In this sermon, Peter Allison discusses the qualifications for overseers as outlined in 1 Timothy chapter 3, focusing on the requirement of 'good behavior.' He emphasizes the importance of evaluating elders based on scriptural criteria rather than worldly wisdom, illustrated by a satirical letter rejecting the Apostle Paul's application as a missionary. The sermon delves into the meaning of 'good behavior,' linking it to orderliness and respectability, akin to the well-ordered cosmos. Allison explains that a well-ordered life is crucial for an overseer to lead worship services effectively. Biblical examples from Psalm 1 and Psalm 112 are used to illustrate what constitutes an ordered and respectable life, emphasizing planning, purpose, and adherence to God's word as key aspects. Finally, the sermon concludes with a call for reliance on God's grace to achieve these standards.

Our scripture reading this morning is 1 Timothy chapter 3. I'd like to read the first seven verses that give the list of the 17 requirements that overseers must have. We'll be looking though, primarily in verse 2. Hear God's word. 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 greedy 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. Those who seek these as precepts will walk at liberty.

Heavenly Father, Your Word is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. It is true. And we ask that You would sanctify us, set us apart this morning through Your Word. Instruct us, give to us, Lord, a glimpse of You this morning. Of Your glory, of the sufficiency for all of our needs, of Your wisdom.

And I ask that You would sanctify my lips, that through a vessel of clay the riches of Your grace may be spoken this morning. Through Jesus Christ we ask these miracles. Amen. I remember one time as a young lad overhearing my father in a conversation with some Mormons at the house and he had pointed out Joseph Smith's criminal record and legal conflicts. And the Mormons' quick reply was, well, Paul was in prison too, as if that canceled out all of the concerns regarding Joseph Smith's qualifications to lead any church.

And I'm sure that's a well-used response, But it highlights the necessity of evaluating elders by the scriptural criteria of God's Word and not the criteria of the wisdom of this age. But how we do that is also important. Bill Britton, a minister in the United States, is credited with a satirical letter that illustrates just how differently these same criteria that the Bible gives can be applied or they can differ. And in this fictional letter, a mission board is explaining their reasons for rejecting the Apostle Paul's application to serve as a missionary with them. And some examples from this letter, which you may have seen because it's old, is one, you've had some conflict, they say, with mature Jewish brethren in nearly every city you have visited who simply want to encourage the converted pagans to be properly circumcised.

These men controlled the synagogues you could be ministering in if you would simply tone down your dialogue to a more friendly and respectful exchange. They go on to say, in one case The conflict was so great that the ministers had to convene a special council meeting in Jerusalem to prevent a serious split in the church. They say, well, you also admit to being an unskilled public speaker. Mr. Paul, surely you must know that God's people deserve the highest levels of excellence in the pulpit.

And yet, instead of going to much-needed homiletics classes, you spend your time making tents. They say, we have another paragraph, we see here you have a jail record in several places. If this is true, it puts you in a bad light. And it would damage the church's reputation and respect. You have criminals representing them.

Frankly, Mr. Paul, we seriously doubt you could have been innocent and the judge wrong in so many cases. It just doesn't look right. It also seems you are a troublemaker, they say, Mr. Paul.

Several businessmen of Ephesus have written us that you were the cause of a severe loss of business, and you stirred up a mob protest. A minister must be respectable and learn to cultivate the respect of men in groups like these. Or they say In other cases, we see that you didn't stay long enough, in our opinion, to get a church properly grounded. Moving around so frequently does not speak well of a respectable missionary. And we hear from Troas that you once Preached too long, a service lasting over 12 hours.

And due to your long preaching, a man fell asleep and fell to his death. It is reported from your home church that you could not get along with your fellow ministers. That John Mark, the nephew of one of our more respected leaders in the Jerusalem church, had to leave your party in the middle of a journey and that you had a sharp quarrel with gentle Barnabas, who is known for being an encourager. Now These men are well respected in Jerusalem, and we wonder why you are always having trouble with your fellow workers. You see, what's being called into question here is behavior in this satirical letter.

But it's not the actual behavior that's in question. There's no debate about what the behavior was. What's in question is whether or not it was good behavior. You see, their standard of evaluating this, their criteria for evaluating good behavior is in this case radically different from the Scriptures standard of evaluating Paul's behavior. And so this is the next criteria that's given in our text for an overseer.

And I had intended this morning to deal with the next three, but in the course of preparing the message, I realized we're not going to have time to get to the second and the third. So we'll just deal this morning with this next criteria, that of good behavior. What constitutes good behavior? The Greek word translated here, good behavior, means having the characteristics or qualities that evoke admiration or delight, or that cause one to be held in high regard. That's a dictionary definition of it.

Sounds like one too. But it's someone who is respectable and honorable. The Greek word was originally a philosophical term that described a well-ordered or balanced person. A well-ordered person. Now of all the seventeen criteria in this text, this one probably has the biggest variation in how it is translated into English.

They range from, the translations range from calling it good behavior, as the new King James does in the King James, good behavior to having respect for order, to comely apparel, comely apparel, speaking of clothing, to respectable, modest, dignified, decent, orderly, honest, and those are just the ones that I consulted. I don't know how many others there may be out there. But this is, I think, one indication of the difficulty of conveying the sense of this requirement. What is this? So you can think of this message, or as you think of this message this morning, consider the two questions.

If you can come away with some understanding of how these two questions are answered, then I think you have comprehended the message this morning. There's two questions. One, what does it mean to have good behavior? What does that mean? What is good behavior?

And then secondly, what does this add that differentiates it from the previous requirements that we have seen. And admittedly, there's a lot of overlap in some of these requirements, but these are not just superfluous words. Each word in the Scripture is there for a purpose. It's ordained by God. And Paul even argues in places, remember, from one letter.

So each of these words is significant, so we want to understand what does this add? How is it different? Even though there's overlap, how is it differentiated from these other requirements? So what does it mean to have good behavior and how do we differentiate this requirement from the other ones that have been given? There was, we remember, the requirement to be blameless.

To being above reproach. That means no one should be able to bring a charge that would stick. It's not being sinless. But it does mean not having any sins or faults that would bring reproach. Not having sins or faults beyond what is common to men.

We don't reproach people for those things that are common to us, those failings that are common to us. Okay, so that was the first requirement, and that was an overarching requirement. It sort of encompasses everything, and the other remaining fill out what it means to be above reproach. But then there was, secondly, this requirement to be vigilant, to be watchful. This is a critical part of oversight.

Oversight is the work of an overseer. It's a critical part of the work of a shepherd. It involves vigilance we saw over our own person, as well as vigilance over the flock. Then there was the requirement to be sober-minded. And that we saw meant to exercise good judgment and self-control.

To have a sound mind. When Thestes accused Paul of being mad, he was saying, Paul, you're not of a right mind. You don't have a sound mind. You're not thinking straight here. Good judgment means how to think properly about any given situation and knowing what to do in that situation.

How to think properly about it and how to act in that situation. Self-control is being able to act how we ought to act. So, good judgment is knowing how to think and what to do, and self-control is being able to do it. So good judgment is needed when we deal with people and all the many and varied situations that arise. Good behavior, then, is being respectable, doing what is respected.

But as that fictional letter that I read illustrates the standard and perspective by which good behavior is measured is just as important as the criteria. So I think we can make some sense out of this wide array of words that are used to translate this good behavior by noting the Greek word itself is closely related to cosmos. That's the Greek word for world. It's our word for world too. We talk about the cosmos.

Astronomers talk about the cosmos by which they mean the entire heavens, the planets, the solar system, the galaxies in this universe. We call that the cosmos. And this word here that's translated good behavior is very, very close to cosmos, kosmios. Now the primary meaning of cosmos doesn't initially have anything to do with world. It doesn't really seem initially.

The primary meaning of cosmos is that which serves to beautify through decoration or adornment. And you wonder how do you get world out of that? The secondary meaning of cosmos is a condition of orderliness, of orderly arrangement, of good order. That's what cosmos means. And you would be completely justified to wonder how the word for universe could be connected with that.

But I think here's how it's connected. The universe, the cosmos, is so incredibly well-ordered That the word for universe in Greek is the word for well-ordered and orderly. Because when we look at the cosmos, that is what we see. It is this incredibly well-ordered system. Modern eclipse predictions for solar eclipses can give the start, the maximum, and the end times to better than within one second out to years in the future.

Now, can you predict your arrival to church this morning to within one second? And that's just 20 minutes into the future. Can the weatherman predict the weather, you know, to one second, when it's going to start to rain? An hour in the future? Hard.

But a solar eclipse is so ordered, it's so regular, that we can predict it to within a better than a second, years into the future. The path of the totality of the eclipse can be predicted to within a few tens of meters, or perhaps a hundred meters in some cases, centuries in advance. It's down to a meter. I recently obtained a wall chart of the Sauros and Inax eclipses. There's different types of eclipses.

And it covers all the eclipses between 1000 AD to 150 or more years into the future. They're all known. Down to the second, to within meters of when they will happen and where the totality will be. And the reason they can do this is because the heavens are so incredibly and highly ordered. The period in which the moon's phases repeat is 29 days out to six decimal places in inaccuracy.

Just six decimal places. And there are many other aspects of the Earth that are also, of the universe, that are very well ordered. The length of a solar year varies by less than 30 seconds one way or the other from year to year. Less than 30 seconds. Over a whole year, the length of that year varies by less than 30 seconds from year to year.

That's an incredible order. Think about, you think about taking a trip, right, of even 15 hours. Are you going to get there within 30 seconds every time you take it? Plus or minus? I mean, We're doing good if we can get there within an hour or two, right?

And that's just 15 hours. We're talking a whole year. The universe is just incredibly well-ordered. And so this is how The word for well-ordered is related to cosmos. Or cosmos I should say is the word for well-ordered.

Now in the New Testament, this word is only used two times. Once here, once in this chapter, and once in the previous chapter of 1 Timothy 2, where women are to adorn themselves with modest clothes, with propriety and moderation. That word modest is the exact same word. That's good behavior. Women are to adorn themselves with modest clothes with propriety and moderation.

Paul is saying that women should dress in an orderly way that is respectable. You see, someone who is sloppily dressed with disheveled and dirty clothes that are thrown on in some haphazard way doesn't engender respect. It's orderliness that is respectable. We intuitively connect orderliness with respectable. We would be somewhat embarrassed, wouldn't we, to let others into the bedroom if we have clothes kind of scattered all over the place.

But once our clothes are all organized in an orderly way, once our closet is ordered, then we're comfortable letting somebody look at that. Or if the bathroom has our toiletries scattered all over the sink, or the sitting room has toys scattered all over the room, right? What do we do if somebody is coming? We want to order everything. We want to put it in order because we have a desire to be respectable.

And orderliness is nearly synonymous with that respect. And so I think the sense of orderly or respectable best captures the sense of this requirement. Orderliness. An overseer's life should be well ordered and disciplined, like the cosmos. Like a well ordered room so as to be respectable.

Now why is this important for an overseer? Why is it important especially that an overseer must be respectable, honorable? We all should be respectable, but an overseer must be respectable. Well, one big reason, and it's not the only reason certainly, but one big reason is how important order is in the worship service that the overseer and the minister are to be conducting. If you turn to 1 Corinthians 14, Paul discusses the importance of order in the worship service.

1 Corinthians is just a little before this book. 1 Corinthians 14. And Paul says there, he discusses a number of things with respect to the public worship of God, dealing with prophecy and tongues and their purpose and so forth. But then he gets down to, in verse 26, He gets down to dealing with order. Specifically order.

And how prophecy and tongues affect or are done to be done in good order. And he says, how is it, brethren, Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, a teaching, a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. How is this? He's questioning their order. He's saying there are some things that are not in order.

There's confusion. He says in verse 27, if anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three, each in turn. Order is important. Orderliness, especially in the worship of God, is very important. It doesn't go on and on and on, whoever wants to do it.

He says two or at most three, because that's what's important for good order. Each in turn. In other words, they shouldn't be competing with each other or trying to talk at the same time. There should be an orderly progression from one speaker to the next speaker. And there should be one to interpret.

There... Okay. Shouldn't go on indefinitely. One or two or three. And orderly progression.

Then he addresses what to do if there is no interpreter. Keep silent. Why? Because it's disorderly. You have somebody talking and nobody knows what he's saying.

That creates confusion. What happens when you can't understand what's happening? What happens with a child who is not able to follow what's going on? They become restless, don't they? They become disorderly.

And the same happens for us adults if we're sitting in a room and hearing somebody talk and we can't understand what they're saying. Our mind wanders and we become restless. So that's not conducive to good order. Keep silent. And Then in verse 29, he gets to prophets, and the same rules apply to those who are speaking in tongues.

Take turns and limit it to three. And if another prophet receives a revelation, then shut up and sit down. Let two or three speak and let the others judge. But if anything is revealed to another, he who sits by, let the first keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one." Paul is emphasizing over and over again the necessity of order, good order, and decency in the worship service.

Then he goes on, then he gives the reason. Verse 33, For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. God is not the author of confusion. If there is confusion and disorder in your worship service, that is not of God. God is not the God of confusion, not the author of it.

Verse 34, Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home for it is shameful for women to speak in church. If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge the things which I write to you or the commandments of God. But if anyone is ignorant, let him be ignorant. Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy and do not forbid to speak with tongues." So he's not forbidding people to speak with tongues.

He's simply stressing that it must be done decently and in order. And then his summary and conclusion in verse 40 to this whole section is this, let all things be done decently and in order. And that's given rise to the probably often repeated summary that Baptists call water water and the Pentecostals fire fire and the Presbyterians order order. Well, they all are important. We want the spire of the Holy Spirit.

We want the water of baptism. But we also want orderliness in our worship. And so an overseer must be one who is respectable, leading a decent and well-ordered life. Because if his own life is not in order, if his own family is not well-ordered, then he won't be able to do all things decently and in order. He won't be able to lead an orderly worship service.

Because you see, our families reflect ourselves, and the church begins also to reflect the leaders that are in it. So that brings us to the question of how do we define what is respectable and what is not respectable. What is respectable behavior? And we need to define that according to the Scriptures. And there are a couple of Scriptures that I would like to go to this morning that give us a definition, a description of what a respected person is.

And the first one is Psalm 1. Psalm 1 describes the blessed man who leads an ordered and respectable life. First, Psalm 1 tells us what this respectable man doesn't do. He doesn't walk in the counsel of the ungodly or stand in the path of sinners, that's habitual sinners, those for whom sin is a way of life. He doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful.

And as you know, that's a progression that begins with listening to the philosophy and the wisdom of the world. It begins by putting stock in that wisdom so that we begin to follow it in some way. And we sort of ignore the fact. We live in what some might call a cognitive dissonance. We kind of ignore the fact that it's contrary to the Scriptures.

And we just live with that. But as we live with that, we gradually begin to justify it. We gradually begin to justify these unbiblical ways of thinking. We rationalize them to ourselves and pretty soon our whole way of thinking changes to where what now used to appear wrong, we justify as right, and what used to appear right, we now begin to think of as wrong. I mean, we're seeing this happen in our culture right now.

And with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and other events, we're seeing horrifying things, things that are obviously wrong, being justified by people who probably several decades ago would not have tried to justify these things. See, the whole way of thinking, this is the conversion, progression I should say, between walking in the Council of the Angali to standing in the path of sinners, habitual sinners. And then that then progresses to where you can sin without any guilt. And then you begin to scoff at the very truth that was once believed. And there are a number of classic examples of this.

Bart Ehrman, Charles Templeton, are two that come quickly to mind of people who now scoff at what they once believed and preached. Ministers. But then Psalm 1 tells us what the respected man does do. His delight is in the law of God, and in his law He meditates day and night. His delight is in God's Word, and He thinks about God's Word.

To meditate on God's Word is to put great weight on those words. And so as a result, there is a respectable order in his life. He's like a tree planted by the river that brings forth its fruit in its season. Notice the order there. The order that comes in this person's life.

His life is ordered just like God's world is ordered. His leaf doesn't wither, and whatsoever He does, prospers. That's a picture of a respected man. Psalm 112 also describes a man who is ordered in his life and is therefore respected with the exact same two sets of actions. Psalm 112, Blessed is the man, praise the Lord, blessed is the man who fears the Lord and delights greatly in His commandments." See, he loves God's Word, and he puts great weight on it.

And here's what happened. Here's the description of him. His descendants will be mighty on the earth. His family is in order, And so it's respected. His children.

Wealth and riches will be in His house. And His righteousness endorsed forever. See, His finances are in order. He is gracious and full of compassion and righteous. He's gracious and full of compassion.

He is able to show, and we'll see in the next requirement, hospitality. A man deals graciously and lends. He guides his affairs with discretion. He's not always running out of money and needing to borrow and live in debt. Rather, he is the one who lends.

Surely he will never be shaken. The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance. He will not be afraid of evil tidings. His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Now it's talking about his demeanor.

His demeanor is in order. His heart is steadfast. He doesn't melt down and throw fits. That's not decent and orderly. Proverbs 25, 28 says, Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls.

A city broken down without walls is not respectable. It's disrespected. A man who has no rule over his own spirit is like that, not respectable. Verse 9, He has dispersed abroad, He has given to the poor, His righteousness endures forever. Finally, his horn, it says, the conclusion of this is his horn will be exalted with honor.

He is a respectable man. Job is another example of a respectable man. He had a very large and close-knit family that enjoyed spending time together. That's the fruit of a home that is in order. And so Job 1.5 says, "...so it was when the days of feasting had run their course..." His family was feasting together.

"...that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning. There's a life that's orderly. And offer burnt offerings according to the number of those children. For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This is what it says, this Job did regularly. See, he had an ordered life.

This was his regular pattern. Just like the heavens are ordered, Job's life was ordered in a similar way in that he regularly interceded for his family. And so a respectable person then delights in the law of God, meditates on that law. And thirdly, we can say that they lead a purposeful life. They lead a purposeful life.

Where you can't have a well-ordered life if we get up each day and don't have a clear purpose for that day. And we can't lead a well-ordered life if we begin each year without a clear purpose for that year. And we can't have a well-ordered life if we don't have a purpose for our life. Our life is the sum total of every little day. You can think of little vectors, right?

And the life is the sum total of each one of those things and where they point. And when they are all pointing in the same direction because we know where we are headed, we know what our purpose is, then you can go quite far. But if every day goes a different direction, you end up going nowhere over your life. And so Proverbs 21.5 commends planning and the diligent execution of those plans as the path of success. It says, The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty." There's plans, plans, and the diligent execution of them.

Proverbs 6, 6 speaks of the preparation for the future. Again, planning for the future. Go to the ant, consider her ways, and be wise, which having no captain, overseer, or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest, so she has no want in the winter. Advanced planning. So we need to have plans for the future.

We need to execute on those plans with diligence. But then we also need to have the proper sequence for those plans. The order of the plans is important. Proverbs 24, 27 speaks to the sequence of our plans in our work. Prepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself in the field, and afterward, build your house.

You have to have that order, right? If you try and build a house before you have a way to support the house, you end up with a disordered life. You see, respectable men have goals for their lives so that their lives are ordered, so that their lives are defined for a purpose. Scripture has a lot to say about well-ordered plans. Proverbs 15-22, Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.

Proverbs 16-3, commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. Proverbs 16.9, a person plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 19.21, many plans are in a man's heart, but the Lord's purpose stands. The Westminster Shorter Catechism sums this all up in its first question. What is the chief end of man?

What is our purpose? What is the purpose of our life? It's to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Now we'll just close with these two admonitions from Scripture regarding that purpose of our life, to glorify God. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 9.

Paul says, Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. We make it our aim. That's our goal. That's our purpose. That is the ordering cause of our life.

That in everything we do, we are well pleasing to the Lord." And that's of course defined by His Word. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. And Paul's exhortation to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, after he had recounted a number of things, he says, none of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to myself so that I may finish my race with joy and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel, the grace of God." That was Paul's goal. That was what drove his life. That's why he did all the things that he did.

And Paul's assessment of Paul in the Scriptures is that he had finished his race and he had been successful in carrying out that commission. May God give us the grace because we can't do anything apart from Him. We plan, but God directs our steps. We plan, but God disposes because God's purpose stands. So in all our ways, we have to commit our way to the Lord and trust in Him and not lean on our own understanding.

And He will direct our steps. These people who are described in the Scriptures are not respectable men because they are respectable men. They are respected because by the grace of God, God worked in them. What was well pleasing in His sight. And so He is our sufficiency.

None of us is sufficient in these things of our own but in Christ we are none of us is acceptable or respectable in of our own in our own but in Christ we are accepted and become respectable. Heavenly Father, we thank You that we are accepted in You, in the beloved. We thank you that you redeem us. You redeem our failures and our faults. That you remove our guilt and our shame and make us as your children respectable.

We ask for diligence in this. To give heed to make our call and election sure. We ask for your grace to persevere in doing well, and that we not grow weary in doing well, remembering that we will reap in due time if we do not grow faint. And we ask, Lord, for Your strength that we might be steadfast, unmovable, and always abounding in Your work. Remembering that our labor is not in vain when it is done in you.

We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.