Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. 1 Timothy 5:17-26.

Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, and the laborer is worthy of his reward. Dost an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses? Them that sin, rebuke before all, that others also may fear.

I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins. Keep thyself pure. Drink no longer water only, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities. Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment, and some men they follow after.

Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand, and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these scriptures, and we thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you that we have been accepted through the work of our covenant mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. And on the basis of that, you have shed your Spirit abroad in our hearts in order to write the law upon our hearts to create love in the context of your church and relationships in the context of church life.

We thank you Lord God for this particular portion of scripture and ask that your Spirit would do his work by smiting us and healing us, by convicting us of sin and assuring us of the forgiveness of those sins through the personal work of Jesus Christ. And then Lord God, may we have unplugged ears that we might hear what these scriptures have to say to us. And may we Lord God walk in obedience by the power of your Holy Spirit. We ask this in Christ’s name and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Now, I know that can be difficult to listen to and you wonder why do I read quotes from other men, from John Calvin or whoever. Well, my job as I see it from those passages in Ezra and Nehemiah is to take the word of God and to give you the understanding of it and to make it simple in one sense. Now, the word of God is not simple. I’m going to show you today what probably a lot of you have not thought of and you may not agree with me. But I’m going to show you something that’s important, I think, for interpreting this passage correctly that may not be obvious.

So simple doesn’t mean just, you know, you just read it and that’s that. But it does mean I want to communicate it clearly. And to do that, I read things by men and they’ve communicated something real clearly, at least as far as I can see. So I think in those particular portions of scripture, it may be clearer for you if I read from them as opposed to speaking myself.

Okay? Now, last week I wanted to mention that last week’s sermon, the late Independence Day sermon, I want to do that occasionally—to speak about the truths on which this country was founded. And those truths really have a lot to do with the founding of this church. Reformation Covenant was formed out of men who had a tremendous desire in families, not just to have a nice church we could go and worship and then go do whatever we want to during the week, but rather men who greatly desired in the innermost part of their being a holy commonwealth.

Again, to use a phrase that men who formed this country used. And I want to keep that idea in front of us.

You know, entropy is something that God has built into the universe. Entropy says that things move from a more ordered state to a less ordered state unless you inject something into the system. You probably heard about that in terms of rebuttal of evolution, but the idea is if you just have a house, it’s not an appreciating asset in the sense of actual value. It may be in terms of supply and demand, but actual value—because your house runs down, things break, pipes get clogged. And the same thing happens in this church. Its vision of doing what we could—our small part in the vast expanse of God’s church on this earth, church militant—is to retain that sense of militancy, sense of going outward with the message of the gospel into our lives and our culture to affect a reformation in our land, to affect the recovery of the holy commonwealth at the birth of this country, which has been betrayed by centralization and by moving away from God.

So I think it’s very important to remind ourselves why we’re here. The worship of God as we understand it includes an expansive sense of that worship to everything we put our hand and foot to. So I want to continue to hold that up in front of us.

Just a couple of quotes that I didn’t get to last week, and kind of say some of this. De Tocqueville was an early commentator in the 1830s, I believe, about American culture and whatnot, and he said this. He had just been commenting on his work on the charters of Connecticut, Massachusetts and other states. He said this:

“The reader will undoubtedly have remarked, ‘The preamble of these enactments in America, religion is the road to knowledge and the observance of the divine law leads men to civil freedom.’ “

And that’s what our country was formed on the basis of.

Christopher Hill in a book on the Puritans said that the intention of the American settlements was, or the plantation was, to be a holy commonwealth. Men, Christopher Hill adds, who have assurance that they are to inherit heaven, have a way of presently taking possession of the earth. This courage and confidence enable them to fight with economic, political, or military weapons to create a new world worthy of the God who had so signally blessed them.

As Hill adds, previous theologians had explained the world for the Puritans. The point was to change it. And that’s our point. That’s the point of Reformation Covenant Church—to take this word of God and its full implications and to be part of a reformation and to affect once more on this particular real estate, whether it’s known as the United States of America or Oregon or not in the future, but to affect a holy commonwealth wherever God has planted us. So that’s what we want.

A Puritan sermon before the House of Commons in 1641 read this:

“Reformation must be universal. Reform all places, all persons and callings. Every plant which my heavenly father hath not planted shall be rooted up.”

Bold words to a parliament, to a House of Commons. But that’s the truth. Every kingdom that raises itself up against Jesus shall be rooted up.

R.J. Rushdoony summarized the New England Puritan vision of the holy commonwealth in this way. He says that it was not individualism but a sense of destiny as God’s chosen people, faith in their calling—not only in terms of personal covenant of grace as a church covenant and the development of the reformation but as a civil covenant. They’re called people of God as a civil order surrounded by the notable and marvelous tokens of his providence.

Timothy Dwight’s Conquest of Canaan, 1785—Dwight was quite important in the early years of our country—is eloquent evidence of this faith. Dwight in good advice and bad verse saw the restoration of Eden as part of America’s destiny and summoned America to perfect her federal system for this stupendous realm, this chosen race of God.

So that is the vision, and the way we accomplish that vision is through, as I mentioned last week, covenanting—terms of the church, in terms of civil covenants, faithfulness to those covenants, confession of sin. That the judgments that God brings upon us—the centralization and tyranny that we’re beginning to experience more and more in America—is a result not somehow of some external conspiracy as much as it is the result of God’s chastisement upon us as people.

So now let’s shift gears—but maybe not shift gears a whole lot—because we’re going back to instructions from 1 Timothy about how to behave yourself in the house of God. And that’s really what we’re talking about in terms of civil reformation as well. And we’re going back now to 1 Timothy and to continue this book. We’ll be done hopefully in a few weeks. And we’ve just reminded ourselves where we’re at in 1 Timothy.

We’ve come out of a large section on widows. And now we move to a section on elders. And this whole section that I just read is one section. I believe the whole thing talks really primarily about the officers of the local church known as elders or overseers.

Now, why does Timothy move this way? It’s been remarked that honor is one connection here. You know, you’re supposed to honor widows. And then he goes on to talk about honoring officers, double honor for those that rule well and labor hard, etc. So that’s one connection.

Another connection may be that in the Old Testament, the responsibility to provide for the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger was linked in terms of the use of a portion of your tithe, the rejoicing, and the events that would happen in community life to the Levite. Why is he thrown in there—the Levite? You got the widow, the fatherless, the stranger in the land obviously in a reduced state, and then you got the Levite.

And I think that probably the primary significance of that is that our charity, our benevolences, our rejoicing are to have a religious aspect to them. Prayer and the word are to accompany everything that we do. I think I could make the point by way of application that sometimes the Levites—or church officers—feel as vulnerable and maybe in fact are as the widows, the fatherless, and the strangers for various reasons which we may get to in the context of today’s message.

But there’s another text that I want us to look at relative to this connection. I want us to turn in our scriptures to Deuteronomy 25:4 if you will. In the middle of this passage we’ve just read, we have this statement about the ox and the threshing of the grain and being able to eat. And you know, we know most people who are somewhat literate with their scriptures and have read them somewhat, been in church for a while—I mean, if you’re not a new Christian, you probably know that’s a reference to an Old Testament law.

Paul says, you know, the scripture saith this as a reason to give elders honor both in terms of esteem and money. And we most of us know that’s some kind of Old Testament case law. You know, that’s about as far as we get with it. You know, we know that there were these various case laws in the Old Testament. And some had to do with animals and we don’t know exactly why, but it seems like God wants us to be kind to animals. And so now he’s taken that application and he’s bringing it forward to say, well, in essence, we’re supposed to be kind to animals that are threshing out grain. We’re supposed to be kind to the pastors doing his work. And that certainly is true. All that’s true except that it’s important to go back and see the context, what tune Paul is playing when he whistles the bridge from it or when he whistles the chorus to it.

You know, we have these New Testament citations of Old Testament truths. And if you’re well read in the scriptures, when Paul says, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox,” he’s summoning up a song or a larger piece of scripture for us. And here it is. And let me put this, and I can’t go through this to show you this, but Deuteronomy is deuteronomic law. It’s the second telling of the law. So what Moses is doing is he’s going through the law again and he’s given a careful exposition of the Ten Commandments, is what his basic sermon is here.

And so we get toward the end of this book, and I believe we’re now in the section that this citation that Paul uses here and in 1 Corinthians talks about minister support being related to ox. That text is the beginning of the last section on covetousness—the violation of the tenth commandment, coveting.

But in any event, I want us to see something here. Some commentators place it with verse three. I don’t know how they managed to do that, but verses 1 through 3 have talk about controversy between men and judgment. And the wicked man is worthy of being beaten. He’ll have to lie down and be beaten. Then verse 4: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox.” And then verse 5:

“If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother unto her. And it shall be that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother, which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel. And if the man like not to take the brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go into the gate unto the elders, and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.’ Then the elders of the city shall call him and speak unto him. And if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her, then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer, and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house, and his name shall be called in Israel, the house of him that hath his shoe loosed.”

Chris W. is going to start a couple of weeks some sermons going through the Book of Ruth, and we’ll see an application of this, a specific historical application. But my point is that this is the law of the levirate. The levirate responsibility here is the man who has a sister-in-law who’s been widowed. Okay? And in the context of her being widowed, he’s supposed—and she has no children—he’s supposed to help her raise a child both by impregnation, but I believe also to raise up his name. He also would have to a certain degree follow the responsibilities for that child that’s born. The child wouldn’t be fatherless in a sense because this man takes over those responsibilities.

So he’s called to do this work and he’s warned that if he doesn’t do this work, he’s going to take his shoe off. He’s not going to be protected from that ground which has thorns in it now, and she’s going to spit in his face. And in any event, he is disgraced by the spitting in the face and by the shoe being taken off.

Now, if he does do his work, then he is to be blessed. The whole point of these laws is the blessing and cursing that attaches to him. And I believe that this, first of all, I know that the oxen citation is not in the context of miscellaneous case laws about animals. It’s in the context of men. Men. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, he says, does God care about oxen? No. He says, “This was written for our sake. For our sakes altogether. In its first application, it was written for us,” he said.

So what’s the correlation here that causes Paul to bring this case law into his discussion of the role of the elder? I believe the correlation is that there is a sense in which the elder is performing this levirate duty. Let me explain. The elders of the church are responsible to help the church of Jesus Christ bring forth seed and spiritual fruit. They labor in that job. In the case of the levirate, he has to labor in terms of raising the son—and all, you know, from A to Z, he’s got to help his sister-in-law with the birth of this son and then the raising of this son to have a name in Israel. Hard work.

And that hard work is prefaced, I believe, this whole section with a statement that if this is the ox, the ox is him—the levirate in the first application. Otherwise, we’ve got some kind of gloss here, some kind of mistake in the text, it seems. But it’s very easy to see that this man—I think what’s being said here is that this man who’s going to raise up this nephew of his, he has a right to use the property that belongs to his sister-in-law and his dead brother and this nephew while he’s in the job of raising up this son. Okay? It’s talking about the blessing side, the reward to him in terms of his obligation of the case law to raise up children—a son rather, a nephew, a name in Israel.

And then at the end, so it begins with a blessing and it ends with curse. Goes from, you know, Psalm 1—blessing—and then Psalm 1 ends with the destruction of people who don’t submit to God, and it ends with the curse of being disgraced if he doesn’t do this thing.

So all that by way of saying that another indication of this is that this has to do with widows, and Paul has just talked about honoring widows in the context of the church. I talked about how there’s a sense in which the church itself is the widow that Christ has visited. The Book of Luke says, you know, Elijah didn’t go to all the widows. He went to one widow. I’ve talked about the significance of widows in the New Testament.

And God has come to us—because we’re widowed in Christ—he’s now led us to himself. But he’s not present physically. He’s at the right hand of the Father. He raises up a levirate, a levirate person here—officers—to perform the work of producing spiritual fruit in the context of the church both by preaching the gospel and evangelizing so that people are brought into the faith newly birthed, and then also in the context of their spiritual growth as they grow up to be a name in Israel so that RCC can be a name in Israel.

So officers are raised up for this function. So there’s this correlation to the honoring of widows. And then God honors widows by the production of these levirates. And then God honors the widow of the church by bringing people in to minister in the context of the church, and they then have the blessings of the honoring that’s supposed to be given to them. They then have the potential curse there—that they don’t do their job correctly. It’ll be publicly rebuked. And then they have a model in Timothy where Timothy says, “This is how you go about doing this work.”

Jesus talks about his yoke, taking his yoke upon us. We’re ox. This sermon—the title is “The Angels Are Watching”—would be my original title. I was thinking of this because all this happens. In the middle of the text, it says that God adjures Timothy in the presence of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and angels—elect angels—to do these things. The angels are watching, Paul tells Timothy.

But another title could be “Elders as Ox” or “as Oxen.” You know, that’s the correlation made. I’ve been called a bison or a buffalo before because I used to have my beard used to look a little—I don’t know what it was—but I was called that. Well, I don’t mind that so much anymore. It’s kind of like an ox, and that’s kind of what I like. It’s a good reminder to me, and it’s helpful to you to see that one way you can look at this passage of scripture is: How does that ox go about doing his work to produce spiritual growth on the part of God’s people correctly? Blessings and cursings are meted out, and then the job is laid out in the context of the case law. So all this correlates together.

One more little bit of, you know, generalized stuff before we get to the specific text. It’s interesting to me as we prepare for communion today that these oxen are threshing out grain. They’re taking heads of grain, they’re separating heads of grain—the chaff from the wheat. And the wheat is then able to be used as offerings to God and only secondarily as food for man. First were offerings to God—bread. And then Paul reminds Timothy in the middle of this text, on what elders are supposed to do in terms of judging or ruling—particularly that’s the stress here. It is the discerning of chaff and wheat. That’s part of what’s going on here. Okay?

Discipline is talked about in the context of this text. The text doesn’t say, “Let the guy who preaches a great sermon, who really can teach, let him be worthy of double honor.” No, what it says is the one who rules well is the one who’s worthy of double honor. And then particularly those who also labor hard in the word and preaching, the emphasis is on rule. Okay? Guarding and nurturing. And so as the elder go about their work, they create this bread—this loaf of Christ, so to speak—that he compares us to. And in the middle of that section, again, it seems like a gloss. Some commentators say, “Well, it’s just something that got somehow stuck in there.” We don’t know why it’s in there. All of a sudden Paul gives this personal instruction to Timothy—you know, to drink some wine from now on and don’t just be a water drinker.

Well, there are things that correlate. I mean, some people have said, well, his frequent ailments of his stomach had to do with the churning of the gut. And you go about the difficult job of overseeing, directing, leading, guiding, ruling the church, and you know, it could very well be the case. And so it’s an admonition to elders—you know, things get tough and your stomach is really churning away. Have a little bit of wine because it’s going to calm it down.

And by the way, I know I’m getting off the subject but I’ll get back to it. That is an indication that this wine is wine and not grape juice, because sweet grape juice, it just makes your stomach sicker. The wine has been known since man has made wine to have a good effect on the stomach.

But why wine? Now we’ve got the reference to bread through the oxen threshing, the discerning work of the ruler, and now we’ve got wine. Well, it’s a picture of communion again. And at least by way of application, I don’t know about interpretation of the text, but at least by way of application, I think we can see these people that are ruling doing their job well. They’re being honored by the church. They’re being guarded by the judicial practices of the church. They’re being warned that if they sin, they’re going to be publicly rebuked. They’re being given Timothy as a model of how to rule correctly.

And these men then are the ones who also end up serving, nourishing, the physical picture of bread and wine to the congregation of Christ. It’s a picture of them being nourished up and producing themselves a spiritual seed before God—God through their lives. So it’s a beautiful picture that’s painted for us here. It’s not just a bunch of abstract instructions to elders.

Beautiful picture drawn in the levirate from the Old Testament drawn in the picture of bread and wine and the sustenance, and helping us to define what the role of elders in the context of the church is. So it’s a beautiful picture.

Let’s get to a little bit more specifics then in terms of this picture. I’m giving you an outline—now, sermon notes, I guess I called them this week. Not an outline. It’s a long story. Lost my keys. Couldn’t get into my office most of yesterday, so I did this at home for the most part, which is a little different. But in any event, I’ve provided you some sermon notes there.

This text of scripture could be used to talk about a lot of things other than what I’m going to talk about. Let me just mention a few in passing—not yet on point one, but still in the introduction. It is said here that those who labor in the word and teaching. This means that the elder’s job is not just to study all the time. It’s to study to the end of teaching. So it’s not speculative study. We could spend a sermon on that if we wanted to, but understand that’s in this text.

Understand too that Timothy is seen here as a bishop. In this text, the officers of the church are referred to as elders. And earlier in the qualification for elders in 1 Timothy 3, the word used was overseer. Okay? And those are two words that are used somewhat interchangeably about elders—for elders in this text, honor is being stressed and maybe the family relationship from back from the levirate law in Deuteronomy 25. And so a family-honoring term, elder, is used relative to the office.

Earlier in 1 Timothy 3, the overseeing—the function as opposed to the person—here the function was stressed more in 1 Timothy 3, and the term overseer was used. Okay?

But it is interesting that overseer is always used in the singular in the New Testament and elders are used in the plural. Timothy—we could go into at least a sermon or two about Timothy as a bishop and his role in terms of hearing cases that brought against elders, for instance, his role of making sure that these pay arrangements were made. I mean, we could look at this text and say, well, it’s interesting. How do we end up with church budgets? How do we decide who pays who what? And it seems like Timothy is being given instructions to perform this task.

So there’s interesting things in this about that. Who sets the salaries? That appears Timothy might. That’s another thing that could be successfully and probably profitably studied out in this text.

Another thing that we could study out is the idea of two versus three offices. You know, I believe—let me just quote a little bit from Matthew Henry on this. We’re talking now about two or three offices. By that I mean, is there elders and deacons, or are there elders, deacons, and ministers? The three forms of unity. The Belgian Confession lists distinct from elders: ministers. You got ministers or pastors, lay elders, and then deacons. Three office positions. We have always taught in this church a two office position. There’s only elders and deacons. And some elders may teach more or some may not. But there only two different sorts of elders.

In this text, Matthew Henry in his commentary says that he confesses that this is the plainest text of scripture that can be found to count evidence and opinion that there are actually three offices. Matthew Henry said, “This is the text—clearest one in which you could try to draw this conclusion.”

But Matthew Henry goes on to say in the early church clearly they didn’t have two kinds of offices. They clearly only had the same guy who would both teach them and rule them. That’s clear. He says then—he says, “I find it strange that the ones that receive the double honor, if this really is two different offices, elders and ministers, okay, if that’s the case, then it’s strange that it’s the elders, the lay elders who rule, who be getting the double honor. Seems like the preacher of the word would be the guy to get the double honor.”

So that kind of works against it. And he says, “I find it even more strange that the apostle should take no notice of them when he treats of church officers.” That is in 1 Timothy 3. And he says, no, he says, “In the primitive church, we had one to preach to them and the authority to rule them. Ruling and teaching were performed by the same person. Only some might labor more in the word and doctrine than others.”

So we could spend a whole sermon or two talking about that—the two versus three office position. I believe the text actually reinforces the two office position.

You know, Paul cites the scriptures, for the scriptures declare, “The ox shall be muzzled,” when talking about the requirement to do double honor to elders people of God. We could preach a sermon there—that if God says it, it is established. When you quote the scriptures, you quote them correctly, the discussion is over in terms of debate. The word of God is to be our only standard of faith and practice, not the secondary standards of the church ultimately. You know, there’s an old saying, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” Well, it’s wrong. God says it, that settles it, whether or not you believe it. Okay? And we could preach about that. Excellent text here.

Understand, too, that when we have in the middle of this text that Paul adjures Timothy in the presence of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, that—without getting into the specifics—this is another proof text properly used of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The particular Greek grammatical construction identifies God and Jesus Christ as the same individual here. Okay? So this is a text to use against the Jehovah’s Witnesses or others who deny the divinity or the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Interestingly, in that context he says, “Our God, Jesus Christ.” It’s a polemical statement. Paul at various places in the epistles—this isn’t picked up on too much today—but he is aware of the fact that the Roman government believed in emperor worship. Remember we talked about that in 1 Timothy 2 when we’re supposed to pray for the civil authorities. It’s polemical. It’s written against the idea that the civil state is God walking on earth. And we have an obligation as a church and as ministers to say that salvation cannot be ushered in through the civil state. They can’t provide for health, education, and welfare. It’s not their job. Our Savior is Jesus Christ, and his kingdom indicates what is the proper functioning of the civil government.

We could talk about that. Lots of things here in this text to talk about, but we want to talk about specifically this picture we have of the correct relationship of the officers to the church first. Then Paul gives instructions to Timothy regarding elders and their rule in the church.

The first thing he says is that elders are to be honored and guarded in the context of the church. However, those elders that rule badly are to be disciplined in a public sense. And then third, he says that this process—this process of discipline—is for the protection and the proper functioning of the elders themselves and the flock.

So we could say that we’ve got the good, the bad, and Mr. in between talked about in these first three points.

Under point one, Paul tells them that those that rule well—the good elders—receive double honor. And that double honor has to do with esteem, and that double honor has to do with pay, as is clearly made evident by the citation from Deuteronomy 25:4 and the other citation from the saying of our Lord that “the laborer is worthy of his hire.”

Secondly, he says that those elders are to be guarded—the good ones are—because you can’t receive an accusation against them. You can’t hear it except in the evidence of two or three witnesses. In the Old Testament case law, it took two or three witnesses to convict somebody. In the case of the elder, it takes two or three witnesses to even hear the charge. The word used here for charge is a formal judicial charge. It is kategoria—kata with an accusation. The public place. It’s something that is said in a public place by way of charge or incrimination against a person.

And Timothy is told here that as you hear these cases against elders, if you’ve got some people who are surmising things and there’s no witnesses to the fact that this guy has sinned, don’t even hear the case. Elders are to be honored. Elders are to be guarded in the context of the church. But those are the good ones. The bad ones, they’re supposed to be disciplined.

Those that sin are supposed to have their sin brought home by way of conviction. The word used there for rebuke means to drive home to the heart of someone their sin. You may not get them to come fully repentant, but you at least bring them to a sense of conviction through a rebuke. And so that’s supposed to happen to the bad ones.

And the point of all this is so that those watching the process—the elders in the first application, Mr. In between, who’s neither good nor bad—I mean, they may not be worthy of double honor, but they’re not bad. They’re watching this and they’re going to be fearful of God’s judgments. And as a result, they’re going to sin less. And the people that are aware of God’s judgments, if this is done in a public setting, they also are going to fear and as a result be more careful. Fear is not always bad. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and when we fear public disgrace and as a result that keeps us from sinning, that is a good thing.

So Paul says to honor and guard the good elders. He says to discipline the bad ones, and he says that this will produce well-being for all elders and really for the entire congregation as well.

Now let me just mention a couple of things. In terms of this, the ones that are the good ones are men who excel and who work hard, who labor in the word and doctrine and who excellently rule. I think there’s two things being said here. The good elders—the ones that receive double honor—are characterized by a quantity of work. The ox illustration is a good one to get that illustration across. The more the ox works, the better he’s fed because he’s eating the grain as he’s working. And if he work long hours, you don’t give him much pay, he’s going to get weak and tired, and as a result, he’s going to stop plowing.

So the more the guy works, the more he’s supposed to be able to eat from the carnal, as it were, prosperity of the church, the tithes that come into him, is going to sustain him in reference to how much he works. So if he works a lot, he’s supposed to be given more money. But it isn’t just quantity, it’s quality. He’s to labor hard, which means to toil, to work, to near exhaustion. He’s supposed to be a hard worker, long hours, all that stuff if he’s going to get double honored.

But he’s also supposed to excellently rule. He’s supposed to do it in a quality that is also superior. And so as Timothy makes evaluations for the pay that the elders receive, their portion of what tithe comes in, he’s supposed to do it on the basis of their quantity and quality of work. So the text tells us that the more they work, the more they’re supposed to be paid.

All elders, on the basis of this, it seems that all elders should receive some stipend, but that some more than others based upon the quantity and the quality of their work. But secondly, we can take this honor as not just honoring in terms of money. The word doesn’t say “pay them double.” The word uses the word timé, which is the beginning by the Timothy’s name—timé—honor of God or honoring God and being honored by God. The word means honor. Same way as “honor widows,” and it has a financial component just like the widow’s honor was to be placed on benevolence roles. But the word is more broad than that, and here we can take at least the illustration of the cattle into play—that you’re being kind to them as well.

So the elders are to be honored and esteemed among the congregation. In other words, you can’t just pay him a lot of money if he’s a good worker and then treat him poorly—you know, don’t like him or don’t have much to do with him or talk about him behind his back, whatever it is. The scripture says that the church is supposed to honor the church officers. You’re supposed to look up to them, supposed to have a degree of reverence for them, supposed to think well of them, and supposed to compliment them and that kind of stuff.

Lenski, I think in his commentary, said, “Well, you know, it’s nice to put flowers on the grave of a dead preacher, but you know, this text says, hey, honor them. Give them those flowers for their life. Encourage them in their work.” Okay? And in that encouragement, you’re going to get better work and service out of them.

You know, in the Old Testament, people stopped tithing. Those Levites had to get out of work, and they end up going someplace else, and the people of God were diminished in their understanding of the word of God because the Levites were no longer encouraged by way of monetary recompense. And the same thing—you know, you know that money is nice, but you know, at the end of the day it’s not enough. You got to have the encouragement of the people you work for.

And those of you who work in the marketplace, or those women at home as well, you know how much better you work when you get encouragement from your husband and he gives you a dowry or he gives you some stipend amount of money to spend for whatever you want to spend it on as he should according to the scriptures. And as he gives you words of encouragement, you know, your labor is better. And as he discourages you, yeah, you can still do it right. You still want to work under the Lord in all that you do. But God has set up these secondary means.

And men, you know what it’s like to work for a bad boss. I know what it’s like. I went from an excellent boss to a bad boss. And boy, I’ll tell you, I actually walked away from work one day—just walked out to a playground, spent a couple hours just sitting out there because I was so discouraged. Well, it’s that way with church office. Officers have much that provides discouragement to church officers in the context of the church, and the church has an obligation. Timothy is supposed to bring this instruction to the congregations. The job of the bishop here—if we want to look at Timothy as a bishop or as the elder—is to encourage the congregation to stir them up for this honoring of church officers that will let them persist in their work.

There’s so much that provides discouragement to church officers. And the people of God are to honor and guard. You’re supposed to give those that work hard with good quality more money. You’re supposed to esteem them. You’re supposed to show kindness to them as well. And you’re supposed to guard them.

As I said, these implications from not hearing a charge. It’s interesting to me that John Calvin has some excellent comments—which maybe I will or will not read. I don’t know. I was amazed as I read Calvin’s commentary on this particular portion of scripture how many things he wrote that seemed so right on target for making this stuff clear for us. And I think one reason for that was that Calvin went through the whole gamut at Geneva.

You always think of John Calvin being the dictator of Geneva or something. That was not the way it was. When he first went to Geneva, he was only there a short time and he was driven out of the city. People would, you know, sick their dogs on the man. They’d make up all kinds of cruel stories about him. A lot of scandal and a lot of things being said behind his back and other guys—just this, that, or the other thing. They’d throw wash water on him when they could, you know, real funny stuff. And they actually drove him out. The city council drove him out.

And he went back. There were certain conditions where the church would not be under the jurisdiction of the civil state. That was a big problem. Well, Calvin went through it. He knew that elders, officers in the church, had to be protected from the slander of the congregation because he knew that as you deal with people, you’re going to offend people by what you do. You’re walking around with a big target on your chest just because you’re an officer in the church, particularly if you’re, you know, more visible in the context of the church.

And if people are upset about the church, you can bet that usually that being upset is going to get attached to the pastor somehow. People are going to talk about them. You can’t stop it. I used to try to stop it. Can’t stop it. All you can do is preach what the word says, pray to God, that the Spirit brings people to conviction, and then pray that the rest of the people that aren’t engaged in this stuff will not allow it to go on behind the elder’s back.

You know, an angry countenance drives away slander. The Proverbs tell us. And sometimes you just got to suffer. And sometimes what you just want to do is tell people, hey, you’re going to keep talking like that. You know, go talk to the guy. Go talk to the man. Don’t talk to me. I’m not going to listen to you. And in fact, you keep it up, I’m going to get mad at you with a righteous anger. You hope the people do that, but at the end of the day, they’re not good.

And so what you do want to do is you want to put a stop to that sort of stuff, at least in terms of the official courts of the church. Timothy was instructed by Paul to not hear these accusations on the basis of slander. Got to be two or three witnesses. Have to present this case in the context of the verse here tells us—in the presence of the man himself. You got to be able to face your accusers. That’s a fundamental right built into the American Constitution based on this and other texts. Scriptures know nothing of, you know, all these charges and evidences being worked up and then the presentation comes to the man: “We found you guilty.”

No, that’s not biblical. And that’s just what slander is. Of course, it’s a failure to bring the witnesses to the person so he can hear the witnesses against him and respond to them. Got to be on the basis of two or three. Got to be done publicly. And it’s got to be a serious enough charge that merits the kind of term that’s used here that I referenced earlier—a judicial discipline. Has to be a charge that is meriting of a serious public accusation. It’s not some flying rumor, as Calvin said. It’s not some, you know, bit of slander. “I don’t like the way the guy brushes his teeth, the way he talks,” or whatever it is. It’s got to be something substantive.

Calvin, I won’t read these commentaries from Calvin, but he does have an awful lot of good things to say there in terms of the need to protect the officers of the church.

And so that’s called for here. They’re to honor and guard the elders. And then secondly, as I said, the bad elders are to be rebuked. You know, Calvin did write that bad men will take, for instance, the protection and guarding that’s given elders in the first portion that Paul writes and they’ll turn it on its head. In the Roman Catholic Church, some councils had decided it took 72 witnesses to come against a bishop in the church. 72. And they got to it through some convoluted reasoning, I’m sure, based some how on scripture. And a lay person couldn’t bring a charge against a bishop in the church. Had to be a minor bishop would bring the charge. So they constructed all these things in the name of guarding the minister that really didn’t allow this next portion to be carried out—to rebuke those that sin publicly.

This is the other side of the coin. I know churches. I know men that have told me that you know, the idea that the church officer holds his membership in the local church is a dangerous practice because then the members of the church can bring charges against him. So what you really want is you want the ministers to be member of Presbyterian—the denomination. That’s the way the Presbyterians are by and large. The minister is not a member of the local church. His church, so to speak, is Presbyterian. And one of the reasons—I’m not saying all men who do this do this for this reason. I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure there are good biblical reasons. But I know that it’s been explained to me by men who have moved from membership in the local church to believe that ministers should have their membership in Presbyterian—that the reason for that is to insulate the pastor and to give him protection.

Protection. Well, you know, the scriptures do say elders need protection, but not that kind of protection. Men twist what the scriptures say in terms of guarding your elders to then guard in such a way that you can never get to step two, which is to rebuke the bad elders publicly.

Now, I say publicly. There is contention about if this is in the presence of the other elders or if this is in the presence of the church. And probably that depends on the sort of sin that was engaged in. Grammatically, you can’t prove it one way or the other. It just says “in front of the others,” and the others could have reference to the other elders. And that certainly would be true in some cases. But other cases that were more public sin, you’d want them rebuked in terms of the church itself.

And then the whole purpose of this, the text tells us, is that this might provide a degree of protection or guarding and nurturing as these ministers do their work of raising up spiritual seed in the context of the church by way of spiritual maturation of the people. And that others also may fear. And so fear is an important part.

Churches today that have gotten rid of church discipline, gotten away from the idea of a public rebuke for sins, they end up very impoverished and weakened because people don’t then have this godly fear of sinning, a fear of being embarrassed publicly. And God says, you know, that’s a proper thing to have happen in the context of the church. Church discipline is important.

As we’re going about this ox-like work of trying to produce spiritual fruit in the church, it’s important that church discipline be seen as a large part of that process both for the members as well as for the officers themselves. Okay?

Well, then Paul goes on. Now, I believe we can look at this as one way to structure this: Paul then gives instructions to Timothy regarding his—Timothy’s own—example to the elders. He is to be prepared to judge righteously. And I’ve got in your outline with the proper use of his mind or his intellect, his emotions, his standard, and his body.

Now we’re reading from verse 21. I charge thee. So he’s given him now the basic idea: There are good, bad, and indifferent. And you got to honor and guard. You got to punish. And you got to do this so that people might fear, including the elders.

And then he says, “I charge you now, Timothy, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins. Keep thyself pure. Drink no longer water only, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”

I believe that one thing we can see here is that God is showing Timothy as a really good ox worthy to be quadruply honored. This is Timothy now. And he’s given Timothy instructions as he goes about this work of ruling and overseeing in his particular calling—ruling over elders. He wants Timothy to be a model, and he gives him a series of statements here.

He says first of all that you observe these things without preferring one before another and doing nothing by partiality.