God has established various forms of government to organize the different spheres of human life: self-government, family government, and civil government are all established by God. In addition to these spheres, God has also established church government. What does a proper, biblical church government look like in the local church? While the Bible doesn't give us every detail about church government, there are several passages that give us certain clear principles that should guide our understanding of what biblical church government looks like.

The following message is a presentation of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches where we're proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life. More information about the NCFIC is available at www.ncfic.org. So before I get started I'd like to recommend a couple of books on the topic. We are speaking about establishing biblical church government and what that means in terms of what the New Testament teaches is talking about what the New Testament terms elders or overseers. Those are terms that both Paul and Peter use interchangeably so that's a single office when you see the word elders you can substitute in overseers when you see the word overseers you can substitute in the word elders because both Paul and Peter used them interchangeably in texts.

So Alexander Strauch has written a book called Biblical Eldership, an Urgent Call to Restore Biblical Church Leadership. And then the companion book is Minister of Mercy, the New Testament Deacon. So both of those are written by Alexander Strauch. The thing I really appreciate about these books is the overwhelming amount of space is allocated to pure New Testament text exposition. Just a very careful breaking down of the New Testament text.

When you read his books you get the sense that he didn't come to the topic with an axe to grind. He fished out the relevant text and then he very carefully deconstructed them to see what the Bible would teach us about these things. So I think It's a really good handling and a much more comprehensive handling than we have in an hour. So, if they're not on your shelf now and you're interested in church planting, go buy it. It's a great reference book and because it's broken down text by text, that's how the books are structured, it's really easy to find out when you hit a rough patch and you want to have a careful exposition of a certain part of one of these texts, it's really easy to find because the book is structured around the text.

So, the reformers had a mantra, semper reformenda, which means always reforming. They were always wanting to bring the word of God to bear on every practice that they had, on all their thoughts. There was a reformer in the middle 1800s from Switzerland named Alexander Venet and he said this and it's really a good compliment to John Robinson's quote from yesterday, the exhortation is in a lot the same direction. Alexander Venet said this, the Reformation is still something to be accomplished, something for which Luther and Calvin only prepared an even ground and a wider door. They did not once and for all reform the church, but they affirmed the principle and laid down the terms for all future reform.

To continue the work of Reformation, do not consider it complete, but return without delay to the large pure spring of all truth, the Word of God. So we're continuing on the theme here that Reformation is before the church, never in the rearview mirror, and so all of the structures of the church should be measured against the plumb line of scripture and where we find that they deviate, we should do the adjusting, not the Word of God for sure. But we should also acknowledge, so we've got a topic today that's about church structure. And I want you to want to begin the talk by saying that a reform in the church isn't principally about structures. Now sometimes there are structures in the church that underpin what the church is about and so when we find that those structures have drifted from the teachings of Scripture, they may need to be tweaked, but it would be completely possible to tweak the structure and get the structure right and aligned and still not be doing the work that the church should be doing.

So I will speak out of both sides of my mouth. One is to say that when we talk about biblical eldership and getting church government right, it's really critical. It's very important. But out of the other side of my mouth I would say it would be possible to get that right and still miss the mark of what a church should be about. In fact, I think it would be appropriate to say there may be churches who have church government wrong that are much more on mission to what Jesus would have for the church.

And there are churches who have church government just pristine according to the New Testament teaching who are not about what they should be doing. So we should always be striving to marry these things up, to have our structures right and make the tweaks that need to be made to return to the teaching of Scripture where possible. But understand if we desire to have reform in the church, it's that our hearts would be lit on fire for God, that we would have a white hot passion for God. And if it doesn't serve that purpose, then the tweaking of our structures would not have very much value for us at all. Let's pray on that topic now.

Heavenly Father, we do desire to be a people who love you with all of our hearts and I pray that as you're reforming the church, God, that this would always be before us, that we would love you with all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our minds and all of our strength and that we would love our neighbor as ourselves. God, we do desire to have all the structures of the church aligned with what we see in the New Testament, but God, we know that we have something in our hearts that would be content with that and not content with you. We want you to be our portion and our very great reward as you promised Abraham. We pray that you would accomplish this among us in Jesus' name, amen. So The question is, is eldership biblical?

Is eldership biblical? And the thesis for our time that I'll be making an argument for is that the short answer is yes. Eldership, local church government by a plurality of qualified men is amply even lavishly set forth in the New Testament. So I've chosen the words carefully there. I want to read it again because it's what all of our time will be structured around.

Local church government by a plurality, a plurality of qualified men is amply even lavishly set forth in the New Testament. In fact, there's more teaching on this in the New Testament than there is on the Lord's Supper, than there is on baptism, than there is on spiritual gifts. So we have been given a lot of content about what local church government should look like in our churches. Paul and Peter talked a great deal about it and we're going to review a lot of those passages today. There are 13 passages that directly address this issue using either the word elders or overseers and those are again are terms that both Paul and Peter used interchangeably.

That should tell us something. There's 13 of them, not 13 verses but 13 passages, paragraphs that address church government. So the plurality of elders is well established. I'm going to take you through, of these 13, there are nine where you can tell for sure that the author is talking about a plurality of men governing the local church. The other four you can't tell.

In other words, in 1 Timothy 3 when Paul starts out an elder then must be and he starts into the qualification. That passage doesn't bear on whether a local church is governed by one or more than one elder. So you can't tell from that passage. So there are nine where you can tell for sure what that passage means, and they're comprehensively on the side of a plurality. There's four when you can't tell at all.

Here are the nine. And we're gonna go through them quick, but I want to pile them up. I want you to feel the effect of the piling up of them so we get the sense that the New Testament only has one message on this topic. One, Acts 11 30, this is the first mention of elders. This they also did, we're talking about an offering here that's being sent, "...and sent it to the elders, " plural, "...by the hands of Paul and Barnabas." So this was ascending to the church in Jerusalem and elders, plural is the word that's used.

Number two, Acts 14. So when they had appointed elders, plural, in every church, singular. Number three, Acts 15, four, and when they had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the church, singular, and the apostles, and the elders, plural. Acts 15, later in the chapter, then it pleased the apostles and elders, plural, with the whole church singular. Acts 20, from Miletus he sent to Ephesus another church but a single church and called for the elders, plural, of the church.

Acts 21, and when he had come to Jerusalem the brethren received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James and all the elders, plural, were present. Again, a singular church in Jerusalem, plural, eldership leading the church. Philippians 1-1, another church. Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi with the bishops, plural, I hate that translation, shame on them for rendering it bishops because it has all the baggage that is not like it, but anyway, it is what it is, so I've put overseers in brackets there, with the bishops plural and deacons.

Titus 1.5, for this reason I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders, plural, in every city, singular. James 5.14, finally, is anyone sick among you? Let him call for the elders, plural, of the church. We see it over and over and over again, and I belabored the point, but really the teaching, there's nothing to contradict it in the New Testament, and there's a pile on the side that the local church would be governed by a plurality of men. In the New Testament we see this form of local church government across a wide geographical area.

In other words we saw a lot of churches represented. We saw the Church of Jerusalem in Philippi, in Crete, And we see it across diverse cultures. We see it in Jerusalem, we see it in Rome, we see it in Greek cities, so no argument can be made that it's cultural or that it's geographical, we see it's comprehensive across all these different categories. A plurality of qualified elders governing the local church is the normal New Testament practice. Alexander Stroud says this in this book, he says, if you're looking for a senior pastor don't look in the New Testament.

You can look in the New Testament until your eyes bleed and you will not find him there. And the senior pastor model as it's employed in many, many, many, many, many churches is a double whammy and here's what I mean by that. It consumes one man beyond his mean. The weight of the church is upon the shoulders of one man and he wasn't designed for that so it consumes one man beyond what was intended and secondly it deprives other able men who have been raised up by God and the character traits have been put within them and they're gifted to teach and they can manage their own households while they're qualified to be elders but it deprives them of the opportunity to serve in the church in that way. So what what do we see in the New Testament?

We see Paul appointing elders in all the churches at the beginning of his ministry in Acts 14 23. In his first missionary journey it says, so when they had appointed elders in every church, so at the very beginning of Paul's ministry, in his first missionary journey, we see this is what his practice was, and then at the end of his ministry, one of the last epistles that he wrote, Titus 1.5, we see this, he says, for this reason I left you in Crete, Titus, that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. He was doing it at the beginning of his ministry, he was doing it at the end of his ministry. It was Paul's practice. It's very interesting that in Titus 1.5 he identifies a church without a plurality of leaderships as a deficient church, as something that has a lack.

He says that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. And all of the essentials, all of the essentials for what you'd want to know about eldership are laid out in the New Testament. So we're not building a doctrine on a single verse or a couple of single verses, but on a comprehensive, very consistent teaching. What do we learn about eldership in the New Testament? We learn what they should do.

We learn what their function in the church is, and there's what? One, two, three, four, five, six different passages that address what the role of an elder is. So as an elder in a church, I'm very comforted by this. There's not just one little corner of one passage that addresses this, but there's a lot to say about what an elder should be doing. Secondly, we learn who can be an elder.

There are qualifications and they're clearly laid out in 1st Timothy 3 and in Titus 1. The New Testament addresses how the church should relate to an elder. These four texts talk about how the churches and elders should relate to each other. This is very important, especially in an age where most churches draw a distinction between clergy and laity. The New Testament will have nothing to do with that thought as we'll see as we go through some of the flagship texts.

And so as elders grapple with understanding how they should relate with the people in the fellowship and as the people do the same these texts instruct us on the type of life that we should have together. How to handle an accusation against an elder 1st Timothy 5 tells us about that and how to discipline an elder also in 1st Timothy 5. So the essential things about what you need to know to implement this type of government in the in the local church is very lavishly laid out for us in these texts. So the rest of our time will be devoted to looking at six of what I'm going to dub flagship passages for this and we're just going to look at the passage. Here's the beauty of this time at least as I see it.

If you just note what these six texts are and you wanted to go back a year from now and recreate this message, you'd be able to because all I'm going to do is we're going to read the text and then I'm going to say what, I'm going to point out the obvious. I'm going to say here's what this text says about eldership, A, B, C, D. You don't need to even write down A, B, C, D if you don't want to because when you go back to this text, if you just read it a couple of times, it'll be the things that you could pull out and put down in plain English. These passages are so clear. So we'll begin in Acts 6, and it's verses one through seven.

Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the Twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, It is not desirable that we should leave the work of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith in the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Then the word of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith." This is an interesting passage, but it never once says the word elders and it never once says the word deacons, so why would I put this as a flagship passage? One of the things we should understand about Luke as a historian is he never back dates his accounts. In other words, the first occurrence that we have of the term either elders or overseers is in Acts 11. And it's about this church and he uses the word elders plural so we know for sure from acts 11 that there were elders in this church but Luke as a careful historian which if you've ever seen any sort of analysis he's he's praised he's widely praised as a historian doesn't backdate his terms in other words at the time of act six if they weren't calling the leaders of the church elders, then he doesn't call it elders in his account. But what we see here is that this group of men who are clearly leading the church in Jerusalem are functioning exactly how we would see elders function in the church and they explicitly call out their duty as prayer in the ministry of the word which as we go through these other flagship texts we're going to see that's exactly what the business of elders is in the local church.

So I do believe it's legitimate to call out this text and say this is how leaders in the local church, this is what they were and this is the business that they should be about. The thing that we learn from this passage is that the local church needs a group of men who can give themselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word will always be the most important function and it will never be the most urgent function. Are you with me? The church needs prayer and the ministry of the Word more than it needs anything else but it's not nearly as urgent as the complaints that arise about widows not being fed. And every church will experience this problem.

And so the church has this need, but if you don't find a way to appropriately handle the other legitimate needs of the church, no one will be devoted. This is what the Apostles are identifying in Acts 6, that there is this thing that's most important but it'll get robbed from by other things that are legitimate but are not their function in the church so there has to be another way to appropriately handle those things. So having deacons which they appoint these these seven men and again they're not called deacons in this passage, but we see root words in the Greek that mean service which is exactly what the word deacon means, and we see the word deacon show up in a very similar capacity later in 1 Timothy 3. So having deacons is a very important part of having an eldership that functions properly because it allows the eldership to be be continually focused on prayer and the ministry of the Word. And finally look at the fruit.

This is a story with a happy ending. The unity of the church is preserved. We start out with a complaint. There's disunity and the ending is the unity of the church is preserved and the number of disciples is multiplied. So now we'll move to Acts 20, and in Acts 20 Paul is nearing the end of his ministry and he knows he's got one last shot at the leadership of the church in Ephesus.

Ephesus where he spent a couple of years of time personally discipling and ministering in that church. He's got one last time to address them. So he's en route and he calls for them to come and meet him on the beach at Miletus and so we get this kind of see his last words to this group of people that have been precious to him and see what his counsels are to them. This is a really valuable passage for for elders. Acts 20 starting in verse 28.

He's addressing the elders. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.

So now brethren I commend you to God and to the word of his grace which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. What do we learn from this passage? First, right out of the bat he says, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock. There is a call for elders to take heed to themselves. Self-examination.

Now we're going to learn as we get to First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 that there's a list of qualifications, but the point is is that there are qualifications which are mostly character related for elders. And a critical part of this, the starting point of this, is that elders would take heed to themselves, even before they're examined by others, that they would take heed to themselves. There would be an ongoing self-examination process. Elder qualification is not a pass-fail test. I passed, I'm qualified today, I'm qualified forever because These are about character traits where there can be slipping into an area of becoming disqualified from a time period of being qualified.

So for an elder, taking heed to yourself is a job that's never done. Secondly, elders must take heed to all the flock. As we look across the breadth of these passages, we really can categorize what an elder should be doing in just three categories. We saw the first two in Acts 6 was prayer and the ministry of the word. Elders should be dedicated themselves to those things.

The one other function that we see added to that here in Acts 20 is the shepherding function, that there is a care of souls that is entrusted to elders and that they are to take heed not only to themselves but also to all the flock, all the flock. When there's a local church, everyone in that local church is to be cared for by this team of qualified men that God places over the church. So there's a shepherding function here as well, and knowing all the flock is a key duty of the shepherding ministry. In fact Richard Baxter, if you're familiar with him, wrote the Reformed pastor, which is very helpful work directed to church leaders, makes the argument that local church should only be as big as the elder team can really know, and he takes it to this verse saying elders are charged with knowing all the flock. If the flock's too big then there should be a sizing down of that flock so that everyone gets the appropriate amount of care in the local church.

Next, the Holy Spirit appoints elders as overseers to shepherd the church. The Holy Spirit appoints elders as overseers to shepherd the church. Now does this mean we haven't been giving mechanisms that we put in place as well, no it doesn't mean that at all. These things work in harmony. They must be qualified, there must be a testing against the qualifications, there must be something internal to the person that causes them to desire the work so that they're not working under compulsion, but this is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Often this is exactly how the Holy Spirit appoints elders is he makes it clear to people around you that you're qualified and he puts a desire within you for the work, but It is ultimately the Holy Spirit that appoints elders as overseers to shepherd the church and this is how we should view our church leadership. God has placed this group of qualified men over our church and it should cause us to think in the right way about our church leadership. It makes it much easier to be under the authority of a group if we can rest and know that the Holy Spirit is the one who appoints church leadership. Elders are to protect the flock from savage wolves. This should not be new to any of our thinking that there are threats against the church from the inside and from the outside, Paul says.

He talks about even in your own midst men will arise speaking perverse things. Where am I? Yes, these are men who speak perverse things and draw their brethren away and they're a threat to the unity of the church and the health of the church and God has given the church a group of men who can lock arms against the enemies of the church and so he gives this function that elders are to protect the flock from these wolves. Now let's turn to 1 Timothy 3 or you don't have to turn there we'll put it on the screen but that's our next text 1st Timothy 3 I'm sure you're all familiar with this Paul says this to Timothy this is a faithful saying if a man desires the position of a bishop he desires a good work A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, Not given to wine, not violent, not greeter for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous. One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence.

For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Likewise, deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. But let these also first be tested, then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless.

Likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. So what do we learn from this text? One, we learn that eldership is for men. Eldership is given to men. Secondly, eldership is a good work.

Eldership is a good work. By the way, maybe we'll back up one. First Timothy 3, not coincidentally, is right after First Timothy 2. And in First Timothy 2, Paul lays out the argument for men leading the church. And His argument is based on only one thing and it is the creation order.

Adam was created first and then Eve was created to be his helper and he bases his whole argument on that. You'll find nothing in his argument about culture of the day. It's only on creation order. And so this principle of men leading the church is timeless because it's based on a creation order and that's not changing. It's one history And it happened a long time ago and it is what it is.

And that's the argument that Paul makes. Secondly, eldership is a good work. And we have something to do with this point. And what is that something? That something is that we would train our children that eldership is a good work, that we would view it that way ourselves so that those who are placed in authority in the local church are esteemed, but also that we're putting a mindset in our children that this is a good work so that our little boys would be aspiring to that.

And I remember when I first got a hold of this concept that my one son Jake was three years old at the time so one bedtime I decided well I'm going to start this work tonight. I'm going to get him to aspire to this good work. And I said Jake would you like to be an elder someday? And he said yes. I said well what is it about that you like?

Well, you get to stand up front, you get the microphone. I love the microphone. And so I thought, well, I think Jake needs kind of a resetting to add some soberness to this. So I said, this is a lot of work. I spent a lot of time studying, it's a lot of time, there's duties associated with it.

You know, are you sure you want to be an elder? And he looked at me and he said, no, I think I want to be a fireman. But time is on my side and I'm still working on it but the Holy Spirit will not call all of our sons to be an elders but they'll either be an elder or there will be someone in the church if they're a member of the congregation then they need to esteem those who are elders and understand that God has appointed them to a good work or they need to aspire to it themselves and in either case our efforts in teaching what's right about this office to our children will be rewarded. The next thing that we learn is that an elder must be qualified, pre-qualified in advance of serving in the office, which only makes sense, but the church should be very careful in this respect. Much harm has come to churches and it's very difficult to undo the harm once it's been done.

When unqualified men get into leadership, the impact of that can be decades long, a decade long impact for sure. So we should be very careful about qualifying. The qualifications fit neatly into three categories. One, mature Christian character and the overwhelming majority of the qualifications are boiled down to that. It's just mature Christian character.

It's the fruits of the Spirit in action. If you just take Galatians, the fruits of the Spirit, and you start mapping them against the qualifications for elders, you find there's comprehensive overlap. There's nothing in the qualifications for elders on the character side that would not be right square in the middle of one of the fruits of the Spirit. And what is the message of that? The message of that is that the elder is not some superhero.

The elder is simply a mature Christian. In other words, we're just to validate that we're putting people in leadership who have mature Christian character, not extraordinary Christian character, simply mature Christian character. And we shouldn't think wrongly about this as if the elders are the one who have to meet these qualifications but the rest of us are off the hook. No, we could find commands for every one of these qualities to be within every Christian. We should all be examining ourselves to see if these are in us.

That's why it makes me laugh when I see in the political arena that we're not electing a chief pastor as if there was this super amount of qualifications for pastors that no longer pertains to anyone else. That's not the case at all. It's simply looking for a level of maturity in church leaders, that's what's being called for. So there are qualifications. Mature Christian character is the first category, the second category is management of the household.

We touched on this yesterday, but the church is not a business. It's a family. And so when you want a training grounds for the church, you don't put them in a master business association. You don't put them in an MBA course. You put them in home to see how they can, to allow them to hone their family management skills so that then they'll take it to another family and apply those same skills there.

And Paul says it explicitly here, if a man can't manage his own family, how will he manage the church of God? So the second qualification is very critical and it's that a man understand how to manage his household well. And thirdly, that he's able to teach. It's a clear prayer and ministry of the word have already been singled out as functions and so this ministry of the word an elder must be able to teach and he must be able to defend sound doctrine. And There's a master qualification for all these when Paul says that he must be blameless or some translations say he must be above reproach.

In all of these qualifications you would say there's a line there somewhere and I'm not sure exactly where the line is. Am I qualified in this category or am I not qualified? And this gives us the litmus test. Are you blameless in this category? Are you above reproach?

If you're looking for perfect men you'll keep looking forever and the church will never have any leaders so it's odd it should be intuitive to everyone that perfection isn't the standard. But the question is can a man be rightly reproached in this category? If the answer is yes, he's not qualified. If the answer is no, if someone would bring a charge in this category in a man's life and the discerning people in the church would say come on, he may not be perfect in this area but he's not, you can't reproach him in this category of his life, then he's qualified. Interestingly enough, not on the list.

Seminary training, quote-unquote calling this mystical sense that God has called me into the ministry, not on the list. Personal charisma, not on the list. IQ, not on the list. Gifted men, Not on the list. How often have churches taken the most gifted men?

Man, they can run a business, they can make an organization hum, but meanwhile their home life is a disaster, but we'll put them in leadership in the church because they can make the fundraiser go, man. The building fund is flush when we put Brother Bob in a position of leadership and meanwhile the solid mature Christian character that's necessary for the long-term health of a church is missing. This is wrong. It's not not right to do that. Next text, Titus 1.

Lots of overlap between 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, but there are some distinctions, so we'll touch on it. Titus 1 verses 5 through 9. Paul writes this to Titus. For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination.

For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine to exhort and convict those who contradict." So the first thing that we learn here is that things are lacking in a church without elders. I think I've said that and probably belabored the point, so we'll move on. But churches need a plurality of men who can share the leadership load and provide stability and wise leadership to the church. Number two, an elder must be qualified. We've already seen and said that.

Number three, one of the jobs of an elder is to use sound doctrine that has been passed to them to exhort and convict those who contradict. And that's not always wolves in the church, at least not in the classic definition. Sometimes it's just the immature in the church. You know we're not all maturing at the same pace. You know we didn't all get saved on the same day.

God is going to bring people into all of our fellowships that were just saved last week or a little slower on the sanctification curve and they're going to say crazy things and they're going to have an appreciation for crazy books and there needs to be stable Christian men who are there and have an understanding of doctrine who will who will gently instruct and who can who can use sound doctrine to exhort and convict those who contradict. Taking us back to Paul in Acts 20 as he was exhorting these Ephesian elders on the beach of Miletus, he says a couple of striking things. He says, one, I kept back nothing that was helpful but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house. And then seven verses later he says this, for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Now when we look at Acts 20, what we see is Paul's making an argument from his own life for how elders should conduct themselves in the local church.

And this is what Paul says about himself and his his two-year ministry among the Ephesians. I kept back nothing that was helpful. I did not shun to declare to you the whole counsel of God. An elder must be a man who's ready to hold forth, who lets every arrow fly and leaves the quiver empty. An Elder is not a man who rings his hands wondering if he should weigh in or not weigh in.

He knows he's a man who should weigh in because God has set him in a function that he would not withhold anything that was helpful, that he would deliver the whole counsel of God, and he would have a teaching ministry that's both public and from house to house. This is the type of man that God is putting in leadership in the local church. We're winding down, we only have two passages left, but they're good ones. James, James 5 verses 13 through 15. Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

And the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins he will be forgiven. There's three things I'd like to highlight from this text. One is that the elders are always on call for prayer. We'll go back to the first text that we looked at, Acts 6. We will continually devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.

Prayer is front and center as a role for an elder in the local church. Elders are always on call for prayer. They should always be ready. One of the things that I remember about Scott's ministry in my own life. Scott and I have known each other forever.

He performed a wedding ceremony for my wife and I 17 years ago and we knew them even before that. But one of the things I've always appreciated about Scott is if you had a concern that you were talking to him about whether it's on the phone or in person or whatever he does not wait he does not promise to pray for you he launches into prayer and expects you to follow along and this is a beautiful ministry this is the mentality that an elder should bring that when there's a something of substance on the table that it should be prayed about and it shouldn't there shouldn't be a promise to pray later that we should launch into prayer and bring people with us into a rich prayer life, that we would pray for these things on the spot and we would pray earnestly. Number two. What we see here is something interesting. The sick should call for the elders.

Elders are not clairvoyant. They do not know all that is going on in the life of everyone in the fellowship. And so the call in James 5, though elders should be as sensitive to these things and should be initiating prayer, it's very appropriate for elders to do that. It's not what we see in James 5. What we see in James 5 is a call for the sick to bring the elders to pray for them.

How many people have had their feelings hurt and have left churches because the pastor didn't come pray for me or didn't visit me while I was in the hospital? You should have called them. According to James 5, this is what James 5 is teaching, the sick should call the elders to come and pray, then the elders should come and and do their duty faithfully and earnestly. And lastly, elders anoint with oil in the name of the Lord, especially when there's prayer for the sick there's something that James 5 is commending to us. Now I'm going to tell you why we do this in our church, why when somebody calls us and they're sick, why we anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.

It's because James 5 says if the sick calls you anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. I've heard lots of teaching on exactly why you should do this and I'm not sure I've ever been satisfied with any of it but James 5 says we should do it so we just in faith we bring along the vegetable oil and we anoint them and we pray for them and there's something here even if it's just out of sheer, simple obedience to it, that we might not understand all of what's involved or why God would call us to do it in this way. It seems like very strange to us. We do it because the Bible says to do it and it's unequivocal there's no carve-outs or caveats and so we bring the oil with us when we go to pray for the sick. Lastly, and this I have to tell you, this is my favorite if I had to throw away all the other flagship passages and I could only pick one I would pick 1 Peter 5.

I'm the Peter fan anyway because he's so deeply flawed I'm just so encouraged by reading about him. 1 Peter 5. Peter identifies himself as an elder and he just talks about this beautiful relationship of the people and the men who God has appointed to lead the local church. The elders who are among you I exhort I who am a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that will be revealed. Shepherds the flock of God which is among you serving as overseers not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. Likewise you younger people submit yourselves to your elders. Yes all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The first thing that we see in this passage is that elders are to shepherd the flock of God. I'm gonna beat the dead horse one more time.

There's three key functions for elders in the church. There's prayer, there's ministry of the word, and there's shepherding. Everything that an elder is doing in his ministry in the church he should be able to tie to one of these things. Otherwise, there's something that's probably stealing away from something that's more important. So elders need to get really focused on prayer and on the ministry of the word and on their shepherding duties.

And when they identify things that are taking, even very legitimate things like feeding widows, can we agree that feeding widows is a good thing to do, is noble and the church should be doing it? Even when there's things that we affirm that are good that elders are spending time on, but it doesn't fit in the category of prayer or in the ministry of the word or in shepherding. They should really, really consider if there's not a way that they can't give this to something else. You know when you have a group of qualified men, you have this group of qualified elders, you have this group of qualified deacons, there's a real danger in the church that this group of men, they're ambitious, they're desiring to serve the Lord, would do everything for the church so that the people in this church could just come and enjoy and partake and be ministered to. This is not the life in the church that we see described in the New Testament.

We see a life in the church where every joint supplies, where everyone has a ministry to bring to the church, and that the job of the leadership of the church is to equip for ministry, not to do all the ministry ourselves. The second thing we see is that the elders are among the brethren, and the brethren are among the elders. The first thing we see in verse one and the second in verse two and this goes to the point that there is no distinction particularly between elders and congregation and there's not a priest class that's been created when the office of elder was established in the local church but the elders are among the people the people are among the elders they're together we're living life together and there's not a big gulf this is a servant class not a priesthood class And elders are to serve in a particular way. How do elders serve? Not by compulsion.

Woe be unto you if you twist a man's arm to serve in eldership, even if he has all the other qualifications in spade. If he can't affirm that it's good work or that it's the right time of life, or if he doesn't have something inside him that's giving him energy to go do that work, Hey, it is not a cakewalk to be an elder in a local church. There's a massive amount of problems that come with it. And a man better have something inside him who says, yes, yes, I want to serve the body of Christ in this way. Because if he doesn't and you put him in that, there's going to be, the pressure's going to crank up, There's going to be all sorts of things going on It's going to be requiring more time than his wife thinks he ought to be spending to it There definitely should be unity in the home about whether a man should serve in the position of an elder or not It should not be by compulsion next it should be willingly those go together, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly, not lording it over.

Again, this goes just to the heart of it not being a priesthood class but being a servant class. These are volunteers who are ready and willing and able to give their life to the local church and they're not called to be lords over to be the bosses of the church but they're called on to serve people to come alongside them and help them grow in the faith, to equip them for the ministry so that the church as a whole becomes more useful in the hands of Christ. Being an example. Critical. This is why the fruit of the Spirit has to be manifested in a clear and recognizable way in elders because they're called to be examples of the church.

Elders should be able to say follow me as I follow Christ, right, and people could look in their life and knows what that means and that it's a good thing and not a bad thing. Next elders are under shepherds to the chief shepherd. This goes hand in hand with not being a lord over and it should go without saying but we'll say it anyway. Elders are not chief shepherds in their church. They're tasked with delivering the mail not writing the mail.

We're under shepherds. There is a head of the church, there is a chief chief shepherd in the church, it's the one spoken of in Psalm 23 and it's not you and it's not me or anyone in this room it's Jesus Christ and we're his servants and we should conduct ourselves according to all that he said. Next, elders who serve well will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. It is a good word and it has its rewards with it. Serving the people of the Lord comes with a reward.

There's a crown of glory that will not fade away for those who serve faithfully in this position. The members of the body are to submit to the leadership of the church. Just because there's no laity distinction from a clerical class doesn't mean that there's not authority. There is absolutely authority that comes with being an elder in the church. And so the admonitions are that the authority should be used and humility should be used rightly but not at all that there's no authority.

There is authority. These men are given the responsibility to lead the church, take it in a beautiful direction. This is the last one, yes. All of God's people, including the elders, are to be clothed with humility. There is a sense in which there's a mutual submission between the leaders of the church and the people in the congregation.

We're all to be closed with humility. Let's pause for a minute to talk about training of elders. How do we raise up these kind of men who would fit this, who would have these character qualities where they can be described as blameless or above reproach, where they're functioning rightly in their households, where they're able to teach. Where do we come up with these guys? How do we produce this result?

Well, first we should acknowledge that elders are a byproduct. Elders are a byproduct. And all I mean by that is we don't have a training class unless you're going to send them into their home and tell them to start there. There's not a class that you can say that you are now, we now certify you to be an elder. It's a result of God bringing a man to Christian maturity and then a church recognizing it, not training it, recognizing something that has already been accomplished in the life of a man through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in his life.

That's why they call it the fruits of the Spirit. It means the Spirit has produced abundant fruit in a man and then the church says yes, yes he's got it, he's above reproach, he can teach, he manages this household well. So it's not as simple as having a six-week training course, it's a byproduct, it's the endgame of what the Holy Spirit would do in a man's life. End game's not the right word because it makes it sound like the work is finished and of course that would be ridiculous to say that of an elder. Still ongoing sanctification for all elders, but it's a recognition of something that has already happened.

And if God hasn't brought a man to this point yet, no problem, there's lots of ways to serve and contribute in the church, but only men who are qualified, pre-qualified, should be put into the office. We should recognize that this is not skills based. If it was, we could have a six weeks course and we could teach the content and if you pass the test you could be an elder, but the nature of the work is not like that. It's not skills based. So how do we do it?

We just left with no recourse for training elders. We just hope somebody comes up and so we can recognize it? No. We develop robust heads of households. If you came wanting a one semester solution, I have nothing to offer you.

I don't think the New Testament does either. But as we develop robust heads of households, leadership for the church will be raised up. In 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 as we look at these lists of qualifications for elders, both of them mention household management. Shepherding the church is more like managing a family than managing a business. Therefore teach men how to manage their households well, let's make sure we define what well means, it doesn't mean Tidy children, but it does mean a family that's flourishing spiritually and where there's obedience has been secured in the children so they're in reto they obey in reverence with all submission And then let those men who excel in that home environment that we can see that they're succeeding there, they have the character qualities and they're able to teach.

Then let those men shepherd the church. Here's what's ironic about that, and I touched on this yesterday. In the standard church model, the church leaders are the ones who are most disqualifying themselves through their lifestyle, because they're out of their house four or five nights a week, and most of them cannot fit family worship into their schedule. They should be disqualified for local church leadership if they're not out front discipling their children in a very active way. So Deuteronomy six, that we would put the Word of God in our hearts and then we would teach it diligently to our children.

When we insist on this, I think that's the next one, yes, insist on Deuteronomy 6. When this is functioning properly, when a man is faithfully putting the Word into his heart and then teaching it diligently to his children. There's a two-fold effect. When Deuteronomy 6 is operating correctly in a household and a man says, I'm the chief theologian here and I'm going to put the Word of God in my heart with all diligence and then I'm going to teach that I'm going to pass that to my children diligently when I Wake up when I walk along the way when I lie down and I'm in my house, then when that's functioning, he's becoming a more capable Bible teacher by the day because he's opening up the scripture and he's making a little comment about it today and this happens one day at a time. I've seen this happen under my own roof.

I live in that man's body where family worship began to cause me little by little by little to become a workman, more approved every day, And so there's this steady stream of the Word of God entering the home and also entering yourself. It's not just your children and your wife who are getting the benefit, is it? It's you. It's us. And so the man is becoming a more competent teacher and also he might have a son or two on his knees and a daughter or two who are ready to support a man in this ministry.

There are no men who serve as an elder as if the wife is not impacted by this job. Elders need to have a wife that is completely on board, that she understands the value of this ministry to the church and she's saying, yes, go! And during preaching week, I know It means double for me in some other categories, but go. I understand the beauty of what God is trying to do in our local church and I support it. And so our daughters need to be on our knees and our sons need to be on our knees.

Some of these daughters will be wives of elders and they need to be ready to affirm this man and supercharge his ministry in the local church. Some of our sons, God, the Holy Spirit will raise up to be elders and it's because they've had this steady drip day after day after day after day just deposit by deposit one right after the other And how powerful is that over an 18 to 20 year span? What will they be like? What will the, how deep will the bench be in our local churches if we'll do that faithfully in our homes for the next two decades? It'll be a deep bench.

Most churches you ask them, what's your biggest problem? We don't have enough leaders. They're not qualified. They're not able to teach. They don't know how to handle the Bible.

Will this be true in ten years? Will this be true in twenty years? It depends on what's happening in our home. We'll devote ourselves to family worship and we'll put down that daily deposit that builds upon itself one after another for a couple of decades, our churches will be flush with qualified leadership in two decades. Summary.

The issue on the table is the sufficiency of scripture. It's not that there's not enough teaching on the subject. It's not that it's been tried and failed. It's that largely it hasn't been tried. But the church is recovering this.

You're seeing more churches embrace this and bring up a group of qualified plurality of men to lead the local church and it's beautiful and pastors, the guy who used to be the senior pastor is loving it, is loving it. They might have resisted it at first but he's understanding that what it really means when he can lock arms with other men who are co-equals with him and they share that load together. It's a beautiful thing. The New Testament patter for local church government is plurality of shepherds. They're qualified.

They have tested character. They are proven to be faithful at home and then they're given other responsibilities as well and they're able to teach and they're devoted to these three core functions to prayer, to the ministry of the word, and to shepherding the people of God. What if our churches had 50% more of prayer and the ministry of the Word and shepherding? What if it was 50% more in our local church? What would that mean to the life of the church?

What if it was 50% less? What if there was 50% less prayer? What if there was 50% less Ministry of the Word in our churches? What if there was 50% less shepherding, faithfully getting beside people to help them mature in the Christian faith? The impact is profound.

If it's more, it's profound. If it's less, it's profound. We should pray that God would give us more. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do pray for this, that you would raise up mighty men, not mighty in themselves, but men who are trustful, who are fearless, not because they're full of pride, but because they're full of confidence in you.

They know you can do anything, and they know that you work through normal, ordinary men. God, we pray that you would give us men who have the fruits of the Spirit in abundance in their lives to to shepherd your people, to pray for your people, to deliver your word to your people. We pray that you would give us men who have who have learned this trade in their home whose wives and whose children are flourishing under their leadership at home because they're the the servant leader in the mold of Jesus Christ, and that you would give us a man who could teach with boldness, with passion, and rightly handling your word. Men who don't need to be ashamed because their workmen approved. We ask these things in Jesus name, Amen.

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