Dennis Tuuri

1 Timothy chapter 3. This is a true saying. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, and apt to teach. Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous. One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity.

For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest being filled up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Likewise, must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.

And let these also first be proved. Then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless. Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children in their own houses well. For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good degree and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.

These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you that our savior was received into glory and that your holy spirit was poured out upon this world and upon your believers. We pray now, Lord God, that spirit would do his work, that work of writing your word upon our hearts. We pray that we may be those who have open ears to hear what your scriptures say. That our hearts may be soft and not hardened. That the spirit may do his work of conviction and assurance.

We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In Colossians chapter 3, beginning at verse one, we read, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ siteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

Mortify therefore your members upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry, for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, in the which he also walked sometime when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these things, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Where there was neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

Now, in many households today and in many churches today, we’ll have gospel text read talking of the resurrection of the savior in the empty tomb. And this text is an interesting text to consider on this day because it points us to some paradoxes. It says to seek the things which are above. It says our life is hid in Christ. It says that we’re dead with him and have been raised with him. And this doesn’t always sit with our experience.

He goes on to say to seek after our life which is in heaven and after Christ and after the manifestation of the fruit of the spirit in our lives. There’s a sense in which, as people usually in this culture in America in the 20th century conduct egg hunts, many in our church perhaps or some at least are following, I think it’s Annie Higgenbotham’s directions and family celebrations with hunts for reminders of the work of our savior and his resurrection rather than eggs. But to seek out things is what we do on Easter in many families and in many churches.

The scriptures tell us we are to seek things out on the basis of the resurrection of our savior. That when we get up in the morning we don’t have a bunch of presents—we go seek after things. It’s interesting when we think of the Easter stories and how we have the finding of the empty tomb. I mentioned this in our Revelation class—it seems so significant somehow that the morning of our savior’s resurrection, when his disciples, pictured really by the women who came to him, find the tomb empty.

You know, there’s nothing in the day to tell them that anything’s changed. They apparently didn’t feel any different. They didn’t start talking in tongues. They didn’t exhibit unusual holiness that day. The physical appearance of the universe didn’t change. But what changed was the tomb was empty. An event outside of us, outside of the appearance of our reality, that then has eternal consequences for everything.

I do believe the scriptures talk of the resurrection of the savior as the inauguration of the new creation, the new world order, the new age. But it comes not with a bang. It comes with the silent empty tomb. So it is with us. We come today to seek things out, to be told, on the basis of the resurrection of our savior, to seek the things which are above, which has significance then for seeking after character qualities and department. Christian deport, character, Christian department and character and how we live on the earth.

Things change because our savior is resurrected. Some of the things that we seek out are characterized, summarized in many places of scripture. We just read one, the putting off and the putting on. And one also is found in 1 Timothy 3. We’ve talked about these verses. Yes, their qualifications for officers, but yes, nearly all of them except maybe the novice one applies to all of us as we mature in the faith.

These are things that we’re supposed to be able to do. These are marks of spirit-filled men. Officers more than anything else—men who are full of the spirit. And these are evidences of the spirit’s work in a person’s life. And these are the things we’re supposed to seek out. We can see these as God gives us officers. He gives us a church. He gives us the house of God ordered by his word to affect these kind of changes in our life, to get us to act in accordance with what these things should be like.

So this is a summary statement I believe for all of us.

Now you got an outline—looks a little complicated, I know—but really there’s four things it can be said that these character qualities fit into. And you’ll notice on the outline, you know, don’t spend a lot of time. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. If you do get it, you get it. But on the outline there is kind of indentations on these four different areas.

There are summation statements. See the outline—the outermost part under each of those first two. And notice that I use the term overseers and servants. And these are terms that are used in the scriptures of officers. They’re terms that are used of us, too, though. We oversee our households. We oversee our sphere of influence. And we are servants in the context of the church of Jesus Christ—servants to Jesus, being servants of others, look at us all.

And in the context of that, when you evaluate your life, there are summation statements that are given for both the elders and deacons. And there’s two for the elders. It says that you’re supposed to be blameless, not chargeable. I think that first reference refers to within the context of the church. And then at the end of the list of qualifications for elders, it says that you shouldn’t—you should have a good reputation of those outside.

So your life should be characterized as being good by people who see you in the church and people seeing you outside of the church. And again, there’s a summation statement for the deacons. They’re supposed to be sound in faith and practice. That’s what the scriptures that we just read say in the middle of the qualifications for the deacons. There’s a summary statement that they’re to be sound in faith and practice. You read that in verse 9: “Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience”—orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the understanding of God’s word, the mystery of the faith, the scriptural revelation to us, the work of our savior and what is that all about?

And then in a pure conscience—our life summary statements. And then secondly, in addition to these summary statements, there’s statements in both lists of qualifications relative to the family and begins after the summary statement in the qualifications for elders. He’s got to be a husband of one wife, a one-woman sort of man. And toward the end of that list of qualifications for elders, the one who rules his own household well. We’re going to come back to that in a couple of minutes.

Then in the deacon side of it, it says that he’s supposed to have wives that are characterized in a particular way. He’s supposed to exercise himself in the context of his oversight responsibility so that his wife would demonstrate certain character qualities as well. It says he’s also supposed to be a one-woman sort of man and he’s also supposed to rule his household well.

We have summary statements of our whole lives. We’ve got qualifications, marks of the spirit in our life in terms of our relationship to our families. And then we have marks of the character of our life, the marks of the spirit of our life and our character. That’s the third big area—Christian character. You follow that indenting thing in Christian character.

Remember we said a couple weeks ago, and I preached on this, that there are three basic character qualities. The Christian character qualities listed in the first portion of the outline, the qualifications for elders, the three Christian character qualifications are: to be vigilant, watchful; to be sound of mind; and to be well-ordered. And I talked about those several weeks ago.

And then by way of contrast, we’re not supposed to have unchristian character. We’re not supposed to be contentious and covetous and as a result be impatient. Okay? A positive and a negative. Well, in terms of the deacons, that summary statement is there: to be venerable. That’s the word I use on the outline under the first point. The deacons must be venerable, grave, dignified in some of your translations.

Character quality—your character should exhibit the fruit of the spirit. And then finally, your department, your actions, what you do in relationship to people, should characterize that as well. And there are two things mentioned positively in the context of the elders. You’re to be hospitable, loving strangers, loving to entertain people, particularly when they have needs, to bring them into your house.

And you’re to be apt to teach. You’re to use opportunities to instruct those you’re in the context of and yourself from the word of God about whatever comes up in the context of your life. Prone to teach, looking for opportunities to share what the Lord has taught you. It doesn’t mean preachy. Doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be a know-it-all, but it does mean you’re supposed to be able to give out lessons, biblical lessons, particularly your family of course, but then one to the other as well, to bring our speech into a position where it edifies each other.

Apt to teach—which means you should be apt to teach, you must be teachable.

In terms of the negative, our character is not to be like the ungodly character, which is characterized as being petulant, prone to irritation by means of wine or other improper attitudes, and not to be a striker. You don’t hit people. You don’t get mad at them and short with them.

In terms of the deacons, the department qualifications says that they must not be double-tongued nor given to wine, greeting. So there’s these summary statements.

And I want to pick this up—this particular portion of scripture—up where we left off last time. And I’m going to focus primarily the next few minutes upon this qualification of venerableness. The first one listed under qualifications for the deacon and also found in the qualifications for the elders. And we’ll see that.

So, I’m going to talk today so you know where we’re going. We’re going to talk primarily about venerableness, dignified, being dignified, grave. I like the term venerable. And we’re going to talk about then the rest of the qualifications as ways to lose your venerableness in the context of people looking at you.

Elders are supposed to rule their families in such a way as to be venerable, worshipful. The word has its root in the word worship. You’re supposed to be, in a sense—I mean, not idolatrously, but to a sense—you’re supposed to comport yourself in the context of your family, men, in such a way as would bring reverence to yourself. You’re supposed to do it in a dignified venerable fashion to elicit a worshipful response on the part of your family.

Deacons are characterized—that’s the one positive character quality required in the terms of Christian character—is that same word: venerable. And the wives of deacon also—that same exact word is used in the context of the wives of the deacons. Their wives are to be venerable. Okay, so we’re going to talk about that, and then we’re going to say that the various improper qualifications, the rest of the text can be understood as ways deacons or servants or all of us lose our venerableness to those that we’re in the context of.

If you don’t use your tongue properly, if you’re double-tongued, people will find it out. Or if you use your tongue improperly to slander others, people are going to know that and the shine will come off you. You’ll become tarnished and people won’t have that kind of reverential attitude toward your Christian character, toward the manifestation of the spirit in your life.

And if you don’t control your passions and if you like wine too much and silver too much and things too much instead of recognizing behind them is God, if you pry out after things and work hard to get silver and gold and wine and that sort of stuff, you’re going to lose your sheen to those you’re around, your glory.

If you don’t manifest through your walk with Christ the knowledge of the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, the sheen’s going to come off. You see? To try to do this without maintaining the central aspect of your life, holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience—people will see that. God will see it and the sheen will come off. You won’t be venerable.

And if you have an inability to control your wife so that your wife ends up being a slanderer or not being venerable herself, doing things that are improper, not being faithful and having fidelity—that’s what the word says here. The wives of the servants are to be faithful in all things—then you’re going to lose your sheen. You see?

And then it says that if you do these things right, deacons, you’re going to attain a good degree. If you do these things well, what it means is people are going to think well of you. You’re going to have a good reputation. And if you don’t do these things well, people are going to have a bad reputation. You’re going to have a bad reputation. They’re going to have a bad attitude toward you.

And I want us to think about those things in the context of all of our lives. All of us. Let’s talk about it a little bit. Then let’s go to the text and we’re going to pick it up actually with the final few qualifications for the elder. Verse four actually. “One who rules well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity.”

And I don’t want to pass up ruling well. To rule well means to preside over your family. It means to exercise leadership. We read in Romans 12:8 that if you have the gift of ruling, you’re supposed to do it with diligence. So that tells us that diligence is a character quality of ruling. And men, when you rule your family, it must be with all diligence. It’s easy to back off. It’s easy to not do it. The scriptures say you’re supposed to rule your household.

Stand in front of them authoritatively, not lording it over them, but definitely having them under subjection. You’re the head of the household. All the decisions made are finalized by you or they don’t get made. Okay? You must rule your house, household. And to do that, you must be diligent in that rule of the household.

That rule of the household relates to the honor and glory you get because we read later on in this epistle that the elders who rule well—same word—are counted worthy of double honor. Now, it reads money probably in the first application, but it means glory or weight or reverence. And so, men, if you rule well in your household, it will help you to be venerable to your family.

To rule well also means to do it in such a way as to care for. Because the text goes on to say, “If a man know not how to rule his own household, how shall he take care of the church of God, the house of God?” That word take care of is found in the story of the good Samaritan. And so the ruling of the household, the ruling of the church is with the view to taking care of them. It’s not to exercise people around you for your ends. It’s to minister to them, to dress up their wounds, to make them strong.

And so your rule is toward that end. But notice, men, heads of households, particularly here, you must rule in the context of your home. How well do you do that? Is your only role at home giving pious advice? “Well, I think this might be a good idea” and then step back and let your wife make the decisions.

Now, there’s a lot of things we should delegate to our wives. But man, if your life, if your leadership style is characterized by giving pious advice, sitting back and not making the decisions, and as a result, not taking the blame for what occurs in your family, you’re in sin. Sin. You’re not ruling your household well.

You got to be the primary decision maker. Even if it’s the delegation of responsibilities to various members of your family. Some of you don’t rule well in this church. Many people don’t rule their home at all these days and age. They bought into the idea of equality. Not in terms of essence. We all know we’re equal in essence in the sight of God—men and women, boys and girls, men, fathers and mothers.

They bought into the idea of equality of rule, a perverted form of democracy where all the family does is vote on things. If you’re always leaving every decision up to the whim of what goes on and then you’re carried by the whim of the kids that you talk to, you’re not leading your household. You’re supposed to have a goal out here: their maturation. And you’re supposed to be moving down that goal and evaluating how well those children are maturing and how well you’re doing guarding yourself and your wife and how well you’re doing maturing yourself and your wife to meet the qualifications.

And if you don’t do that, you’re in sin. You fall short. Scriptures tell us that you’re supposed to do this in such a way as to be venerable to them. “Having his children in subjection with all gravity.” That doesn’t mean the children have all gravity. It means you have all gravity. The sense, according to Lenski I believe, the sense is in subjection to the father—the children with dignity on his part.

Okay? He acts in a dignified way when securing due obedience to his instruction. So it’s referring to him, not the kids—referring to you men and you women as you represent the husband in the context of your families. You must act in a way that is dignified. And that word dignified, as I said, its base word is the word for worship. Things that are worshipful. And so you must be in a sense worshipful to your family or to the people in the sphere of influence in which you work.

Now, it’s interesting because when we get to the prayers of the church in a couple of weeks in 1 Timothy 2:2, we read that prayers are supposed to be made for kings and all that are in authority “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” And that word honesty is the same word. And you know, there’s a real sense in which the ability of us to be venerable in the context of our families is contingent to a degree on the sort of civil governance that our actions bring upon us.

You know, there’s no such thing as a tyrant. I don’t think biblically, God gives tyrants to people who refuse his kingship. And if we complain about the civil government in this country—which we should do in a proper sense—let’s remember that they’re there as judgment from God because we fail to rule well in the context of our families and churches, etc.

But you see, this says you’re going to be in a position—you got to pray for them—and we need to pray diligently for our rulers because the way the state works today, as we know so well in this church, is to bring down the authority of the family, authority the mother and father, to bring it down, the authority of the householder over his own property, to bring down the authority a businessman has over his business. And so he cannot be seen reverentially by his employees or by his neighbors or by his family anymore.

To a degree, we can’t perform that correctly because the civil magistrate is constantly intervening in the God-given authority we have in our homes. And we know in this church, the civil authorities make way, prepare a path for children to scorn their parents instead of reverence them.

So the idea is: this word is when you rule your households, fathers and mothers, you’re supposed to do it in a dignified manner that they might have worship and honor for what you do and for who you are. To hold yourself in such a bearing as to be honorable and worthy of venerance.

As I said, this refers to the wives too because in verse 11, “Even so must the wives be grave.” Verse 8, “The deacons must be grave.” In chapter 2 of Titus, verse 2, “The aged men are to be grave.” It’s repeated again and again and again that our character quality as we mature in the faith is to be one of being grave.

Now it’s interesting how this word is used in the Greek. The word was used of reverential things. It was used to talk about the temple, for instance, in Jerusalem. It’s reverential. It reflects the glory of God in its templeness. It was used to talk about great-looking clothes. You know, you really fine duds, nice shiny robes, whatever it was, were reverential. They were dignified, sober, grave, whatever your translation says.

Think of it as what those clothes, really nice clothes, bring forth from people around. It was used in terms of speeches that were really eloquent and well—boy, that was a reverential talk that guy gave. And it was used in terms of music—not just any music, the music of the spheres, so to speak, the philosophy of the Greeks. The planets and the spheres had music associated to them. And so certain music reflected that and it was worthy then of honor or weight or venerableness. You see? So that’s how the word works. Or positions as well.

You know, positions of authority were positions of venerableness. The way the senators think of themselves in the United States Senate, which is quite obvious if you watch that very long, some senators think of themselves as really being worthy of quite a bit of worship and honor, replacing the Lord Jesus Christ. But in any event, it has that context to it.

So there are these external pictures of the weightiness or honor or worshipfulness, which has its core, of course, in God himself. And even the Greeks understood that the word had its core in the person of the gods. And the person of the gods were reflected through these clothes or buildings or speech or music. And so it should be with us—understanding that’s a perversion of the truth. The truth is that God is only worthy to be worshiped. All other worship is idolatry. But we can worship, so to speak, have a venerable attitude towards architecture, music, speech, positions of authority, and people as they manifest the spirit of God in the context of this world.

You represent God. In other words, you know, to put it very simply—and you know that this text here in terms of ruling your household—there’s a couple of quotes here I want to read from other commentators.

“The word grave speaks of the combination of gravity and dignity which invites the reverence of others.” Gravity and dignity which invites the reverence of others. Authority must be exercised, must be done with true dignity. That is, it must be done in such a manner that the father’s firmness makes it advisable for a child to obey, that his wisdom makes it natural for a child to obey, and that his love makes it a pleasure for the child to obey.

In other words, it’s a way of saying it: must be a good father, a kind father, but one who has determined that God will be honored and served in and by his house.

A wise translation of the verse says: “Presiding over his own household in a beautiful manner, holding children within the sphere of obedience, doing so with a sincerest regard to propriety.” Indeed, if a person does not know how to preside over his own household, how is it possible that he take care of God’s assembly?

And once again, the Greeks can help us here. The original Greek word—the Greek word for honor and reverence—was not contrasted with overly strictness. Too much severity is not what’s being talked about there. There must be authority and rule. But when a Christian begins to lord it over his household for his own purposes, not God’s, then he moves away from that reverence as well.

So there must be real authority and there must be done in such a way as to elicit reverence on the part of your family or elicit reverence from others to your very character. And as I said, the same term is used of the deacons. Luther translated this term, deacon—in terms of the deacon qualification—the term venerable. That is, having a serious bearing because of a serious mind and character because they had to deal with all kinds of people, all ages, all types of people in their work. Sensible, steady men were needed.

It’s also contrasted in Greek literature. This word is contrasted to a lot of jesting around. So the way to lose your venerableness in the context of your family is to jest around too much and be a good buddy to them, or to be so removed that all you’re seen as is an austere, strict ruler. And the idea is to be in between there, bringing the bearing of God, who sent his son to die for our sins, and to have his venerableness attached to ourselves.

One commentator called this “a spiritual or a spirit-wrought gravity and respectability.”

Now what is your relationship to this text? Do you manifest? Start with the husbands and wives. Start with the rulers of the homes here. In your use, in your use of the responsibility God has called you to in your family. Think of your day this morning. Think of your day yesterday. Think of last week. Think of incidences the Holy Spirit will bring to your mind.

How did you do? Did you use your speech and authority in such a way as to promote reverence on the part of your children? Wives, did you use your speech and authority in such a way to increase reverence for your husband on the part of your children? And husbands, are you using your speech and your authority in your bearing in such a way as to build up the reverence of the children for your wife or to tear it down?

Well, I think all too often our lives are marked by tearing down the reverence that God says we’re to exhibit to our children. To tear it down through our own sin, our own lack of self-control, our own lack of heart for the task that God has called us to do in leading this group of people as a church, maturing them for kingdom work as they go forth from our house.

We lose heart for that task. It gets too complicated for us. We don’t know what to do anymore. We get frustrated and all we want to do is have a good time. All I want to do is have some fun. I don’t want the responsibility anymore. Men, you know what I’m talking about. You get home at the end of the day and the last thing you want is heightened responsibility. But it seems like that’s exactly what you get from God.

See, that’s sin on our part. We’ve got to confess it. We’ve got to repent of it. We’ve got to ask God to fill us to those tasks. Why? The same thing. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. These kids are still giving me a hard time. Still can’t quite make out what’s going on here.” And you get tired of it. We lose heart. We lose control. We get angry. We get upset. We yell. We scream. We try to get authority by pounding our fist on the table.

Now, you know, not all yelling and screaming and pounding a fist is bad. I mean, God does that. He does that to us. He yells at us a lot—I mean, not a lot, but he does. He yells at this world and he pounds his fist. But he’s always controlled. It’s always for a purpose. He always uses, you know, I call it exaggeration for effect. It’s not like us. We lose control. And that’s why we yell and scream usually, unless we’re really under good control.

We belittle our children too often. We belittle our wives. We even begin to belittle ourselves. And as we do those things, do we earn that veneration of our family? We do not. We lose it. We lose it on the behalf of our wives, our husbands, our children.

It’s our job to build each other up. I mentioned about going out and seeking. I read a story this last week about Easter egg hunts and how by the time we get to some of them, they have salmonella. And by the time you get to some of the Easter eggs you’ve hidden out there—maybe next year or the next if you do it the next week—they stink real bad.

Well, as we go about our search for venerableness, for that gift of God that the spirit works in our heart, as we seek after the things above, what do you find? If I ask you to go back last week or this morning or yesterday, what do you find in your search?

Well, probably you find some good eggs. You probably find some marks where you did well, but you also find some areas where you did very poorly that really don’t have nice pretty colored eggs anymore. They’re rotten, stinking eggs.

Well, let’s go on. Christian department—the use of the tongue. How do you use your tongue? This actually goes right in. Double-tongued. Deacon can’t be double-tongued. He’s in between people. He can’t be a people pleaser. He’s a middle person. As one says, he’s the pastor of the people. He must not say one thing to one and something else to the other.

Bad deal if they do that. He doesn’t say one thing to one person, something different to another. Another commentator: He doesn’t talk out of both sides of his mouth.

The word double-tongued is dialogos, meaning one saying one thing and meaning another and making different representations to different people about the same thing. Different representations to different people about the same thing for personal advantage.

Of course, the expositor says: Persons who are in this, who excuse me, who are in an intermediate position, having in the same department chiefs and subordinates, are exposed to a temptation to speak of the same matter in different tones and manner according as their interlocutor is above or below them.

In other words, if you’re at work and you know, if there’s people you report to and people report to you and you represent certain office policies, you’re going to say it differently to your superior than you are to your subordinate. Well, maybe you’re not, but that’s the temptation. “Yeah, I don’t agree with that, boss, either. This is what we got to do.” And to the boss, “I don’t know what’s wrong with these guys down here. They just want to get on board. You do it.”

I do it. We all do it. We’re double-tongued. We sin. We don’t use our speech correctly. And unfortunately, some of us do it. Some of you do it in terms of your wives. You say one thing to your wife and something else to your kids. And you tear down your venerableness. You tear down her venerableness. And women, you do it too. You say one thing about your husband to him, you say another to your kids. Or you use your tongues to slander.

The deacon’s wives must not be “she-devils”—is what I, maybe somebody mentioned that word to me. I think it is. It’s diabolos. Slander is a devil. The devil is the slanderer. He accuses God’s people. He’s the accuser. And deacon’s wives aren’t supposed to be slanderous. None of us are to use our tongues to slander each other, to tear each other down. But we do that.

As we go looking for the eggs of how we’ve used our speech, and do we position the truth? Do we tell people what we think they’ll want to hear to keep our reputation good as opposed to the truth of the matter? And as a result, represent things differently to different people? Is that what we do? Well, if we do, we found rotten stinking eggs out on our Easter egg hunt. We haven’t sought the things that are above.

When we use our tongues improperly, we tear down the venerableness that God in his glory has given us on the basis of Christ’s work. We rip it apart. What does Proverbs say? How foolish that woman who tears her house apart with her own hands. I’ve seen women do that. I’ve seen wives do that very thing. And it’s obvious and it’s ugly and it’s terrible.

And I have not seen many husbands do it openly because husbands are a little more clever—like Adam was to send Eve out there to try that fruit out. But men do it too. And at the end of the day, the husband is more responsible than the wife because here it says the deacon’s wives must exhibit these things. Why? It’s a mark of the deacon’s ability to manifest the spirit. His wife is a project. It’s not that he’s not a—he’s a project, too. We’re all projects. But the husband has to see himself, his wife, and his children as projects.

And the result of that project in the terms of the wife will disqualify you from office and will shame you in terms of your Christian character if you’re not seeking office. Your Christian character and department indicates and is results in venerableness of other people to you.

I read a sermon this last week on the incompletes—they called it—of Easter from this Colossian passage and about how you know you have this empty tomb and we’ve got this call in Colossians to seek the things that are above. And it’s—I’ve thought of Hebrews, you know, where it says there remains a Sabbath keeping for the people of God.

All right. Well, the Sabbath has been accomplished definitively in Christ’s work. We always—I teach, I try to—let’s sit down and rest in the finished work of our savior in our worship service. And yet we go through this weekly cycle where we have this special rest that we come to. Why? Because we’re not entered into the eschaton yet. We’re not fully there. It’s now and not yet. It’s complete and incomplete at the same time.

You’re a new creature in Christ Jesus. The spirit indwells you, but you do all those rotten stinking things with your tongues and your attitudes and your department. You get upset. You do strike out occasionally. You stay too long at your wine and get testy, or you stay too long at your own whatever other passion you might have, your own glory or whatever it is, and you get testy with other people.

You do it. We’re not apt to teach because we’re not been taught. We won’t listen to the instruction of God’s word. And so we can’t be apt to teach. We’re incomplete. We’re in these two worlds. And it’s frustrating to us. We wonder what’s going on. Where is the dominion we keep talking about? And if Jesus is king, why is that CSS so awful? And why doesn’t God do something about it? And if I’m a Christian, why don’t I treat my children better? And why don’t I treat my wife better? And why don’t I be more thoroughgoing in terms of my vocational calling to exercise dominion?

You sin. You’re still in that in-between state, so to speak. And so Paul tells you to consider yourself dead in Christ and raised. That’s the reality. That’s your future. Without a sense of the future, there’s no hope in the present. So he reminds us that we are resurrected in Christ Jesus.

That Easter is about Christ’s resurrection and it’s about your resurrection. That is an accomplished fact. But you still must seek those things because you’re in the process of maturing and working that out, of seeing the old die away. It’s like that 40-year period between AD 30 and AD 70 where the two creations overlap until they’re finally done away with. Our lives are lives in which the old man and new man, so to speak, the patterns of existence and thought and character, deportment overlap with each other.

And so we sin and yet we do tremendous things. They’re all beautiful eggs we can find in our days. I mean, I know all of you and I know I’ve said some things to bring conviction to you, but the other side of it is that your mark—your lives are marked by essential faithfulness, right? Nice looking eggs. And when we go out and we seek through our lives and we see those rotten, stinking eggs of how we bring down our venerableness or actually try to positively tear down somebody else’s venerableness—

I want us to think of those the way that some of us will have those treasure hunts today where sometimes you go out there and the thing you find is the crown of thorns or you find the 30 pieces of silver. Maybe that’s what you find this afternoon—kids or adults, if you go do that hunt. When you find the what is can be seen as a rotten stinking egg, recognize that you find an evidence of your sinfulness and the reason why our savior bled and died and was raised up.

Don’t let it so tear you down as to somehow imagine that forgiveness hasn’t been obtained, that the Christ isn’t resurrected, that you’re not resurrected in him. But let it humble you.

I smile that I made that mistake in the first song. I always wonder when it will happen. Usually there’s a mistake I make in the order of worship. Usually at least one mistake. I always wonder when it’s going to happen and how big it’s going to be. And I see it as God humbling me. I don’t, you know, don’t get me wrong. I have my culpability. Didn’t practice that song. Thought I knew it well enough. A little slothful. Not managing my time well.

But you know, there’s always something that God will do to manifest to you and to make evident to yourself and other people your weakness. That’s okay. He does it so you’ll understand your weakness. And then he brings you to a position—or pray to God this is what’s true in your case—of not denying and try to make that smelly egg into some kind of fragrance beautiful, but to bring you to a realization of your sinfulness.

I spoke with a counselor, a woman, this last week about a family counseling matter I’m involved with. And they said, “Well, you ought to bring somebody along from this Westside Counseling Center. They’re biblical counseling.” And I said, “Well, you know, term means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.”

“Well, they’re biblical,” she said, “because they remind people of who they are, and that’s the starting point for everything else.”

And I thought, “That sounds pretty good.” And she said, “Who they are is they’re precious and they’re important people, and they’ve got to get their esteem up.”

Well, see, I didn’t argue with her. It wasn’t the place. It would have been detracting from what we were trying to accomplish. But you see, what the scriptures reveal is that we’re rotten, stinking sinners, and that God has delivered us from that. And two—most times what you need to hear in the middle of a difficulty with your wife or your children or something else is how you screwed up.

What you need to be revealed to you is—you go out there looking and you find 30 pieces of silver. “Oh, I thought I was going to find something nicer indicating how good a person I am. I thought I was going to come to church and everybody was going to love me, but I didn’t. They didn’t like me too much.”

See, because God reminds us graciously of our sin that we might then move to a confession of that sin and a growth in grace. And yes, come to the esteem of the cross and the resurrection and count on that reality. You know, we got to start with a realization of our sinfulness.

Well, I want to just, in closing, talk to you about several—from another book now—several areas of incompleteness, several things that we have found in our lives. And he calls them incomplete. They’re sins, really, is what they are. And I’ve talked to you and I hope you realize your sin relative to a venerableness or worshipfulness in your character and being of an improper use of your tongue.

We’ve talked about that of an overly indulging passions. And do you have an incompleteness or a sin relative to being apt to teach or hospitable? I mentioned you can’t be apt to teach if you’re not teachable. You can’t hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience if you don’t know what the faith is about. In order to do that, you’ve got to study the word. You’ve got to take use of the opportunities that are along the path of your life for that study to increase.

If you’re not apt to teach, if you find that in your home, you’re not able to articulate biblical truth to your family using the occasions that come up in everyday life, maybe it’s because you don’t understand the faith that well yet. And maybe that’s because you’re not making use of the opportunities, among other things, that this church provides. We’ve got Bible studies. We’ve got one, two, three, four studies going on nearly every week or every other week. On the women’s study every week, I think, for the Heidelberg Catechism and my Canons—adore opportunities. Sabbath school classes for the adults now in the morning. You make opportunity. You make use of those opportunities.

No. I’m not saying these classes are mandatory. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty if you shouldn’t have to be there. But I’m saying that if other things in your life are so crowding your life to where you don’t study the mystery of the faith so you can’t hold it with a pure conscience and you can’t articulate it to your children and instruct them or to your friends and help build them up in the knowledge of the truth—and repent of those sins, of those things crowding out your life so you don’t seek out the educational opportunities they’re afforded you.

I don’t want to hear about it. I do, but part of me doesn’t want to hear about it. If you say, “Well, I just can’t get to things and I don’t know what the faith is and I’m so busy and I can’t”—no. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to hear that. I’ll be hearing that for years. Things I hear from people for years, dilemmas that are unresolved. God brings dilemmas along, but he gives us the means to work our way out of those dilemmas. And in terms of the knowledge of the word, there’s lots of means you can avail yourselves of in this church and informal things as well.

So, these are some incompletes. These are some areas in our lives where we want to be like this, we end up being like this, and the thing to do is to confess that and to move on.

Let me move—let me just briefly, in closing, a couple of other areas suggested by an article, called a book actually, called “Wake-Up Calls.” He talks about relational incompletes. Do you do you have unresolved conflict with someone? Or do you have feelings that have not been expressed? Well, with the expression of feelings, you know, it’s kind of new age and hippie sort of—you got to let it, let it all hang out. And you know, “If I hate somebody, I should tell them I hate you.” You know, it’s a feeling.

But it is certainly true that one of the areas of sinful incompleteness, or sometimes just the incompleteness that God and his providence gives us, is unresolved relationships. And it makes us wonder about this resurrection and it makes us wonder why Easter isn’t a more joyous occasion for us.

Integrity incompletes. Do you have trouble keeping agreements or being truthful about people, places, and things?

Career incompletes. Do you continue to work in a job you hate? Or do you fail to do the best job that you can? I would say, do you see your job as a calling from God? And to what degree have you manifested that and your attempt to restructure that job and you’re thinking about it relative to God’s word of dominion?

Financial incompletes. Do you have debts that are mounting? Do you have trouble saving as you know you should? Do you have trouble controlling your spending, your desires again—wine, silver? Do you have trouble controlling your passions? And as a result, God gives you the indicator, the wake-up call of increasing indebtedness or simply an absence of savings—financial incompletes that make us feel terrible.

Do you have physical incompletes? Do you eat and drink things that you know are bad for you and do you continue to put off committing yourself to a healthy lifestyle?

I’ve got one of those going on right now in my—