Truth
On
Tough
Texts
ISSUE 20 –
March/2007
Pastor,
Bishop, and Elder
(2)
Ephesians 4:11; I Timothy 3:1-2;
5:17
LAST MONTH WE BEGAN A BRIEF STUDY OF THREE
OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD, misinterpreted, and misapplied New
Testament terms: pastor, bishop,
and elder. We dealt first
with the meaning of these terms and second with their
identity. That brings us to one other
consideration.
The Chief
Responsibility of This Office
Our primary “tough
text” here is I Timothy 3:2, where Paul states that
one
of the qualifications (not just duties) of
the pastor is that he is apt to teach. We submit
that it is a tough text because its real
meaning and significance are often missed or simply
ignored.
Those three words
are actually only one word in the Greek,
didaktikos, which appears in the New Testament
only here and in 2 Timothy 2:24, where we find the same
phrase. Many look at this as superficially as they do
the word “desire” in verse 1 and think that anyone can
do this just because he wants to (see Issue 18 of tott for a study
of this verse and the call to ministry). But this word
specifically means “skilled
in teaching.” As one expositor puts
it:
Not merely given to
teaching, but able and skilled in it. All might
teach to whom the Spirit imparted the gift: but
skill in teaching was the especial office of the
minister on whom would fall the ordinary duty of
instruction of believers and refutation of
gainsayers.[i]
The meaning is
clear. The point is not that “it is a nice
quality if a pastor is a good teacher” or that “being a
good teacher is certainly a plus,” rather being a
good teacher is an absolute requirement to hold that
office at all. If that quality
does not exist, a man is not qualified to be a pastor,
regardless of how gifted he might be in other areas. In
light of our study of the “call” to the ministry, the
ability to teach well is an evidence of whether or not a
man is truly called. He must be a highly skilled
teacher, who works hard in his studies and proclamation.
Later in this letter (5:17) Paul
writes:
Let the elders that
rule well be counted worthy of double honour,
especially they who labour in
the word and doctrine (emphasis
added).
That is the one
qualification that sets him apart from the “deacon” (who
we’ll examine next month). Since the primary duty of the
overseer is to preach and teach the Word of God, being
gifted for that is essential.
Further, it’s
crucial to note that this qualification is the only
one in the list that relates specifically to a
candidate’s giftedness and function. The implication
is clear: while this leader has several duties, the
primary one, and the one he must be specifically gifted for, is
teaching.
I have heard certain
preachers say, “I’m not really much of a teacher, but I
sure love my flock,” and have heard certain sheep say,
“Well, he’s not a good teacher, but he does have a
pastor’s heart.” If I might lovingly submit, while
loving God’s people is most certainly commendable, if a
man is not a skilled teacher, he simply is not qualified
for that ministry, for he can’t do the number
one thing his job requires. This
is equivalent to a surgeon who does not know how to make
an incision or a carpenter who can’t use a tape measure.
It’s interesting, in
fact, that in that entire list of qualifications, “love”
is not even mentioned, while being a skillful teacher is
high on the list. Now, of course, the pastor loves the
sheep, which is understood in the shepherd/sheep analogy
and is certainly implied in the word “patient” (v. 3),
but Paul specifically says that the candidate
must be a good teacher. That is his
function! Men who are not doing
that today betray the office and bring shame to
Christ.
Unlike today, when
many pastors do everything under the sun except
teach, Paul repeatedly
emphasized the mandate of teaching in the Pastoral
Epistles:
1 Timothy
4:6: If thou put the brethren in remembrance of
these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus
Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good
doctrine, whereunto thou hast
attained.
11-13: These
things command and teach. Let no man despise thy youth;
but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in
conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in
purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to
exhortation, to doctrine.
v.16: Take
heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in
them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself,
and them that hear thee.
5:17: Let the
elders that rule well be counted worthy of double
honour, especially they who labour in the word and
doctrine.
2 Timothy
2:24: And the servant of the Lord must . . . be apt
[skilled] to teach.
4:1-2: I
charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus
Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his
appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant
in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with
all longsuffering and doctrine.
Titus 2:1:
But speak thou the things which become sound
doctrine.
Even a quick look at the
statistics of the Pastoral Epistles, in fact, reveals
how central this is. In searching for various related
terms, we find the following in the Authorized Version:
“teach” (9 times); “teaching” (twice); “preach” (once);
“preaching” (twice); “speak” (3 times); “exhort” (8
times); “doctrine” (16 times); “rebuke” (5 times);
“reprove” (once).[ii] That is a total of at least 47
references to the teaching and preaching ministry of the
pastor-teacher, bishop, and elder. Is there any doubt?
Should there be any question
today?
Still there
are those nowadays who think other things are more
important. The “minister,” or whatever you prefer
to call him, is viewed as part administrator, part
manager, part philanthropist, and even part entertainer.
He is expected to be, and even aspires to be,
“well-rounded,” that is, someone who can wear many hats,
including: businessman, media figure, psychologist, and
philosopher. As one commentator astutely
observes:
. . . many of
today’s ministers spend a great deal of time pastoring
and shepherding in the restricted form of pastoral
counseling; and few spend much time teaching. The old
Scottish ministers used to go from home to home
catechizing. They then had an educated
congregation.[iii]
Oh, how well that
would go over in most churches today! Indeed, how few
Christians today really know God’s Truth. While there is
not one single word of Scripture that even implies any
of those other so-called “qualities” for a pastor, it makes it clear what he
must be, from beginning to end—a teacher.
If he has no teaching ability, if he cannot clearly
convey God’s truth, he does not belong in the ministry.
He, in fact, is not called to
the ministry at all, for God would not call someone who
is not qualified and can be proven to be qualified by
other observers.
Showing his continuing
concern, the above commentator goes on to write about
this qualification:
[The elder] must be
“didactic.” The usual translation is “apt to teach.”
Many elders today, as everyone knows, are not apt to
teach . . . the deliberate attack on New Testament
regulations shows that some denominations are apostate.
They no longer are Christian churches.
Those are certainly strong
words for our day, but they are true. If a church does
not have preaching and teaching as the core of its
ministry, and if it does not have qualified people
carrying on that ministry, it is a perversion of the New
Testament standard.
A direct corollary
to this mandate of the pastor’s primary responsibility
to teach is stated in Acts 20:32: “And now, brethren, I
commend you to God, and to the word of his grace.” The
context of this verse (vs. 28-35), of course, is that Paul,
in a hurry to get to Jerusalem for Pentecost, sends for
the elders (pastors) of the church at Ephesus. In one of
the most touching scenes in Scripture, we read the
counsel and parting challenges Paul gives these dear men
of God. Of the six basic responsibilities of the
pastor-teacher,[iv]
the one in verse 32 involves the pastor’s responsibility
to study. “Commend”
(paratithemi) speaks of “a
deposit, a trust.” Preachers have been entrusted with
the Word of God, put in charge of its use. What a
responsibility this is and one we had better not take
lightly!
Again we emphasize I
Timothy 5:17: Let the elders that rule well be
counted worthy of double honour, especially they who
labour in the word and doctrine. Labor is
kopiao, “labor to the point
of exhaustion.” This must be our approach to the study
of God’s Word. Most preaching today shows the shallow
study of the preacher (if he studies at all). This is so
important that Paul said again in his second letter to
Timothy (2:15): “Study [Old English, ‘be in a state of
absorbed contemplation’] to show thyself approved unto
God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing the word of truth.”
So while the number
one responsibility of the pastor is to feed the
sheep, his number one priority must be his study time. A preacher who does not
spend the majority of his “ministry time” in study and
prayer will simply not be able to adequately feed his
people. It is as simple as that. Today’s
“seeker-sensitive,” movement where “preaching” is not
preaching at all, rather “motivational speaking,”
accomplishes absolutely nothing spiritual. What God
demands from pastors is hours of studying Truth and then
feeding it to His sheep. Harry Ironside relates an
incident that perfectly illustrates the trend of our
day, even though it occurred around
1935:
I listened to a widely
advertised man the other day who was said to be one of
the outstanding religious leaders of our day, and for
nearly an hour he was telling ministers how to preach. I
listened carefully, but I did not hear him quote one
verse of Scripture. He quoted from Shakespeare, from
George Bernard Shaw, and a number of trashy novels, and
he drew his illustrations from ancient and modern
literature. Yet he was supposed to be a teacher of
preachers. If preachers have to listen to that kind of a
teacher it is no wonder they deliver sermons that never
could convert one poor sinner.[v]
And look where we are
today! It gets harder every day to find men who are
truly preaching the Word of God instead of philosophy,
politics, pop-psychology, and “warm-fuzzies.” Families
who have had to leave our church because of the demand
of job relocation have shared with me the terrible
frustration they’ve suffered in trying to find a church
where the Bible is preached. I once heard pastor and
author Dr. Steve Lawson say at a Bible conference that
there are some families in his church (Christ Fellowship
Baptist Church; Mobile, Alabama) that drive over an hour
every Sunday, and even through two other towns, just to
hear the Word of God expounded.
Worse is the fact that men
are actually being trained to disregard preaching and
teaching. Many Bible colleges, seminaries, and pastor’s
conferences revolve around the latest marketing tools
instead of the revealed Truth of God.
Ironside goes on to relate
another trend of his day that again parallels ours. He
recalls how several years earlier a very well known
American pulpit orator stated that “expository preaching
is the poorest type of preaching in the world because it
leaves so little scope for the imagination.” While
Ironside doesn’t give the name, I strongly suspect he
was referring to Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), whose
philosophy of preaching changed the pulpit forever.
Beecher was an orator, showman, and ad-libbed most of
what he preached. He prepared his Sunday morning sermon
an hour before the service and his evening sermon in the
afternoon. His message was dominated by love and the
universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, and
his delivery was nothing but drama and entertainment. Oh
yes, he was enormously popular, as many are today, but
he said little that was biblical. Not surprisingly, his
theology got progressively more liberal until ultimately
he accepted evolution and higher criticism and even
rejected eternal punishment and verbal inspiration. And
that is exactly what we are seeing today, a steady drift
away from Scripture. Ironside is correct when he writes:
Thank God for any kind of
preaching that leaves little scope for man’s
imagination, for the Word of God says, “And God saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually.”
Indeed, thank God for any
kind of preaching that leaves man out of it. And, oh,
would that pastors today recognize the mandate that God
has given them!
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible
Church
*
*
*
Sermons—Their
Matter
By
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
ERMONS SHOULD HAVE REAL
TEACHING IN THEM, AND THEIR DOCTRINE SHOULD BE SOLID,
substantial, and abundant. We do not enter the pulpit to
talk for talk’s sake; we have instructions to convey
important to the last degree, and we cannot afford to
utter pretty nothings. Our range of subjects is all but
boundless, and we cannot, therefore, be excused if our
discourses are threadbare and devoid of substance. If we
speak as ambassadors for God, we need never complain of
want of matter, for our message is full to overflowing.
The entire gospel must be presented from the pulpit; the
whole faith once delivered to the saints must be
proclaimed by us. The truth as it is in Jesus must be
instructively declared, so that the people may not
merely hear, but know, the joyful sound. We serve not at
the altar of “the unknown God,” but we speak to the
worshippers of him of whom it is written, “they that
know thy name will put their trust in thee.” To divide a
sermon well may be a very useful art, but how if there
is nothing to divide? A mere division maker is like an
excellent carver with an empty dish before him, To be
able to deliver an exordium which shall be appropriate
and attractive, to be at ease in speaking with propriety
during the time allotted for the discourse, and to wind
up with a respectable peroration, may appear to mere
religious performers to be all that is requisite; but
the true minister of Christ knows that the true value of
a sermon must lie, not in its fashion and manner, but in
the truth which it contains. Nothing can compensate for
the absence of teaching; all the rhetoric in the world
is but as chaff to the wheat in contrast to the gospel
of our salvation. However beautiful the sower’s basket
it is a miserable mockery if it be without seed. The
grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious
failure if the doctrine of the grace of God be absent
from it; it sweeps over men’s heads like a cloud, but it
distributes no rain upon the thirsty earth; and
therefore the remembrance of it to souls taught wisdom
by an experience of pressing need is one of
disappointment, or worse. A man’s style may be as
fascinating as that of the authoress of whom one said,
“that she should write with a crystal pen dipped in dew
upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a
butterfly’s wing”; but to an audience whose souls are in
instant jeopardy, what will mere elegance be but
“altogether lighter than vanity”? Horses are not to be
judged by their bells or their trappings, but by limb
and bone and blood; and sermons, when criticized by
judicious hearers, are largely measured by the amount of
gospel truth and force of gospel spirit which they
contain. Brethren, weigh your sermons. Do not retail
them by the yard, but deal them out by the pound. Set no
store by the quantity of words which you utter, but
strive to be esteemed for the quality of your matter. It
is foolish to be lavish in words and niggardly in truth.
. . .
Rousing appeals to the
affections are excellent, but if they are not backed up
by instruction they are a mere flash in the pan, powder
consumed and no shot sent home. Rest assured that the
most fervid revivalism will wear itself out in mere
smoke, if it be not maintained by the fuel of teaching.
The divine method is to put the law in the mind, and
then write it on the heart; the judgment is enlightened,
and then the passions subdued. Read Hebrews 8:10, and
follow the model of the covenant of grace. Gouge’s note
on that place may with fitness be quoted here: —
“Ministers are herein to imitate God, and, to their best
endeavor, to instruct people in the mysteries of
godliness, and to teach them what to believe and
practice, and then to stir them up in act and deed, to
do what they are instructed to do. Their labor otherwise
is like to be in vain. Neglect of this course is a main
cause that men fall into many errors as they do in these
days.” I may add that this last remark has gained more
force in our times; it is among uninstructed flocks that
the wolves of popery make havoc; sound teaching is the
best protection from the heresies which ravage right and
left among us.
Sound information upon
scriptural subjects your hearers crave for, and must
have. Accurate explanations of Holy Scripture they are
entitled to, and if you are “an interpreter, one of a
thousand,” a real messenger of heaven, you will yield
them plenteously. Whatever else may be present, the
absence of edifying, instructive truth, like the absence
of flour from bread, will be fatal. Estimated by their
solid contents rather than their superficial area, many
sermons are very poor specimens of godly discourse. I
believe the remark is too well grounded that if you
attend to a lecturer on astronomy or geology, during a
short course you will obtain a tolerably clear view of
his system; but if you listen, not only for twelve
months, but for twelve years, to the common run of
preachers, you will not arrive at anything like an idea
of their system of theology. If it be so, it; is a
grievous fault, which cannot be too much deplored. Alas!
the indistinct utterances of many concerning the
grandest of eternal realities, and the dimness of
thought in others with regard to fundamental truths,
have given too much occasion for the criticism!
Brethren, if you are not theologians you are in your
pastorates just nothing at all. You may be fine
rhetoricians, and be rich in polished sentences; but
without knowledge of the gospel, and aptness to teach
it, you are but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
Verbiage is too often the fig-leaf which does duty as a
covering for theological ignorance. Sounding periods are
offered instead of sound doctrine, and rhetorical
flourishes in the place of robust thought. Such things
ought not to be. The abounding of empty declamation, and
the absence of food for the soul, will turn a pulpit
into a box of bombast, and inspire contempt instead of
reverence. Unless we are instructive preachers, and
really feed the people, we may be great quoters of
elegant poetry, and mighty retailers of second-hand
windbags, but we shall be like Nero of old, fiddling
while Rome was burning, and sending vessels to
Alexandria to fetch sand for the arena while the
populace starved for want of corn.
[Opening paragraphs of chapter 5, “Sermons—Their
Matter,”
in
Lectures to My Students.]
*
* *
Charles
H. Spurgeon dared to say, “Many would unite church and
stage, cards and prayer, dancing and sacraments. If we
are powerless to stem this torrent, we can at least warn
men of its existence and entreat them to stay out of
it.” A. J. Gordon dared to say, “The notion having grown
up that we must entertain men in order to win them to
Christ, every invention for world-pleasing which human
ingenuity can devise has been brought forward till the
churches have been turned into play-houses and there is
hardly a carnal amusement that can be named from
billiards to dancing which does not find a nesting place
in Christian sanctuaries. Is it then Pharisaism or
pessimism .
. . to predict that at the present fearful rate of
progress, the close of this [twentieth] century may see
the Protestant church as completely assimilated to
fourth-century paganism?” We smile at that today, but we
are not overstocked with Spurgeons and
Gordons.
Vance
Havner
Pepper and Salt,
p. 115
NOTES
[i]
Henry Alford, Alford’s Greek
Testament (emphasis in the
original).
[ii]
“Teach” (I Tim. 1:3; 2:12; 3:2; 4:11; 6:2, 3; II Tim.
2:2, 24; Titus 2:4); “Teaching” (Titus 1:11; 2:12);
“preach” (I Tim. 4:2); “preaching” (II Tim. 4:7; Titus
1:3; “speak” (I Tim. 2:7; Titus 2:1; 2:15 [I Tim. 5:14
and Titus 3:2 not appropriate]); “exhort” (I Tim. 2:1;
6:2; II Tim. 4:2; Titus 1:9; 2:6, 9, 15; “Doctrine”
(I
Tim 1:3, 10; 4:6, 13, 16; 5:17; 6:1, 3; II Tim. 3:10,
16; 4:2, 3; Titus 1:9; 2:1, 7, 10); “rebuke” (I Tim.
4:1; 5:20; II Tim. 4:2; Titus 1:13; 2:15) “reprove” (II
Tim. 4:2).
[iii] Gordon Clark, Ephesians (Trinity Foundation), p.
138.
[iv] 1.
Guard
his own life and ministry (v. 28); 2. “Feed the church
of God” (v. 28); 3. “Oversee,” that is, lead the sheep
(v. 28); 4. Protect the sheep (vs. 29-31); 5. Study and
pray (v. 32); 6. Be free of self-interest (vs.
33-35).
[v] Harry Ironside, I Corinthians (New York: Loizeaux, 1938),
pp.
407-8.
