First Timothy lesson 18 cont.
1 Timothy · Mike Doyle · Feb 2, 2025
1 Timothy, No. 51
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261938103540

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, so we are in lesson 18, talking about deacons, qualifications for deacons. And verse 13, verse 13 said, until I come and give attention to the public..." Oops, I missed it. Wrong verse. Talking about deacons in verse 13, chapter 3, he said, "...for those who have served well as deacons, they obtain for themselves a high standing and a great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus, and that's New American Standard. The New King James says, for those who have served well as deacons, obtain for themselves a good standing and a great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

So question four, we talked about the acquiring by serving properly. And so question five is, What does this attitude look like, this attitude of confidence? It comes from the word to be free and bold in speaking. It's interesting that in the process of serving the Lord as a deacon, there's a reward built into the servant, and the reward is something that is really interesting and probably important to the person who receives it. For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. So I thought we all had the same standing. So what's he talking about here? When he says, a deacon or a teacher or an elder who's been serving, one of the rewards is that he moves into a high standard, or the New King James says, great boldness in the faith.

Mike, I'm reminded of 2 Corinthians 12, 11, where Paul says, I am a nobody. I was talking to my boys about that verse this morning. Obviously, in the context there of chapter 12, we know that when I am weak, then I am strong. And it's not my strength. It's the power of Christ dwells in me. And I don't know, but I think this has a lot to do with recognizing your own inability and coming to a greater realization of His ability in you, which is available to every believer. I mean, it's not like one person has a corner on the power of Christ, you know?

I think it's cool, because I've had this conversation with you, Miles, and with Courtney the other day, coming down from the mountain. The conversation was, well, how do you know if you're doing what God would have you do? Because if we're studying on Sunday morning in the main service, and we've been studying here about gifted men getting given to the church.

Let's just say you aspire to be a deacon and people maybe recognize it in you, but there's no email that says, okay, you're now a full-fledged deacon, but as you're involved with doing exercising the gift of a deacon or teaching or anything like that, you begin to realize, oh, this is okay. I think God would have me do this. And you gain a confidence. And it isn't arrogance, it's a quiet sort of understanding that, you know, you wake up one day and you say, wow, I'm teaching, isn't that something? I never really thought I'd ever be a teacher of God's word. whatever the deacon is doing, you know?

And you're comfortable with it because the Spirit has persuaded you through the process that that's good, that's right. And so people can tell that you're comfortable in the position. Does that make any sense? Am I explaining that pretty well? Yeah, Mike.

Also, I think putting it in context, the high standing, looking at both for the elders and for the deacons, look at what the qualifications have to be as men of dignity, not double-tongued, they're above reproach, manage their own children. I think that's what the high standing is, is that they have a high standing because they're The men of dignity, there are all these things, these qualifications. That's, I think, the standing. The high standing is they aren't men not of dignity or they're double-tongued and all that. I think the high standing is that they meet these qualifications. kind of a qualification of high standing. It's not that they're better than anybody. No, they're not. They just meet these qualifications, that they have a high standing because they meet the qualifications.

I would say a good example is, I sat down, I wasn't the only one that talked to Sue Russell and said to her, you know, we think that she has a perfect empathy and temperament to talk to Russ. And she does. I mean, she's a very empathetic woman and she listens and she's savvy. And Russ just blew her off. Well, that doesn't mean that she doesn't go and if someone says to her, why don't you try this or why don't you do this? You know, it's the same way of teaching.

Another personal example, I remember We took over the distribution of Miles Stanford stuff in, what, 97? And been doing it a couple of years and I felt like, boy, am I out of water in this deal. Because when people wanted to talk about it, I didn't think I was qualified.

So a guy calls one day. And he's a Canadian, right? And he says, well, I'm a pastor somewhere, da, da, da, da, da. And he said, I've just awakened to the growth truths and grace and identification. And he said, I'm really having a tough time not resigning from the pulpit.

I said, why are you doing that? He said, well, I've been teaching them the wrong thing. I said, so now that you've got the right thing, Why would you quit? And so I called up Miles Stanford, and I said, Miles, and I said, Miles, you need to call this guy. He said, no, you need to call him. I said, I'm not qualified. He said, that's how you get qualified. So I sheepishly called this guy back.

You know, I was thinking, what am I going to tell this guy? You know, he's been pastoring a church for a long time, a reasonable amount of time, and he wakes up to grace. And he starts teaching his congregation. And so I thought, well, what do I say to him? I guess I can encourage him. Say, if you have any questions, here's my number. Doesn't that factor into time with the Lord?

Yes. It's huge. The great blessing about being a teacher, for an example, is the time that God allots to you to get ready to teach. That's where the real blessing is. That's where it is. The teaching part of it is cool, especially with interaction, but the learning part, just you and the Lord alone, that's such grace, you know. JD. So what's the opposite of God bless? Oh boy. The contrast.

What would it look like for a deacon to not be confident? I mean, Courtney's going to kill me for saying this, but no confidence. I don't have any confidence in what I'm doing. I'm not. The word fear comes to mind. Fear's good. Really good word. reserve, not fully invested in what it means and how to convey it to others.

You know, Romans 12 says that God has gifted every man, every single one of us, for some position to edify the body of Christ. Everybody in this room has that. And so, you know, The teachers and pastors are kind of high profile, but all of you have something that God has gifted you to be in a position to edify the body you're in. They'd all get embarrassed if I started telling them what I know, but there's a woman in our congregation that I would go to her for comfort any day of the week. and know that I was going to get it. Yeah, that's really good. And you can see it. Anybody who's gifted in the body of Christ recognizes that his dependence or her dependence is on the work of the Spirit in them, that it isn't their That's why I'm not a big fan of seminaries.

These guys come out with a whole bunch of self-confidence, but they're not trusting the Lord about anything. They're too smart. And not that some of those guys don't really help contribute to understanding God's Word, because they do. But a lot of them are terrible teachers, even though they've got a head full of terrific knowledge.

So yeah, I think I like the word fear, because you're afraid to stand up and actually do it. How are you, to Donna's point, you're so self-confident that you don't even know what you're actually talking about, and secretly you're overextending just to replace the fact that you don't understand what you're talking about. may not be qualified.

Yeah. And I, you know, a lot of teachers start that way. I know, you know, they don't have confidence, they just have a desire. But for a deacon, that needs to have already passed. Right? That needs to have moved forward. And they now can stand boldly in the words that the Lord said and explain them clearly. And they can, however they're serving, do it boldly. Well, and I just keep thinking about Courtney here. Yeah, I mean, this is your position, so you have every place to speak of it. Having a boldness to speak. confidence to speak of it.

How does that happen? How did that happen for you? The Lord only only well and and like we've known each other with 25 years and uh uh I love it when somebody doesn't agree with me and the reason I like that is because it causes me to dig and think and and and discuss and you learn.

Because here's the thing, if you're a teacher, does it matter how much information you know? What matters is how much can I communicate it to you? If you don't get it, what am I doing up here? If it isn't presented in a way that it's beneficial to you, what am I doing? I'm a clanging cymbal. Telling you what you want to hear.

By the way, go ahead. I was just saying, you know, the Luke Jenkins answer, the Lord, you know, it's Jesus, I had to modify the Luke response. But it's really, I think, it's time with the Lord and just confidence in the Lord. You know, I think that you spend time, and the confidence is, You spend time in the Word, and you just have a trust in the Lord, I think. And that gives the confidence. I think that's mainly it. It's spending time, and you trust Him. By the way, I listened to part of the class last week. I was having breakfast with all these people, and they wouldn't hurry up and get done, so I listened. But you brought up the issue.

What do we have around here that qualifies somebody to be an elder or a deacon? And you know what it is? It's the infamous 75 questions. There are in our archive, if you want to be an elder, if you aspire to it, one of the things you have to do is you have to sit down with those 75 questions and you have to answer them all and put biblical references in them. And then you have to sit down with the existing elders and go through it with them.

I mean, you talk about sweating. I'm sitting with Vern and Hal Malloy. I'm thinking, oh man, you know, what am I doing here? But they were real, they were gentle, you know, and they gave me pointers and said, you need to work on this, work on that, work on that. That was really cool.

But that's what we use, and I don't know if we do it for deacons, but we certainly do it for elders. And they're pretty comprehensive if you haven't seen them. So what this attitude looks like, I wrote down, the idea of publicity is sometimes attached to it, but it's secondary. An assured position. and blameless reputation in the church with a pure conscience would assure boldness of speech and an attitude in the Christian community and elsewhere.

That's from Vincent. I like that. Okay. It's question six. The words in the faith are to be connected with only one word here. What's the word and how does it help the body? It's a trick question, not really. In faith, so. Well, it modifies the confidence side. confidence or boldness. Yeah. It modifies it. And that's what it's connected with. And that's where the connection is.

It isn't self-confidence. It isn't your ability to, you know, orate in a manner that's, it's confidence in the faith. When you see the word, the faith, what are we talking about? Christian faith. Yeah. Remember when we talked, remember the faith class? You had to definitely go in front of the word faith. It meant the body of doctrine, which you believe. Now, what's interesting about that is, how do I say this? Let's say you're raised in a reformed environment. You ever met a reformed person that wasn't confident about what he believed? No, they're confident, but it's self-confident. You know, there's a difference.

If you're a reformed under-law person, then the manifestation of the grace of God isn't there. Because when law comes in, grace goes out. You can't have both in the same room. See, that makes sense. Grace, the doctrine that we're talking about, has to be grace-based, not law-based. And if it is law-based, there is no grace. That's the primary principle that you see. With elders, deacons, anybody who serves in the church, they serve based on grace, not based on, I ought to do it. Brian White said, the difference between grace and law is that under law, I have to. Under grace, I want to. I like that. Does an overseer have to be a really skillful teacher? What does skillful mean? Does he have to be really good at managing his household? That's a qualification. Does he have to be a good manager?

Yeah, you do. But I would say in the kind of teaching God's Word, that's an acquired skill. I think that the previous verse says that. I think you can have a teacher, or a deacon in this case, that has confidence in the faith and knows the word and has a relationship with the word and not be a skillful teacher in the sense that they are articulate as others or things of that nature. I do not think skillful is... What would be the difference then? If you explain the word of God to folks, to believers and unbelievers, you may not be the most articulate person ever. You may not be skillful, if that is what you mean by that. But I do think that there's an empathy and a way about a believer that, even if they're not the most enjoyable teacher to listen to. They can relate the word of God because they have confidence in the faith.

So, Donna. I was thinking, oh boy. Oh yeah, Mr. Stumblebum. He used to, he used to, oh yeah, he would, he would say to me, I don't know how I ever get through that. I'm stumbling over the words and I'm forgetting and I'm, oh, But the content was amazing. I think the answer to your question is you have to be gifted. Go back to the qualifications.

The qualifications for an elder have to teach. It's not in the deacons. No. So the teaching is more an elder qualification, not a deacon one. The deacons, you know, you look back at Stephen and that, I mean, he was a servant. I mean, he obviously had a great, before he gets stoned, you know, he obviously, and I think it's the, Deacons should have great confidence in the faith, have the body of doctrines figured out, and able to talk to people and respond. I don't have the same qualifications as Albert. You're not what J.D. is saying.

A deacon doesn't have to be a teacher. I can go around to the deacons here, and there are several that are not. Were they teachers? They can be, but it's not a qualification. They know the word and can respond to anybody. But, you know, it's not, they wouldn't be, I wouldn't say teachers as an elder is.

Yeah, I would agree. You agree with that? Yeah. You know, the other which I, you know, just, I was getting, trying to put myself contemporary to what Paul is, is saying at this time. I find it amazing that, you know, great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus, so the body of doctrines, we call it.

Think about this time. There wasn't a Bible. So I think just at this time, the Holy Spirit was working in amazing ways because Paul would teach and go around and teach. And it was left up to those elders and deacons at the various bodies to remember and to bring forth that word.

I've been in trouble. Yeah. I mean, if you just came in trouble, we didn't have a Bible and all we had was you coming and talking to us. Well, you'll notice on Paul's first missionary journey, He went through and then he went back through and what did they do?

They appointed elders and deacons. They did the appointing. And we don't do it that way now because... But he knew how the structure was supposed to be for the edification of the local body. And elders and deacons were at the top of the list. But I think, you know, just what did they teach?

You know, they didn't even pull up, you know, First Timothy. Sure. They didn't pull up, you know, Romans, like, oh, here, yeah, or Galatians. Oh, this is, I've been crucified with Christ. You know, they didn't have that ability. But Paul relayed it on to them, and it stuck.

And that's where I think, at that point, the Holy Spirit was working in an amazing way, I think, to give these elders the knowledge that it had stuck. And Paul comes around a bit, kind of fine-tuned him, I'm sure, but gave him the word, and it progressed. And that, I think, is the most amazing part. It persisted, too. It remained the same. So I think, yeah, just the early church, I think, was just an amazing time. Oh yeah, I mean, with the end of the first missionary journey, Paul's already writing a letter to Galatians about law. Okay, 14 and 15.

These things I write to you. though I hope to come to you shortly. For if I'm delayed, I write to you that you may know how you ought to conduct yourselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth." That's the New King James. New American Standard says, I'm writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long. But in case I'm delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.

So question seven is, what's the primary reason Paul sends these instructions to Timothy? The organization of the local body. Yeah, and here's the way it ought to go. So Paul, not only is Paul teaching the truth, but he's instructing them through letters and through other things, and how the body of Christ, the local body of Christ on the earth should function, and who should be involved in it and how it works. He's doing that right away. And especially on that first missionary journey when he heads back down through the same cities, And through that process, he appoints elders, I'm sure he educated them, and others in local bodies.

When you think about it, how big were those churches? Big enough to fit in a living room, probably it. It wasn't until 300 A.D. before they got the big buildings, thanks to Charlemagne. When Charlemagne made the Roman Empire Catholic, the church went from sandals to silk slippers overnight. in the big, beautiful buildings.

It was never that way at first. You know, also just like we're sitting on the deacons, you know, an axe. I keep thinking about that, you know, Paul goes back to these towns and, you know, a lot of them he was run out of, you know, and then he returns. You know, even when we were going through the other night, I thought about that, you know, he gets stoned, they think he's dead, and they haul him out of the town.

The next verse says, well, he got up and he went back into the town. And he went back through these areas where there's a lot of persecution, but he went back to strengthen the local body. Yeah, and don't you find it interesting when he did that, the evangelistic part of his mission, what he wasn't focused on. It was focused on establishing the local churches.

Yeah, to go back, check how they're doing, and like I said, fine-tune and then give the organization. Sure, because they didn't know. Yeah, and pointing elders and beacons so it would run efficiently. Weiss says the purpose Paul had in sending these letters, not that Timothy should know how he should behave himself, but how the members of the church should conduct themselves. Timothy probably knew but other people didn't know.

The things that Paul's writing to Timothy consists of instructions concerning the officers of the local church, their duties, qualifications, and the matters of church discipline. And when you really look at Paul's thirteen epistles, all but two of them are all about discipline.

You know, stop doing this, start doing that. You know, Corinthians and Galatians, they're all about correcting issues within a local body that were a problem. So what we're saying is that these verses do not ... they include Timothy, but they're not specific to Timothy. They're exclusive of all church members.

Well, it's like Paul sent us a letter in Holly Hills. He would define the roles of people in the church, and here's what your responsibility is, and yours is, and yours is, and that kind of thing. So he's very diligent to set it up because it's a representation of the body of Christ on the earth, and it's got to look a certain way. The next question, which is a fairly long one, I said, what do these verses tell us about the church?

Pretty easy stuff. What's the word church mean? It's ecclesia? What's that? What's it mean? It means called out ones. That's all it means, okay? So, when you look at the church here, it's composed of a body of called out people, called by sovereign grace of God into salvation. Unique, okay? Ecclesia was used of the pagan Greek to designate a meeting of citizens of a town called by the town officials to an assembly. The local church is therefore an assembly of God's people. So this ecclesia is not a word that's unique to Christianity. Notice that the church is never ever referred to as a building in the New Testament.

Somebody says, what church do you go to? How do you answer that? I'm sorry? Somebody asks you, what church do you go to? How do you answer that in a sense? I tell them Holly Hills Bible Church. And the next question is, where's that? I don't know. I think I played it one time when I was teaching. There's a a cappella or whatever.

And the dad is asking the kid, you know, turn the TV off. Let's go. Let's go to church. We can't go to church. Why? Because we are the church. They played that here because I always think about that. We can't go to church because we are the church. So my questions, well, I always answer that question with a description of what we do here. Yeah. No, that's what people, Christians say, well, where do you go to church? Or what denomination do you belong to? Or what building are you in?

Which is, you know, I think the, Christendom has evolved to that, you know, where the church's primary responsibility is to uphold the truth. It doesn't matter where it is, it's their responsibility to do it. Teaching and maintaining and defending the doctrine is the major duty of the church. So how do you answer people who say, no, the major purpose of the church is to evangelize the lost?

What do you think about that statement? It's true. No, it's not. It's either true or not true. Well, it's inclusive. That's another trick response as well. Well, that's a reform. The reformers, that's their deal. It does include that, but it's not. It doesn't stop there. It has to do with the body of doctrine being taught fully. Yeah. And so.

In terms of priorities, is it more towards the top or more towards the bottom? It depends on your congregation, so to speak. I don't know if that's even the right way to say it, but if you're dealing with those that are willing to be there, and you know that they don't know the Lord, then you need to share that body of doctrine with them.

If they become believers, then it's your responsibility as a deacon to extend that teaching to the remainder of the faith. Miles Stanford had a great answer to this. He said, the primary purpose of the church is not evangelism. The primary purpose is to be qualified for evangelism.

So when you're involved with your local body of believers, you're learning the doctrine, you're learning the truth, you're getting qualified. So when someone asks you about the gospel message, you're prepared. So many people today, I mean, the very first Sunday school class I ever went to at Faith Press in Aurora was a class on how to evangelize, and it was based on the fact that we had to write out our testimony.

We had to edit it, and then we had to memorize it, and then the first guy that went by too slow, we were to buttonhole him and tell him. Even then, I'd been a Christian less than a month, I thought, this isn't right, because it doesn't fit the idea of grace. Yeah, we're responsible, but we're more responsible to be qualified to be evangelists or to represent the life of the Lord Jesus to the world. I kind of question that a little bit.

I think the Holy Spirit qualifies a person. The Word of God is the content. If they are brand new and they're sharing their faith, which I can look back to my own personal experience, I didn't know the full body of doctrine. I wasn't a deacon, but I was operating within the church. I was willing and the spirit was able. And so I just trusted him and people came to know the Lord and there's some of them on the, I mean, there's some of them that I talked to on a daily basis that they are now growing in their faith far beyond what I was incapable of doing.

But I think in my weakness that, you know, Lord Jesus was, I'm not suggesting that here comes lost soul number one and you want to talk to him about Christ but you don't talk to him because you're not qualified. No. You talk to him. He uses all things. Like I said, the guy shouting down at the Rockies, if God didn't want him there, he'd remove him. But for some reason, he leaves him there and he's shouting for that one person who maybe looks at the scripture because of that. Or you'd say the wrong thing at the wrong time or whatever. Yeah, I made a career out of telling the right thing to the wrong people. Yeah, and he uses all of those things.

The Holy Spirit will work in miraculous different ways. It's not a formula. That's the point. All salvations are miracles. That's why I think one of the gifted men to the church is an evangelist. Not everybody is an evangelist, they are in the sense that they manifest this life that's lived by the power of the spirit of course, and people will say it. It's like Maloy used to say, you pray that someone will come up to you and say, �What's that hope that's in you?

How did you trigger that?� You didn't, you know. Yeah, for a deacon. It's it's not just the ability to evangelize it is to yeah Teach maybe not teach but to be able to have confidence It's the word that we use sure oldness in deep in the faith. Yeah Knitted together in love That's close we're over did you have a question Donna I Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you for how careful you are to cause us individually and collectively to grow in the knowledge and grace of our dear Savior, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his name. Amen.