(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Amen, well it's good to be here once again and as most of you know I'm on the road trip, so I just came from Mountain Baptist Church in Fairmont, West Virginia and I'm going to be going to Pure Words Baptist Church in Houston, Texas after this, but we're going all across America, 6,700 miles. I'm being driven by two teenagers, so just pray for safety on the road because obviously it's dangerous out there on the road no matter how great of drivers they are, it's still dangerous. So tonight I'm going to be preaching about the importance of the local church and we're here in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and the bulk of this passage in 1 Timothy chapter 3 is all about the qualifications for the bishop and the Bible uses this term bishop interchangeably with pastor and elder and not only does this chapter contain this big long section giving the qualifications of the bishops and then the deacons but then it also goes on to say in verse number 15, but if I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God which is the church of the living God the pillar and ground of the truth. So the local church is the pillar and ground of the truth and today many people are de-emphasizing the importance of the local church. We're living in an age of technology where it's so easy to just do things online that we would have normally done in person just a few decades ago, right? You know for example people today are ordering food online and they're getting their groceries delivered because they order online instead of going to a bookstore or clothing store or shoe store they're pretty much just going online and then they just order it on Amazon, right? Instead of meeting with people in person they just hop on zoom and meet online, right? And they're just all of these ways that our lives are shifting more and more online and that's not necessarily always a bad thing it could be really convenient and save us a lot of trips to different places but we need to stay with God's institution of the local physical church congregation of God's people. It's something that's very important in the new testament ought to be important in our lives there's something about physically going to church. Now you say why you got to go to church physically you know what what why does it have to be in person? Well if you stop and think about the the word church itself literally means a congregation okay so that's literally impossible to do online because it is an assembly it is a group of people it is people physically gathering together and so it has to be in person to be church. Now a lot of people are de-emphasizing church because they have this misunderstanding because we've said and many people have rightly said that the church is not the building it's the people and of course it's not the building of course it's the people but because people have heard that statement without understanding it then people will make statements like well we're the church like I'm the church you're the church like I'll be at somebody's door when I'm not saluting and they say well we're having church right now because you know the two of us are I mean who's had somebody tell you that when you're not saluting right just you know the two or three of us at that door I mean this is church we're in right now because church is the people and it is correct that church is the people but it's not just any people and it's not people by themselves and it's not people on a doorstep and it's not people that are just in random groups in living rooms or wherever it is a congregation it is an actual gathering or assembly of people and it's not just any assembly of people but it is actually a group of people that is organized in a certain way because if any group of Christians just kind of hanging out and talking about the bible constituted church or if people just sitting around the living room and having a bible study was church then why do we have a whole chapter about the qualifications for the bishop because it sounds like that wouldn't even matter because everywhere's the church two guys in a fishing boat talking about Jesus while they fish is church according to these people sometimes they even count the fish in the two or three and so the point is that in order for it to be an actual scriptural church it needs to be following a new testament pattern it's a congregation of born again baptized believers that are following a new testament pattern of worship and preaching and singing and there's an organizational structure there where you got a bishop you got deacons now obviously a small church may not have deacons or there could be a church that is temporarily without a pastor or they're looking for a pastor or something like that i get that but in general though the church is something that's organized right it's not just a random just three people nobody's qualified nobody's trained nobody's leading that's not church that that's just a bunch of christians getting together which is great for christians to get together and hang out and have a bible study but it isn't church and we need to emphasize what god emphasizes god considers the church important you say well how do you know church is important well how about the fact that the vast majority of the new testament is literally addressed to churches you know the church of god at Corinth churches of Galatia church of Ephesus i mean who are these letters written to what does that even mean the epistle to the Philippians well you know when you read that it's it's to the saints which are Philippi with the bishops and deacons you know and then you get to the churches of Thessalonia Thessalonica that is and so all throughout these new testament epistles you see they're being addressed to churches then you get to the section of the bible one right here and these are called the pastoral epistles because after you just had a whole bunch of epistles written to churches then you have epistles written to pastors right and so Timothy is a pastor Titus is a pastor and then the epistle to Philippians says hey i'm writing to the church in your house so again to the church then you get to revelation who's the book of revelation written to the seven churches in Asia now if church wasn't important if churches weren't being emphasized why would so many new testament books just be directly addressed to the church because the church is god's institution right the bible says that he purchased the church with his own blood and so here the bible says that we ought to know how to behave ourselves in the house of god which is the church of the living god the pillar and ground of the truth now we're all lovers of truth here that's why we're saved right the biggest reason why people aren't saved is because they don't love the truth so they they believe lies they follow lies if they really cared about the truth they would seek and they would find they would ask and it would be given to them they would knock and the door will be open to them anybody who's truly sincerely seeking truth will find it and they will find jesus who is the truth incarnate and so we're lovers of truth that's what it means to be a saved christian to love the truth to believe the truth to follow truth and so the church is a place where the truth is exalted and lifted up right it's the pillar of the truth right so what does a pillar do what are these pillars doing right here they're holding something up right and so the church holds up the truth it supports the truth it lifts it up sort of like you don't light a candle and put it under a bushel you put it up on a candlestick so that it can give light unto all that are in the house you want it to be high and lifted up right jesus christ talked about that if he would be lifted up he would draw all men unto himself and so we want to lift up the truth the pillar of the truth that lifts it up holds it up supports it exalts it is the church that's the church's job to do that right and what's so beautiful about this metaphor here of the pillar and ground of the truth is because you know the pillar on the one end is lifting it up and then you know the ground of the truth it's sort of like the bottom that it rests on and dwells on it's like ground zero for the truth right here at the local church right so it you know a basis that could be a foundation that can hold up the truth where we could go to find the truth firmly planted should be the local church and so because god's institution of the local church is so important it's important that there be a bishop which means overseer to make sure that all things are done decently in an order and to make sure that it's actually the truth that's being lifted up to make sure that it actually is a ground or a foundation for the truth as well and so the reason that it's so important to have a pastor is because church is important that's why the qualifications are important and the reason why it's important how we behave there is because it's a place that we should treat with the utmost reverence and respect again we're not talking about the building you know if you were here in the building on a Tuesday or something and and you know and all the chairs were taken out of here and somebody wanted to kick a soccer ball around or something you know the lord would not be offended i'm not saying that that's something that goes on here or should go on here i'm just saying like it would be no biblical issue to take all these chairs out of here and and you know somersault around and do whatever you want in here you know because it's a building it's not a special it hasn't been sprinkled with holy water or something like that it's just a building but the institution the congregation these services that we hold on sunday morning sunday night and wednesday night are sacred they're holy and we ought to know how to behave ourselves in the house of god because it's the church of the living god and that should mean something that should be a big deal to us you know this is why by the way a lot of people dress up when they come to church it's not some kind of a legalistic pharisaical thing of hey you have to dress a certain way of course not and people ask us all the time uh you know hey is there a dress code what should i wear i always just tell people no just wear whatever you want come on down you know obviously i'm hoping they don't do like a walmart at 2 a.m type of thing but you know within reason right i mean as long as people are are decent you know come on down right we're not worried about the way you dress who cares it's not a big deal but here's but you say yeah but i look around i see a lot of suits and ties and people dress nice you know the only reason that you see that is just because people are taking it seriously and it's kind of like a highlight for them to go to church it's like a big deal like like if i take my wife out on a date i may dress up nice she may dress up nice for that just because it's kind of a highlight it's just a it's a big it's not that we have to it's not that you have to there's no issue if you come to church in casual clothes i don't have an issue with it but but but the thing is you know i'm wearing a tie right now just because i'm trying to take my job as the pastor seriously pastor bozens is taking his role as a pastor seriously so he comes in a serious outfit especially as the pastor to preach god's word and so forth and people will dress nice just like they would dress nice for a graduation a funeral a wedding whatever just taking it seriously just because it's important it's it's a highlight it's really something that we should look forward to and it's like a highlight of the week like hey sunday is this great day it's a beautiful day where we get to go down and focus on the things of god you know there's all this other stuff going on in our life all these other things that we're thinking about but you know it's kind of an event every sunday right it's an event and and you know maybe you even have a special breakfast or you know whatever you do to make the day special but you're excited because you're going to church you get to sing the songs you hear some preaching you hopefully learn something new from the bible and so church is a big deal in god's eyes in the new testament text well you know what let's make it a big deal in our lives as well and think of it as a highlight of the week and the midweek service i love the midweek service you know and i mean a lot of churches are getting away from having a wednesday night service a lot of people are too busy or whatever but it's kind of nice to punctuate the week with that midweek service because i don't know about you but sometimes sunday to sunday it could be a long time to go without going to church and so going in the middle of the week is sort of just like a rebirth a spiritual reset like okay you know we're in the middle of the week let's stop and take a moment to remember why we even exist why are we even on this earth what is our life even about yeah we have all these other things going on we're busy on monday busy on tuesday busy on wednesday hey but at the end of the day all things are and were created for his glory ultimately and so that's why we exist that's why we're here it's what our lives are all about it's great to stop and think about that a few times a week and so church should have a place of preeminence in our minds and hearts because it's a big deal to god it should be a big deal to us so why is church important you know again just looking at the text looking at the passage we see the emphasis placed upon the bishop and the deacons and their qualifications showing that this is important it's an important institution he's have a guy over it that can do this important work and make sure that the church goes forward the way it should because it's so important and then we see that church is the pillar and ground of the truth it's the house of god it's the church of the living god and then we get to a third reason here just looking at the text itself uh for why church is important because the bible says in verse 16 and without controversy great is the mystery of godliness god was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit scene of angels preached under the gentiles believed on in the world received up into glory you say well what does that have to do with the importance of church you know whenever i'm reading a passage like this sometimes it's easy to just feel like god just keeps changing the subject and sometimes you wonder is there a rhyme or a reason to it you know it's like oh here's the qualification for the pastor oh by the way you need to know how to behave yourself in the house of god hey isn't the mystery of godliness great wow god was manifest in the flesh but but what we need to understand is that obviously these things are connected obviously there is a theme there's a point that is connecting these things especially when they're within one chapter you know the reason that these chapters have been divided the way that they have over the years is because this sort of represents a complete thought in certain ways well if you stop and think about it the mystery of godliness being great means that there's a lot for us to learn as christians right because without controversy what does that say no reasonable person is really going to argue with this when the bible there are a lot of controversial things out there right where if i said something a lot of people would argue with me or tell me i'm wrong or disagree with me but this is one of those things without controversy meaning hey here's one thing we could all kind of agree on without controversy great is the mystery of godliness you know the the fact that god was manifest in the flesh is something that's pretty hard to wrap our mind around how god could become a human being and how he could live among us and be tempted in all points like as we are and yet be without sin i mean that's pretty incredible how the creator of the universe could limit himself to the point where he's a little baby and he's a toddler and he's growing up and he's he's growing in wisdom and in stature and in favor with god and man and and for him to be able to say something like well of that day and hour knoweth no man know not the angels in heaven neither the son but the father only you know i mean that's pretty crazy that the son of god the lord jesus christ could be limited in that way and robed in in human flesh and be hungry and thirsty and tired and angry and go through that whole human experience i mean that is a great mystery it's hard to wrap our minds around that and and that's without controversy great is the mystery of godliness the fact that god was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit scene of angels preached unto the gentiles believed on in the world received up in the glory what what a story the greatest story ever told and it's something that we spent our whole lives learning about and we keep learning because we're never going to fully grasp all that and so because there's so much to learn this is another reason why we need the local church because the local church is a place where we learn about god's word and so by coming to church we learn about the mystery of godliness and because the bible is such a big book and there are so many doctrines and so many things to learn you know you got to go week after week sunday morning sunday night wednesday you know just go for a few months and say i've learned everything i know everything about it i get it now no you know you keep coming back you keep learning there's always more to learn and then a fourth reason would be kind of spilling over into chapter four where it says at the beginning of verse one now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils now look if there are a lot of people departing from the faith another word for that is apostasy right so if there's a lot of apostasy going on and people departing from the faith if there are people that are giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devil you know the new testament says there are many antichrists out there they they don't confess that jesus christ has come in the flesh many deceivers are entered into the world the bible says there were false prophets also among the people even as there shall be false prophets among you so it sounds like another reason why church is important is to warn us about the false prophets that are out there right so a church that's doing its job is going to be expounding to us that mystery of godliness and teaching us about jesus and teaching us about who he is and what he did his ministry his teachings his second coming and then that church is also going to be warning us about all the deceivers and seducing spirits and and devils out there and how to avoid them that's also part of the role of the local church and so the church is important now backing up now that we kind of seen an overview here of this chapter thinking about the importance of the local church the bible says in verse number one of chapter three it says this is a true saying if a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work now the the job of being a bishop or a pastor or an elder those three words are used synonymously in scripture this job is a is a big deal it's an important job this is not just like well i don't really have anything else going on in my life so you know maybe i can just kind of fall back on being a pastor you know because because it didn't work out for me as an electrician or a computer programmer you know that's no no if you desire the office of a bishop that's a good work i mean that is a great calling and it's a good work because obviously being a pastor is a lot of work and so it says if any man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work it's a good work because it's an important work because the church is important it says in verse number two it says a bishop then must be blameless the husband of one wife vigilant sober of good behavior given to hospitality apt to teach now when we look at a lot of those in the list there these are virtues that every christian should obviously have it's not like god has a different kind of morality for pastors than he has for people right i mean the same things that would be sinful for me to do are the exact same things that would be sinful for you to do it's not like well that's a sin for you because you're a pastor but you know hey i'm just a layman so for me it's fine well it's fine for you it's fine for me and vice versa because right and wrong are absolutes you know things like stealing murder adultery fornication drunkenness blasphemy pride foolishness these are wrong for everybody me you we have the same sets of rules and so some of these things listed here general morality obviously we should all be blameless and that's not saying sinless it just means that we don't have some big glaring thing about us that's blameworthy where people would be like what in the world this guy's pastor look at this glaring sin that he has you know it's a it's a shame and you know he's worthy of blame for that uh blameless but but all christians should seek to have a clean testimony and be blameless in this world and not be someone that brings shame and reproach to the cause of christ with their testimony obviously that goes for everybody right blameless husband to one wife obviously god wants us when we get married to be married for life and the bible is crystal clear the man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh what god has joined together let not man put us under right whosoever divorce of his wife and marieth another committed adultery right whosoever put it the way his wife is causing her to commit adultery and so therefore we should all strive to be the husband of one wife or obviously for women you know they would flip this over and be the wife of one man be vigilant i mean every christian needs to be vigilant right meaning that the devil is not just attacking pastors he's attacking all of god's people and so we need to be awake vigilant literally means to be awake you know a vigil is when you stay up all night so being vigilant means you're alert you're awake you're aware and you understand the dangers that are out there you're not gullible you're not ignorant of satan's devices obviously these are just kind of general morality we should all be sober we should all have good behavior we should all be given to hospitality right and what does that mean obviously hospitality is talking about you know buying somebody lunch taking people out to eat giving people a place to stay we're just just treating visitors well treating guests well being friendly to visitors helping them out with what they need etc but then we get to this last point here at the end of verse two and it says opt to teach now this is something that not necessarily every christian is going to have because not necessarily every christian has this calling but for the pastor he has to be someone who just has the raw ability to get up and teach something you know some people are just bad teachers and you know what sometimes they're really good at what they do but they're just bad at teaching and you know what i find is that sometimes the people that are the best at something are the worst teachers you know and and it's funny because you know i've taken a lot of foreign language classes i love foreign languages and i've taken a lot of foreign language classes and a lot of people that you know they really want to be taught by a native speaker you know because that's kind of the the gold standard of you know getting the authentic teaching but you know what i always like to be taught by somebody who's not a native speaker and i'll tell you why because they know the struggle they've already been through what i'm going through they've already been down the road that they're bringing me down they're asking me to do something that they've already done they've learned that language and i've noticed that people are super good at piano sometimes they're not necessarily a good teacher because they're saying well i mean this is just like this this is easy right like a lot of people it's just yeah it's just so easy well that's not what i want in a teacher i want a teacher who understands how hard it is and can break it down to me and make it easy for me and understand the struggle that i'm going through and so here's the thing pastors haven't necessarily lived the perfect life or had everything handed to them on a silver platter in life ideally pastors have actually been through some pain and suffering and problems in their life now and obviously we don't want to have a pastor who has destroyed his testimony and done terrible things but i'm saying pastors who've maybe been through painful experiences hard times maybe everything in life hasn't gone perfectly for them they've gone through some tribulation so that they'll be able to comfort those that are in tribulation also with the comfort where with they themselves have been comforted of god they'd be able to help others you know because uh if somebody just had it too easy in life well then they might just be all well yeah the christian life's easy you know i remember one guy i talked to you know uh he said you know husbands love your wives you know it's so easy like i don't understand what's the issue it's just husbands love your wives of course this guy was single who told this to me you know and then you know shortly thereafter this guy got married and shortly thereafter this guy was divorced this guy's marriage lasted literally a couple of months and i just remembered sitting there and having this guy tell me it's just i don't understand what the big deal is husbands love your wives it's just like what's the big deal well you're about to find out buddy what the big deal is because it's pretty easy to say that when you haven't had any problems when you haven't gone through anything when you haven't experienced life when you haven't done anything okay and so being apt to teach here's what it means it means a couple things it means number one being able to take something that's complicated the great mystery of godliness and to make it easier right i mean that to me if somebody said what is teaching tell me what the word teach means what is the essence of teaching i would say to them here is how i define teaching taking something hard and making it easy taking that which is complicated and making it easy and you know we've all had teachers in school that were just bad at explaining things and we're confused and we're you know we're just we're shaking our heads it's like i don't know what's going on right then you go on youtube and there's some guy from india that just explains it perfectly and it's just like wow that was easy he's a teacher look my dad it was an incredible mechanic just he's just i mean he's taking apart cars he's taking apart trucks he's taking apart motorcycles putting them back together again he's taking apart boat engines and repairing them i mean he's an incredible electrician and incredible mechanic extremely talented great abilities and he would fix things that other people couldn't fix and he would go very serious on just tricking out his own vehicles all my life but you know what i learned virtually nothing about mechanics from him simply because he was not a teacher that's is not nothing critical about my dad it's just the reality of it that my dad wasn't really able to impart that knowledge unto me and he would always say that and he would always say i'm not a good teacher and he would say those who can do and those who can't teach and obviously that's kind of a silly saying but there's a little bit of truth in that sometimes that you know he was just so good at it it was so intuitive to him he didn't necessarily know how to break it down to somebody who didn't get it who didn't see it and he didn't necessarily have the patience to break it down because you know what being a teacher takes a lot of patience i mean can you imagine teaching kindergarten or first grade or something i mean you know those abcs so well an addition and subtraction it's just like you'd be like okay we're explaining this again don't you get it little johnny you know that five minus three is two but you know there are a lot of wonderful people that can do that job and for 30 40 years of their life they can just keep on explaining that seven minus three is four you know and they can just they just they'll just explain that for 30 years 40 years and they have an aptitude for teaching and they're able to break things down that are hard so the essence of teaching number one is taking something that's complicated and making it easy right that's what it means to be apt to teach right to be able to take something really complicated in the bible and make it easy now a lot of people do this the opposite you know a lot of the calvinists and these these uh kind of theologically geeked out types they take something simple and they make it complicated right i mean they take things that are simple and they make them super complicated and you listen to these guys preach it's like i've been reading the bible my whole life i've studied the bible a lot i've been around church i've eat breathed and slept and stuff for years and i can barely understand sometimes what some of these reformed guys are even saying and i'm thinking if i who've been in church my whole life if i can barely even keep up and follow what you're saying how much less can joe six pack figure out what in the world you're even talking about and you know i always think about what it said of jesus how the common people heard him gladly that would never be said of these reformed geeked out theological types the common people heard them gladly no the common people are like gag me with a spoon like i don't want to listen to this guy because it's so boring it's so dense it's so dry and it's almost and you know what i've noticed about people that aren't good at teaching sometimes too uh especially when it comes to the ministry when it comes to pastors and preachers who tend to make things complicated is it's kind of just an exercise in puffing themselves up sometimes of just hey let me show you how smart i am you know let me just use as many big words and make things as complicated as i can because if i can make things complicated and make you confused or you know then it kind of makes it seem like i'm on another level but if i can take that which is hard and make it really easy then we're both on board now you know and and by the way i've worked at some jobs where sometimes there'll be a guy training you and he almost like protects a little bit of his knowledge because he doesn't want you to know too much who knows what i'm talking about you know what i mean because he'll kind of protect the knowledge a little bit because he wants to make sure his job is secure that he's up here and you're down here well as pastors we want to bring you all the way up here but you know we should want you to surpass us in knowledge and know as much as us and know as much as you possibly can we're not trying to hold anybody back when it comes to knowledge so aptitude for teaching is a prerequisite for being a pastor it means you've got to be able to take something complicated and make it understandable but not only does it mean making it understandable aptitude for teaching i think that when it comes to pastoring too you have to be able to preach in such a way that you can keep people's interest you know part of aptitude for teaching is not to be boring now obviously you know we're all going to preach a boring sermon from time to time because you know obviously we're just human and we're doing the best we can to uh to preach interesting sermons enlightening sermons helpful sermons edifying sermons but at the end of the day the spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down and i i thank i thank god that the bible is not a boring book you know god's up in heaven and he's imparting truth to us down on earth and he could have given us a more boring book but he gave us a book that contains all these fun things i mean think about there are some fun bible stories there are some fun portions in the bible to read and there are some just crazy things and wild things i mean some of these old testament stories i mean they're action packed and you know one of the one of the biggest things i would say is a feature of the old testament especially is defying the reader's expectation like a lot of us we miss this just because if we've grown up in church our whole life we already know how every story is going to end so it's kind of hard to defy our expectations but sometimes as an exercise you know you should do you just read the book of genesis or read the book of first samuel second samuel and pretend that you don't know what's going to happen and try to kind of think about how you would be reading this for the first time if you didn't know how it was going to happen because it takes so many twists and turns it's really a book that defies your expectation you know oh i'm going to make you a great nation abraham oh his wife's baron you know and then it's like is it going to be the nephew is it going to be ishmael is it going to you know there's all these twists and turns then his wife's with some other dude and then you know and just whoa what in the world because remember he says it's his sister and then this other guy's going to marry her and you're whoa where's this going i mean the story's all over the place it's a fun read now the whole bible is not necessarily always a fun read just like all of our sermons are not necessarily always going to be fun but in general the bible's interesting the bible's pretty fun the bible's got a lot of exciting things the bible's unpredictable if you didn't already know the story because it's really a complex book and so you know i think that if that's the way god has delivered truth to us there are funny things in the bible there are really emotional things in the bible they're exciting things in the bible i believe that that's how we should as preachers deliver truth as well you know we should try to make it as interesting to the listener as possible because you know what i could speak with the tongues of men and of angels but if nobody listens to it i'm just speaking into the air at that point right i mean think about it i could get up here and preach the greatest sermon of all time but what if nobody's listening what if nobody shows up what if nobody downloads it what if nobody is present or what if the people who are present are zoned out because of because my delivery was was was poor and so this is why we need pastors who are apt to teach who have the ability to make it interesting make it a little bit fun break it down in such a way that we can grasp it and by the way the most boring sermon of all time is the one that's going over our heads and we don't understand it you know if we don't even know what's being said that's super boring and so the pastor needs to be apt to teach the next thing we get back to some things that really would go for everybody not giving to wine no striker obviously god doesn't want anybody boozing it up or or being a person who lives in riches and luxury and and and just excess you know he wants us all living a moderate life and being sober and so forth no striker he doesn't want us getting involved in road rage and and fistfights and brawling uh not greedy of filthy lucre hey the love of money is the root of all evil that goes for everybody he wants us to be patient not a brawler not covetous one that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity look every mother and father needs to have their children under control every mother and father needs to rule over their children and obviously ultimately the husband is the final ruler in that house and he is to rule his home and and teach and guide his home this is not just for the pastor but it is a prerequisite for pastor because if a man know not how to rule his own house how should he take care of the church of god not a novice now novice simply means beginner and all this is saying is that the pastor should not be somebody who's newly saved new to church new to preaching new to soul winning right he shouldn't be a beginner nothing wrong with being a beginner it's always funny when people uh want to criticize a preacher and they call him a novice you know like i've been called a novice after i've been saved for like 20 some years i've been married for over a decade had all these kids been pastoring for years preached thousands of sermons soul winning thousands of hours he's a novice you know like call me call me call me an insult that's real you know like or at least that you could pretend is real but a novice that's just stupid because and and you know what i here's what i like about this attitude that criticizes someone by calling them a novice is that it makes it sound like there's something wrong with being a novice there's nothing wrong with being honest that's not an insult it's just that a pastor shouldn't be a novice well you know you could call you could say that i'm a big jerk if you want but don't say that i'm a novice because that's just stupid whatever i am i'm not a beginner at what i am whatever i'm doing i've been doing it a long time okay you may not like what i do you may not like how i do it but i've been doing this for a long time the same way i'm doing it now so whatever i am i'm not a beginner okay but it's just kind of funny when people just call people and they don't call me that anymore but they'll call other people a novice you know when they're not a novice right then what is the real novice it's the guy who's newly saved is it bad hey i want a church with lots of novices in it because that means that we're reaching people right we want to have novices we want to have beginners right we want that guy who's going out soloing for the first time preaching a sermon for the first time just got saved in the last year amen we just don't want to put him in charge of the church because he's a novice right that makes sense not a novice now why don't we want the novice in charge one reason is that he could be lifted up with pride and fall into the condemnation of the devil right if he just kind of climbs the ranks too fast he's a brand new beginner and he's up there leading the church you know that might be a little too much too soon and then he could be filled with pride and you know god has a way of of humbling us as pastors and as christians so that we don't get too big for our britches right and you know pastor burzins is is doing a great job pastoring this church and leading this church and he deserves your utmost respect and love and he deserves your loyalty and your support as your pastor because he's a great pastor and he's doing a great work but here's the thing pastor burzins paid his dues to get where he is right now it's not like he just got saved a couple years ago and just boom he's just pastoring the church and who's this guy you know pastor burzins has been serving god for a long time you know i mean he's been correct me if i mark how much you've been pastoring now for 10 years i mean that's a long time man he's been pastoring for 10 years right but here's the thing much longer than that because i i can always know how long he's been serving god because i've been pastoring faith forward baptist church for 17 and a half years and guess what he started coming to the church after i'd only been doing it for about seven or eight months right so you take however long i've been pastoring subtract you know seven eight months and that's how long he's been serious about serving god because so so he's been seriously serving god for like almost 17 years now because when pastor burzins started going to our church back in august of 2006 you know right away he was making big changes in his life he was getting on board with soul winning reading his bible just uh you know for you know large amounts of time he was he was cranking through uh the word of god he was out soul winning with me he was coming to the church he was learning he was preaching so i mean he you know he's been at this thing for you know well over 15 years of really being serious about serving god and and he's even been pastoring for almost a decade you know he's paid his dues and even before he even became a pastor you know he'd been in faithful word for about you know almost seven years of just seven years of being a faithful church member paying his dues as a as a church member and then his first several years of pastoring weren't easy he's paying more dues right and you know same thing with myself you know the the first few years at faithful word baptist church you know i'm working a full-time job i'm trying to pastor at the same time that's not easy you know working hard going through stuff going through pain and misery and problems blood sweat tears going through stuff okay well you know what that's gonna make me a more humble person when people come to me and they're having problems and they have stuff going on it's like hey i've been through some stuff too and so i'm not just gonna be like oh you're pathetic it's just husbands love your wives you know it's just easy it's just you know just live the christian life it's just just go to church go soul winning read your bible pray what's the big deal you know what you know thou shalt not steal thou shalt not kill you know what's your what's your problem what's your malfunction you know why why are you having such a hard time you know hey look here's the thing you know going through stuff in our personal life prepares us to be able to sympathize with other people and be humble and we've had bad stuff happen in our life that that's that's sad or humbling or heartbreaking or painful or whatever and so therefore uh that's why we don't have a novice because the novice you know he hasn't really been through all the all the crap that life is going to throw at you and and especially when you're serving god and persecutions coming at you and you're going through problems and everything so then it's easy for him to just get lifted up with pride you know i'm thinking of some bozos in particular but i don't even want to mention them because they're not even worth mentioning but just these novices who get super prideful especially when they go to the foreign mission field they go to some place where just by being an american they're like an instant rock star just by being an american they're a place in this world my friend you want does anybody here want to be a rock star but you don't know how to play the guitar hey you there are some places where you can go where you're just a rock star because you're american okay and you know they go to a place like that and a bunch of people want to hear them preach hey i've done it rob you've done we've got places where we were rock stars and we'd walk in and just oh hey let's gather a thousand people to listen to you guys preach real quick right we've been to those places it's cool and we use that opportunity to preach the gospel but you know what we didn't do we didn't come home from that trip saying we're awesome people just people love us like we just go somewhere and we just go thousand people come hear us preach because we're just we're just dripping with the holy goes right here and just you know people just want to hear what you know because we we understood the fact that god had given us an opportunity and it was kind of a fluke thing and where god's opening doors for us and we understand that because we're americans and we're going to a place where people think that are that americans are super cool it's not that we're super cool it's just they think we're super cool because we're americans and so they'll give us the time of day and then we use that opportunity not to glorify ourselves we use that opportunity to glorify the lord jesus christ and preach the gospel and get hundreds of people saved and it's a it's a it's a great opportunity to go to people who will listen to you and so that's what we do but what we're not going to do is say well i'm superior to pastor Roger Jimenez because you know look how much more results i'm having over here in timbuktu you know it's like well yeah why don't you let's see you try that in sacramento california and see how you do you know you're gonna get a wake-up call real fast when you find out that you're not as cool in sacramento california as you are in a third world country and i'm all for don't get me wrong i'm all for going to third world countries and preaching to thousands of people and i love man i love going places where where people are just thronging you people are just getting in literally getting in line to hear the gospel literally hey that's that's fun after you've been in some of these unreceptive neighborhoods it's a nice change but you know what's really sad is to then turn around and let that go to your head and get prideful right so the novice if he has too much success if all of a sudden he's pastoring all of a sudden he's just you know put into this position of being a bishop you know you can see how being lifted up with pride he could fall into the condemnation of the devil and then whatever talent he has goes to waste because god can't use prideful people you know i mean look god can use a lot of people but pride is a deal breaker my friend it's not gonna work you will never have success serving god as a prideful person it's it's like it's like the mother of all sins in many ways like it's just like it's it's it's one of the the most damaging sins it's literally why most people are going to hell because they they're too good to ask christ for the free gift they gotta do it on their own not a novice that's being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil moreover he must have a good report of them which are without lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil that kind of goes back to being blameless and and not having some big glaring thing about you that you know the world could point to you know look the world's gonna attack us and criticize us but let it be because of the doctrine not because of our sleazy personal life or something right we don't want that and so we want to have a good report of them whichever that i want to be blameless and you know they're not going to dig up skeletons from our closet you know let them instead just can you believe this guy's preaching what the bible says you know that's what we want it to be about and then it says likewise must the deacons be grave not double tongued not given to much wine not greedy of filthy lucre holding the mystery of the faith and a pure conscience and let these also first be proved means tested and tried then let them use the office of a deacon being found blameless even so must their wives be grave not slanderers sober faithful in all things let the deacons be the husbands of one wife ruling their children and their own house as well right a lot of the same qualifications and really just a standard for all christians everywhere for they that have used the office of a deacon well purchased to themselves a good degree by the way it didn't say you know those who join an online bible college purchased to themselves a good degree okay you know the bible does not require a college degree for the ministry okay what what it requires is that someone served god in their local church meet these qualifications and the proof is in the pudding but it says here that they purchased to themselves a good degree and great boldness in the faith which is in christ jesus these things ride i under the hoping to come under these shortly he's saying look i'm writing all these things to you and hopefully i'm just going to show up anyway and be able to tell you all this stuff in person and even be able to maybe expound in even more detail but in case i get tied up in case i don't make it if i tarry long if it takes me a long time to get there that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of god which is the church of the living god the pillar and ground of the truth and so again what's the chapter about it's on the surface it's just about the qualifications for the pastor and obviously that's the most important thing we could derive from this but if we kind of take a more bird's eye view of the whole chapter what comes right before what comes right after what's in those last few verses at the end of the chapter we see that really we can also get a message just about how and why church is so important right that's why it's important to have this bishop there and that's why it's important that it lift up the truth and that there's this mystery and all these things in the bible that we need to spend a whole life studying and learning about so that we don't get deceived by the guys in chapter four that are trying to seduce us and trick us and you know the pastor the bishop the elder if we look at these three terms right what does bishop mean it literally means overseer right it's just it's it's somebody who is just making sure that everything goes the way it's supposed to go and then pastor you know this is feeding the flock leading them to the green grasses and the cool waters right because the pastor is feeding the people with knowledge the pastor is a bishop and that he oversees the church and and he's looking out for the wolves and he's making sure everything goes the way it's supposed to go and then elder has to do with the fact that he is not a novice that he's a mature guy who's kind of been down that road he has experience and he has a lot of years of christianity under his belt he's paid his dues he's done it and he can lead the people he's done marriage he's done child rearing he's done these things so he can actually talk about ruling his own because he has a family you know and he can talk about going through trials and tribulations because he's been through some trials and tribulations he's been through persecution he's done it and so that's what these three terms mean and that's the three aspects of being a pastor and so the bishop aspect that's specifically brought up in this passage being the overseer making sure that everything goes the way it's supposed to go because again church is not just an informal gathering around a cup of coffee at a coffee table in a living room but rather it is an institution that's organized that's serious that's doing uh actually serious work of evangelism it's it's it's doing a great work not just hey let you know i'm i'm bored and i want to get together with some christian friends and talk some bible and you know the thing that i like about this church and the churches in our movement is that they are doing serious work for god i mean who has this as a who puts this as a backdrop behind a pulpit right because you got all kinds of church with all kinds of flowers and pastoral scenes and artwork and maybe a couple of curtains maybe some kind of a fake plant or something i mean who puts a street map you know this is like this is like what you find you know in a pizza place so if the delivery driver can kind of check this on his way out the door to go deliver the pizza right this is what you put like you know if you're an electrical contractor so that you know we're talking about where the service calls are where the new houses are being you know put in this is something that you find a plumbing contractors uh lobby or something who puts this behind the the pulpit in a church i'll tell you who somebody who's not playing games about actually reaching this area with the gospel you know when i see this backdrop i say this is a no-nonsense backdrop that says hey we're here to do some serious work for god and you know what i don't see these kind of house church people and again nothing wrong with church meeting in a house i've preached to a church in the house pastor burton is pastor of church in the house you know we pastor a church that met in the house but it still had this kind of mentality but you know it's funny these kind of coffee clots churches these kind of get together and just meet in the living room kind of house church people i don't ever see them rolling out the room and putting a bunch of safety pins in the map and talking about how you know we're gonna go here you know you don't see that do you that's right because it ought to be about the work of god it ought to be like an organized group that's why we need leadership why do we need a bishop i mean deacons because we're doing stuff you know i mean if we're all just going to sit around and talk about the bible well you know what we don't necessarily need some highly qualified guy to to help us with that i mean he just needs somebody just needs to you know bring the pastries and and you know and just have some some kind of fun little insight about the bible that we can kind of riff on for a while on the couch or whatever hey and i'm all for i'm all for sitting around the couch and riffing on some biblical stuff you know i get together with my friends and do that too i hope you get together and kind of sit around and and sit around living rooms and and and eat refreshments and kind of just just kind of you know chat about the bible and just say hey i read something cool the other day or whatever but you know the local church is so much more than that it's a it's a it's a well-organized machine being about the father's business you know i i jokingly was kind of referring to businesses like pizza restaurants and contractors having this but you know what we're about the father's business here you know that's why our churches have like a break room you know and and like because we're doing work we're doing stuff you know other churches have a fellowship hall we got a break room you know what i mean anyway you know we still might call it a fellowship hall but i'm just saying you know we have a we have a break room because we are working you don't have to take a break if you're not doing any work okay but we're working we are a team here and there's important preaching that's going on warning about the false doctrine you know breaking down the mystery of godliness making it simple making it easy i guarantee you you walk into pastor bozeman's sermon on sunday morning sunday night wednesday night you walk out knowing what it was about whether you liked it or not you walk out you know what that sermon was about you don't just walk out like man i don't know what was he talking about what was that what does that even mean everybody walks out knowing what's been said okay he's apt to teach the material is broken down so simply that even a theologian can understand what's being said real work is being done people are organized it's being overseen by somebody who's making sure that year after year it's still king james it's still sowing it's not becoming some yeshua yahweh hakala gondola thing it's all going forward not being carried about with divers and strange doctrines but just a serious rock-solid pillar and ground of the truth that's what we want in a church and you know what you can stay home and listen to it online but you know what god wants you to get your butt down here and be in the the house of god with god's people i'll share one more thing before i'm done you know i grew up in a family where going to church was just it was just you just went to church and here's the thing you know my dad is not a pastor i don't come from a long line of pastors or something you know my dad my mom they're just ordinary christian people and you know uh they're wonderful christians and and this is no offense to them just the reality is they weren't super into church or anything they were basically just they were just solid church members but they weren't super into it as far as like you know they're not they're not uh you know getting really involved in in ministry and things like that you know but they're just solid church members but you know the biggest thing that i really appreciated about my upbringing is that man they never had an attitude that church was just optional or something it was just like they had a do or die attitude about going to church it was just like you go to church and and and and they really imparted that to me because let's face it we're gonna have our ups and downs spiritually in our lives i've had ups and downs spiritually in my adult life when i was a kid our family had ups and downs spiritually but that consistency of just dragging myself to church for the last 41 years of my life just always being in church you know that right there will do a lot for you at the low times you know just just kind of that minimum of just never getting out of it you know so that even when you're you're backslidden or you're discouraged or things aren't going well you know just at least just kind of getting down to church that pattern of just weekly church events man that goes a long way to keep you serving god and isn't it interesting that both of my parents and my brother and my two sisters and myself you know what we all go to church we all consistently go to church we're all in baptist churches we're all serving god and you know you've got to just get to a point where you make church as important as god makes it and you get down here and you support the man of god you support the people of god you get involved in the mission of god and you know i hope you get i hope you get really involved in stronghold baptist church but even if you don't get really involved i hope you just get down here and just at least be at the services you know is that so much to ask to just show up and just sit down and be at church right but let me tell you something that would go a long way not just for you but for your wife and for your kids too just being in church and i'm glad that my parents always took me to church no matter what was going on we always went to church because that is the minimum my friend to just at least coast in your christian life you get out of church and things can really go south and you know what there are people in other countries right now man they wish that they had a church like this you know there are a lot of people in other countries that are struggling to find anything and so you got this you got you got filet mignon being served up here at stronghold baptist church three times a week and you know other people would just they would just love to get a hot dog you know they would they would just love to get a bean burrito you know what i mean and and you got you got filet mignon over here you know get down here well i can just listen to it online yeah you could but you know what it'd be a lot cooler if you came down here because where does the bible say don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together that's probably enough word of prayer father we thank you so much for this church lord and uh what what a what a powerful statement that this map behind me makes because lord it represents about nine million people which is just a mind-blowing figure lord and so i pray that this area lord would be evangelized what a what an incredible job what a massive undertaking to try to evangelize this entire area but lord i pray that you would just empower your people i pray that you would just send forth laborers into your harvest lord i pray that this church will grow and thrive and be used greatly to do that great work for you lord i pray that every person under the sound of my voice would understand the importance of attending church and in jesus name i pray amen