Dennis Tuuri

give God worship, make confession of their sins, and God raises them back up to life. It is always used as an opportunity for God to instruct his people with a word from that heavenly perspective from the throne room in heaven to take with us into all of life and to speak forth into the nations. So the sermon fits into worship in that context. It is a command word from our king of kings. It is really in a very real sense the outworking of the worship which we give him this day—a command to use that worship and to worship him in all things that we do by preaching forth his word and applying it in our lives.

Please stand then for the sermon scripture which is from 1 Thessalonians 5:12 and 13. 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13: “And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves.”

This is used last week. We didn’t finish with this material. We’re basically going to finish it up today and draw some applications or implications from the text that we studied more exegetically last week. And so that’s why the outline kind of reflects that. The first part is now squinched up. You’ll notice the second part has been expanded a little bit more. And that kind of shows the general direction of what we’re going to do.

Just so you’ll be able to stay with me through this, I’m going to review last week’s first two portions—first two major items on the outline. We’ll review that in a minute here very briefly and then we’ll go on to spend more time applying that third point of the second point, sub-point C under section two—essentially looking at the explicit command of the scripture regarding the correct valuing of church authorities.

This is part two of last week’s sermon essentially. We will then clarify some statements I made last week about function and form under outline 3a for the church, point 1, and then we’ll continue going through the rest of that outline.

So first we’ll have kind of an overview of what we read and talked about last week just to remind you of the context for making application from this text. One thing I wanted to mention—it’s kind of always nice when I don’t really finish with the sermon as I did last week—and in the providence of God I’ll speak to that later perhaps, but it’s interesting in God’s providence how that message became necessary to go over to this week and how that’s a good thing.

But in any event, I can go back and look at my notes and see if I really communicated correctly. And one of the things that I didn’t really explain, I don’t think, about the object lesson I used last week to start the sermon—remember the long pole? It’s easier to watch the top of the pole instead of the bottom if you’re going to try to balance it on the end of your finger. And remember I was saying that the application of that—the way I’m using that illustration—is that the second tablet requirements, the commandments number 6 through 10 (some people say 5-10, okay? But I say 6 through 10, whatever)—but those portions of the Ten Commandments that talk about our relationships with one another, that how we can sin against each other—theft, murder, etc.—those are indicators of an incorrect, really, obedience to the first set of commandments. How we’re to love God with all our heart, soul, might, and strength.

So if we’re loving God correctly, the second tablet will also be performed correctly. And when we fail to do those second half of the Ten Commandments and the case law requirements of us, it’s an indicator that God gives to us to go back also to reexamine our relationship to him. What I essentially the object lesson is then—that if this is the pole meeting my finger, is where I’m focusing upon the person of God, and the end of the pole is where I’m focusing upon my inner relationships with other people—here’s how I kind of make sense of this illustration.

When you try to look at the stick—and I’m not sure this is true scientifically why it’s easier to actually follow the top—but I think this has something to do with it. If you look at the bottom where the stick meets your finger, and you try to maintain, you know, a 90° angle here between your finger and the stick, it’s hard to see minor variations when that stick is a little off center. By the time you notice them, it’s too late to get your finger in place.

Now, at the end of that stick though, if that angle is a little bit off at where the base—extrapolating it out—it’s easy to see how a little bit of difference here becomes a very big difference at the end of this tall stick. And so it’s real easy to see errors in how your finger is meeting up to the bottom of that stick in terms of the angle.

And I guess that’s what I’m saying about these requirements of 1 Thessalonians 5—the second half of the chapter—many of them having to do with how we’re to relate to one another. It’s easy to see if we do not do that, how really we’re not honoring God correctly either. In terms of the material of last week and this week—valuing church authorities—and we’ll get into family authorities as well. If we’re not doing that correctly, it’s because we’re not really properly evaluating the authority of God in our lives or valuing it rather. It really shows an area of rebellion against the ultimate authority that all these other things in church, state, and family are pictures of God’s authority over our lives.

So I wanted to sort of make that point that the extrapolation helps us to see our errors.

Now, basically in the text that we’ve just read, church authorities are described. They’re described first as those who do three things: who labor, preside, and admonish. Or Lensky says those who toil, preside, and train. Those who toil—and the word there, remember we said—those who engage in self-sacrificial toil. The word means in its root meaning to be cut. And by way of application to work, it is not just any old work. It is enfeebeling work. Work that makes you weaker or more feeble.

And so church leadership is described in this passage as those who engage in self-sacrificial toil—toil that costs them something. Okay? Toil that makes them hurt so to speak and become weaker—not in a physical sense necessarily, but you understand the correlation.

Secondly, those church authorities are described as those who take—the point was the way I described it. The word here means literally to stand before people—that is to feed them, by implication to care for them, to protect them, and to guide them. The word is not used frequently. It is not used in its Greek usage of an official function. There are other words where if Paul had used the word meaning explicitly of a title to an office, a manager, an overseer—this word has more the connotation of the function involved as opposed to a title for the office. And so it’s kind of an informal term, but it’s very important term with this sense of to go before, to be the point man, to take the necessary hits if you have to guard the flock or to guard your family or whatever it is, and also to lead, guide, and train them.

That aspect of training is further evidenced in the third basic thing that church leaders are called in this text, and that is those who admonish you. In the text in 1 Thessalonians 5, and we said that this word essentially means to equip and challenge others to obedience. I might say to equip and challenge others to make corrections toward obedience.

Remember, we spent some time on this word last week because this is the word nouthetic in the Greek that becomes then the basis for Jay Adams’ use of the term nouthetic counseling, and literally it means to put somebody in mind of something. The New English Bible translates admonish as counsel. Now it’s interesting because the word counsel, I think, has root implications in the English to call together, to talk over a matter that needs correcting. So that’s real good in terms of the way Mr. Adams and others understand this word in the Greek and its application in the New Testament.

You call somebody together with you either one-on-one or in a group setting and you discuss matters, you teach them from the scriptures to the end that something become corrected in their life. So the concept to admonish means to put the sense into it, but it has the implication that there’s a problem that’s being addressed.

Remember we said that J. Adams says essentially this word—nouthetically counsel—has three necessary elements to it. First, it indicates a need for a change in the person that you are counseling or admonishing or exhorting. There’s something wrong that needs to be fixed.

Secondly, it is fixed specifically by word, by verbal interchange. And of course, by using the word of God. Remember, we distinguished it from paideia—to train somebody—not explicit instruction so much, but more through physical actions, the way you could train a dog, for instance. Probably a real poor analogy. The other word for teaching in the scriptures means to teach by the giving of intellectual knowledge. I give you encyclopedias worth of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects—the impartation of knowledge that doesn’t have to do directly with a problem in your life. That’s more of a formalized teaching. This word is distinguished by saying there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. That problem is then addressed through teaching, and that teaching has a verbal aspect that is primary to it.

Then the third thing that Adams says about this particular meaning of nouthetic counseling or this meaning of this word and what the scriptures mean is that the purpose of this is not to shame somebody or to make them feel bad, but rather to get them to move in a positive direction of blessing in terms of God’s blessing toward them.

Paul says to, for instance, the Corinthians, he says, “I don’t share these things. I don’t write these things to you. I don’t admonish you. I don’t counsel you. You could say, ‘To shame you,’ but rather to confront nouthetically as my beloved children.” It is Paul’s compassion and desire to help them that leads him to this admonishment. And so it is a good thing.

So those who are in authority, who do these three things in terms of the church at Thessalonica—now Paul’s purpose is not mostly to give a description such as we just given, but rather to say that when you have people in the congregation who do this, then you are supposed to honor them. He says, “We beseech you, brethren, to know them that do these things.” And then he says in verse 13, “to esteem them very highly, for their work’s sake.”

So he tells them he wants them to acknowledge those who do these things—to look for those who are doing these things in the local congregation, to acknowledge them, to say yes, they’re doing that—and then secondly to esteem them very highly for their work’s sake. And you remember we said that word means—it means to esteem, to appreciate abundantly, out of all means beyond all measure—it’s a very intense word, combination of several words kind of put together here. Finley called it a triple Pauline intensive meaning beyond, exceedingly, abundantly. That’s how much you’re supposed to esteem these people who work in the context of the congregation.

And we drew some societal application for that. One of the reasons you do that is because we need leaders. It’s God’s means—leaders in local churches, leaders in families, and really eventually also leaders in the civil magistrate in the civil government. We need godly men in these places for society and culture to progress and for the kingdom to be manifested in a greater and greater fashion in the world.

And we said that the key to understanding this kind of abundant esteem for officers or fathers or whoever it is—that God himself is the one that we’re supposed to esteem above all others. Ephesians 3:20—that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we think he can do or above all that we will ask. God does these things. We’re really esteeming him as we esteem those authorities.

And then just noting—we’ll go back to this in a minute—but he says to esteem them very highly for their work, for the sake of their work, not for—he doesn’t stress here their position. He doesn’t stress positional esteem, but rather he stresses the esteem for their actual labor itself, what they’re doing.

Okay, that’s basically review of last week and prepares us then to go on now and to pick this up and stress a little bit now for a couple of minutes this concept of esteeming them very highly. And to spend a little time understanding this and talking about it a little bit.

We said last week that to esteem very highly means, among other things of course, to obey them according to Hebrews 13:17—to submit to them, to pray for them from other portions of scripture we talked about last week. Submission, prayer—it changes the way we speak about church officers.

1 Timothy says, “Rebuke not an elder but rather entreat him as a father.” You treat him differently with your words, with your thoughts, with your actions. You esteem him very highly, which has an effect then, because it is in love, on your actions. You’re to be kind, useful, and patient in a heightened sense toward church officers.

1 Timothy 5:19: “Against an elder, receive not an accusation, but upon the testimony of two or three witnesses.” And so a high form of receiving negative testimony about an elder is also implied in the text.

Now I want to quote a little bit from Chrysostom—St. John Chrysostom, John of the golden tongue they called him—from his homily on this portion of scripture. And I won’t read the whole thing, obviously—well, actually it’s not that long, but I won’t read it all. But he basically starts his homily on this portion of scripture by talking by showing some correlation between those who have oversight functions in the church—doctors—and with fathers.

And he says, you know, doctors, you know, it can be pretty tough sometimes esteeming your doctor highly because he hurts you and this kind of thing. And he gives you medicines that are not nice to take, etc. And fathers with your children—the same way. You know, it’s difficult for the children to submit to them. Sometimes they can be harsh. They can do things that hurt in the short term but are good for you long term.

But he says that it’s even worse than these cases. These cases show us the need for this instruction because it’s a difficult thing to submit to any authority and certainly in the church as well. But he said, “At least if you’re going to the doctor, you’ve got a reason for going. You’ve identified some problem. You’re going there and at least your friends and relatives are saying, ‘Yeah, submit to that doctor.’

“And with children, you’ve seen they really have no place to get out of the relationship. So they have to kind of correct their attitude. But in a church, it’s particularly difficult sometimes to submit to those rulers over you when perhaps your family members don’t even support you in the faith or that others don’t support you, don’t support you’re being involved in that particular church or whatever.”

So he says that in terms of church officers is particularly different, and he goes on to say that this is particularly so, and he—I’ll begin quoting now from Chrysostom. He says, “If I say, for instance,” and he’s saying if I speak now exhortatively to the congregation or to individuals, he says, “If I say, ‘Chastise thine anger, quench thy wrath, check thine inordinate desires, cut off the small portion of thy love of luxury.’ All is burdensome and offensive to the church members.”

He says, “And if I should punish one who is slothful or should remove him from the church or exclude him from the public prayers, he grieves not because he is deprived of these things, but because of the public disgrace. For this is an aggravation of the evil that, being interdicted from spiritual things, we grieve not on account of our own deprivation of these great blessings, but rather because of our disgrace in the sight of others. We do not shudder at, do not dread the thing itself.”

And he says, “For this reason, then Paul says, ‘Honor these men highly, esteem them highly.’ In other words, esteem their corrections as well, so that you will come to the point when you’re chastised or admonished or exhorted in a particular area. You’ll come to correction instead of just feeling publicly disgraced. You’ll focus upon that disease that is within you that the position of the soul of your soul is trying to get you to come to correction for.”

And so he says that because of that tendency to not do that, Paul has to remind them again and again of the need of this. Indeed, our Savior—remember he told them, we had it read in the communion talks a couple of months ago. He said, “You know, those who sit in Moses’ seat, do what they instruct you in terms of the word of God. Respect them. Value their teaching highly. Don’t do like they do when they break God’s law, but respect their authority that God has placed them in.”

And you remember when he healed a man, he said, “Go present the offering to the priest which is required in the law”—a way of respecting that office and that function that God had given under the old dispensation of the sacramental system.

So Chrysostom says it’s very important that we see the necessity of doing this. He goes on to say this. He says, “If a man stand up for thee before a man, thou doest anything. Thou confess thyself much indebted. But he stands up for thee before God and thou does not own the favor.”

In other words, he’s saying if you were in a conflict with another man and somebody came up and stood up for your character—this happened just yesterday actually. Mr. Cyprian interpreted one of the questions and answers at the end of the day to be casting perhaps a negative slant at Reformation Covenant. I’m not sure it was intended that way, but that’s how he interpreted it. And so he began to defend then our church and me individually as well in terms of this church wants godly husbands for their daughters, etc.

Well, see, when you see a man coming to your defense that way, you certainly will esteem him highly. When a man speaks up for you—and he says, “Your pastor, you have to remember, those rulers that God has placed over you stands up for you on a regular basis in terms of God, the way Moses did for his people in the wilderness that God had entrusted to him.”

He goes on to say, “And does he not stand up for thee?” Thus he says, “And how, you might say, does he stand up for me? Because he prays for thee, because he ministers to thee the spiritual gifts, that is, by baptism. He visits, he advises, and admonishes thee. He comes at midnight if thou callest for him. He is nothing else than the constant subject of thy mouth, and he bears thy injunction, thy injurious speeches.”

So he’s saying that if you think about what your elders, your leaders do for you, it’ll help you to correct a lot of times the complaining and the carping against leadership that can frequently happen in the context of a church.

He goes on to say that he doesn’t merely say love in terms of church officers but love very highly as children love their fathers. Chrysostom says, “For through them you are begotten by the eternal generation. Through them you have obtained the kingdom. Through their hand all things are done. Through them the gates of heaven are open to you. Let no one raise divisions. Let no one be contentious. He who loves Christ, whatever the priest may be, will love him, because through him he has obtained the awful mysteries.”

“Tell me, if wishing to see a palace resplendent with much gold and radiant with the brightness of precious stones, thou couldest find him that had the key and he being called upon immediately opened it and admitted thee within, wouldest thou not prefer him above all men? Wouldest thou not love him so dearly as in thine eyes? Wouldest thou not kiss him? This man hath opened heaven unto thee, and thou does not kiss him, nor pay him court.

“If thou hast a wife, dost thou not love him above all who procured her for thee? So if thou love Christ, if thou lovest the kingdom of heaven, acknowledge through whom thou obtainest it. On this account, he says, ‘for their work’s sake, be at peace with them.’”

Now he ends there by citing the next portion of the verse—verse 13—”be at peace among yourselves,” and I think he’s wrong in actually attributing that part of the verse to the elders, but you get the point. Chrysostom says if you begin to think upon what these individuals who are called to office in the local church perform for you and trying to open up heavenly blessings from the word of God to you, will indeed esteem them very highly and correct your sinfulness to do so. And so that may be of some help.

Additionally, the catechisms—the two that are most frequently used in this church—the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Catechism—both speak to this basic obligation under the Fifth Commandment. What Paul is instructing here is an application of the Fifth Commandment in terms of the church itself.

In the Heidelberg Catechism, Question 104, “What does God require in the Fifth Commandment?” Answer: “That I should show all honor, love, and faithfulness to my mother and father and to all in authority over me.” Catechisms always saw in the Fifth Commandment in terms of mother and father a relationship to all functional superiors, all those in authority over me.

Catechism goes on to say, “Submit myself with due obedience to all their good instruction and correction, and also bear patiently with their infirmities, acknowledging the mother and father, church leaders, state leaders, all will have infirmities and shortcomings. You’re to bear with them. That’s part of your love for them that we just read of in 1 Thessalonians 5. Since it is God’s will to govern us by their hand.”

And there’s the key. Of course, it’s God who is governing you by their hand. You may not like your parents. You may not like your church authorities. You may not like your civil magistrates. But to the extent that God has placed them there, you understand that God is ruling through them.

Now, 1 Thessalonians 5 says, “For their work’s sake.” And he says that the degree to which you’re going to honor your parents will actually in fact change some depending upon how honorable they are. And so if your church authorities or state authorities don’t honor God by their actions, you’re not going to esteem them as highly as you would should they be doing that. And that’s understood and taught in scripture.

Norm Jones in his workbook going through the Heidelberg Catechism says that the authorities referenced in the Fifth Commandment include those in the home, those in the school (if you’re not in home school), those in the church, the civil government, your employer, as well as the aged. Leviticus 19:32 as well as scriptures in the New Testament speak of the aged—also those who are elderly—as having this kind of respect and authority due to them.

The Westminster Catechism goes a little bit—quite a bit—beyond what we just read in the Heidelberg, and it will be very useful. I’ve done this before, but I’m going to do it again right now. We’re going to read the Westminster Catechism on the Fifth Commandment and pause a little bit as we go through some of it.

First of all, the Larger Catechism asks, “In the Fifth Commandment, why are superiors called father and mother?”

“Superiors are called father and mother both to teach them in all duties toward their inferiors like natural parents, to express love and tenderness to them according to their several relations.” So the catechism says that God actually is instructing all functional superiors here, and he calls them by the collective name father and mother, but he does that to impress upon them their need to have a tender affection toward those under their oversight or care.

He goes on to say the catechism does, and to work inferiors to a greater willingness and cheerfulness in performing their duties to their superiors as to their parents. Most children have a love for their parents. You’re supposed to take that love and see the necessity to love church officers and officers of the state and other positions in the same kind of way.

“Question 126. What is the general scope of the Fifth Commandment?”

“The general scope is the performance of those duties which we mutually owe in our several relations to as inferiors, superiors, or equals.”

And then, “What is the honor that inferiors owe to their superiors?” And this is what Paul is really getting at in 1 Thessalonians 5—the honor that inferiors functionally in the church owe to superiors functionally in the church. And so this catechism question will help us to see the application.

The catechism answers, and there are many scripture texts which we won’t go through to enforce this answer, but if you have a catechism of scripture texts you can do a personal study on if you’d like. Says, “The honor which inferiors owe to their superiors is all do reverence in heart, word, and behavior.”

Okay? Do reverence in heart—what you feel, your soul—in word, okay? What you’re going to say about people, and in behavior, your thoughts, your words, and your behavior should all be affected by the esteem that you’re to give church officers. And by way of application, parents and other officers as well.

Goes on to say, “prayer and thanksgiving for them.” Practical application of high honor for the superiors of the church. Pray for them. Prayer and thanksgiving. Let your prayers be filled with thanksgiving, particularly if you believe they’ve done good work in leading you into truth in terms of the scriptures in the kingdom.

“Imitation of their virtues and graces.” And of course, we’ve talked a lot about that earlier in First Thessalonians. Paul was the pattern for Timothy, and Timothy and Paul became the pattern for the Thessalonians. They become patterns to people throughout the region that they lived in terms of evangelism and then patterning in their lives what submission to the will of God is. And so God has placed you in that position to also have a model. And if he’s given you a model, then you ought to imitate that model in terms of their virtues and graces.

“Willing obedience to their lawful commands and councils.” That’s tough. Willing obedience to their lawful commands and councils. We live in America. We live in a country that doesn’t want any kind of commands or councils—where everybody’s a judge, you know? Everybody essentially is a law to himself. In the book of Judges, highly individualistic culture. Don’t want people telling us what to do.

And yet, and it’s interesting how God judges that culture and provides a civil state that tells us what to do in every aspect of our lives. It’s difficult to submit yourself to the commands and councils of other men, and it’s particularly, of course, all children recognize the difficulty of that in the home. They learn to do it, but then when they leave the home, the thought normally is we leave behind now functional superiors. But that’s never true. You always are in a position—all of us are—in one place or another of being a functional inferior to a functional superior, whether it’s at work, the civil arena, the church arena, whatever. And it’s difficult to humble ourselves, essentially, to receive counsel.

You know, sin is in the heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it? And frequently, when somebody comes up to us and says, “We think you got a problem in this area,” you won’t even be aware of the sin. But see, if you reject that counsel and if you say, “Well, I’m just taking off and ignoring the counsel that a church officer may give me without thinking it through and trying to be sensitive to the scriptures about it,” you’ve damned your own soul. You’ve closed your ears rather to the one who can help you to be sensitive to the sin that is so easily besets as Hebrews says, and is so hard and difficult sometimes to ferret out and to see in our own lives.

So you’re rejecting the very grace of God ministered through the church when you move away from church authorities, when you move away from the context of a body of people. Calvin said that he who leaves the church, you know, essentially leaves the primary means of sanctification to go off on your own. We’ve seen this time and time again, even in people in terms of this church, but in the greater culture and in Christian Reconstruction itself—those men who operate outside of local fellowships end up with large problems that are obvious to many, but they’ve never seen them because they’ve removed themselves from the vehicle, the group of people around to admonish, exhort, encourage, to think through things. That’s the very means of God’s sanctification—of taking out those blind spots and observing, having people observe them and bring us to correction.

To live outside of the local church is essentially to remove yourself from one of the primary means God gives us for sanctification.

Okay. “Lawful submission to their lawful commands.” It’s very important too, of course, to point out. It is their lawful commands that require submission, due submission to their corrections.

“Fidelity to defense and maintenance of their persons and authority according to their several ranks and the nature of their places.” Remember I talked about that last week. “Deference to defense and maintenance of their persons.” Remember we said that church leaders are going to be point men. They’re going to be—they’re taking hits out there at the point. That’s where I used that military example. The point man’s the first guy to get shot.

And Mr. Cyprian said yesterday, if you’re getting into counseling because you want to think there’s glory or something, forget it. If you’re going to try to work one-on-one helping people correct, you’re going to take lots of flack. You’re going to get lots of hits. And church leaders are called to do that in an intensified sense. We’re also encouraged and admonished—church leaders the more so—in an intensified sense, and they’re going to take more hits.

It’s your job, if you highly esteem them and value them and don’t want them to be blown away—blown out of the saddle—is the point man. It’s your job to come to their defense. Remember I said before—a real easy application. You hear people saying this that or the other thing about your church leaders, outside of the church, inside the church, whatever. You’re not supposed to say, “Well, gosh, I wonder what the truth here is,” and ferret it out. You’re supposed to assume your church leaders, give them the presupposition that they’re walking in fidelity to the scriptures.

Now, you may want to do some investigation. You may want to, you know, make sure you’re squared away, but I’m saying that the benefit of the doubt must be given to the officers of the church that you attend if it’s a faithful church in terms of the scriptures. And defense should be given—not just, you know, hearing these things and saying, “Well, I’ll believe, you know, my church authorities are good.” But actively, actively combating that kind of slander against their character. You have an obligation to do that if people come to you.

Obligation to defend. Okay.

“Bearing with their infirmities.” I mentioned that before. And “covering them in love.” Covering their infirmities in love. Now, again, as Mr. Cyprian pointed out, I think correctly, it doesn’t just mean forgetting them. If your church officers have problems and infirmities that need correction, your responsibility is to come alongside them then and try to help them with that problem as well. Not just sit back and talk to others about it. That’s terrible.

Go to them with their problems and infirmities. If they can be covered, ignored, great. But if they can’t and need the atoning work of Jesus Christ—if you have a sin problem that hasn’t been repented of by leadership—you have an obligation to come alongside them privately, of course, and help them to see that in their own lives so that they may be in honor to them and to their governments.

Okay, so that’s one set of systematic treatment of the scriptures as it relates to this particular scripture—actually in terms of honoring it—would be very helpful to you. You could take that Westminster Catechism, the Larger Catechism I just read, and make a checklist for yourself and ask yourself on a regular basis: Am I praying for? Am I thanking God for church officers? Am I trying to defend their character? Am I trying to, you know, support them and submit to their corrections, etc.?

The application is obvious. Okay, so that’s one way to kind of move this into more of a practical application—how to apply this text in your life.

Okay. And this is all essentially still under the second point of the outline—the responsibility. And we’ll go down to the third point—clarifications or, excuse me, implications from the text for the church for officer selection, function versus form.

I mentioned this some last week. I just want to make sure you understand what I’m trying to say and what I’m not trying to say. I am not trying to say here, with the statements that I made last week, that there’s no such thing as church office or that there would be a real long period in which a mission church that Paul had established would be without formal officers. I don’t know that there weren’t formal officers at Thessalonica when this epistle was written.

I think the strong indication from the text is that they were not formal officers yet and that he’s stressing their function here—not just because it’s important to stress the function, but because they really had not yet moved to elder selection. This epistle, I believe, was written quite early in the life of the Thessalonian church. They were quite young in the faith at this point in time. I think Paul wanted to come to them and strengthen them. I think one of the things he probably wanted to do was to take the men who had demonstrated their calling to service in the local church and ordained them and installed them as elders.

So I think that probably was happening. But I think it is important to see here—that you know, you can look at the qualification list in 1 Timothy 3 and say, “Well, everybody meets the qualifications, are all elders?” Uh-uh.

Because, this is by way of implication, the things we just read—those three-fold criteria of what elders do. And you can look at the correlation as we have with Acts 20, Paul’s address to the elders at Ephesus. Look at the correlation to 1 Timothy 5, which we looked at last week, to Hebrews—these are things that elders are supposed to manifest in their lives and I think should be manifesting prior to being put to office.

If a guy is not self-sacrificially toiling for the local congregation, and if he isn’t really being a point man in terms of guiding, leading, helping, instructing, caring for, etc., and if he is not getting involved with people within the congregation to admonish them, exhort them to faithfulness, equip them for the task of obedience in areas of their life—if he’s not doing that to some degree before he’s ordained as an elder—why assume that it’s going to happen after he gets ordained?

You know, I don’t think ordination, the laying on of hands, means the imposition, the transference of a more self-sacrificial attitude toward the congregation than the person had beforehand. He’s got to love the church and see it as part of his particular calling in the context of that church to self-sacrificially labor for it prior to that. And that’s one of the ways you identify those men who are called to that position.

So that’s what I was trying to stress last week: Function before form. Function before form. We’ve talked about that before. A. B. Waker—I don’t think I quoted this last week, so I will this week. “Paul has in mind the reader, the leaders who had emerged in the church on the basis of their functions within the community. He makes no appeal to persons appointed by himself.”

Now that’s kind of an argument from silence, but I think it is significant. “Paul calls on the community to recognize as their leaders precisely those people who function in such a way as to toil for them, to protect and care for them physically and materially, and to direct them ethically. So he says, you got people doing that. Well, there they are. When you get around elder selection, there they are. You should be able to identify them as such and move to selection.”

And that’s what we’re in the process of doing in this church. That’s what the church is doing in Seattle is looking for the men that manifest this. I think it’s becoming more and more obvious in the context of RCC. And I think very shortly, you know, again—I don’t want to get ahead of myself—but I think very shortly you’ll see one or two more officers being put up for consideration by people.

So I think that’s what you look for is that functioning to occur. And then what you are essentially doing then when you ordain elders is simply ordaining and formalizing what God has already brought to pass and what he has caused to occur in the context of the congregation.

Now, ordination is important, and I want to stress the function and not the form too much. Form is important, and it is important to be able to identify these people. When you have people ordained to office, then these commands we’ve just referred to—helping you think through the implications of—are very germane to what you’re supposed to do for those people. You know that I could, you know, we have church officers in this church now—four of them—and you have obligations to do those things that I’ve just spoken to you of in terms of the Fifth Commandment for those four men, no doubt. And you know that because of the form that has been instituted on the basis of the function of these men in the church.

Okay. Secondly, by implication, office description—two, not three officers. I know this is a bit technical for some of you, but it is a big question as RCC continues to develop as the church in Seattle develops.

Just briefly, within Reformed circles there are some people who take a two-office position—that is, that there are only two officers, two sets of office in the New Testament church: elders and deacons. Other Reformed people believe in three offices—that is, you have deacons, ruling elders, and teaching elders. And for instance, Samuel Miller, in his book The Ruling Elder, says the church should have at least one teaching elder and a board of ruling elders as well as deacons.

And I got a real problem with that. I just do not see in the New Testament, based upon the patterns of government of the Old Testament either, that sort of division between ruling and teaching. And here in this text, what did we just read? We read that it is those who labor really hard, who preside or rule, and who admonish nouthetically with the word of God—in other words, is what’s implied there clearly—who teach. In other words, they labor, they rule, they teach. Remember we said that the Greek says that these are not three different groups of people. This is one class of people, and they do all these things. And those guys then, I think by implication, every member in that set, so to speak, is involved to varying degrees in those functions.

Now, all of them should be laboring very self-sacrificially—some more than others—and it may be that a man may functionally not teach or counsel or admonish as much as preside and be a point man. There could be a differentiation in some degree of that function, but essentially I think that the construct here gives us simply a justification for one group of elders, not for two.

By way of helping that argument out, in 1 Timothy 5:17, we talked about this last week: “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.”

See, you have the same three elements. Those who rule well or appoint men in a good sense are worthy of double honor—particularly those who labor copiously, toiling, toiling self-sacrificially, in the word and doctrine. Now, there’s large group exhortation, there’s small group exhortation, there’s one-on-one exhortation going on. And so, again, I think that 1 Timothy 5:17 really wraps them all up together as well, just like Thessalonians does.

And so I think that this text helps us to move in the direction—it’s not as a proof, but it helps us to move in the direction—that there are only two officers in the church: deacons and elders, not three.

Third, very important implication for office performance—the priority of sacrifice. 1 Peter 5:2: “Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint but willingly, not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God’s heritage but being examples to the flock.”

And who’s the great example? Jesus Christ. Can’t get away from it. We could spend a lot of time on this, but just briefly: Paul says here to esteem these people very highly for their work. Now, there is a positional respect you’re to have for all officers—church, state, and family. All those institutions, positionally, those men deserve respect.

But Paul says to esteem, really abundantly highly, these men because of their work, not because of their position—for what they actually do. And that work is characterized in verse 12 as, as I said before, self-sacrificial labor.

And I think we see here a strong emphasis upon function, and that function being equated with hard work—self-sacrificial labor. Very important. We’ve talked about this before, but Jesus is the example. He bled first, and we come to the cross first, and we come to Christ’s sacrifice for our sins first, and then on the basis of that he instructs us, exhorts us, commands us to walk in obedience.

Any pastor, any civil magistrate, any head of a household who hasn’t demonstrated self-sacrificial love and labor for the people that he’s supposed to minister to is going to have a hard time getting people to follow him.

Okay. Office is not about the assertion of authority. Office is about the practice of hard work, as the result, leading to the real authority then you can come to people in their own lives with. And if we have a problem in America with people ignoring the counsel of pastors and teachers without excusing their sin, we probably also have an absence in America of pastors, teachers, elders, deacons, etc. who self-sacrificially work for their people and instead just want to club the sheep over the head.

Real authority is there. I don’t want to overbalance that way either, but I’m saying that this text teaches the priority of sacrifice in terms of officer performance. So it instructs us and gives us implications for the description of office, necessity for function as a priority to form, and in terms of that function, the priority of sacrifice in performance.

Okay. Now I want to draw some implications for the family, and I think it’s very important. You know, God’s word is a command word. It is there to bring us to conviction for sin and to have us move in righteousness. To the extent that we haven’t accurately obeyed or completely obeyed 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13, we have to come to confession and conviction in our own lives in terms of church officers.

But the application, as I said by way of the Fifth Commandment to parents, is important as well. We said last week, parents certainly labor self-sacrificially for their children. They’re to be—hit men or God’s hit men. Sure, that’s what you don’t want to be—as a hitman you get hit. They’re point men in terms of leading and presiding over the family and admonishing them. We looked at some scriptures last week about that.

And very importantly, in the story of Eli in 1 Samuel, when God judges him because of his two sons who were real reprobates doing lots of mean and nasty things and had no regard for God really—it says that God brought the judgment upon Eli and his sons and indeed upon the whole nation because Eli had not warned his sons. The text tells us. Jay Adams in his Competent Counselors mentions that the term warn in the Hebrew is translated in the Septuagint as this nouthetically counsel term—nouthetikos, or at least the same basic root form.

Now the Septuagint was a Greek version of the Old Testament that was in place at the time of our Lord when he came to earth, and so that was a common version of the Old Testament scriptures. It’s not inspired, but it does give us a good understanding of at least how that culture, how they interpreted the Old Testament texts, and secondly, what these Greek words mean in terms of reference back to the Old Testament. It’s a good bridge between the two testaments, between the languages between the two. Not inspired, can be an error, but I think here it very significantly and probably appropriately says that if Eli had admonished—nouthetically counseled—his children, the failure to do that rather was why God was bringing judgment upon his sons and upon himself and upon the nation.

Remember the ark itself went into captivity at this time. We’ll get back to that a little later. Eli’s sons died in battle, and Eli heard of it, and he was and killed upon hearing the news. He fell and died.

So we know we’re going to have a baptism here, and we’re going to ask the couple if they agree and intend to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Admonition—the same basic concept—to train. You know, our kids have problems. They’re born, you know, in total rebellion against God. Unless God can’t miraculously regenerate in the womb (he did with John the Baptist), but most children, as Bob Dylan said, they come out. They are stone cold dead as I stepped out of the womb. That’s how kids come to us. Okay?