Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript

Sermon scripture is found in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, the concluding chapter. And I will read beginning at verse 12 through verse 15. Please stand for the word of our King of Kings.

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.

Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men.

You may be seated. This time the younger children may just go down to their Sabbath schools. Their parents desire that.

Paul, the first epistle of Paul, is generally held to be to the Thessalonian church, the church of the Thessalonians. We are in the concluding section of that epistle. We’re in the obviously portion of the epistle that is exhortation explicitly. And we have come today to a specific exhortation in verse 14 that we are going to speak on today. That exhortation is: now we exhort you brethren, warn them that are unruly.

We have a series of very explicit commands here. The next time I’m in the pulpit, I’ll be speaking on comfort the feeble-minded. We’ll spend one week on the next phrase, support the weak, and then one week on be patient toward all men, and on into the rest of chapter 5.

So we have here a series of exhortations from Paul—short, pithy, imperative statements to the church. And we don’t want to gloss over them. They’re very important for us to hear at the end of this epistle. This is a portion of scripture that is very practical, has a lot of application both in church and in the family.

And so it would be a very excellent chapter or section of the epistle to have memorized in your homes. We’re beginning to work on this last half of chapter 5 in our home from verse 12 on. Margie Becker, I guess, gave a shower talk on this portion of scripture several weeks ago that, my wife tells me is excellent and drew a lot of applications from what we’ve been talking about even the last few weeks in this portion of the epistle to the home and certainly there are a lot to be made there and I’ll mention that again today.

Some believe that this may have been written in a form like this to be easily serve as a catechism for children or adults memorizing the practical exhortations of the apostle Paul and it may well have been used that way and is certainly as I said useful to be used that way in terms of memorization today. Very easy phrases for children to memorize and also to apply in their lives.

## Biblical Context

What I want to do is with this particular command—warn them that are unruly—I want us to look first at the biblical context of the command, the bookends for this command in this portion of scripture and then I want to look at the command itself, the two portions of it: to admonish and then you’re admonishing those that are unruly and then we’re going to look at the context for this command, the cultural context in terms of Reformation Covenant Church and there I’m going to apply the bookends of Mr. Cipione’s talk to us a couple of weeks ago and the other bookend of Manzanita. What that is—that’s the location where myself and the deacons and our wives will be going in a couple of weeks to plan out the next few years of what we believe the Lord may be having us do at Reformation Covenant Church, evaluate, pray, etc. So those are the bookends for this command as well.

Now in terms of internally to the text itself, the bookends are first of all the instructions regarding elders that we have talked about for several weeks now, a couple of weeks. Just in summary, of course, that section by implication gave us the three basic tasks—tasks of elders that can be summarized in this way in terms of a local congregation. Those tasks are to labor self-sacrificially, to preside or to be a point man in terms of the church, to guide, to guard, to lead, and then third to admonish. And we talked about that quite a bit. We talk about that a lot today as well because that’s the same word that’s used in this command.

And then we said by explicitly what we read in the last couple of verses are instructions to the lay essentially in terms of how they’re supposed to, what their responsibilities are toward elders specifically and by implication deacons as well and by implication as well those in family government.

The three things that we are required to do in terms of biblical elders is to know who they are, to esteem them very highly, and then also this is to be done in the context of love. And so love is the third requirement.

And in a way you could sort of, you know, I don’t think too artificially link up the laboring of the people in the context of the congregation to the knowing of that labor on the part of the congregation. The presiding or being the lead man, the guard group of men so to speak for the church with a proper esteem from them on the part of the congregation. And then the admonishment that elders are called to engage in with the love on the part of the congregation.

Admonishment is never an easy thing to receive and we may receive some of it in this sermon as well and I hope that it’ll be received in the correct spirit, a spirit of love for me and for the work that God has brought the church officers to do at Reformation Covenant Church.

## The Bookends of Peace

So the first bookends are these verses we’ve just looked at in terms of elders. And additionally, we kind of glossed over this little phrase at the end of the preceding verse—verse and be at peace among yourselves. Very important verse. Could spend a lot of time on that, but kind of drew that in last week to the first half of that verse. But the other part of this bookend, the first bookend is this call for a maintenance of peace. And in the outline, it says the maintenance of peace. It doesn’t say to achieve this. It says to maintain it.

God gives us peace. Remember peace is not the peace of the world, the absence of conflict primarily. Peace is the presence of blessing. God gives us that in Jesus Christ. Blessing is a reality for us in Jesus Christ and is a realized thing because of the work of our savior. Curse or the movement away instead of peace. Disorder is always a potential for us as we move in disobedience. But we have peace and we’re called in this section—the verse just prior to this verse—to maintain it.

Hendrickson in his commentary says that in the terms of the context speaking specifically of the teaching relative to elders he said in a way this peace statement could be very loosely paraphrased in this way. He said essentially it means to stop your carping—instead of continually criticizing the leaders, follow their directions so that peace results—and certainly that’s one aspect of the peace that Paul admonishes them here to maintain. Obviously the peace can be lost in the terms of the local church if people criticize and don’t have the correct spirit toward leadership.

We mentioned last week and I’ll mention again now that peace in the scriptures particularly in the epistles—we go through a lot of verses. It has the context of the body of Christ. Peace occurs in the context. The blessings of God are not fully present when a person is isolated, when he’s outside of the context of a local church. Peace is realized in the context of the local body. All those blessings. And as I said, peace is maintained by doing certain things.

One of the things that peace is maintained by is by the correct relationship to the appointed officers that God has brought into being in a local church. But then this second stuff, the second half now of the other side of peace—these admonishments to the congregation in terms of how to treat each other—are also an essential part of maintaining the peace, the reconciliation we have with God and with each other.

That peace can be lost if we fail to admonish the unruly and to comfort those who are weak and to also encourage those who are fainthearted. If we don’t do those things, the implication is we’re not going to have the peace that God has planned for us.

Okay, so that’s part of it. And then the other context, the other bookend. So the first bookend is the instructions about the elders and peace. The other bookend for this particular admonition we’re talking about today—admonish the unruly—is what follows these other things that goes on in the next couple of verses that I read for the scripture text: Comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men, see that you don’t render evil for evil, but ever follow that which is good both among yourselves and to all men.

And this is the other side, and these are more instructions to the lay.

## Biblical Categories of Sin

And you’ll notice here on the outline I put that under this particular point we should first of all in terms of the second bookend acknowledge the biblical categories of sin. Acknowledge the biblical categories of sin. There is a differentiation—what we just read—of people having various problems. Some that Paul addresses in this instruction are unruly; others are weak; okay, others are feeble-minded. And we’ll get to each of those characterizations of them.

But you see, the point is that if you’re going to implement this instruction, you’ve got to start thinking biblically about why people have problems in their lives. Are they weak? Are they feeble-minded? Are they unruly? Sometimes it can be a combination of these things.

There’s a thing called the DSM3, and I don’t remember what the S stands for. It’s the diagnostic something manual, third version that people in counseling—and all too often Christian counseling as well—use to diagnose problems with people. You know, if a guy has these particular things evident in his behavior, then this big manual will tell you he’s schizophrenic and what type of schizophrenic he is.

Mr. Cipione calls it the denying sin manual because all too often those categories are ways for people to deny the sin of violating God’s word. Well, we should have the beginnings. We have the beginnings in this text and we should develop in our own minds a DSM3, so to speak, a biblical one to diagnose one another and people in our families—for instance our children—in terms of biblical categories.

The scriptures give us these categories. Mr. Cipione in our course that Roy and I took a couple of weeks ago went through various bizarre and strange behavior and essentially grouped them all in terms of the ten commandments. So if you got people who are particularly violating this commandment, these are the things that flow from that. And so you want to analyze people using biblical terms.

When we looked at the seven deadly sins, the church for 2,000 years has said that people’s sins generally fall into these seven violations of the word of God in terms of the seven deadly sins. The Proverbs are full of instructions to us to understand certain kinds of people. And if you have a fool, there’s characteristics to a fool. There’s ways to respond to a fool as opposed to ways to respond to a wise person. You’ve got the man who is lustful and goes off, you know, after women. People are different categories. The strange woman—remember we talked when I talked on lust, the strange woman versus the right woman for you—and it doesn’t just mean the prostitute on the corner. It means something else.

There are biblical categories for sin. While we’re not going to talk much today, this is the beginning kernel in this verse. I think one of the central aspects is this verse can help us with is to begin to think biblically in terms of people’s sin problems.

## The Inherent Responsibility

Secondly, under the instructions, these general instructions we have now, I put: accept the inherent responsibility in these commands. We are now at a string of commands—four or five or six—that are directed explicitly to who? To the leadership? No, to the brethren. Paul says, we exhort you brethren. And he goes on to list the admonishment, strengthening, etc. that he calls the lay to action in regards to. And so Paul inherent in this section of scripture is responsibility to take upon ourselves these duties one toward the other.

Paul says, “We exhort you, brethren.” That term for exhort, to urge, is a stronger term than the beseeching that he did at the beginning of verse 12. We beseech you to know those that labor among you, etc. He was asking here. It is a stronger term.

And I guess that in terms of this afternoon’s sermon and what we’ll be doing in the next few months in terms of these verses, I also would urge you here at Reformation Covenant Church to accept the responsibility to perform these actions in your life and in the life of your family and the life of the friends that you have here at Reformation Covenant Church and the extended body of Christ as well. I exhort you and I exhort myself to walk in obedience to what we’ll be learning about here.

He says that the ones that he exhorts is the brethren and this similar—remember we’ve seen this term brethren throughout this epistle. It clearly puts these instructions in the context of the general Christian calling, not to the leaders of the church. And I just want to quote you several commentators here so you don’t have any unclarity here in your mind relative to this position.

Hendrickson says that it is clear as day that these commandments are addressed to all the brothers. Lensky said that correcting faults in members is the duty of the whole congregation, but the elders also doing their part. Hendrickson went on to say that all except the disorderly must admonish the disorderly. Mutual discipline must be exercised by all the members. It is wrong to leave this to pastors and elders.

Another commentator said that the entire local body copes with practical situations by advising an errant or erring brother. So the scriptures clearly say—as attested by commentators throughout the different disciplines who believe the Bible is the word of God—that these instructions are given to the lay, not to the leadership. The leadership have a role. Yes, they do. But you have a responsibility as well.

This fits right in with what I talked about before last week from Romans 15:14. Paul says, “I’m persuaded of you.” And I could say that I’m persuaded of you, brethren, here at Reformation Covenant Church, that you are full of goodness and filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish—that’s this same term admonish—one another. Remember J. Adams transliterates that as nouthetic counseling. We would call it biblical counseling.

Okay. Colossians 3:16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Now he doesn’t mean just the leadership here. Dwell in you. Let the word of Christ dwell in you—an individual member of this church—in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

I am convinced—I’ll say it again—that the scriptures plainly teach that elders who preach have a responsibility in that preaching to involve a teaching element but also involve an exhortation element in that preaching. It is absolutely essential to the calling to biblically preach. That’s what preaching is.

Colossians 1:28 says that we preach Christ, warning every man. That’s this same word counseling, exhorting, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we might present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Okay. So accept the responsibility to you the lay in this church from this command.

## The Command Itself

Let’s look at the command itself. The command says to first of all admonish. Admonish. What does this mean? We’ve talked about it a lot. It means to warn. It means it does not mean merely to appeal to somebody’s intellect. That would be the transmission of strictly teaching. But rather to admonish somebody is to appeal to their conscience and to their volitional aspect, to their will as well. When you talk to them, people don’t like this sometimes when you do this. When you come alongside an erring brother and you speak to their volition and you call them to turn around and to correct in particular areas, they don’t like that, but that’s what the term means.

As I said before, nouthetic—this Greek word—has the note of disapproval in it. People needed to be spoken to. Okay? And I just want to say here again that when I use the word counseling, okay, this is what I’m talking about.

Now I know that we know that nine churches out of 10—maybe more, maybe 99 out of 100, I don’t know. A lot of churches in the evangelical community, when they talk about counseling somebody, they’re talking about using the DSM3, analyzing schizophrenics, compulsive behaviors, etc., etc., and ignoring the biblical categories and ignoring biblical solutions. That’s wrong. That is an excuse for discipline.

And most churches—it’s one of the reasons why we don’t have excommunications occurring throughout churches in the greater Portland area—because they revert to counseling instead. They take people’s responsibility away. That’s what the 12-step approach in AA is all about. It removes personal responsibility and it does not address the central issue of sin. That’s not what I’m talking about.

When I use the term counseling, I’m talking about what the scriptures tell us here to do—to teach one-on-one. We’ll look at Acts 20 a little later. But Paul said he taught publicly and he taught house to house. And that’s part of my job—to counsel people, to bring to notice areas in their lives they may come to me, I may go to them—that need improvement. And that’s what counseling is according to the scriptures: is giving them the scriptural manifestation, the scriptural evidence of what’s going on, scriptural solutions to the problems that they’ve been involved with and moving them along in righteousness. That’s an essential aspect of my calling. And according to this verse, your calling is well—one to the other.

So I’m not talking about secular counseling. I’m talking about biblical counseling. If the word counseling bothers you, well, you know, I suppose we could use another term. We could use admonish, but it doesn’t quite do it. And that’s why Jay transliterated nouthetic into nouthetic counseling because it does have a lot of aspects to it and there’s not a good word for it. But just understand that’s what I’m using the term for.

Matthew Henry said that some will go out of their station and rank and it’s not only the duty of ministers but of private Christians to warn and admonish them. Such should be reproved for their sin. Okay, so that’s one element—according to Matthew Henry, reproved for their sin, warned of the danger, point out to people where that sin is leading them to, plainly, of the injury they do to their own souls and the hurt that they do to others. Okay? Reprove, warn of the danger, tell them of the injury they do to their own souls and that of others.

Such should be put in mind of what they need to do and be reproved for doing otherwise. Put in mind—that’s part of the basic element of what this admonishment word means—is to put the sense to somebody. Explain it to them. You know, you’ve heard—well I won’t bother with the joke now—but there’s an old joke about the Swedish man who couldn’t get a check cashed. Those of you who know it know what I’m talking about. The banker eventually took this guy’s head and he wouldn’t sign the back of the check is the joke. I probably should have told it, but he wouldn’t sign the back of his check. Nobody would ever cash it for him. So he finally goes to one bank, they cash it. He goes back to the other bank and the guy said, “Well, how come you didn’t just sign your name to the back?” Here I would have cashed it. And he said, “Well, he explained it to me”—because what the banker did—”are you taking his head and bang bang bang on the counter.” He said, “Now sign the check and I’ll cash it for you.”

Well, in any event, that’s what we’re supposed to do—is well, we’re not supposed to bang people’s heads, but we’re supposed to explain to them very clearly and distinctly what they’re doing wrong and the implications of it. We need to bring the sense, put them in mind of what they need to do and then reprove them for doing otherwise. It doesn’t just mean, you know, to tell them something and then walk away and maintain the friendship. If they don’t do it, reprove them for doing otherwise.

But sometimes people aren’t going to listen to you. Jeremiah 6:9 and 10 says, you know, “To whom shall I speak? Jeremiah said, and give warning that they may hear. Behold, their ear is uncircumcised and they can’t hearken. Behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach. They have no delight in it.”

There will be people in the context of the visible church of Jesus Christ with uncircumcised ears to hear things about what they’re doing wrong. So you got to know that if you’re going to begin to implement this admonishment. Other people will however hear; open the ear. Most of them will in the context of the local church. They’re there because they have the same spirit dwelling in them who has led them to that church as you do. But they need you to admonish them, or to strengthen them, or to comfort them. Whatever the particular situation calls for. That’s what these scriptures imply.

Galatians 6:1 brings another aspect to this that [is] very important to point out. He says, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual—” now that doesn’t mean the leadership, and follows the leadership, surely, but surely every believer is called to maturity and spirituality in the body of Jesus Christ. So this is again talking to all of you.

“If a man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness. Spirit of meekness, very important element of this process, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” Again, if you’re going to start getting into this and coming alongside your friends, you know, have problems and haven’t come to correction, you’ve got to be very careful that you’re not drawn into their sin when you go to them to teach them about what they’re doing wrong. You have to watch yourself.

Galatians 6:2 goes on to say, “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” See, bear ye one another burdens, fulfill the law of Christ. That doesn’t mean be at a prayer meeting, hear what they’re doing wrong, and do nothing about it. That is not bearing one another’s burdens. Galatians 6 says that you’re supposed to reprove them, restore such a one as much as is in you possible. That’s what bearing the burden means. To come alongside of them, watching yourself that you don’t sin. Okay?

So the command is to admonish, to nouthetically work with, to counsel, to analyze according to biblical categories of sin, to talk to them about specific scriptures about that sin, to demonstrate to them from the word of God that what they’re doing is wrong and calling it correction in those areas. And if they fail to do it, then obviously you can’t just ignore that. You must move on in terms of that course. And we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes—then what do you do then? Okay.

## Who Do You Admonish?

Who do you admonish? Well, this text tells us we’re supposed to admonish the unruly. Now, the term unruly here in its basic Greek root meaning comes from a term that described a soldier who would break rank. Okay, a soldier who would break rank—anything it came to imply then—anything out of place or out of order. Okay.

Now in 2 Thessalonians 3, which we’ll look at in a minute, it is used specifically in terms of idleness as well. Idleness. And it’s interesting that there was a papyrus—a manuscript found that was written in AD 66, within you know maybe 10-15 years of when this epistle was written—and in that particular papyrus this specific term—and I’m giving you this because there’s not a lot of biblical uses. The only place where this word is used is right here and then some forms of it are used in Second Thessalonians and that’s it in terms of the whole scripture—so you got to look at, you know, if God hasn’t given us a lot of internal evidence to what a word means and you got to look at the greater context. What is the Greek normal meaning for that word? And the normal meaning is to break rank.

And this papyrus was found and it said that it was a covenant for a boy—by a boy’s father—that the boy was entering into an apprenticeship for a particular trade. And in the covenant it said that if the boy should play truant then the loss of time in terms of his apprenticeship would be made up after the period of the apprenticeship of the contract expiring. Okay. So in other words, boy would say let’s he was in an apprenticeship for 2 years. If maybe 2 weeks out of that 2 years he goofed off and was idle and didn’t do what he was supposed to do, if he broke rank in that way by not being there, then this contract called for that two weeks to be added on to the apprentice period at the end of the time—the end of the two years, they tack on another two weeks, the time which he had goofed off.

And so the term also has the connotation of idleness as Paul uses it in 2 Thessalonians 3. In fact, let’s turn to 2 Thessalonians 3 and we’ll look at the other occurrences of this word.

2 Thessalonians 3 beginning in verse 6. Paul says, “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us.” And there’s that word disorderly—who breaks rank.

And we’ll go on to see what Paul is talking about. Paul says in verse 7, “Yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we behave not ourselves disorderly among you.” So he’s saying, now if you want to know what I mean, I’m going to give you example of what it means in this context not to be disorderly.

It goes on in verse 8, “Neither did we eat any man’s bread for ought, but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you, not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you that if any man should not work, neither should he eat.”

So what’s Paul talking about? Who are the disorder that Paul is speaking of? It’s the ones who won’t work. Vocational calling. The ones who bowed out of their apprenticeship contracts, so to speak, their vocational contract, their vocational calling. So he’s talking about idleness in terms of 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 11.

“But we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. So now we’ve added something else to it. Remember I said before the sins of the tongue—idleness leads to being busybody. That’s what he’s talking about here.

“Nor now them that are of such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread. So Paul’s not asking you to do anything in First Thessalonians that he hasn’t said in 2 Thessalonians. He does too. He exhorts them. He admonishes them to come to correction. Eat your work with your own hands. Eat your own bread. Don’t be a loafer. Don’t, you know, be a sponge off of other people.

Verse 13. “But ye, brethren, be not weary in welldoing. And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”

Now notice verse 6. Paul said, “If there’s somebody walking disorderly, withdraw yourselves from them.” Then he went on to an explanation of what disorderly was. It was idleness and being a busybody. And he said that he exhorts them by this epistle. And he expected them to take this epistle to these people and exhort them by the word of Paul. And we have this epistle. So we can now exhort by the same word of Jesus Christ.

But if he doesn’t come to repair, that’s when you implement verse 6 and verse 14, you have no company with them. So it’s not as if you see somebody with a problem and then withdraw yourself from them. No, you see somebody with a problem, you exhort them with the word of God and if they fail to come to correction, that’s when you withhold company from them to embarrass them. You break off fellowship.

But he goes on to say this is not excommunication because you’re supposed to count him not as an enemy but admonish him as a brother. Excommunication, Matthew 18, you treat him as a tax collector, not as a brother anymore. And so this is a different case. Paul says there are those who are disorderly that you’re not going to excommunicate perhaps, but in the meantime, while that process may be going on, other members of the church should withdraw themselves from such disorderly people.

Verse 16 says, “Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always. By all means, the Lord be with you.” See the connection again to peace. That’s why we talked about the bookend of peace. The before the commandment here and in this commandment: you know, live at peace among yourselves, maintain that peace, admonish each other. Here he’s saying, admonish each other. And goes on to say, now the Lord of peace be with you.

See, the Lord of peace and blessing won’t be with us if we settle for cheap peace, an absence of dialogue with an unruly brother. That’s not biblical peace.

Okay? So that’s an example of unruly. And another commentator, Milligan, I guess it was, concluded that Paul’s reference to these Thessalonian members that we just read about were those who, I’m quoting now from Milligan, who without any intention of actual wrongdoing were neglecting their daily duties and falling into idle and careless habits because of their expectation of the immediate parousia of the Lord.

Okay, so Milligan thinks they thought Christ was coming right back. They weren’t trying to be bad guys or be disobedient. They just got caught up in that rapture fever, so to speak, and ended up quitting their jobs and sitting around waiting for the rapture. And so Paul addresses those who were idle and idleness was due to breaking rank as well. So those two concepts of idleness and breaking rank are linked I think according to the scriptures.

Lensky says that this term unruly means out of line. The careless soldier who is too far forward or too far back to the rest of the ranks and thus needs a sharp word of rebuke.

In verse 11 of the first 1 Thessalonians 5, we were commanded to carry out mutual edification. And another commentator said that there is no more effective way of carrying out mutual edification of each other than obeying Paul’s closing exhortations for improvement within the assembly.

So this is involved also with the responsibility we have to build each other up. And again, the end result of this is that peace that is referenced in the verse just before this—God’s order and community.

Another commentator said that only a false and cowardly peace will allow disorder to continue in the church unchecked and unreproved. Okay.

Now, you know, there are lots of ways for people to be disorderly and, you know, some who are way out in front of the rest of the ranks—aren’t content where the particular officers have led the church to in terms of the battle and want to go fight other battles. Those who just pull back from the battle altogether. These people are disorderly and you have an obligation to admonish them and if they don’t hear the admonition, that according to second Thessalonians you have an obligation to withdraw yourself from them. Okay? So that’s your obligation.

Now Paul was talking to loafers. Ward in his commentary said that these were like troops who are in battle rather—who are who are not in battle order, or like ships in disarray. Church members who are not at their post on the job give a bad impression [to] unbelievers, especially if they’re constantly looking for handouts. We have something to give.

Now, that’s a good summary of what we’ve been saying here. We’re called to man our particular station within the church and our vocational calling within our families. And if you break rank with your family and fail to lead your family, if you break rank with the church and fail to do the task that’s been assigned to you within the context of the local church, and certainly if you break rank by leaving the local church autonomously, then you can expect other members of the congregation to admonish and exhort you.

And certainly you can expect it from the leaders, but you can also expect that if the rest of us are doing our job, they were looking for handouts—the people that Paul addressed. And there are other people who don’t look for physical handouts. We’ve talked about sloth and that sort of stuff in this church, but sometimes there are people who come to church all the time looking for spiritual handouts, who just want to see what they can get from the local assembly in terms of spiritual truths or good feelings or whatever it is.

But Paul by implication tells us we’re supposed to be contributing to the ministry, not always seeking what we can get out of it. And so if you come to church and go away and say, “Well, gosh, how did I get ministered to?” You’re thinking wrong. You should come to church and think, “How can I minister to others?” Otherwise, you end up like the man looking for the handout. Although it might be a little different, little different kind.

Okay. So we all have an obligation to admonish such people to come into correction in their lives based upon the scriptures.

## The Cultural Context

And let’s talk now about the cultural, current cultural context for the command. These texts that we’ve just talked about for the last 3 weeks now really speak to two areas that Reformation Covenant Church is distinctively moving in that many other churches are not. These are two areas that distinguish us from many other fellowships. And these are two areas that are near and dear to my heart in terms of what the ministry of this church is.

Now, one of these two areas that I think that we think the scriptures are calling us to is the recovery of biblical views of eldership. Biblical views of eldership. The verses we talked about a couple of weeks in the last couple of weeks, the threefold evidence of a man’s call to office in terms of the local church and then what he does in that office in the local church, correlating well with Acts 20.

We have a different view of elders in Reformation Covenant Church than Baptist churches and other churches have. Not putting down Baptists. We have a different view of elders though. In Baptist churches or other community churches, elders are men who occasionally sit in on board meetings and who are basically inactive until there’s a problem. And usually the problem could be financial in nature or maybe the pastor is, you know, doing just that or the other thing that people don’t like. And then the elders spring into action, but until then, they’re just sort of sitting there as a board. They attend meetings and they may, you know, give a little bit of advice and counsel, but essentially they’re fairly inactive.

We don’t—I don’t think the scriptures teach that. It’s a perverted view of what elders are.

The reformed view—now not the historic reformed view, but the current reformed view—isn’t much better. It has ruling elders who essentially do the same thing. They may just sit on a board occasionally, may get involved in financial affairs, maybe not. They add on to it, though. They sit and hear judicial cases. And of course, the problem with that is that in most Presbyterian churches, there are no judicial cases because they’re all off getting counseled by the DSM3 and receiving psychological analysis.

Even when there are disciplinary cases, that’s when these men spring into action—the best of reformed churches. That’s not what the scriptures teach. Plain and simple. That’s not what First Thessalonians 5 teaches that we just read. It’s not what Acts 20 teaches.

Turn to Acts 20 if you will. Just to show you the very words here so that you can see that this correlates perfectly with what Paul is saying in 1 Thessalonians 5.

I’ve had people tell me that as long as a person meets the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, the list of general qualifications, that guy is okay to be ordained as an elder. I don’t believe that for a minute. I believe that 1 Timothy 3 are qualifications that we all should be aspiring to and I want to see every man in this church be able to meet those qualifications and I think that probably half of you do generally—but that doesn’t mean half of you are called to be elders. Those are general qualifications. But then there are also special qualifications for the particular office.

Paul in Acts 20 says in verse 20 he taught them publicly and house to house. Understand that—publicly, house to house. The pulpit ministry is not effectual according to the apostle Paul for carrying the church in the right direction. Cannot do it just from the pulpit. You got to go house to house and work with people individually because he did that he could say in verse 26, “I am free from the blood of all men for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.”

He wasn’t free because he in church publicly had preached and he would assume that everybody would hear it. No, he knew that his obligation was to go to each member who needed exhortation personally and teach them from house to house.

And then his obligation before God was gone. That’s based upon Ezekiel 3 and Ezekiel 33. We’ll look at those a little later if we have time. But you know the watchmen—the responsibility we have to warn the unrighteous. Paul said he had that responsibility. The way he carried it out—and he’s addressing elders here in Acts 20—and he’s by implication he’s telling this is what you should be doing: is you preach and teach and you do that publicly and house to house.

Going on verse 28: “Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flocks 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.”

What was he calling him to be? Every elder he was calling to be point men—point men in nourishing and leading the church and point men in guarding the church from the wolves that God always sent. Those hands to take off the weaker members of the flock who really are not of the flock.

“Also of your own selves shall men arise within your own church, within your own group. He said men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. And you better be ready. You better not be thinking you got an inactive position as an elder. You sit around till a problem happens. You better be proactive.

“Therefore, watch and remember that by the space of 3 years, I cease not to warn everyone night and day with tears. Did he labor self-sacrificially? You bet he did. He warned him day and night with tears.

“Warn, counsel, admonish, work with biblically. And now, brethren, I commend to you, 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 that are sanctified.”

An inheritance. He’s talking here. I think there’s a obvious—if you know the scriptures, the wilderness promised land analogy can’t help but pop into your mind when you see this term inheritance—and all in that God has given to all those that are sanctified. The choice that he was putting before the Ephesian elders and the choice that is before this church is to move toward biblical views of eldership and covenant community and to enter into the promised land so to speak or to pull back into the wilderness.

That’s what Paul says before them.

So Acts 20 correlates what first Thessalonians 5 says. And it’s very important that you understand that things are different at Reformation Covenant Church from the church you may have attended in the past. And if you’re visiting, you’ve got to know this is a central distinctive of what this church is all about. We believe all elders are called to that threefold ministry that First Thessalonians 5 tells us about the way that Paul describes it in Acts 20.

Now, we don’t mean by that they’re all full-time. Some may do that 10 hours a week, some may do it 50, but we mean that all men are called to do that. We don’t believe in a sitting board of elders, all the Baptist or the current reformed churches. We’re talking about something different. We’re talking about men who labor, who lead and who admonish as well.

## Biblical Community

Now, secondly, these verses also in terms of the cultural context of God’s providence and bringing us to this scripture at this point in time, secondly, the other aspect that this church is unique in—I think, not unique, but certainly trying very hard to do biblically—as we’re trying to recover biblical community.

Neil in his commentary in the verses we are speaking of today—to admonish the unruly—said that Paul is setting a very high standard of Christian service for the ordinary church member and placing upon his shoulders duties which we tend now too much to regard as the parson’s job or the elders’s job. Sets a very high standard of Christian service.

That’s the standard we think that everybody at Reformation Covenant Church is part of this community should aspire to—have the guts and we’re going to talk about courage in the next few weeks—to have the strength of mind and to have people around you who will admonish you to correction, to have all that in place so that you can correct people in your sphere of influence in this church when they go off the beaten path.

I can’t get to everybody and I don’t care if we have four or five elders. You can’t do it that way cuz the scriptures say that you’re supposed to be doing a lot of this work in addition to the leaders. Of course, you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to see yourself not simply as coming to church and occasionally sitting here with a group of people, but to be in covenant with them, to be committed to them, to be part of the extended family here.

And if you’ve got family in your house, I hope that your children are not being deprived of the admonishment that this calls us to as fathers and apply it the same way to your friends here at Reformation Covenant Church.

I talked about Ezekiel 3. We don’t have time to turn there, but I do want to just read a couple of verses from it.

Son of man, verse 17, I made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand.

If you don’t tell the wicked that he’s perishing, when you have opportunity to, God says he’s going to require his blood at your hand. He’s responsible for his sin, but you’ve sinned grievously, too, and not warning him.

Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity. But thou hast delivered thy soul.

And that’s what Paul was saying. I’ve delivered my soul. I’ve warned you all. Now, you can say that’s talking about evangelism. Yeah, it is. But verse 20 does.

And he says again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die because thou hast not given him warning. He shall die in his sin, and his righteousness with which he hath done shall not be remembered, but his blood will I require at thine hand.

Nevertheless, if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he has warned also, thou has delivered thy soul.

Implication clearly is that we as watchmen have the same obligation relative to the righteous people—that’s the ones here in our church, those who are righteous and who are living lives in obedience to God’s word. And the presupposition is that we’re going to go off the path sometime. And if you’re not willing to come alongside your neighbor and say, “Get back on the path,” you’re not willing to move toward biblical community.

When we see people doing things here in the fellowship, for instance, okay, that we think is wrong, I don’t mind you come and tell me. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing to let church officers know what’s going on. It’s needed. But you also have an obligation to talk to that individual and say, you know, I saw this happen at the dinner table and it’s not a good thing. You ought to correct your child in this manner. That takes courage. I know it’s not easy. It’s not easy for me to get up here, you know, and suggest things that we need improvement on either. It’s certainly not in the context of personal relationships, even tougher than preaching cuz you got somebody staring you right in the eyeballs, you know, but you know, if you do it right and you communicate to them your love and your concern for their family and not judgmentalness, they’re going to receive it well and they’re going to thank you for it.

I’ve had in this church—it’s been several years ago, I think—I’ve had people who didn’t come to me about my children but went to somebody else who then came to me. Dad, wrong way to do it. And what havoc and what disorder that brings to a church not to follow Matthew 18 and generally the principles involved.

I’m not saying it’s an actionable offense in terms of church court, but generally Matthew 18 says if you see your brother sinning, you run down and tell the elder and tell him to go tell your brother. No, doesn’t say that. It says go to him. You know, when your brother Ezekiel says, “You’re the watchman.” 1 Thessalonians 5 says, “You admonish the unruly.” Go to him yourself.

Now, there may be times which you also want to go to church officers. See, we got a problem here in terms of the covenant community on Sunday. We need to address. Fine. That’s good. But don’t use it as a way to obviate or to get rid of your requirements in terms of this verse and the development of biblical community.

It’s terrible. People have heard things in, you know, from friends about this church who don’t go here and you know they don’t track them down, they don’t make people accountable for these things, they don’t apply Matthew 18. They may say well I don’t like what you’re saying but then they maintain the friendship. What does this verse tell us? This verse says that if they don’t make correction and going into 2 Thessalonians you withdraw yourself from them.

This is heavy duty stuff. This is real stuff in terms of church community and that’s what we’re trying to do at Reformation Covenant Church.

I guess one way to think of it is the most churches you got pastor, elder, people in the pew. We think the pastors and the elders are the same thing.