What I Would Do Differently
Sermon 7 Matt 28:16-20
III. Elder-led
A. Differences between elders and deacons in 1 Timothy 3.
i. You will also notice, we are told that elders must manage their households well, like deacons. But with elders Paul adds, “for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of God’s church?” Deacons are not called to manage the church, but elders are.
1. In 1 Timothy 5:17 you will see the same word “rule” is used there in connection to elder and is the same word that was translated “manage” in chapter 3. This managing is connected to the preaching and teaching of the Word. Then you have another set of qualification similar to this one in Titus, and in 1 Peter 5.
ii. Elders must shepherd the flock and exercise oversight. Elders are responsible to teach, lead, pray, shepherd (which includes teaching and oversight), feed, rebuke, warn, steering the correct direction, train in righteousness, and as we saw in Ephesians 4 a few weeks ago, they are to equip the church members to do the ministry.
B. Acts 20:17-31.
i. Note that the word “elder” is in the plural in those verses.
ii. Paul called for the elders (plural) of the church (singular) to come to him. And what is their charge? They are to watch over the flock that the Holy Spirit has made them overseers, to care for the church – this language rules out authoritarianism, but also gives them authority, which we will see in Hebrews and also saw in 1 Timothy – they are to watch out for wolves and be alert for those who would prey on the church.
iii. What does it mean to have a plurality of elders, practically speaking? It means you have multiple men who hold the same office with the same qualifications. It means you have elders who are on staff, like the lead or senior pastor and associate pastors, but also men who qualify who are not on staff but have vocations outside of the church. But it means they are all equal according to office and they share the weight together.
iv. A plurality of elders is a desire to, not only follow the clear biblical model, but to share the responsibilities with other qualified men both on and off staff.
v. The benefits are numerous. To name a few, it helps with
accountability, balancing gifts, burden sharing, it is also a better picture of the church, because it shows that ministry is not just for a select few, paid “professionals.”
vi. Also, think of how they will make up for one another’s
deficiencies. No pastor is the complete package – every pastor has things they are gifted and good at, and other things they are not so good at, and need to work on. When you have a plurality of elders, they make up for one another’s deficiencies and complement one another to better serve and lead the church.
vii. Congregationalism: It is the church gathered who affirm these men and elect them and follow them as they lead. But if they cease leading the church in a biblical direction, if they consistently fail to meet their qualifications, if they cease to teach and preach the Word of God, if they teach heresy, the members have an obligation to confront and, if necessary, remove.
C. Hebrews 13:17.
i. Here is a word we do not like: obey. But this word “obey” means something like “give deference to.” It means that if you disagree with an elder (or elders) you, of course, can (and should) go to them in private and express your reasons, hopefully from Scripture.
ii. If what the elders are doing is in keeping with the Word or is something the Word is silent about, you give deference and support them knowing that they are keeping watch over your soul, as ones who must give an account.
iii. “Watching over” assumes the elders are doing so according to the preached word, and so the members give them deference so that they do not lead with groaning, but lead with joy, because if they are leading with groaning, they are of no advantage to you. They cannot lead in a way that benefits the members if they are not doing so with joy.
iv. Here is my question to you on Hebrews 13:17: it says to submit and obey your leaders, right? Your leaders. Which leaders?
v. And here is the question to leaders and them giving an account for how they led: which people are they supposed to oversee? Who are they giving an account for?
vi. Are Christians supposed to submit and obey all pastors? Must you submit to all leaders in the city? In the state? In the world? Am I as a pastor going to be held accountable for every church in town?
vii. Christians are to submit to their own leaders, which implies a formal recognition of their participation in a church with particular recognized leaders. Church membership helps Christians formally recognize to whom they are to follow and church membership helps an elder know which specific sheep are the ones under his oversight.
viii. The commands of 13:17 are nonsense and unobeyable without formal church membership. Formal membership is the only biblical way for a people to know which leaders to submit to and the leaders to know for whom they are responsible.
Conclusion
Does church polity matter? It matters greatly. Jesus Christ, the eternally existing Creator- God entered flesh, lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death on behalf of guilty rebels, and rose three days later from the grave, then ascended to the right hand of Father to take His rightful place on the throne of the universe. He is thus the head of the church, the same church He died for and established, the same church He calls His beloved bride, the same church He said would prevail against hell itself, the same church He said He would build.
And in His infinite grace He has handed over to the church responsibility under His headship to steward rightly. And He has specific ideas, handed to us by the apostles and inspired by the Holy Spirit on how the church should be ordered and how it should operate.
So, on the most basic level, this matters because it is a matter of obedience. But it also matters because we each need regular reminders of what our roles are and how they complement one another so we can pursue the mission faithfully.
We must be reminded how we as a gathered church have authority from heaven to bind and loose. How we have authority to exercise the keys to the kingdom in the way we accept and remove members, elect deacons, elect elders, and how we expect them to meet qualification to watch over us as they serve and lead.
Jesus expects elders to lead the ministry, deacons to facilitate the ministry, and the congregation to do the ministry. And friends, if we pursue biblical membership and polity, we will be a united people who pursue the mission of Christ in the way of Christ, for the glory of Christ, until the day of Christ.
Sermon 10
1 Corinthians 3:10-17
Introduction
As we reach the end of our biblical church membership series, we look back on some challenging and revealing texts.
Looking back on the history of FBCC, one cannot escape the fact that this church has gone through an inordinate amount of trauma over the last several decades. And one of the culprits is inescapably the lack of biblical church membership. The trauma has been the check engine light from the Lord telling us that something was amiss in the engine – in the very lifeblood of the church towards the right destination – but I wonder if we have not ignored the light and kept driving, assuring ourselves that at some point we would stop for an inspection. Or maybe, we avoided the inspection because we were afraid of what it would reveal.
And such things are hard to hear, there is no doubt about that, but we cannot escape the fact that this series and these texts of Scripture have shown us quite a bit. These words from God on what it means to be a member of Christ’s bride have been the mechanic’s instructions on what needs to happen to fix some of the problems in the engine, and we thus have a choice to make.
Perhaps before these past 9 weeks you may never have been taught about biblical church membership and polity, and maybe never even really thought about it. So, your not pursuing it was likely from simple lack of being genuinely aware.
But now you know, and you must do something with it. And that is our question today:
what will you do?
In our present text what we will see before us is 3 choices on what kind of builders we can choose to be. But before we get into that, we need to be reminded of what it is we are building, and we need to make sure we never forget.