.
I do think there’s a sense,
though, in which the
Christian community does have a part to play
in setting and holding the standard of leadership at every level,
whether that be a volunteer
teacher or whether that be an elder or a deacon or whether that be a paid staff person or a pastor, whatever it is,
we as a church are called to together really in flesh or model or live out our deepest character.
And once again, this is a kind of
antidote to hypocrisy.
And I think that
it should be lived out structurally.
And that’s a reminder to all of us that we make up the
structure together as a church family.
So to whatever extent we have a part and voice in that,
we should use it.
Yeah, I don’t know to what extent people are interested in the early church
as a rule, but I think it’s fascinating to think that the Christian church at the point of this letter is
either literally years in the making or perhaps even a decade or more,
but it is brand new.
And in this letter,
we have instructions about unappreciated
leaders,
false witnesses,
sinful leaders who refuse to repent.
And that’s in four verses.
We often maybe think that the
troubles we see in our evolution of the church are new.
And it turns out that the church community,
the people of Jesus were navigating some of these challenges really right from the jump,
just at the very beginning.
And as a person who’s going to be face to face with them,
Timothy is getting this advice from Paul.
And there’s just a wonderful sort of mentorship
relation in that.
And I think, again,
I don’t want to oversell Paul,
but as a person who
works in a church,
every time Paul says these things,
I feel like he nails it.
I feel like he
has deep insight into our brokenness as humans,
the challenges of being church,
the needs and
issues of leaders and people.
And I just hear a ton of wisdom.
And I hope that Timothy
was encouraged and strengthened by these because these are certainly,
I think at
midpoint in my career,
I recognize a depth in these words and the wisdom in these words that
I’m not sure I did at the beginning of my time in ministry.
I don’t think any of us would want to probably be in Timothy’s shoes that he needs to be
told there may be a time to hold leaders accountable in public.
I don’t think that
there’s any person for whom that would be their preferred instruction.
And so the fact that Paul
was compelled to write this,
I think that unto itself does remind us that the early church had
bumps that needed navigated and it had leaders who needed help to account.
And someone needed to do that work.
And so to whatever extent that’s our experience today, wherever we are
in our own present communities,
church communities life.
I mean, I think the reality is we continue
to try to be faithful as they tried to be faithful.
And the text that is ancient,
thousands of years old remains incredibly prescient and contemporary as all scripture is.
Yeah. Hope you can join us tomorrow.
We’re going to get some a little bit more personal instruction
for Timothy as an individual,
some very interesting places that Paul chooses to go in that.
And so
we’ll see you next time.