Following God’s Way: “Following the Recipe” – 1 Timothy 3:1-7

 The words “use only as directed” are found on many prescription medicines. Too much or too little won’t have the right effect! For that matter, many cookbooks warn, “for best results – follow the order and amount of each ingredient accurately”. What happens when you ignore the ingredient list and add twice the salt and half the sugar? Yuk!

What is true in medicine and cooking is also true God’s admonition for choosing God’s choicest leaders and servants in His church. The Lord shared the ingredients essential to both leading and serving in the church through a letter of Paul to a younger Pastor whose name was Timothy. The message was clear – good leaders and servants of the Lord can and should be measured by careful attention to specific ingredients!”  Remember, this section of the letter addressed instructions concerning public worship (Chapters 2-3). The key verse in 3:15 reminds us: “That you may know how to behave yourself in the assembly” as we explored in our previous study.

The command or charge of this section can be simply stated: Choose your leadership and those who serve officially the body wisely! There were essentially two “offices” referred to in the passage: Episcopos (i.e. Elder/Overseers, 3:1-7) and Diakonos (i.e. Deacon/Servants, 3:8-16). These were official offices, but the truth is the same goals existed in the whole of the church. In other words, we are to ascribe to become what our leaders model. The issue of official titles notwithstanding, many people are called to be leaders in some sense, and still many more are called to “lead” in one way or another. The list helps all of us, because it offers a checkpoint for our spiritual lives.

Remember God blessed the Ephesian church with great leadership. Acts 20 indicates that Paul founded much of the work and who later turned it over to Timothy after he had trained a core of godly leaders to lead the church. The Apostle John apparently followed after some time to continue the training of the flock. Though they had “stars” in their midst, the church needed to move forward by understanding the exact ingredients of Biblical leadership in the church. It would impact the home and the community. It is essential to remember: God has shared what makes a good leader on His evaluation form!

What kid of leaders should we strive to become? How do we combine the many character traits mentioned in the deluge of management and leadership articles to find a good leader? Well, we don’t. We simply combine the ingredients God told us to carefully.

Step One: Add Healthy Measure of Passion and Zeal (3:1): We have to WANT the job. Leaders are to desire the opportunity to serve Jesus by leading. They should KNOW if they are called to be leaders by their basic giftedness. The work is a good thing to desire, but they must truly WANT to opportunity.

Paul pressed this idea with two verbs. First, he said a man must “set his heart” on leadership; literally to “stretch out in order to grasp,” like a football player straining to reach the goal line. Next he said that a leader must “desire” leadership. That verb means to “eagerly desire” or to “be ambitious for” as in a hunger for.

We do a disservice to the king to thrust the unwilling and wary into this kind of work. What is true in the church is true in other areas as well. People need to “own” responsibility to really desire to do a job well. As one Pastor wrote: “Reluctance and hesitation are not always a bad sign. Perhaps the person feels unworthy or perhaps they don’t understand what the job entails. Sometimes reluctance is good because the job of leadership is an awesome task. We don’t want leaders who take their jobs lightly. On the other hand, settled unwillingness and opposition is a sign that you don’t have the right person for the job.” Remember, 1 Pet. 5:2 – “…Not because you must, but because you are willing…”

Step Two: Add a humbled life without handles (3:2a): Translated “blameless” or “above reproach” the pottery term (anepileptos) is literally “unhandled”; one it is impossible to convict credibly in an impartial judgment. Political leaders have shown over and over again that undiscovered “skeletons in the closet” will eventually be discovered and used to control the leaders in blackmail. People need to have done all that they can to free themselves from their mistakes if they would have a free hand to lead. Everyone makes mistakes, and many of the churches leaders had, at one time, lived in defiance of God’s Word. No one can go back and do life over, but they can turn from wickedness, take responsibility, pay for the damage where the damage can be repaired, and responsibly admit previous failures. The failures become points of contact in ministry, rather than skeletons that can be discovered and manipulated! Thayer in his commentary writes that this means, “not open to censure, irreproachable”.

Step Three: Add consistently tested loyalty (3:2b): The phrase “Husband of one wife” referred to the loyalty of a “one woman kind of man”. God honors commitment. God honors moral purity. God loves loyalty. How many are the sad stories of men that have not been faithful to their marriage vows when temptation has come their way? The idea was not married more than once, but originally the idea was likely a man of fidelity. Is this not equally important in any leadership role. If one cannot trust your word, why should they follow you? Note the issue is NOT the size of the test – but the size of the character!

Step Four: Filter out the cloudy sediment and sentimentalism (3:2b): The word is translated “vigilant” or “temperate” (nephalios), but probably originated from the mixing of wine. The idea is one that is “clear headed”, not cloudy. To lead, God requires one that is able to clear the nonsense out of the discussion. Leaders must see clearly. They cannot allow the sediment of their own personal attachments and whims, but like we count on a judge to see only the law and temperate it with clear judgment, we count on leaders to see only God’s Word and temper their understanding with love of Jesus and His Church. Cloudy sediment may be loyalty to friends that want to share unbiblical ideas, hunger for recognition that keeps us from faithfully executing the office we are given, or even the desire to care for our families that keeps us from crossing a key giver in the organization. Real leaders clearly note what would please the Lord. Real dads follow the Lord, not the strong desire to be liked by their children. Godly leaders need to have the ability to keep their head clear  in all situations. The word prudent; sober or self-controlled (sophronos) is literally the legal term “of sound mind”. It means that we make the judgment without any defect of mind. This is a careful warning: sin is rooted in deception. Those who are hung up on a “pet sin” are living a deception and are not “of sound mind”. Those who are pprudent are able to curb inner desires and impulses. One writer says this means to have a “soundness and balance in judgment, not unstable; and not given to quick and superficial decisions based on immature thinking”. I like the words of the Pastoral sage Warren Wiersbe when he comments “He must have a serious attitude and be in earnest about his work. This does not mean he has no sense of humor, or that he is always solemn and somber. Rather it suggests that he knows the values of things and does not cheapen the ministry or the Gospel message by foolish behavior.”

Step Five: Strain out the Desire for Personal Affirmation: “respectable” is translated “of good behavior” (kosmios)  translated in the passage on women’s dress as “modest” in  2:9. The idea is not ostentatious, but desiring focus to be on Jesus and not ourselves. It is hard to measure people’s true intentions, but it is easy to see if a person is drawing overt attention of a room to themselves.

Step Six: Add a healthy dose of time spent in new relationship building: hospitable (philoxenos) means “loving strangers”. It is not the primary function of the leaders to build ever deeper relationships to the flock. It is a stated part of their work to reach the “strangers” and draw them in. Some of this certainly is relational evangelism, but other parts of it include offering ministry and counsel to those on the edge.

Step Seven: Add distilled and prepared teaching: translated “able to teach” or “apt to teach”, this term didactikos does not simply mean able, but ready with practical and spiritually powerful teaching rooted in the Word. Leaders need training time, and need to ready some parts of the their teaching ahead of the experience of leadership. They need to teach one page while knowing what happens on the next already. They are not always leading by discovering. To be sure, they continue to grow in the journey, but they have done much work to become ready before they begin the process of leading others spiritually. One Pastor remarked “Every preacher needs 10 sermons and a fast car!” I guess he had in mind that if you speak the truth, somebody is going to get mad…

Step Eight: Add carefully measured self control: Several terms are in view here. “Not addicted to wine” or “not given to much wine: is actually all one Greek term – paroinos translated literally “beside wine”. Greek records indicate that Aristotle used the word to mean “tipsy; lingering with his wine”. “not pugnacious but gentle (or sometimes translated patient: gentle; sweet reasonableness) and peaceable” (amachos) not macho – or “no striker; not violent” is a term also used in Titus 1:7 and appears to be linked to the wine issue above grammatically. Every leader needs seasoned speech. Every leader needs to learn to offer the right words for the right time. Just as your car needs both gasoline and water, they must be added to the right place, the right time, the right way – or a disaster results. Remember, You cannot get words back once offered!

Allen Redpath, in his book Passion For Preaching offers a test for the words of those of us who teach, but I found them helpful for all of us. The acronym is THINK:

• T Is it TRUE ?
• H Is it HELPFUL ?
• I Is it INSPIRING ?
• N Is it NECESSARY?
• K Is it KIND? …. Love is ….

The issue seems to be one that becomes argumentative or hostile because of wine or lack of some self-control issues. Someone who is pugnacious “carries a chip on his shoulder and is quick to get into a fight”. A godly leader is a peacemaker instead of a troublemaker.

A man told the story of a time when his car was stuck in an ice storm in the driveway of his house. He took a baseball bat and used it to break the ice off the surface of the driveway. After a time, he decided to come inside from the cold and have a cup of coffee. A few minutes later his seven year old came in an announced, “Dad, I got the ice off the car for you!” “Great! The dad said, “How’d you do it?” “Same way you did”, was the reply. “I used the baseball bat!” People become like their teachers in word and deed!

Another quality of self-control is contentment indicated by the phrase “free of the love of money” (also translated “not guilty of filthy lucre”) literally means not covetous: not a lover of money (one  word -  aphilargyros). Each of these terms is included in the idea of self-controlled.

Step Nine: Add working knowledge of stewardship (translated “manages household well” sometimes translated “one that ruleth his own house well. Another related idea of stewardship is the phrase “not a new convert, a novice (neophyte, new planted). This seems different, but the idea is that one that is new has not learned the longer lessons of stewardship. All plants look green when first planted, but managing the watering, the soil and the sun steward the plant to long term heath. New converts aren’t ready because they don’t see the maturing process yet. They can feel a sense of deserving and entitlement that is not real (3:6) and the Devil will surely use this.

Step Ten: Top off with a positive testimony to the world about them (translated “good reputation with those outside the church” or “have a good report of them without” the idea is NOT “well liked by the world” but those who are well thought of in places where the societal values match the Word of God.  When a congregation refuses to remove leaders who have Biblically disqualified themselves or does not hold to the high standards of the ingredients of this passage the result will be that they will undermine the moral and spiritual vitality of the whole congregation, as well as destroy the congregation’s influence in the community. Alexander Strauch: “Much of the weakness and waywardness of our churches today is due directly to our failure to require that church shepherds meet God’s standard for office. If we want our local churches to be spiritually fit, then we must require shepherds to be spiritually fit.”

I was challenged by these ideas anew. No group rises above the spiritual depth of its leaders. One Pastor wrote these words and I found them very helpful:

“1). If the leaders have a contentious spirit, the congregation will become contentious
2). If the leaders are inhospitable, the congregation will become unfriendly and cold.
3). If the leaders love money, the congregation will become worshippers of money.
4). If the leaders are not sensible, balanced, and self-controlled, their judgments will be extreme and unbalanced, which will cause the congregation to be extreme and unbalanced.
5). If the leaders are not faithful to their spouses, they will encourage others to be unfaithful
6). If the leaders do not faithfully hold to the authority of the Word of God in their own lives and in the operation of the congregation, the congregation will not hold to it.”

These are days that leaders are needed like never before! Paul warned that days were coming when the need would be great! Acts 20:28-31 – “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.”

Chuck Colson describes the difference between the worldly view of power and position and the Christian view: “Nothing distinguished the kingdoms of man from the kingdom of God more than their diametrically opposed views of the exercise of power. One seeks to control people, the other to serve people; one promotes self, the other prostrates self; one seeks prestige and position; the other lifts up the lowly and the despised…Power is like saltwater. The more you drink, the thirstier you get. The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It’s difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below.”

We NEED to exercise care in our leadership choices in our homes, offices, shops and especially in God’s church. Two police officers respond to a call from the dispatcher concerning a bad traffic accident. When they arrive on the scene, they find a father, mother, and two children unconscious inside a wrecked automobile. Almost immediately after the officers arrive, an ambulance pulls up and tells the officers that several more ambulances are on the way. After the other ambulances arrive and begin to load their patients, the officers discover that there is a monkey inside the car and that the monkey is conscious, though a little bruised up. Since the monkey is the only conscious passenger in the car and there are no other witnesses to the accident, the officers decide they’ll try to get the monkey to tell them what happened. They ask the monkey, “What was the father doing?” The monkey mimics drinking from a bottle. One of the officers said, “Makes sense.” They ask the monkey, “What was the mother doing?” The monkey mimics shaking his finger. “Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. The father was drinking and the mother was getting on him about it.” They ask the monkey, “What were the children doing?” The monkey mimics the children fighting in the back seat. The officers look at each other and one of them says, “Well, with all that going on, it was inevitable that they were going to have a wreck.” The two officers turn to walk away when one of them turns around and asks the monkey, “By the way, what were you doing the whole time?” The monkey mimics driving. Sometimes we wonder who is doing the leading in today’s world!

Remember, God has shared what makes a good leader on His evaluation form!