John, chapter 3, the Bible reads.
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher
come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."
Jesus answered and said unto him, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
Nicodemus said unto him, "How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?"
Jesus answered, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof; but canst not tell
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.
So is every one that is born of the Spirit.
Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?
Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these
things?
Verily, verily, I stand to thee.
We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness.
If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell
you of heavenly things?
Then no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son
of man which is in heaven.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be
lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved.
He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already,
because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness
rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that
they are wrought in God.
After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea, and there he tarried
with them and baptized.
And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salem, because there was much water there,
and they came and were baptized, for John was not yet cast into prison.
Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purifying
him.
And they came unto John, and said unto him, "Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan,
to whom thou bearest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him."
John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing, except to be given him from heaven.
Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not the Christ,' but that I am sent
before him.
He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth
and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly, because of the bridegroom's voice.
This my joy therefore is fulfilled.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
He that cometh from above is above all.
He that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth.
He that cometh from heaven is above all.
And what he hath said and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony.
He that hath received his testimony, hath set to his seal that God is true.
For he whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God.
For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.
The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.
He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life.
And he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on
him.
Brother Bill, would you pray for us?
Amen.
Glad to be back up here.
And in better circumstances than last time.
Last time I was covering for Pastor Morning Sick, and today he's actually celebrating
our church plant in Indianapolis, so it's always nice.
The title of my sermon is "Cutting Edge Leadership," and I'm noticing a theme here today, it's
about leadership and authority, it was not coincidental on this, but the leadership
I'm talking about is more of the tutelage style of leadership, rather than status quo,
for example, a master and apprentice, a teacher and a student, parent and child, that's a
form of leadership, but it's different than that of maybe like you and the CEO of the
company you work for, he is technically your leader and your superior, but there's no expectation
that he's going to teach you, that's down to the leads and supervisors that you work
for. So when I say leadership for the duration of the sermon, I'm talking about tutelage leadership.
I just want to get the little asterisks out of the way to find the terms that we're working
with here. I got this idea because a lot of people, leadership is one of these things where
everybody should know how to do it. There's never going to be a point in life where you
are going to say, well, I didn't have to learn how to be a leader. Leadership is going to be thrust
on you at some point in your life. Whether you're a parent, that's a very common one at workplace,
teaching somebody at work, you're going to have to lead and teach somebody no matter what. And
it's a good idea to actually learn how to do it in a safe environment where you're not going to fail
and screw something up. Practice it when you can. Lead minor things. And this is something you've
seen in the Bible too is a lot of leadership is very important. And specifically, of course,
the type of leadership where you're training up the next generation, both, you know, as children
or as the next generation of ministers. And this is something I actually learned in the Boy Scouts.
I was a Boy Scout from age 11 to 17, which is the maximum tenure unless you did Weeblows and
graduated early. Since I'm preaching, you get a mandated history lesson here. Boy Scouts was
founded 1910 in England by Sir Baden Powell and then brought over to the United States
in the following year and formalized. The Boy Scouts of America are one of the few organizations
that has a federal charter. I think it's an act of Congress that says the Boy Scouts are like a
federally chartered organization along with the Civil Air Patrol is another one. There's a few
other ones. I didn't look at the complete list, so it's kind of unique in that. The purpose of it
was it started in England was a lot of the rise of cities, more people moving in from rural areas
into cities, and there was this kind of fear that that would disrupt the way of life, the kind of
traditional individual leadership that was being promoted. You might find more in rural areas than
in the city. In America it was started because, you know, kind of same reasons a lot of Americans
were moving into cities, getting factory jobs, and they kind of wanted to promote the outdoors
to people and, you know, make better individuals in this new way of life. I would say it died out
very recently. Now the Boy Scouts of America no longer exists in its current form and is now
scouting America. It's become lame. They've allowed, you know, women into it. It's dead.
I think that's very unfortunate. I had a very good experience in the Boy Scouts. I learned a lot.
You will learn a lot if you're in a really good Boy Scout troop. Having an organization dedicated
to teaching young men how to lead properly and how to be a better person is always going to be good.
There's not a situation you can tell me that's not a good idea. We made level critiques like
they're very ecumenical. That wasn't the point. That was like a side thing. First and foremost,
teaching their motto, be prepared. I made it to Life Scout. I did not make Eagle Scout.
One of the requirements for, I should explain the rank structure. There's two sets of ranks
in Boy Scouts. There's what's called the leadership ranks. There's Star, Life, and Eagle.
And then there's the kind of the beginner ranks. And those are Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class,
First Class, and then there's Star, Life, and Eagle. For the leadership ranks, you're expected
to hold leadership positions of increasing responsibility. For example, a Star Scout,
you can pretty much hold any leadership rank to check that box off. But by the time you get to
life, they want you to be a little bit more than that. And like a patrol, a senior patrol leader,
assistant senior patrol or troop guide, someone who has more authority within. And even going so
far as in the life scout requirements, they, one of the requirements in like all by itself is you
have to teach a younger scout how to do something. There's a list of things that you have to teach
them how to do using the edge method, cutting edge leadership. That's kind of the theme of the sermon.
And they have to prove it to the scout master or adult leader that they did it. So you can't just
teach them how to do something to sign it off. You're getting that requirement signed off is
predicated upon them actually proving that they did it. So you can't just like half it
and just kind of, you have to make sure they complete it using the edge method. And I'll
explain as we go on, I'll explain what the edge method is. Very simply is an, I think it's a
backronym, meaning that they came up with the, I don't know, a Sacramento backronym, whichever one.
It stands for educate, demonstrate, guide, and enable. And it's a very good system, how to
explain something you can do in your daily life at work, you know, at church. I'll give some examples
of that. But that's kind of where the Boy Scouts lie. We both came to the conclusion that's dead,
it's gone, it's no more, which, you know, sucks. But this is what things happen. So in the Bible,
you do have a lot of great leaders in the Bible, and you do have some bad leaders in the Bible,
and we can learn from both of these. We can learn from the good leaders what to do, and from the
bad leaders what not to do. For example, Solomon, we can learn from what to do in his glory. It's
called the Book of Proverbs. And we can learn what not to do in his shame, that you'll read about.
And it's something it's very important too. You have many different leaders and one thing kind of
ties them together is when I say to the to alleged leadership is that they they loosely
follow the edge method. They didn't have this, they're not time travelers, but it's a really
good system. The Boy Scouts didn't invent the edge method. It's just they kind of put it put it all
together what it how it works. I mean the concept of teaching somebody how to do it and then guiding
them and then telling them to go do it is not a novel novel thing that was invented in like 1950.
Okay, this has always been around. You see this all over the place. It's not a concrete method.
It's in terms of in terms of you don't have to follow this structure. For example, I was telling
brother Alex that it's something we kind of do in soul winning. The transition from, you know,
hearing pastor talk about soul winning. You hear a preacher talk about the Romans road at your door
or a video. So you kind of learn about it and then you you move to a silent partner where you're
watching a talker kind of do things or demonstrating it and kind of teaching at the same time
and then you make you'll move up to a talking non-talking silent partner where you kind of
answer a door and go through it and then you'll hand it off and then finally just be a talker.
So you kind of move through this whole thing and it works. A quote from my dad about the hedge
method is better than any paid seminar that I've ever heard of. He did a long stint in corporate
Silicon Valley, so that's pretty good. The corporate workers are saying it's pretty good. It's
really effective. And leadership is always in demand, right? Always going to need leaders.
In Ezekiel 22.30, of course, you have this famous verse, "And I sought for a man among them that he
should make up the hedge and to stand in the gap before me for the land that I should not destroy
it, but I found none." Right? So situations are going to happen, and sometimes there's nobody to
be a leader in that situation. So you are going to have to learn this stuff.
With that, we'll kind of go into four points here. So the first one is explained. And put simply,
this is what you'd call like classroom knowledge. It's kind of the base level of understanding
anything is educating somebody. And mosey on over to Matthew 5 if you want. It's not required.
Everyone kind of knows this is the opening of the Sermon on the Mount. And I kind of picked some
characters that exemplify these points. And of course the first one is Christ, right? You could
put Christ down as every single one of these as he does all of these. All these three of these people
that I've chosen do all of these points. I just wanted to kind of mix it up, add some other people
in there, just make it interesting, get some more more stuff there. But the first thing is education,
right? A lot of people start out at square one and if you want to do anything you have to teach
people how to do it. And this is something that Jesus did a lot during his ministry was teaching
things. At that time the priestly order responsible for doing that had kind of not done a really
great job at all. They had gone to start doing their own thing which is just quibbling about
laws and how to uphold these and all these what-is and stuff and they kind of missed the
the simple part of the entire reason for everything existing which was pointing to
Christ. So a lot of times when you look at Christ preaching, he's not preaching that
like anything that's that new. He's really just explaining the law better than anyone else at the
time. And that's a mark of a really good teacher is taking something that's very complex and making
it simple to understand. And you see that all the time. The law is very complex. There's a lot of
statements that you just get bogged down on. As I said the Pharisees, they are example of this. They
fell for it and they just got bogged down in all these what-ifs, hypotheticals. You see that with
modern-day Pharisees, those being the Jews, is they have they spend all their time thinking about
all these what-if scenarios. So yeah, the law is complex. You see even Christians will get bogged
down in this and a good teacher will just make that really simple. You see that when Jesus just
cuts through the famous verse where they ask him, "What's the greatest commandment?" and he's like,
"Well, love God is the greatest one and then love thy neighbor as thyself." And everything's based
on those two, right? Cuts right through it, you know, and you think about that like, huh, he's
right. Like, everything just comes down to, you know, love God and be nice. Not like the liberal
sense of, oh, just be nice, Jesus, but, you know, sometimes you got a bit, you know, tough love on
some things. But you see this many times in the Bibles where Jesus is preaching and teaching people
and, of course, you have the Sermon on the Mount, which is probably one of the longest recorded
times where Jesus just preaches. I think in my Bible, it's one of the only collection of pages
where it's entirely in red, so it's very long and it's very fun to read. I think we all just read
that very recently. And there's a lot of- he's just teaching people how to act, how to be,
how to do things very effectively, right? You come out of it and you'll learn a lot, right? A lot of
it- some of the- there's some very famous verses that come out of it judging others. You'll see
that one, the Lord's Prayer. That one's- he's literally teaching them, telling them what to do.
This is how you pray and it gives an example, right? A lot of people kind of taking it to just
memorize it and vainly repeat it. It is a very good prayer, but I mean have some creativity. It
was an example of a really good prayer. You don't have to literally repeat it over and over again.
And one of the main things that was driving this was, it says Mark's, and also Mark and Jesus,
you know, was moved with compassion towards them because they were a sheep not having a shepherd.
It began to teach them many things, right? And this is one of the things is a lot of people are
lost. They don't really know any better. You know, I don't say ignorant because it has a negative
connotation, but they don't know. You know, you'll encounter people out soul-winning who just
genuinely do not know and they're very curious about it. About a year ago I was at a door and
some people saw on our bulletin King James Only, right? And they were asking about it and not,
they just had no idea that this was a thing. And they're asking about it and I think it was
probably me and Alex. Just explaining, you know, at the, in that moment explaining what King James
Only means to somebody who might have heard of the King James Bible just in passing. Doesn't
he know that only is a doctrine? So you do have to have compassion of some of these people,
you know, a little bit of patience. We'll see that later on of one of the key things is having
patience. The other good thing that when Christ does is people called it out when he did it,
is he taught them having authority, right? In Matthew 7, 28 and 29, it's when he, at the end
of the Sermon on Mount, you know, people were astonished. It says, "For he taught them as one
having authority, not as the scribes." And so, when you're educating somebody in anything,
anything you're explaining, and kind of the theme of the Sermon is you can apply this to both your
everyday life, at work, anything, and preaching the gospel, everything. It just kind of works,
it's a really good system, is having authority, teaching with authority, right? People can pick
up. People have a lot of grace with, you know, stuttering in our modern vocabulary. People don't
have a problem with you saying "um" and "uh," it's just kind of expected. But, you know, with that
authority, preaching from, you have the Bible in front of you, you start quoting verses of the Bible,
people recognize that authority. You shouldn't be, like, second-guessing yourself, like, "Oh,
actually, over here, preacher of authority, teacher of authority, as Christ did." As I said,
it's very easy, start quoting off the Romans road, that's authority, it's the Bible. Everyone
really recognizes that authority, even if they are not saved. A lot, most people kind of agree
that the Bible is very important. The other one is, you know, the other way that Christ taught
a lot was through parables, very famous. You have a lot of parables, everyone loves a good story,
right? We see this within modern, in our modern life, with Aesop's fables, have you ever heard of
that? He wrote a lot of these kind of moral stories, that on their face, they're just a
historic story, like the animals are doing things, but they have a deeper meaning.
You see the same thing with the parables, where, you know, some of these are hypothetical
stories, but some of them are real stories. I think an example of, like, one of the real parables
that we often point to is the the Richmond and Lazarus, because he, yeah, because he, a lot of
parables, it's like a certain man, it's kind of vague, but then, you know, it drops out a name.
So, you see this too in the Bible, in the books, the history section of the Bible and the Old
Testament, you see a lot of these, you know, you can read these as parables for what to do and what
not to do, but they're also historical, and I think that's one of the reasons that they're in
there is, you know, they're teaching history and more, like, seeing the law play out, seeing what
to do as examples. We have these, you know, these great parables, and, you know, sometimes you do
have to explain the parables to people because they won't get it. You see this in Matthew 13,
of course, you know, they don't know what the parable means, but he's willing to explain it,
he's patient with them. You know, some people, it's okay if they don't really understand it now,
but you do want to, you don't want to just keep it high-minded and over people's heads because
you can. Sometimes you have to explain the joke, so to say, to some people. It doesn't kill it,
you know, kind of makes it better to know what's going on. Yeah, as I said, in Matthew 22,
36-40, "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, and a second is like unto it. Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,
right? Just what does the law mean? Love God, love your neighbor as thyself. Simple, right?
And you learn a lot from that. Kind of gives you a new way to look at the Old Testament.
So there's there's some examples of what you could do when you're teaching somebody is,
you know, find a good story of what to do. You know, yeah, you want a good, maybe a good story.
Like, you know, if I'm explaining one of my jobs at work is to certify people on our machinery in
our area. We operate drill presses, saws, iron workers. You know, if you're not careful of this,
it can kill you. Hasn't done that to anyone yet, but people have gotten hurt, right? It's very
dangerous. One of my jobs is to certify, and sometimes you like, you know, a good story of,
you know, what not to do is, um, don't stick your finger near the blade, or else, you know,
tell the story that was told to me, what happened when the guy was checking the coolant sprayer
while the saw blade is running, right? You know, took off part of his finger, right? That story
sticks, that's a story it's going to stick in people's mind. You can tell them, don't stick
your finger anywhere near that while the saw blade's running. You, and they might get it,
they might not, but you rock up that story and you tell them, yeah, he doesn't work here anymore
and he had to get a bunch of stitches, right? They're going to get that in your head, surprisingly
well. You know, you point to the coolant, we have oiled things and you point to the dent in the side
of it and say, well, you know, the material bound up in the steel and it went up and slammed that
piece of steel into the stem of the drill press, but you could pull out that and say, like, this is
why you clamp down your material. That could have been your rib cage, that could have been your arm,
and that was a big piece of steel that did it. By the way, that was me and it sent the oil thing
about, like, 15 feet. Pretty good record. Did not get pulled into the office for that one. I don't
think anyone saw it, but I don't know what the statute of limitations is at work, but that thing's,
you know, Harbor Freight oil can. I don't think anyone cares. As I said, a lot of people just
are ignorant of biblical concepts. As I said, not because they're just wicked people. You know,
they just don't know. Right now everyone reads the Bible, unfortunately, and some people just
don't have the time for whatever reason. So just be ready to explain things patiently.
We see this in... I had a last minute... I had to change... she decided to change the verse... the
chapter we read to John 3. I think there's a reason why this is one of the best chapters in
the Bible. It has the most famous verse in the Bible. You know, off the top of the hits, right?
There's a reason everyone who knows it. And of course, this is an example of Jesus teaching
somebody who's genuinely curious, right? Nicodemus does come to Jesus and ask some questions, right?
He asked, you know, he asked the wrong question, but he was still seeking wisdom. And, you know,
he wasn't, although he was of a, like a hostile faction, the Pharisees, he was still seeking
wisdom. And Jesus was very patiently, patient with him and explained him what, you know,
Nicodemus, I don't think really got it. He might have got it at the end. We don't really know. It
kind of cuts away from him. I heard a theory, I think it was my old pastor at a different church
where he said in one of the gospels, a member of the Pharisees opens the door to Peter
as they're, you know, when they're putting Jesus on trial at various points. And one of my old
pastors said that was Nicodemus. Okay, I don't really know, but I thought that was an interesting
thing that just popped in my mind. So one, when you're teaching somebody, you know, use stories,
use examples, teach them with authority. When you say don't, you know, you can use "um, um," you know,
this is part of our natural speech. Some people don't use it, some people do. Avoid the typical,
you know, pushing up glasses. "Um, actually, you're wrong." You know, some people don't really like
that when you, you know, keep it simple, right? No one likes, you know, lording. Like if someone's
genuinely looking for something, don't lord over your knowledge, especially if it's like a
biblical concept. Like why would you want to just hold things above someone's head about the Bible?
But be patient. You know, some people don't know and they don't know any better. They might say
something really wrong, but about, you know, anything, especially the Bible, but they don't
really know, right? They don't know anything, sometimes anything. So yeah, you know, keep it
simple, be patient, and use some good stories, right? In 2nd Timothy 2.24, you know, "But be
gentle unto all men, apt to teach, and patient." Great, great, and anything. The next, the next
one is demonstrate. This is the D. Demonstrate for a, for your job site, it might just be doing it
in front of them, you know, here's how to use the drill press, here's how to use the auto feed,
or it could just be a role model, the role model. Head over to Exodus 18, Exodus 18, of course,
role great role model, Moses, right? As I said, you could just do Christ for all four of those,
but I just want to throw in some other other great guys to give a little bit of variety here.
You know, Moses, he not only taught the law, but he lifted out, he demonstrated it in nearly
everything he did, and the few times where he kind of broke from it, when he smashes the rock,
right, kind of got less angry at the best of him, we could still learn a little bit from that,
you know, what not to do, but he did demonstrate really good judgment. One of the ways he did it
was, of course, in Exodus 18, you have Moses judging the people, right? What better way to,
you know, teach the law than to have people see how the law was carried out in fair judgment?
It's one thing to say, "well, don't do this, don't do that," but until you provide like a tangible,
well, here's how that looks in practice, some people just aren't going to get it.
And Exodus 18, I'll say there for a little bit, of course you have a text page.
"It came to pass in the morrow that Moses set the judgment of people,
and the people stood by Moses from the morning into the evening."
Right, and when Moses, yeah, and then you have Jethro, I'll get to, we'll probably come back to
this, but you know, you're going to want to demonstrate how to do things just by living it.
A lot of people, you know, we say you're Christian,
have certain expectations of you, how you act, and it's a good idea to actually live up to those
expectations. Most of the time those expectations are really good, and if you're acting like a fool
all the time and you're cussing, you're not living up to what Christianity expects, like how can you
expect somebody else to take you seriously or do those things? This is something Price calls out,
the Pharisees, where they're commanding people to follow the law that they don't really follow
themselves. Yeah, so yeah, everyday life, role models for Christianity, whether you know it or
not, somebody's looking at you either as you know, see what you're doing, see how you live, to just
out of curiosity or to cause problems for you. And you're going to want to demonstrate that,
you know, demonstrate how how to be a Christian to the two people and it'll go a long way. So I'm
advocating that you should just throw down everything and just become a lifestyle evangelist.
That's obviously not what we're supposed to do, but because we're not supposed to do it,
doesn't mean we should just abandon just being a good person. In Matthew 25, we have the,
sorry, Matthew 5, we have the 5, 13 through 16. We have Jesus saying, "You are the salt of the earth,
but if the salt have left a savor, wherewith shall it be salted?" He says, "You are the light of the
world. A city that's set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, put it under a
bushel, put it on the candlestick, and he giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your
light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your father, which is in
heaven." Right? You're going to want to demonstrate your faith day to day. This is something Moses did
a lot. For example, crossing the Red Sea, he's demonstrating his faith. I don't know how accurate
Prince of Egypt was, but I do like to imagine that Moses was the first one in the Red Sea,
walking forward. People followed him after his example. He was the first in a lot of situations.
A lot of leaders nowadays kind of talk, but they neglect to show you how to do it. I've seen this
at work. I had a boss that had told me, I had no idea what I was doing. He's like, "Oh, just do this."
And like half an hour later, I'm still staring at it like, "What am I doing here?" He didn't show
me how to do it. This is something you're definitely going to want to do. Classroom education is one
thing, but everyone likes that. But if you're out in the field, everybody knows that experience
sometimes overpowers classroom knowledge. You can know everything in the classroom, but if you can't
apply it, it's useless, and you really need a teacher to guide you through it and demonstrate.
This is actually how we do it. Seeing a wiring diagram on a piece of paper, very organized,
but then you actually go out and look at machinery all over the place. It does not look like that
in real life. Well, as I mentioned, guide. Guiding. As you notice, the process is going
from classroom knowledge to hands-on to somewhat hands-off, and that's what guide is. It's just
kind of leading from, not leading from afar, but you're not doing it for them. This is something
that I think, you know, Paul, in the book of Acts, he does a lot of leading and teaching people
in person, right? We see this a lot in Acts, but I wanted to use him as a guide for the epistles,
where he's guiding the churches. He's not there in person, that's why he's writing a letter.
They also don't have to follow his advice. They should, and they did in some circumstances,
like the church at Corinth followed his advice, but he's giving a very good suggestion on what to
do and how to do it and why to do it, and it's up to them to kind of follow it or not. And I
imagine, you know, some of the churches, and I think he probably started more churches than
is mentioned, and I think there's probably a reason we don't really hear from them ever again.
It's, there's a lot of cities in Greece, a lot of them probably had churches that fell off,
they fell into the stuff, but the guide is Paul, the guide is Paul. He guides a lot of people,
guides Timothy, teaches Timothy what to do, and he also teaches a lot, that's kind of his role
model. He'll roll up into a town, teach and preach in the synagogue, start a church, and
go until he's thrown out or, you know, thrown out, stone, beaten, or just leaves of his own cord,
but he's a really good guide, right? He taught a lot of people, even now, think about it,
he never really stopped guiding churches on how to act. You really want to think about it, right?
We take a lot of church doctrine from the epistles that he wrote. It says, "In 2 Timothy 2.4,
preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort,
follow love, long-suffering, and doctrine." This is something he's telling Timothy how to preach
and how to be a pastor. He probably did the same thing. You know, we don't have a lot of record of
his sermons in the church at this location. I assume he did preach a lot of sermons. He
probably followed his own advice and he's given this to the next generation. Titus 2.15,
let these things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. There you go, there's the
teaching and preaching with authority, right? And this is the mark of a good leader is like
when to be hands-on and when to be hands-off. Again, this is, you know, you see this in a lot
of leaders where it's just they got to control it. You have like helicopter parents who are just
always in on their child's life. You know, everything must be managed. You know, one of
my good friends from school was his mom was a helicopter parent and he didn't really like it
because he never really got to do his own thing or have, you know, have fun in his eyes. One of
the practical things of, you know, having more hands-off approach is sometimes people just have
to fail. It sucks. No one wants to see, like no one wants, as a teacher, no one wants to see
your student just flub it because it kind of looks bad on you. Like, oh man, I didn't teach
him like right. Chances are you did. They just weren't listening, right? Sometimes you didn't
teach them, but I've taught people how to use plenty of tools and I am positive. I showed the
first thing I always show them is this is the emergency stop button and sometimes they just
don't get it. It's like the first, this big red thing and you know that's on them if they miss
that big red button that's always in like plain view at all times. Some people just miss that,
okay? That's not on the teacher sometimes I want to say. Yeah, so in our walk, right, as Christians
being guided, you know, in the sense we're being guided by the Holy Spirit, we still fail, right?
We still fall. This is to our better, right? Sometimes if God was like the use of bullying
analogy because that's what's happening now in Indianapolis, my time zone math is correct,
right? If you have those gutter things, gutter guards up, you're not going to become a better
bowler, right? You just bounce stuff, bounce balls off those things all day long. You're not going
to be a better person, right? Sometimes you do, sometimes the falling makes you, makes you a better
person, um, understanding why you fell. And, you know, I think God sometimes lets us just eat it,
right? We're, you know, going off, going off the trail and, you know, right into the tree, right?
And, you know, well, you learned your lesson there, come back, right? He does, but he gives
us grace to come back. He'll, he'll guide us kind of back. You really got to be going off the trail
quickly to hit a tree like that, but in a Jude, kind of hints at this, Jude 1, 7, "Now unto him
that is able to keep you from falling, present you faultless before the presence of the Lord,
if he is exceeding joy," right? You know, if we have faith in God, we don't have to fear failing
and too badly, if you're being normal. Granted, there's always the asterisks of, you know,
he should fear God. He is capable of just, you know, once you go too far off the trail,
he's capable of just, you're all done. But, probably most people in here are not going to,
I don't think anyone in here is going to ever hit that boundary. You have to do some really bad
stuff. For example, Saul in the Old Testament, right? No one's doing any of that, right? Lying
to the Holy, in the New Testament, analysis, spires, lying to the Holy Ghost. That was our example.
Don't do it, okay? Paul didn't really directly intervene, as God might, right? He's just one man
doing his thing around the Mediterranean. But, as I said, the Mark of a Good Leader is knowing when
to step in and when to step out. It's something at work, right? You know, he's shown the person
how to use the fancy new drill press. You just got to stand by and make sure they actually learned
what they're doing. You don't want to set them up to fail. That's another thing. When you're guiding
somebody, you do want to make sure that whatever failure they come upon is by their own hands,
right? So, you know, when I was setting up the auto feed settings for him, I made sure that the
bit's not going to go all the way into the $13,000 drill press, right? No matter what he does, he's
not going to destroy it. I just want to see if he's going to hit that boundary. I didn't set him up
to fail, right? He's the first time using it. I made sure that not that the guardrails were fully up,
but that he couldn't just ruin his whole career right there. It is a really nice drill press, but
yeah, you don't want to set people up to fail. There's a difference between tripping and falling
and going fully off. It sounds subjective to say, "Well, what is a good leader
and how to guide?" And it really kind of is. It's just not everyone's set out to be a good leader.
This is something you might be better at than some people, but you do have to know when somebody's
going to ruin their day and when it's just going to be a learning experience.
There's a difference there. So when I say sometimes you have to let people fail,
that's not an excuse to say let people, you know, figuratively die. There's a difference, right?
Well, the last step is, and the whole edge thing is enable, right? And this is something you're
actually seeing right now, right? A pastor has, you know, through preaching and teaching and doing
the men's preaching night, he has taught the men of the church to be able to step up and that's what
you're seeing the fruit of that right now. I saw it today, seeing at the men's preaching night is
letting, you have to enable, right? Mark a good leader is, you know, now you're free to do it,
not like, you know, oh you did your first 10-minute sermon, we're sending you out to
Yakima now, right? You're going to be the guy at Yakima after you did your first 10-minute sermon,
right? Still, this allows you to go, this is something, you know, a lot of churches don't do,
is enabling the young man to step up, and we see right now, well what are the the benefits of this,
is that he's free to do a lot more things. If he took sole ownership of this church,
and allowed no other person to preach behind the pulpit, would we be able to have other churches,
like in Seattle, Yakima, Spokane, and Indianapolis? Probably not, we could be done, I guess,
but it'd be very difficult. This is something, if you're still in Exodus, if you haven't moved,
but this is actually something you see in Exodus, back in Exodus 18. And that example is, you know,
Jethro, his father-in-law, tells him, like, "Look, you're doing a good job, but there's a few..."
How many people were in that camp? Yeah, many people. He says day and night, right? I assume,
you know, day and night one day, day and night the next day, right? That drains you. You cannot do
that for long term. It's something Jethro points out. It's like these people will come into you with
like minor stuff. You don't have to do this. And so, you know, Moses recognizes that's really good
advice and he, you know, probably teaches these elders and guides these elders. And I say guide
these elders, the elders were probably bringing some of the issues to him. So they saw how he
worked, how he acted. They had the law and you know, it just gives them power to judge minor
things, right? That's one of the fruits of, you know, being a good leader is sometimes, you know,
you can step back a little bit as you don't burn out. Of course, you see this too with Joshua,
Moses's direct successor. In Numbers, it says, "And the Lord said unto Moses, Take the Joshua,
the son of Nun, a man whom is the spirit, and lay thy hand upon him." Right? Moses now like literally
enabling Joshua. "And Moses did as the Lord commanded him, and took Joshua and set him before
the liaison of the priest, before the congregation, laid his hands upon him, and gave him charge as the
Lord commanded." Right? Joshua, Moses getting hold, this is the passing of the torch, right?
And this couldn't be done unless, yeah, it says in other places that, you know, Joshua was following
Moses very closely behind. It was one of the more faithful. You see this too, of course, this is why
I picked people I did. You see this too, of course, of Jesus is at the end of the, at the end of the
Gospels, the culmination of Christ's ministry here on earth, is he ordains the disciples and
apostles with the final mission of, you know, continue this, you know, "I got this started.
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you. And lo, I'm with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen." Right? This is,
he enables him to go, right? This is something he knew that at some point that he had to,
that his ministry had to end, his personal ministry. And, you know, the whole Gospels
is him teaching and guiding and leading the apostles and disciples, you know, so for that
mission that they would carry on the torch, right? This is something Paul did as well. He's,
where he's going around and he's, he didn't, when he started a church, he didn't just like just leave
them, right? He did set up elders and, you know, it says in Acts 14, "And when they ordained them
elders in every church and prayed with fasting, they commanded them to the Lord on whom they
believed," right? So he set up these elders so that he can go do other things. And that's very
important, is he didn't maintain this, you know, monolithic, you know, I guess proto-Catholic church,
right, in the Mediterranean region. He's had elders, individual elders doing their own thing.
Something commands Titus, you know, "For this cause I left thee in Crete." That's just set in order
of things that are wanting. "And ordained elders in every city," right? Taught him how to do things,
and now he's saying, "Pass on the torch, multiply," right? This is something bringing back the
Boy Scouts to someone, their missions, is they recognize that leaders that like begets like,
good leaders beget good leaders, right? Everyone wants good leaders. No one wants bad leaders.
I mean, if you do, why? But yeah, you know, send out good leaders everywhere. You know,
the world's never going to be lacking good leaders and teachers, because it's something
that gets passed down to generations. But as I said, the last step is enable. You got to know
when it's time's up, right? Not to say like Paul said all these leaders and then he just
kicked back at Antioch until he was dragged into Rome. He was still active, right? So, you know,
just because you've moved up in the ranks of workplace doesn't mean you're no longer active,
unless you move into the office area, right? Being experienced isn't just constantly. This is what
Paul does. He's constantly going and going and going until they drag him back. They had to arrest
him and drag him before Felix, I think. So he wasn't just kicking it after he ordained all
these elders. He's still going. As I mentioned, Jesus knew that he had to go and so he had to
set up people to continue on and they're still here. So obviously it was a really good deal.
So what's the conclusion? Well, hopefully you got some practical advice, if nothing else, right?
Now you know, you're wondering, "Well, how do I teach the new guy at work do this tool for the
first time teaching somebody how to do something?" Look, just remember edge method, educate,
demonstrate, guide, enable. It works. You know, the Boy Scouts may be wrong about some things,
but they are, they do teach you how to do things effectively. They teach you how to be a good leader,
right? A leader of people who are there voluntarily, I might add. You know, when I was a
leader, you know, if you have boys, you know, boys are multiplicative, they're not additive.
As if you put two boys in a room, the energy that they generate is not a straight addition,
it is an exponential or multiplicative energy. If you're a leader in the Boy Scouts,
you're 16 to 17, maybe 15, and you're having to lead about 10 to 30 boys and a leader in a
youth-run troupe, it's a lot more difficult than you think. The amount of issues that are caused
and one disadvantage, the chain of command is figurative and the talking stick is figurative.
In other words, you can't just, other Boy Scouts, you know, it would work, but you can't do that.
You have to, they're there voluntarily. You gotta teach them how to act and kind of persuade them
to listen to you, even though you're like three years older than them. Yeah, let's see an example
of me using my leadership in Boy Scouts. Yeah, we're out in a desolation wilderness up in the
Sierra Nevadas by Lake Tahoe, if you know where that is. The surrounding Lake Tahoe, once you get
outside the results, is nothing. There's nothing out there called desolation wilderness. We're
out there, and next thing you know, little Timmy has brace breaks. Now there's a piece of wire
sticking out of his mouth, and we turn to our Scoutmaster, and he's like, "Oh, I don't know,
you guys know first aid?" He wasn't going to let us just die out there, but hey, you got to do it.
We had enough Leathermans and Babywell cheese wax. Hey, he got back fine. He got back fine,
but you got to step up, healer, take charge, because he's definitely not having a good day.
He's bleeding his blood all over his mouth. He's got to be that steady, like, "Hey, this is what
we're going to do now." You know, as it says in Zekal, sometimes you've got to stand in the gap,
take over. Some other examples, fun memories of Boy Scouts. Man, I had a bunch of examples of
leadership using this in Boy Scouts, but it mostly just comes down to disciplining 12-year-olds.
No, you can't rip out trees and beat each other with those. What happened to leave no trace?
That really what it comes down to is just trying to discipline around 13-year-olds. Hey,
you'll learn how to become a leader real fast. In these situations, we'll sink or swim out there.
As I said, teach people. Be patient with them. Use some good stories. Everybody likes stories.
They're very powerful. Some of the oldest recorded history is stories, as well as a self-spreadsheet.
Be a role model. People are looking up to you at all times. If you're a father, your kids are
looking up to you. If you're in a workplace, if you have any sort of leadership in the workplace,
your underlings, the people working under you are going to be looking up to you for what's acceptable.
If you're on your phone all the time, they're going to start being on their phone all the time.
If you're working hard, they're going to start working hard. Guide people. There's a difference
between letting people trip and fall because they're running too fast and then running out
in traffic and dying. There's a huge difference between those two. And this goes for a lot of
things. If I'm teaching someone how to do it, if they're doing something wrong and it's not going
to kill them, not going to hurt them, like they laid out their part incorrectly, they got all the
measurements wrong, I can see it. In my head, I'm just thinking, "Oh, this is going to be a learning
experience for measure twice, cut once." They're not going to die from it, right? It's going to
suck, but I taught you how to use a square, I taught you how to use a tape measure, I taught
you how to use an angle finder, and how to read prints, and you either weren't paying attention,
didn't get it, and never asked a question, so, you know, now's the time. And the last one is,
you know, enable people, don't be afraid to step back. You see this now, you know, as I mentioned,
you know, pastors allowed us and enabled us to preach in His absence, which has allowed Him a lot
more freedom than some pastors, right? He's able to go to Indianapolis comfortably, knowing that,
you know, it's not going to be found lacking in the church, right? People can cover for Him if He
wants to go out and further the mission, right? He's not kicking back, but actually, he's at
bowling, but he did preach two services in Indianapolis, right? He's furthering the mission of God
because He's able to leave certain things to, you know, some of the younger, some young leaders.
You see that too with Seattle and Spokane. He doesn't have to be micromanaging everything
they do because He's placed Evangelist Conlon and Evangelist Thompson in charge, right? He's
allowed them to take over, so He allowed to focus on other things like Indianapolis and Yakima and
Vancouver. So we see this, you know, as I said Boy Scouts didn't invent the EDGE method. It's
something you see. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to lead people. Humans have been
around for 6,000 years-ish, and they probably figured out effective leadership very quickly,
and but this is a great framework of, like, you could say like, "Oh, lead like Paul led,"
which is really great advice, but what does that mean? You know, lead like Moses? What is,
how do you explain to that person? Well, there's like five, there's four books of the Bible
dedicated to leading how Moses led. There's some of the longest books in the Bible.
Give some like, what's some examples, what's some framework to go by. You know, I really like the
edge framework. It's helped me a lot in my life, like kind of understanding these leaders, and I
said that we can't really apply it to everybody. The leadership that David had over his mighty men
is different than that of Paul over his, over Timothy and Titus, and some of the named elders
and bishops that he ordained, right? As I said, tutelage leadership versus status quo leadership.
But yeah, hopefully just take that really great framework to go by. I really like that I looked
back fondly at the time of the Boy Scouts. It was really fun. I did a lot of fun things, and it was
really sad to see what I got out right before it went downhill. I was kind of the second to last
generation of actual Boy Scouts. Practical advice, you know, not down. If you ever wondered, well,
I wish Wikipedia was in a book form. Go on eBay, they sell vintage merit badge books, and they,
yeah, and they're really cheap, like four or five bucks, and it's everything you need to know about
how to- the introduction to this topic. They're very nice. You learn a lot from those if you're
ever curious about, like, well, how does this work? Go buy a vintage one, and I say get a vintage one
because everyone in the book is clean cut, shirts tucked in, and they're all men. They've added a
lot of women into the new merit badge books. I did- I was an electrician for four years. I never
saw a female electrician. Didn't- I went to a bunch of part, like, shops for stuff. I don't know why
they're putting female electricians in the merit badge book. Don't- they don't exist, okay? Sorry.
So get a vintage one. They're also a lot cheaper. They're- but they are free online, too, if you're
that inclined. But if you're- if you want a physical copy and you don't want the DEI merit
badge book, get the vintage. It's like 1971. Everyone's- as I said, everyone's clean cut,
tucked in, professionally dressed, everything. And the old ones are really nice. They haven't
discovered anything new in the last 50 years about how electricity works from a practical level. So
as I said, hey, if you want some- that's one good thing is they do have a treasure trove of knowledge
left behind. It's not gone. You can still get the old handbooks. There's a lot of good information
in those handbooks. You know, if you want to get the first aid merit badge book, a lot of good
information on how to do first aid in that merit badge book in one condensed form. So that's one
good thing the Boy Scouts is still doing. You know, as I said, sad to see it go, but I learned a lot.
Hopefully you guys learned a little bit of the introduction to leadership roles in the Bible
and how Boy Scouts approaches a lot of this stuff. But yeah, that ended up. As you blessed this week,
as you bless those who are not here, travel with mercies for everyone traveling back,
and do something for him. I guess if Jesse's a second to last generation, I guess I was the
third to last before it went fully downhill. But the writing was already on the wall when our when
the den mother was like the adult in the room instead of like a man. And we were like all
playing in the fire on this camping trip. And she runs to my dad, Tom, Tom, the boys are playing
in the fire. And he's like, are they hurt? Is someone hurt? What's she's like, no, they're
playing in the fire. And he's like, they're boys. Like, you don't get it. Like, why are you in
charge? Oh, anyway, 143, blessed assurance, close with 143 in the red and the green.
Close this with a prayer.