Dennis Tuuri

And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and 20 elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof, for thou was slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, and made us unto our God, kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth.

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and the elders. And the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them heard I saying, blessing and honor, and glory and power be unto him that siteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.

And the four beasts said, “Amen.” And the four and 20 elders fell down and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever.

Let’s pray.

Acts 20:17-38. And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church. And when they were come to him, he said unto them, you know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you in all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews, and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and have taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.

And now, behold, I know that ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God shall see my face no more. Wherefore I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore, watch and remember that by the space of three years, I cease not to warn everyone night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

I have coveted no man’s silver or gold or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, to them that were with me. I have showed you all things, how that so laboring, ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” And when he had thus spoken, he kneel down and prayed with them all.

And they all wept sore and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him unto the ship.

We’re going through the government of the church as outlined in the scriptures. We talked last week about the three different forms of church polity and we said that we’re in the process—we hope—of moving toward a more biblical form than any of those reflect at the current stage of the development of the church.

And this morning we’re going to talk specifically about the office of elder. We’ll have a couple of weeks then interruption of the series and we’ll return to it. We’ll deal with the office of the deacon and then have three other talks relative to those offices: qualifications, compensation, and honor. All of this is, I suppose, being done at this particular period of time because we’re going to have a heads of households meeting probably in April sometime and we’ll be moving towards selection—or at least putting people in a position to be selected and trained more explicitly—for officers in the church, both elders and deacons.

And so it seemed wise and appropriate that we look at the word of God relative to these offices prior to those choices being made.

Though I guess first of all then we want to talk this morning. Basically it’s two parts and they’re outlined. The first one deals with the fact that we believe the scriptures teach a two office position as opposed to a multi-office position or a three office position. We’ll go over that a little bit and then we’ll look at some of the continuity with the Old Testament officers as well.

Remember we had a long series on church offices a couple of years ago. And if you want more detail on what I’m going to say this morning, I direct you to those series of tapes. I believe there was about 20 of them, going through the Old Testament officers that we’re going to deal with in summary fashion this morning, then going into the New Testament. We’ll try to summarize some of that relative to the elder this morning in this morning’s talk.

First of all, the elder is one of two offices. And I guess that assumes that there is an office as opposed to simply a function. And I think that there’s good biblical reasons to suppose that. I didn’t list the scriptures, but in Acts 1:20, speaking of making up the twelfth apostle, it says they quote from the book of Psalms, “Let his habitation be desolate, let no man dwell therein, and his bishopric let another take,” seeming to refer to this as an office.

Additionally, in the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, we read about the office of the bishop and the office of the deacon. And other passages indicate this as well.

Now, I suppose that what we want to say here is that the formalized structure of qualifications which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes relative to two or three offices and the fact that these men are addressed by their specific offices and salutations, etc., indicate that there is an office here and not just a functioning within the church.

I think that what we see in the New Testament—both in terms of the church and the officers of the church—is that while you have an organism, you have a functioning body. First, as that body grows and matures and develops, it becomes institutionalized. And we’re used to seeing that in a negative sense in this country, that institutionalization is a bad thing. But really I think it’s a very important thing to see that the scriptures teach us that is what occurs. So the office of elder is an institutionalized office in that sense. That doesn’t make it bad; it makes it more explicit.

Now, as we said last week, however, that doesn’t mean we want to go over to the other side of the problem, which is to stress office as opposed to function. In scripture, obviously the terms used are functional terms and we’ll talk about that in a few minutes, and that’s very important to recognize. The stress is definitely on function. Though there is an office as well that is filled by certain men with certain qualifications and who are set aside to that particular office through ordination or laying on of hands.

And so I think the scriptures clearly teach that there are specifically offices in the church as a natural development and institutionalization of functional realities. And I believe the scriptures teach two offices, not three offices or four or five or whatever.

And I’ve got seven reasons here.

First of all, I don’t believe that the scriptures are normally used as a warrant for a third office. Let me just define the terms here. Looking at church polity as we did last week, we said that Presbyterianism comes closest to the mark. Presbyterianism is held, as have congregationalism actually—that we talked about last week—to various numbers of offices. In terms of today’s context, most reformed denominations either are two office or three office groups. They would say: the two office people believe that there are elders and deacons. The three office people believe there are teaching elders, ruling elders, and deacons. And so they separate the elders into two separate offices—not functions now, but specifically offices here—with different ordinations, etc.

And so when we talk about two office versus three office, that’s what we’re talking about. And it’s a particularly important question for us, of course, because if we’re going to select officers now in the church, are we going to select a ruling elder or a teaching elder? Are they both the same person? And so it’s important to discuss it somewhat.

And so we talk about three offices. That’s what we’re talking about. And we’ll talk toward the end of this—after these seven reasons—about the historic church and how Calvin and other men held to four or five offices at times. We’ll discuss that in a little bit.

But right now, we’re considering whether or not the office of ruling elder is a separate office from the office of teaching elder and if they comprise two offices or one office with several functions.

And I believe they comprise one office with several functions for these seven reasons.

First of all, the texts used for the third office are normally 1 Timothy 5:17 and 1 Corinthians 12:28. 1 Corinthians 12 lists the gifts that God gives to a body. And he says, you know, first he gives them apostles and teachers and prophets and then miracles, helps, governments, tongues, etc. And some people believe that means that there are a separate gift of government or rule apart from the teaching office that is put into that list.

Well, the problem—one problem I have with that—is that there are several such lists in scripture that don’t attempt to define offices but, as opposed to that, they define giftings for particular functions within the church. I don’t believe there ever was an office of healer, for instance, or an office of tongue speaker. These were gifted things that occurred in the context of the church. And so I don’t believe those are any kind of reason to suppose I was talking about specific offices.

Then you’d be in the position of saying that there were at one time eight or twelve or twenty-one, whatever list you come up with, officers in the New Testament church. Some of which have now gone the way of abandonment as the function has stopped. I don’t believe that’s the case. And so I don’t think that text is too important.

The text normally used is 1 Timothy 5:17. And that is the passage relative—well, let’s just read it.

First Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, and the laborer is worthy of his hire.”

So this passage—some people see in this passage a differentiation of function between ruling and teaching elders and as a result of that, different officers. But I don’t believe that is being spoken of here at all.

Actually, I think that there are three types of elders talked about in this passage—implicit in the admonition that those that rule well be kind of worthy of double honor is that there are those that rule normally or that teach normally. And so you’ve got elders of one type who are not included in this double honor passage.

So you’ve got the normal situation where elders have some degree of—I think that the text specifically refers to compensation. First of all, it could be—the word honor is used for compensation as well as just respect in the scriptures. But in here with the specific case law admonition about muzzling the ox, I think that compensation is primarily in view.

In any event, compensation or honor is given in some degree to those elders that have the normal functions that elders perform in the church. Those who rule well then are considered worthy of double compensation for the excellency of their presiding. And that’s probably be a good way to translate those two words there. The excellency of their presiding, I believe. Lenski uses that phrase, although I’m not sure.

Those that rule particularly well, by laboring earnestly and to fatigue, as it were, in the word and doctrine are also to be considered worthy of double honor.

And so, it’s speaking of one class of elders who are normally compensated for a particular amount of labor or tasks that they perform in the church. And then it says, if they rule particularly well, if they preside over the church in a particularly honoring fashion, then they’re considered worthy of double honor. And if they work very hard in laboring in the word and doctrine, then they’re also considered worthy of double honor.

And so what it says is you’ve got a situation where people are going to, in various degrees according to various giftings, abilities, and callings, exercise the office of elder in a particular vein more than in another vein and to a greater or lesser degree. In other words, this passage, I think, teaches a gradation of efforts relative to presiding over the congregation or the amount of time they teach in the word and doctrine. And as the basis of those gradations of efforts, a sliding compensation scale reflecting, of course, a sliding honoring scale in terms of our respect and honor due to those people.

And so, actually, I think that it’s but the case law being cited here is that depending on how hard the ox works, that’s how much he eats—that’s how much he’s honored. And so the principle that 1 Timothy 5:17 I think gives us is a sliding scale of compensation relative to how much an elder functions within the context of the local church, be it in terms of presiding sort of functions or in terms of teaching functions.

So there’s no reason to see here the establishment of a second office of elder. Rather, what we have is this idea of a compensation based upon a sliding scale in terms of energy or input into it.

Okay, so first of all I don’t think the reasons—I think that’s a very slim basis to build a third office on 1 Timothy 5:17 when we can clearly see that the text can very well mean something other than two separate officers of the eldership.

Secondly, there are only two sets of qualifications for office and that’s in 1 Timothy 3. We have a list of qualifications: “If a man desired the office of a bishop or an overseer in 1 Timothy 3:1, he desires a good work.” And then it goes on to say various qualifications. And then secondly in verse 8, “Likewise must deacons be grave.” And so there’s a list of qualifications for deacons.

We don’t have a third list of qualifications to distinguish a teaching elder from a ruling elder. And if we’re arguing here for office—and one of the criteria for having an office is qualifications—then it seems like you’d have to have that criteria met for the third office of ruling elder apart from teaching elder as well. And it simply isn’t there in scripture.

Two sets of qualifications clearly—I think—two offices.

Now it’s interesting in these qualifications an absence and a presence. First we have the absence in the list of qualifications here of something that we all would consider—or most churches today consider—to be absolutely essential in terms of a teaching elder: and that is a seminary education or a high degree of intellectual attainment or scriptural study.

Now the only reference here to intellectual attainment is that he’s apt to teach. But we would expect that if this was a list of qualifications for the office of teaching elder, we would expect more emphasis upon intellectual attainment. Yet the scriptures don’t give us that. The characteristics listed are primarily moral in nature as opposed to intellectual. And that’s very important as we consider the selection of officers in the church.

We know I talked last week about the imposition of additional requirements by current reformed churches relative to educational attainments and seminary degrees. But that isn’t a qualification laid forth in scripture. Now surely the man has to be able to execute the scriptures and has to be able to understand the scriptures. And in order to teach them, he’s got to understand them. And to understand them, he knows, has to know how to study the Bible. But that is a far cry from insisting that a man go through three or four or five years of formalized training in institutions that are essentially much drifted from the faith in our day and age.

And so that kind of imposition of a qualification isn’t found in the list of God’s holy requirements here for eldership. And I don’t think we should make it a qualification in addition to what God has already clearly told us.

It is a big mistake to place more stress on exegetical skills and seminary backgrounds as opposed to the moral qualities here laid out. And I think that if these were qualifications for a teaching elder the way that the current reformed denominations perceive of that office, we would see those sorts of qualifications.

Now, it’s interesting also the inclusion of a qualification here relative to the two or three office position—and that is the one apt to teach. If this is a list that is common—that is a common denominator—for both positions, ruling and teaching elder, why is there a requirement that the ruling elder be apt to teach?

In current reformed denominations and in the reformed church for the last 100 years or so, the ruling elder doesn’t get to teach ever. He’s not considered qualified to teach. And so, why would we have this qualification here: apt to teach? If this was indeed the qualification for a ruling elder, it doesn’t make sense.

What the scriptures seem to be saying is that ruling and teaching elders are one office and that there may be more of a functional exercise of a particular side of that office or a particular part of that office. We’re going to talk about this in a couple of minutes later talking about the functions of the eldership.

But in the passage we just read from Acts 20, Paul said that he taught them publicly and from house to house. And I think that’s the basis for the idea of some sort of counseling ministry where you teach people one-on-one or in small groups.

And so the teaching ruling elder distinction has tended to do away with that function as well. It sees a teaching elder as somebody who lectures formally. And of course in the scriptures, the elder teaches in two ways: both in terms of a convocated group such as what we’re doing now, but also in terms of house to house, individually and in small groups.

And so I think there’s lots of problems there. But in any event, two lists of qualifications—two offices.

Additionally, if we go back to 1 Corinthians 12:28, I think what we actually see are two functional categories listed in some of these lists of gifts in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, read that “God hath set some in the church.”

And by the way, note there from that phrase, “God hath set some in the church,” the divinely appointed nature of people to assist and cause the growth of a community. Remember we talked last week about: is church government divinely appointed or can we do whatever we want to do in terms of governing the church? This is just one passage among many that say: no, no, God has an order that he sets in the church of people and gifts and talents.

Okay. “God has set some of the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers. After that, miracles, gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.”

And it is interesting that the apostles, prophets, and teachers—the first list of three particular giftedness here—had to do with elder sort of things: the ministry of the word. Whereas the second group—miracles, healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues—have many are manifestations of gifts in terms of specific individuals, healings or helps or governments.

And so I think that what we’ve got here is a parallel fashion to what we have in Acts 6 where we have two functions listed—both being servants or ministries. The ministry of the word and the ministry of the table or of administration.

And I think that one of the reasons why some people take this list and impose a second office of elder through the government side of this is because they fail to see that the office of deacon—which is the ministry of administration, the serving of tables, etc.—is a ruling office as well.

And we’ll talk about that more in a couple of weeks when we talk about the Old Testament antecedents of the deacon. But suffice it to say that just because we have this idea of governments in the second list or rule does not mean we have to talk about elders.

Deacons rule and their particular function as well. And we’ll see that more pointedly in a couple of weeks.

But in any event, I think there’s two functional categories listed as there is in Acts 6. That’s the pre-eminent passage where the seven are selected by the apostles and set aside for the ministry of the table. You’ve got ministry of the word. You’ve got ministry of the table and administration in that sense—the sorts of things in the church.

It’s important to see we’re not talking here about one group being servants and the other ones being rulers. See, that’s not the idea. Both of them are servants. That’s what a minister is. He’s a servant of God first and then of man as God directs him to.

And both deacons and elders are servants. But the method of their service or their ministry is different. The elder has a service primarily oriented to the word and prayer. The deacon has the service of tables, individual helps, and governments to people. And I think that functional differentiation is made in 1 Corinthians 12 as well.

Four, there are two functions of rule and word combined in Hebrews 13:7. In Hebrews 13:7, we read, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God.”

So what I’m saying here is if there’s a differentiation between rule and word here, the scriptures in Hebrews 13:7 clearly puts them together in juxtaposition one next to the other indicating one office that has two functions. You can look at ruling and the word, but they’re combined together.

And you remember that should remind you hopefully of last week in Exodus 18. Remember we talked about the heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands and the judges that were set up. But remember we said that they really had two functions—they judged through teaching the word of God. Remember we said that Moses and they would come to him and he would teach them the word of God and administer judicial justice in the cases that required it. But that the whole process is really an examination of the word of God, how it relates to a specific problem.

And so these two functions of rule and word are combined in Exodus 18 and the person of Moses. Because they’re combined in the person of Moses, we assume then from the text they’re combined in his representatives at the lower levels—the judges, the heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands. And then you see the same thing in Hebrews 13:7 that in the eldership we also have rule and word combined together.

And so we don’t have two separate offices. We have the functions of ruling and word normally combined. Although men may as it turns out in a given congregation exercise one gift more than another gift because of natural abilities and giftings from God.

Five, salutation to churches list only two officers. Philippians 1:1. When the officers of the church are greeted in Philippians 1:1, they are indicated to be of two types, not three or more.

That passage reads in Philippians 1:1: “Paul and Timothy, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons.”

And so we have a salutation here to a group of people—to the church at Philippi. And the church is greeted by way of greeting also the office bearers in the church. And we don’t have greetings to the teaching elders, the ruling elders, and the deacons. We have greetings to the bishop, the overseer, the teaching elder, ruling elder combined into one office, and the deacon.

And so if we had three offices, we’d expect to see that salutation to three specific offices. We don’t. It’s two.

Sixth, two office. I believe the two office position is foreshadowed in the Old Testament. While the Old Testament has many officers whose functions are fulfilled in the two offices of the New Testament, yet there also is an Old Testament foreshadowing, I believe, of these of the two office position.

Now, let’s turn for a minute here to—this is not necessarily readily apparent what’s going on in Deuteronomy 1, but let’s turn to Deuteronomy 1, which we looked at last week a little bit.

And remember we went through this: the govern the Old Testament office consideration. I really struggled with this as I was doing my studies trying to figure out what Moses was talking about in Deuteronomy 1, verses 12 following.

Remember the reason why Moses selects the officers that he selects here that he discusses is because God had multiplied them. And so it’s when we have multiplication, it’s when we have blessing from God that we run into problems. And those problems are opportunity for increased service. And if we handle those problems correctly, then we continue to be blessed by God.

You see that in Acts 6. By the way, it’s because of the large number of converts that we had the problem with administration of food. The problem is taken care of through the ordaining to office of seven deacons. And then as a result of that, it goes on right in the text to say that the word of God multiplied and many priests became obedient to the faith.

And so you’ve got blessing from God test. You pass the test successfully according to his word. You get evaluated correctly and you get blessed some more.

Well, that’s what’s going on here. And so Moses describes what happened. He says in verse 15: “I took the chief of your tribes, wise men and known, and made them heads over you.”

And remember, we pointed out there that though the King James translates one set “chief” and the other “head,” it’s the same Hebrew word. So I took your heads and I made them heads. We talked about that before.

“Captains over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and officers among your tribes.”

And this little phrase, “and officers among your tribes,” bothered me for the longest time when I was studying this out because he didn’t make officers at the tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. No indication of that in the text.

What Moses is doing here, I am convinced at this point in time—until you can show me otherwise if you’re not convinced—is he’s taking two events that happened in the wilderness and bringing them together in one account. He’s taking the obviously the heads of the tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands from Exodus 18, which we looked at last week. But he’s also taking a set of occurrences from Numbers 11 when they were in the wilderness and they grumbled because of food.

And when they grumbled because of the food problems, they add. Moses goes to God and says, “I can’t bear them.” God says, “Take seventy of their elders, officers over them.” Same term used here, officers. And put them in office.

So Moses takes seventy men who had served the congregation in Egypt. Remember we said that there was functioning going on in terms of office then. And he or he sets them aside to be the seventy who are going to assist him with what? With the administration of the food. That was the whole problem in Numbers 11.

Moses does that. God then takes of the spirit upon Moses and puts it upon the seventy. You remember there were two men back in camp who prophesied even though they weren’t with the 68.

Well, the point is that here for a specific problem, God again because of blessing and multitude and a lot of people and then they grumble and complain, God gives them a solution. The seventy officers, and there’s our administrators.

So in Deuteronomy 1, we have Numbers 11 plus Exodus 18 and Moses says, “I said were you heads of tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands and I also gave you officers.” And those are the two separate offices that are described in Deuteronomy 1.

And that’s a foreshadowing, is what I’m suggesting, of what happens in the New Testament when we have elders and deacons. Okay?

Judges and officers or administrators of food again. And we’ll talk about the correlations between Numbers 11 and Acts 6 in a couple of weeks when we discuss deacons.

But for now, I wanted to give you that background.

And then we read in Deuteronomy 16:18: “Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes, they shall judge the people with just judgment.”

So in Deuteronomy 16:18, this one-time establishment of officers and judges described by Moses from the wilderness wanderings is perpetualized in all the towns. In Deuteronomy 16:18, he says, “Two officers you’re going to have in your each town, a judge and an officer—a head of tens, fifties, thousands as it were—and a shofar.” That’s the Hebrew word there—an administrator.

Okay. And so we have in the Old Testament these two offices that are singled out or two functions that resulted in offices from the wilderness then perpetualized as they go into the promised land.

And I believe that’s a foreshadowing of the fact that as we go into the New Testament promised land—as it were—as the gospel is preached forward and as the world is conquered for Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel in the book of Acts and each of the towns there, we see first the setting up of elders, but then we also see eventually the setting up of deacons.

And so in all your churches as they grow and are multiplied, you’re going to have judges and officers—elders and deacons.

And so the two office position, I believe, is foreshadowed in the Old Testament.

And then finally, there’s only two ordinations in the New Testament. And again, most reformed churches today that believe in a three office position have three types of ordination. You ordain people to be deacons. You ordain people to be ruling elders and you ordain people to be teaching elders.

But that is not biblical. There are only two sorts of ordinations. Paul ordains elders and the apostles ordained deacons through the imposition of laying on of hands. Which by the way correlates to that spirit being taken from Moses being put on the seventy.

And so with the imposition of your hand, you indicate that God’s hand is upon that person—God’s hand of blessing and empowerment for that particular position. The spirit as it were is not physically communicated through the magic of laying on of hands, but rather it’s pictured through the imposition of hands which represent God’s laying the hand and power upon that person.

But there’s only two types of ordination talked about in the New Testament. I give the references there.

And so for all these reasons, I think it’s quite clear that the New Testament only teaches a two office position. Although within each of those offices, you’re going to have specialization of function.

Even within the office of deacon, you know, we’re moving to the specialization of function where one deacon will be in charge of financial affairs or the keeping of the books. Another will be in charge of conferences and this sort of thing. Another deacon will be primarily in charge of benevolences.

Does that mean that they won’t have interaction amongst all these issues? No. It just is a specialization of function as people exercise the particular gifts and abilities that God gives them.

And certainly you’re going to have that in the eldership as well. Some men who are called, definitely selected by God to be elders, may not have a necessarily a calling to be teaching all the time. On the other hand, I think that all elders should be able to teach and would normally in some way teach both corporately and individually in the context of the body.

Okay. I said we’d touch briefly upon the Reformation and the number of offices seen in it. You got to remember you read about Calvin believing in four or five offices. You got to remember there that the context that Calvin was coming out of up to the time of the Reformation—the Catholic Church had a big priestley distinction, clergy laity distinction.

And so what the reformers did in essence was to return to the New Testament concept of elders—of course foreshadowed in the offices of the Old Testament which we’ll talk about—but they what they were doing is moving back to a more biblical position of asserting the divine office of elder. Okay? That’s the context they had the Roman system, the Roman Catholic system which had become really gone far away from the scriptures. They were trying to move it back to a scriptural position.

It’s kind of like communion. You know, we talked about the fact that the reformers tried to move communion to more frequency than just once a year. And but Calvin who wanted communion every week like we do in this church, couldn’t do it. Things don’t happen overnight. We don’t believe in revolution. We believe in reconstruction and gradual growth.

And so Calvin went to quarterly or I think some places monthly communion.

And so I think that the context of this—the multi-office position of some of the reformers—must be seen in that light. They were reinstating the biblical office of elder. Calvin specifically had twelve elders ordained in Geneva to act with the six sitting ministers as the spiritual counselor council to meet together in session. Those twelve elders were given specific geographic locations of the city to be in charge of the spiritual oversight of, and so he tried to reinstitute the office of elder. And as I said, they would then sit with the ministers in the spiritual council—the eighteen of them together.

Now I think that what happened then is that many of the current reformed churches got stuck, as it were, with the temporary reforms made in terms of the Reformation that’s seen clearly in communion. None of the reformers moved very successfully back to weekly communion, and as a result, the Reformed churches got stuck in quarterly communion for some odd reason.

Things happen like that a lot of times. Change that starts to happen in a positive direction then gets stifled and frozen at a particular place. We talked about that last week relative to the three forms of polity that came out of the Reformation and then things got stuck there instead of saying, “Oh yeah, let’s discuss this. Let’s move together towards some more union and realize that we all have elements of the truth and we’re all missing some elements of the truth.”

The same thing is true in terms of communion. And I think it’s also true in terms of the church offices. The reformers moved toward more of a biblical concept of the primitive eldership in the New Testament church. And I think that we see today a movement in that same direction.

So there’s much discussion about two offices versus three offices and attempt to recover the two office position taught seemingly very clearly in the New Testament.

That’s one reason why the name of the church here is Reformation Covenant Church as opposed to Reformed Covenant Church. Nothing against the reformed churches today. It’s just that many of them have tended to solidify at a particular place and we wanted our heritage to the Reformation to be clearly in the name of the church.

Our intention here is to work in terms of the Reformation continuing in America today. One of the mottos of the Reformed Church was: a reformed church always reforming. And it’s very important to see that is the case.

It’s just like in our own lives. We’re reformed now. And because we’re reconstructed and reformed, it doesn’t mean we stop. It means we continue to reexamine our lives according to the scriptures and root out the sin and autonomy that is there and only becomes revealed by God graciously to us in degrees as we can move toward eradication of it and move on into perfection.

Obviously, we never come to completion. We’re a reformed people, always reforming, always discovering more sin in our lives that needs to be corrected and tamed to the Holy Spirit and under the jurisdiction of God’s holy word. And so, the church should be that way as well.

Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about reforming biblical eldership then and what the scriptures teach us the elders do.

First, the functions of the elders here, I’m going to list them in terms of Old Testament antecedents. Antecedent is a big word. It just means those that went before. And so, first of all, as an example, the elders are heads of the households of faith.

And in that sense, the image—as it were—or mirror the elders of the Old Testament who were specifically heads of familial groupings. Okay, the elders in the Old Testament—the word meant, act—well, there’s some debate about what the word meant, but it definitely meant an older person who was head of a specific household unit. Even the oldness wasn’t really the primary qualification there. It said he was head of that particular family that made him an elder.

I do think the word has some origins back to the idea of being having a beard—the specific Hebrew word. And that’s a good uh thing to keep in mind.

I guess I can say this morning—but since Roy isn’t here, I was as I was thinking of this idea of the Old Testament elder being head of a family and the New Testament older elder being head of the new house of faith that the scriptures teach about in the passages I’ve listed for you there in Galatians and Ephesians—that in a way, I don’t want to make this too much, but in a way we have uh the two offices somewhat being represented in the family offices that we have as well.

We have a father and a mother in the church. I don’t mean at all to imply that deacons are supposed to be the mother image of this, but it is interesting that in terms of the family you do have two officers at the head of the family as well. And there are this differentiation of function in terms of administration and rule and teaching.

Please don’t represent that to Roy when he comes back. Misrepresent that to Roy. in any of that the—as I said the passages list that household function of the New Testament.

We’ve talked about this before: that the scriptures indicate that in the New Testament times there will be contention between the natural family and the spiritual family. We’ve talked about that before. I think what it means, and we have the scriptures using the term elder is two things. One, as we said last week, the authority of the government of the church has to grow out of household government.

The households are the basic unit and the division—the basic model, as it were, for the government of church and state. And so the families must be supported.

On the other hand, we do have the concept of a new family in the church—an extended family, as it were, of all the individual families that come together to comprise it. And the elders are heads of that family the way that the elders were head of the specific physical family in the Old Testament.

We have here, for instance, the fact that the Passover feast was administered by heads of households specifically in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, communion is administered by the elders—the extended family head of the extended household. And in this, the elders manifest the fatherhood of God.

And it is a great privilege, of course, that in each of our families, we have God’s title of father given to us as we are fathers in our families. And so elders of the church also represent the fatherhood of God in that sense. And it means they have tremendous responsibility to carry out their tasks in much the same way that the elder of a household would—with prayer, as we would with our own children—diligently with great care and sensitivity and love that must characterize the role of the elder in the church.

Secondly, the elder rules in church court cases the way that the judge did in Old Testament times.

Again, we talked last week about Exodus 18 and Ruth 4. We have specifically the selection of a number of elders to sit as witnesses in a court case, as it were, relative to the and redeemer—the failure to redeem Ruth and so or rather the failure of the man to do his work in terms of fulfilling the household there in terms of Naomi and Ruth.

So Ruth 4:1 we have elders ruling. We have the judges selected in Exodus 18 that we talked about, and then we have a correlation to all that in Acts 15 which we talked about again last week to a certain degree. Then in Acts 15 we have the church council meeting—apostles and elders come together and make authoritative decisions for churches that are not necessarily even represented at that particular council in Jerusalem.

And so the elders rule in church court cases and that rule has authority and weight.

Now it’s important to recognize that authority and again in Acts 15 does not say that this was the decision of the apostles with their apostolic authority. Rather, it’s quite clearly the apostles and the elders who make this decision—not the congregation approving as well that were there—the heads of households, as it were.

Now in terms of the elders rule in the local church, I want to make a brief comment here about contumacy or contempt of church court and how very important that is to consider. In 2 Chronicles 19:11, we read that Amariah the chief priest is over you in all matters of the Lord and Zebadiah the son of Ishmael, the ruler of the house of Judah, for all the king’s matters. Okay?

And so in 2 Chronicles 19:11, we have a clear text that there’s this separation of church and state courts, as it were. And you’ve got the priest and the ruler in terms of matters pertaining to God and matters pertaining to the king. And so these things are differentiated here.

There are two systems of courts clearly taught in the Old Testament.

Bearing that in mind, in Deuteronomy 17 and following, we read that if there’s a case that becomes difficult and it’s taken to the priest and the Levite who’s sitting at the time, in verse 9: “Thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites and unto the judges that shall be in those days and inquire and they shall show thee the sentence of judgment. And thou shalt do according to the sentence which they of that place which the Lord shall choose shall show thee according to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee.”

And by the way, we there have also the two functions of the teaching of God’s law and the ruling going on together in that passage, don’t we? It says that they’ll teach thee and according to the judge which they shall tell thee, instruct thee in, and then compel you in terms of a binding court decision. “Thou shalt do these things. Thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall show unto thee to the right hand, nor to the left.

And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth and minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge—the two systems here represented again, either one—that man shall die, and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel, and all the people shall hear and fear and do no more, do no more presumptuously.”

By the way, that text, verse 13 of Deuteronomy 17, is an excellent biblical text for the idea that deterrence—that capital punishment is a deterrence to crime. God clearly tells us that in this passage of scripture.

The point I’m trying to get you to see here is that contempt of church court—failure to abide by a decision of either the civil magistrate or the ecclesiastical magistrate—is a capital offense according to the scriptures because it’s a challenging of the very authority of God and that authority is as administered through church or through state.

And it’s like putting yourself outside of all rule and authority when you refuse to abide by the authorities that God has in his providence given to you. And so is a great a great sin. And that is why contempt—and contempt of church court—has been seen in the past as a treasonable offense in terms of the state and to be, if, and should be, and had the punishment of the sword—capital punishment—put to it.

And in terms of court affairs in the church, contumacy or contempt to church court is an offense that calls for excommunication. And in this way, the elder is judged—fulfills his role as manifesting God’s judgment in the covenant community.

Third, the elder teaches and prays, and in this he images the Levite from the Old Testament.

In Deuteronomy 33:10, we read—33:8-10—we read of the various tribes and what they’ll be doing according to Moses is the song of witness. Again, in Deuteronomy 33:8, he talks about Levi. And he tells, he prophesies here that Levi’s specific function in verse 10:

“They shall teach Jacob thy judgments in Israel thy law. They shall put incense before thee and whole burnt sacrifices upon thine altar. Bless, oh Lord, his substance, and accept the work of his hands. Smite through the loins of them that rise against him and of them that hate him, that they rise not again.”

Again, the authority of God’s levitical structure was talked about in terms of these punishments of those that would rise up against them. But the important thing I want you to see here is that essentially the Levitical tribe is said to do two things in verse 10: to teach and to put incense before God.

And we read from the book of Revelation when we started this morning about the vials, the odors, the incense that goes up before God on the part of the elders. That’s the prayers that they offer. The New Testament makes it clear that the sacrifice of the New Testament is prayer. It’s what we do with our lips. And so the Levites of the Old Testament were had two functions: to teach and to pray.

And in correlary fashion, so the elders have the two functions of teaching and praying.

There are two parallel passages that are very important for this matter and another matter relative to elders we’ll talk about in a couple of weeks—from 2 Chronicles 31 and Acts 6.

2 Chronicles 31—times of Hezekiah the Levitical order had fallen into disuse of the law. The tithe was no longer being exercised and so the Levites had gone out and gotten regular jobs. And one of the first things Hezekiah does, he commands the people that dwell in Jerusalem to give the portion of the priests and the Levites. For what reason? That they might be encouraged in the law of the Lord. That’s a new King James translation. New American Standard says that they might devote themselves to the law of the Lord.

The Levites are to be provided for through the tithe that they might devote themselves to the study of God’s word.

Similarly, in Acts 6, the apostles come together. There’s a problem with tables and they say, “It’s not fit for us to wait on tables. We’ll have a separate office here which becomes known as the diaconate office—to administer the same way that they had administrators in the Old Testament.

Verse 4 of Acts 6, the apostles say we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word. The very two functions that are outlined in Deuteronomy 33:10 of the Levites.

And see, obviously this correlation of the Old Testament Levite and the New Testament apostle and elder. I’ve listed some passages there showing that the apostles were also elders. And so we have in Acts 6 elders and deacons in the form of the apostles and the seven.

The point I’m trying to get you to see is that as the tithe was to set aside the Levites to study the word of God and the Levites were specifically commanded in Deuteronomy 33:10 to devote themselves to teaching the word of God and to the giving up of incense and sacrifices. So in the New Testament, we have the apostles saying, “We’re going to devote ourselves to the study of God’s word and to pray.”