The Disposition of an Elders

If you have your Bibles with you, would you open them to Two Timothy Chapter four, Two Timothy chapter number four. I know that Pastor Conrad has been dealing with this sermons series on elders, and it has been fascinating to see and to listen. And I know that oftentimes when you hear your pastor preaching a series of messages like that, it's it's hard to hear those messages without wondering is he is he me? Is that is he talking to to me? And if he is talking to me, is he saying yes? Or or is he or is he saying no? And it's hard to hear what it is that's being said without that kind of reflection. And so am not going to necessarily continue the series, but address the issue from another perspective and address the issue as an outsider. And as an outsider, I don't know who the men are in this church who would be suitable for eldership. So you don't have to wonder whether or not I'm addressing you. Not only am I an outsider, although we are filling out our papers to pursue membership here, I myself came to realize last week that I'm not even eligible for eldership here. So I'm speaking as an outsider who's not even eligible for eldership here. By the way, if you're wondering why I'm not eligible for eldership here, usually when we exercise in the mornings, I'm either wearing a Superuperman's shirt or a Batman's shirt, and usually when I drink my drink afterwards, I use my favorite Superman cup or Batman cup. And last week I learned that there's no room for elders here who drop in from outside with Superman or Batman. So I promptly went home, took a picture of myself and my Batman shirt, and told my friend how disappointed I was. So I'm an outsider and I'm not even eligible for the office, so hear it from that perspective. But in all seriousness, what I want to do is share with you from the perspective of one who has served in eldership elsewhere, and from one who doesn't know about the history of the eldership here. And yet because I've served in eldership, I know what eldership requires, and I understand what it is to be in a position where there is a need for more elders. So two Timothy chapter four, beginning at verse nine, do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonaika. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me. For ministry Titikus I've sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also books and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. You may not recognize it, but when you look closely, here you see the disposition required of an elder. Oftentimes, when we think about eldership, we think of it in this sort of sterile manner, and we think of it as though there are men who need to take tests, and if they score a certain number on the test, then they're qualified for eldership. And we rarely think about the kind of temperament that a man needs to have for eldership. By the way, this is also true of men who serve. This is true of men who are called of God to preach the gospel. And early on you begin to serve the Lord and preach the Gospel and serve his church. And it's only after years of being in the battle that you begin to recognize the kind of temperament that was required. And for the overwhelming majority of us, you only recognize it after you realize you didn't have it when you started. But the people of God were used to beat it into you. And all the elders said, Amen. But there is a temperament, and we see it here. There are several things. First of all, the temperament of an elder should be that of a man who is able to handle discouragement and disappointment. He's able to handle discouragement and disappointment because serving as an elder is filled with discouragement and disappointment. Look with me, if you will, at verse nine. He says, in verse nine, do your best to come to me soon. Now we understand that this is the letter that Paul is writing to young Timothy. I want you to back up to chapter one and see what I mean when I say disappointment and discouragement. Back up to chapter one and look at verse one. Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the World of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus to Timothy, my beloved child. This man is not his biological son, but he refers to him as my beloved child. Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus, our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve as my ancestors did, with a clear conscience. As I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I am excuse me, as I remember your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith of faith that dwell first in your grandmother Lois, and in your mother Eunice, and now I'm sure dwells in you as well. He goes on. But the letter is dripping with the personal intimacy of a relationship between two men who loved one another greatly, A mature man man who found in a younger man a son, and a younger man who found in an older man a father. And what is the great discouragement and disappointment here? It is we know from earlier in chapter four, Paul says, I'm already being poured out like a drink offering, and the hour of my departure has come. He knows that this imprisonment will more than likely be his last. He recognizes that although he has left prison before a free man, that this time he will probably leave prison on his way to glory. He is going to die. And what he is saying here is that he hopes, he yearns, he pleads with God that perhaps before his death he will get to see young Timothy again, but he realizes he may not. That's discouraging, that's disappointing, But it's not just young Timothy. Look at the rest of this section for demus and love with this present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonaika. That's disappointing. When you invest in people and they walk away. That's discouraging. When a married couple comes to you for counseling and you look them in the eye and you say, I've seen this before, I know how this story ends. Look at me and listen to what I say. If you do not grab on to this truth, if you do not let go of this offense, if you do not do this and that, if you do not open your eyes, I can look at you right now and tell you you will not survive as a couple. And you watch their hearts harden, and eventually you watch them disappear from the fellowship of the church until you later hear the news that one is living here and one is living there and the marriage is over. That's discouraging. That's disappointing. When you say to a young man or a young woman, I see the road that you are on, and as your pastor, I am pleading with you to turn to repent, and they don't, and then you see them years later when they are dealing with the consequences of the sin that you warn them about, and yet they headlong into it. That's discouraging, that's disappointing. And a man with the wrong kind of temperament will experience only so much of that kind of discouragement and disappointment before he says, I can't do this anymore. There's not only that tragic disappointment. But look again at the text and notice what he says. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Look alone, is with me droped down Tchikus I've sent to Ephesus. These aren't tragedies. These are actually blessings. These are individuals who've been raised up and sent off, And even that is discouraging. There is this fellowship, this camaraderie. There is this world that one enters into when you begin to serve the people of God, and it's something that can really only be understood by those who take on this same responsibility. And there is a sense in which there is a deeper kind of friendship that can be enjoyed within that office, that can be enjoyed anywhere else. And unless you are committed to growing a kingdom where you keep all the gifted people around you and never let them go. What that means is you pour your life into people. You see them grow up, you see them exercise their gifts within the body. You see the body flourish as they exercise those gifts, and then you open the door and watch them leave because they're needed elsewhere. Even that is discouraging, Even that is disappointing, and serving an eldership requires the kind of temperament and disposition that can experience that kind of disappointment and yet not developed the personality that says, I'm not going to let any more gifted men go. The work is hard, the burden is heavy. How many men have come through the doors of Kabwata Baptist Church who are now out preaching elsewhere. How many amazingly gifted men serving in other places, And yet here we are, there are just you know, five, and we need more, and we wouldn't need more if we just held on and stopped letting gifted men go. But you know, you can't think like that. So you watch them come, and you watch them grow, and you watch them develop, and then you send them. So you think pastors love going to conferences because we love listening to preaching. That's not why pastors love going to conferences. Sometimes there's edifying preaching at conferences. But pastors go to conferences because they get to see their friends again. That's what we love. We love the reunion. If we get to listen to some great preaching in the midst of the reunion, that's a bonus. But oftentime, there are those individuals with whom we've served, those individuals whom we've loved, those individuals whom we've given a part of ourselves, and who are gone and we miss them and the conference comes around. We don't care who's preaching at the conference. We're going to see our friends. So requires a temperament that can handle discouragement and disappointment. It also requires a temperament that can handle conflict, because eldership is filled with conflict. Right in the middle of this verse eleven, Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. That's an interesting statement. Turn back with me. If you will look to the left and go to the Book of Acts, look at Acts, chapter fifteen, look at verse thirty six. And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are now. Barnabus wanted to take with him John called Mark, but Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphilia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. Paul Joe Silas departed a sharp disagreement. People outside of elderships aren't aware of this, but elders disagree with one another all the time if they're part of a healthy eldership. A healthy eldership is not an eldership where every man thinks the exact same way and there is never any sharp disagreement. A healthy eldership is not an eldership where there's one man that everyone bows down to and whatever he says goes, and nobody ever says anything to the contrary. A healthy eldership is an eldership filled with men who have different ideas and who have agreements about non essential things, but disagreements nonetheless but they are mature enough, number one, to voice those disagreements because they recognize that it's good for the church. And secondly, they're mature enough to not burn bridges just because there's a disagreement. I know of elderships that have had sharp disagreements with one another that have paralyzed the eldership for a time until they could work through the disagreement. But once they worked through the disagreement and all of the various positions were heard and were argued for vociferously, the final position was far more well developed than it would have been had no one ever challenged it. And they were mature men. They didn't burn bridges. They let their egos stay at the door while they dealt with the issue. You need men with that kind of temperament. Paul and Barnabus had a sharp disagreement, and basically Paul says, I don't want John Mark. No, in fact, if you want him, you don't want me. So you take him, you go. And now at the end of his life he says, bring Mark because he's useful to me. This is a man who knows how to handle conflict without burning bridges. A man who's mature enough Number one to raise the issue in an appropriate manner, and mature enough Number two to leave his ego at the door. It's like a healthy marriage. A healthy marriage is not one where there's never a disagreement. Show me a marriage where there's never a disagreement or a conflict, and I'll show you an unhealthy marriage. Believe it was Ruth Graham who said it best when she said, if the two of us were the same, one of us would be unnecessary. Amen. A healthy marriage is not a marriage where there's never a disagreement. A healthy marriage is a marriage where the disagreements are handled with Christian maturity, where we guard our tongues and don't use the kind of words that are bitter and corrosive, as Paul says in Ephesians, where even when we are disagreeing, we are disagreeing agreeably, and if anything does get heated, and if anything is said that we regret, we are quick to repent instead of holding on to it for days or weeks or months at a time. A healthy eldership requires men with the kind of temperament that can handle conflict appropriately, but not only handle conflict, but handle excuse me, personal offense as well. Look at the next part of this. I'm sorry not yet before that, look at verse twelve, when you come bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and the books and above all the parchments. Healthy elder is a man of the word. And here is a man who realizes that he is going to die in the not too distant future. So what does he say, bring me my tools so that I can research, read and write for the benefit of the church before I die. He doesn't sit there and say, woe is me. I'm about to die and I can't believe I'm about to die, and I just you know, who wants to read at a time like this, and who wants to write at a time like I'm going to die? And you want me to write? No. His attitude is I am at the end of my time. I need to do as much as I can before the Lord calls me home. That's a special temperament. That's the temperament of an elder, a man who understands that his chief contribution to the church is his studying and teaching the Word of God, and he puts that above everything else. Don't we see this in Acts Chapter six. In Acts, chapter six, there's this disturbance in the church, and the Hellenistic widows have this complain and they come to the elders, and the elders, you know, without the apostles, without being insensitive. Basically they say, listen, this is a real issue. You should deal with it. We won't. We can't because what we have to deal with is far more important and this would distract us. So please handle this so that we can devote ourselves to prayer and to the Word, because that's our chief contribution to the church. And in case you haven't noticed, we're dying every day. They're throwing us to lions, they're beheading us, they're hanging us, they're beating us to death, in case you haven't noticed. So we don't know how much time we have. Not saying that this is not an important issue, but I'm saying that it cannot be allowed to keep us from doing what we must do. That's the temperament of an elder. He does not get balked down in secondary and tertiary issues, but he focuses on a life of the Word because he recognizes that that's the greatest contribution that he can make. Now let's look at the issue of the personal offense. This is one of my favorite passages in all the Bible, which probably says more about me than it does about the Bible. He says, sorry, my page had turned. That's not what I was supposed to do. Alexander the Coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. I love this because he names names. I love this. There have been instances where, you know, in ministry, I've felt like it was incumbered upon me to not just address an issue or a false teacher or a false prophet, just in general, but to name a name. And again, in this age in which we live, there is the eleventh commandment. The eleventh commandment is thou shalt be nice. We don't believe the other ten. Amen. And so you name people's names. And there are people, especially in the younger generation. Oh, that's just so unkind, that's just so Unchristian. And I love to take him to Second Timothy chapter four, not just Alexander, Alexander the Coppersmith. Just because you were wondering which one you know, the guy over there on Ninka Linga Linga who does Yeah, yeah, that one, right, there. But notice how he handles the personal defense. He doesn't say I'm going to get him, I'm gonna put on my Superman's shirt and I'm you know, that's not what he says. He says the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message, not because he strongly opposed me. You see, the Elder doesn't get up in arms because somebody doesn't think highly enough of me. He only gets up in arms when it's time to defend the word. You can say whatever you want about me, because here's what I know. Whatever the worst thing is that you think about me, it's not the worst thing about me. Some of y'all didn't get that. Whatever the worst thing you think about me, I promise you if you tell me, I could give you one better. I am under no delusions as it relates to my sinfulness and my need for continued sanctification. I do not operate under the delusion that somehow I don't have rough edges that the Lord Jesus needs to continue to chisel off. So that's not nearly as important, because the worst thing you can say about me is actually probably not the worst thing about me. But when you contradict the Gospel, and when you blaspheme Jesus, I have a Titus one to nine obligation to confront and refute. But that's not the only type of personal offense. Look carefully at the next part, verse nineteen, at my first Now, this is the apostle Paul. This is the man who wrote more of the New Testament than any other man. This is the man who arguably made the greatest contribution of any man to the early Church. You could argue for Peter, but an argument can be made that this is the man who made the greatest contribution to the early Church. Remember that before we read this at my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. That's personal offense. Don't read on. Just stop right there, Just stop right there, Just stop right there. I've been shipwrecked in service to the church. I've been bitten by snakes in service to the church. I've been arrested in service to the church. I've been beaten multiple times in service to the church. I've been locked up in prison in service to the church. People get mad at me because I didn't remember their birthday, because I didn't come to their child's party, because I didn't make it to the funeral because I had one hundred and four temperature that day. They have no grace for me. But when I went on trial, not one person was there. Now, that's how you and I would have written it, Amen, That's how we would have done it right. No, let's read it again, and now read the whole statement. At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them. That's an elder. That's an elder. That's the temperament of an elder. And it has to be because there will be personal offense. But how, thank you, How does this temperament become a reality. The secret is in the next part of the statement. But the Lord stood by me and strengthen me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Why why does he have this temperament? Why is he able to deal with all of this and continue to serve. Why is it that all of these difficulties and hardships don't make him give up or even shake his fist at the church and get angry with her. Why because he recognizes that he has a unique privilege, and that unique privilege is serving the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who was also deserted by all who went to the cross to save his bride the church, and Paul recognizes that he is numbered among them. Christ endured to save me, and beyond that, not just giving me the privilege of being saved, he called me. He called me to serve him and to preach the gospel among the gentiles. He called me to use me to expand his glory and to proclaim the coming of the kingdom, so that Christ might indeed have the fullness of the reward for which he died. How dare I get distracted by discouragement? How dare I get distracted by conflict? How dare I get distracted by personal offense? How dare I get distracted by fatigue or fear or anything else. I have the greatest privilege the world has ever known, and the fact that Christians are immature in the way that they treat me only confirms that I have more work to do. And after all, who am I but the chief of sinners saved by grace? So may the Lord not count it against them. Paul says, I've been discouraged and disappointed, but Jesus is more. I've been in the midst of heated conflicts, but Jesus is so much more. I've had my own weakness exposed through personal offenses, but Jesus is more. So. I endure those for the sake of the Gospel and for the sake of the elect for whom Christ died, and to whom Christ, by his grace, has sent me to preach this good news. What in the world should ever be allowed to distract me from that? This is the temperament of an elder. But here's a news flash. Nobody starts with it. You start with the character that God can use and mold. You start with those basic things that we look for one Timothy three and Titus one. But the only way that you can develop this temperament is to be disappointed, discouraged, mistreated, forsaken, abandoned, abused, have a pity party, here and there, and then have the Lord through your fellow elders, to look at you and say, do you really think you deserve more? Do you really think you deserve better? You're gonna quit. You're gonna quit over this. Let me see if I understand this correct, the spotless, sinless lamb of God, the Father crushed and killed for his own glory, and he gladly endured it for your sake. But people don't treat you with enough respect, and you're ready to quit the eldership. Shame on you. Get up, Get up, because whatever they did to you. Number one, Christ endured worse, and number two you deserve worse. And number three, how will they ever do better if those charged with bringing them to maturity refused to do so? Get up? Love him some more, teach them some more, endure some more, preach some more. That's how this develops, and when it does, the people of God benefit greatly. So what do we do with this? Number one? Examine yourself, those of you who've been listening to this series and wondering if maybe maybe that you examine yourself, because oftentimes here's what I find, especially with younger men. Younger men think of the eldership in terms of its prestige. And so you hear about eldership and we need more elders, and we think, yes, that's a prestigious position. I think I think it should be me. No, you need to hear this side because this is eldership right here. So that's number one. And as you hear this side, do you still think perhaps me. Secondly, for all of us who think about eldership and never think about this side of it, my prayer is that you are better equipped to pray for those who serve in this office, because it's much more than what you think, what you see, or what you know. Pray for those. And then finally for all of us. As we've heard the pastors say repeatedly we need more elder As we need more elders, let us pray that God would send more men to serve in this office in this church, to the glory of God, to the end that Christ might indeed have the fullness of the reward for which he died. Amen.