Dennis Tuuri

It’s 1 Timothy 1:5. We’ll be looking at 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 22, but we’ll start with 1 Timothy 1:5. So, please turn there in your scriptures and stand for the reading of God’s word, please. Our subject today is leadership. 1 Timothy 1:5, “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned.”

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that you might indeed have as the end of this sermon, as the end of our worship, that we might indeed have pure hearts and consciences that are not seared or defiled from the result of our sin, but rather good consciences. And you might give us a faith that is not hypocritical, a faith unfeigned, to the end that we might indeed exercise and manifest in the midst of this darkened world your love in Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. It is according to the scriptures based on 1 Timothy 1:5 and then a couple of examples of men who were leaders, tremendous leaders of God in their day. Our nation at this point in her history has come to what may be one of the lowest points in her history when it comes to the exhibition of leadership, which is a fact, but it is not biblical leadership. It is pagan leadership.

And whether the 14-year-old boy said it in humor, whether he said it as an indictment of Clinton, whether he said it because he’s imitating the president, it really doesn’t make much difference. The fact is that the leader who is to be the embodiment, as it were, of the American people in this country has brought tremendous shame and disgrace to himself and to the nation and to us.

As I watched his talk three or four weeks ago, his apology speech, his sort of culpa as they call it, you know, I actually thought to myself, I don’t want to be a citizen of a country where the president himself has such disdain for the legal processes of the country. It’s a very sad time. There’s a lot of humor in it. But even as you crack the jokes, you feel that kind of sickness to your stomach as you look at the manifestation of ungodly leadership in the midst of our land.

My goal today is the goal of all preaching according to 1 Timothy 1:5, that we might indeed exhibit sound leadership, that in the midst of a nation that is moving further and further away from godly leadership, we might do our small part in our homes, in our workplaces, in our engagement in civil matters, in the civil arena, and in the world culture that we live in, that we might be godly leaders. My particular goal for this talk is then of course the men of the church and those younger men who are growing up, the teens, the teen men, teen boys, and the younger boys as well.

However, it’s true that the church in general exhibits a leadership role in the culture, and that includes women and children as well. This is probably the beginning for many of us—after Monday or in this next week or two—the beginning of your homeschool season. Some I know went through the summer. And I think that it’s important to look at a verse like 1 Timothy 1:5 to know why we do this stuff. What is the purpose of the mother’s work as she addresses the educational needs of her children from a biblical perspective, overseen and guided by her husband?

Children, what’s the goal of the instruction you receive? What’s the purpose of going through these long hours of instruction in your homeschools, or in your private school that you may attend, or in the classes you may attend? Well, Paul says to Timothy that the end of the commandment, the end of the law, the end of the instruction is love. It’s charity, and there’s love that emanates forth from a pure heart and a good conscience and a faith unfeigned.

That’s a high goal, but it is to be our goal, I think. And I want to encourage us all, whether we’re men and thinking in terms of our workplaces or our families, whether it’s women as we approach the homeschool year and the various other tasks that the women do in our church, if you’re single, the leadership that you exhibit in your own household, or if you’re a child, the leadership you exhibit to the younger children in your family—in all of us, I hope that we see these things as the goal of our life, the goal of the instruction we receive.

Now, Paul is writing to Timothy in a particular context. He’s differentiating between the false teachers and the solid teacher Timothy. And he’s telling Timothy that there are many who go about thinking themselves to be instructors in the law. Now, instruction of the law is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing.

But Paul gives the reminder here that if the end result of that instruction, if the end result of the charge that a preacher gives to a congregation or a teacher gives to his students, if the end result of the leadership that’s exhibited in the church specifically, is not character oriented, is not the forming of a Christian character, if it isn’t the demonstration of what the scriptures say love is—based upon, you know, a clean heart and a good conscience and a faith that is not hypocritical—then he says all you are is a vain babbler. These teachers whose goal is not that but simply minutiae of the scriptures, of the law, of tradition, or even well-thought-out lectures on what the scriptures really mean but have no application to the development of Christian character, the manifestation of Christ in the context of our lives and the life of the world—that sort of instruction is useless. It is vain babbling.

I pray to God that my talk today is not vain babbling, but it has as its fruit a renewed commitment to Christian character on my part and on your part, and a renewed commitment to be leaders in the midst of what is becoming an increasingly darkened world, and to not be hypocrites as we wag the tongue or wag the finger at our president and yet engage in basically the same sins ourselves. Maybe not the same objectionable moral sins, but nonetheless a hypocrisy of faith or a defiled conscience or a heart that is not cleansed in contrition before God.

My goal today is that we might indeed mature in these things in the grace of God. And I want to start first of all by saying that leadership knows the proper goal of what it is striving for and it knows the proper means to it. What is the goal here? It’s love. The end of the commandment, the law, is love. And the proper means to attain that love—love doesn’t come out by itself. It is the result of having a pure heart and a good conscience and a faith unfeigned.

The proper means to that goal: Hendrickson commenting on these three characteristics—the heart and the conscience and the faith—says that each member of this beautiful trio speaks of a purity and integrity which produces the most exquisite kind of selfless love, seen in its ultimate form in God’s love itself. Whereas the false teachers were motivated by worthless curiosity, Paul’s instruction was designed to promote the most magnificent of virtues by maintaining the purity of the church’s teaching. God’s truth always purifies the human spirit while error purifies it.

God’s word, faith in the word of God—is the springboard from which Christian character develops, and it is our springboard as well. The goal then is love. Notice in passing that this love is tied to the law of God. The end of the commandment, the exposition of the command word of God found in all 66 books of the Bible, is love. There is no distinction in the mind of God, and therefore in reality, between love and law.

Now, we’ve got to go a little further in our definition of love here, though, and this is a very helpful verse to do it. We live in the age in which, as I understand it, the first worldwide television transmission was the Beatles singing “All We Need Is Love.” Nice song, element of truth to it. But the love that they spoke of was not the scriptural love as defined by God’s word. President Clinton, the leaders of our apostate churches—all speak of love, but their love is not biblical love. It’s not tied to the law of God, nor is it manifested as a result of the clean heart, the good conscience, and the faith unfeigned.

So we want to look at these things very briefly. Leadership knows that to be leading, it must exhibit these things in its life and it seeks to engender those things in the pupil, in the homeschool, in the layman—in the pew or in the chair—in the friends that it moves in the context of. Leadership seeks to engender these qualities that are Christian characteristics.

A clean heart. Psalm 51 says in verse 10, “Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy holy spirit from me.” A clean heart drives us to the realization that love coming from the clean heart comes from pangs of conscience, conviction over the filthiness of our heart in its natural state. When we come forward and confess our sins before God, we, in a sense, every week engage ourselves in a penitent psalm or prayer before God.

As Psalm 51 was a psalm of penitence before God, it was a penitent David—convicted for his sins, knowing that his heart had become defiled as a result of his actions, his thoughts, words, and deeds apart from the spirit of God—that prayed to God that God would create in him a clean heart. A clean heart is not the result of our own actions. It is a result of the regeneration of God’s spirit and then the cleansing of our heart by means of the washing of God’s word.

The heart speaks to the totality of our being. In all of our being, we are to be confessing sin before God and asking him to remove the defilement that our sins create. Without a clean heart, we cannot love in the biblical sense of the term. We love some other according to some other definition, but not according to God’s definition.

The clean heart is accompanied by a good conscience. Now, conscience is an interesting word. Conscience comes from two words—it’s very easy to see there in the English word itself. Cons-science. It’s really related to the word consciousness. And what it means is “with knowledge.” Con is a prefix that means “with” and science means “knowledge” or “understanding.” So to have a conscience is to be with knowledge. And commentators have kind of debated over the years what that etymology of the word means. What is it “with”? What? I would suggest to you the meaning is just very simple.

Remember that it is the unregenerate man who suppresses the truth of God in unrighteousness. He does not have knowledge, as it were, of his actions relative to God’s standard. I mean, he has it, but he’s working against the manifestation of it in his mind. To have a good conscience is to have the knowledge—and all knowledge is ethical according to the scriptures. And so, it’s to be with knowledge, which means to line up our innermost apprehension of who we are, our evaluation of who we are, to line it up with reality, with God’s truth as found in his word. It’s to be with knowledge. And to have not a good conscience is to be completely without knowledge.

And we have an unusual situation in our country where men have developed in this country for the last 20 years who seem to have absolutely no conscience. Now I’ve known such men. I’ve worked for such men in the workplace. It’s like life is a big pinball game to them or a video game. And they don’t seem to have the pangs of guilt that even a non-Christian man at one time had in the context of our culture when it was essentially Christian in nature. The country’s moved on from there—there’s an amorousness now. And I don’t know President Clinton, but at least by way of evaluation of his public character, he seems to have no conscience in terms of what he’s done.

We’re told now that he’s told us he’s sorry. He didn’t say he was sorry. He said, “Well, I’ve already said I was sorry.” No, he didn’t. And that kind of manipulation of words demonstrates that a person is suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness—no awareness of the deep sin that one is engaged with. We’re not to do that. We’re not to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. We’re supposed to open ourselves up and have the knowledge of God as he evaluates who we are.

This is not something either that just comes as a result of you deciding, “You know, all I’ll decide to have a good conscience today.” Paul wrote—or Luke rather wrote—in Acts 24:16: “Herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.” Luke recording the words of Paul. What about you, Christian? Is your heart clean before God? Have you brought the sins that defile your heart to the foot of the cross? Have you confessed them before God and sought not just relief from the pangs of guilt, but a clean heart relative to those offenses?

And have you worked hard at trying to have a conscience devoid of spot? Do you? Were you like the great leader Paul, who in his charge to another leader, Timothy, said that you must see that the goal of all of this stuff that we talk about is to have a good conscience? And Paul said that he exercised himself. He worked hard at having a good conscience.

Children, do you work hard at hearing what your parents say? Do you work hard at reading your Bibles to see where in your life you need amendment of life? Or are your sins a light thing to you? We must, to exhibit leadership in the context of this world—in the context of our nation, while the judgment of God starts to ride over it, as we wait for the indignation to pass—we must work, exercising ourselves to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man.

A reference to the two tablets of the law. That law is the standard by which we evaluate ourselves. And we are to exercise ourselves strongly to have a conscience void of offense relative to that law.

Now, the conscience according to Romans—he says, “The Gentiles with their conscience affirm the law.” Let me read the quote in Romans. I’m sorry, that’s not the right quote. It’s Romans 2:14. “The Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law. These having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing and also excusing one another.”

What this means is conscience—which we normally think of in terms just of a convicting presence and a convicting knowledge given to us by God of his word—conscience, on the other hand, is an affirming presence as well. Your conscience should feel guilty when you violate the word of God. But it should also see as things to be approved conformity to the word of God. It has both those aspects to it. And we’re to work hard to have a conscience void of offense. In other words, a conscience that does not sin either by way of commission sins nor by way of omission, because we see the positive things, the positive fruit of the spirit manifesting itself in the good works that we do.

Conscience, one commentator said, is man’s moral intuition, his moral self in the act of passing judgment upon his own state, emotions, and thoughts, also upon his words and actions, whether these be viewed as past, present, or future. It is both positive and negative. It both approves as well as condemns. Again, to quote Hendrickson, he says that conscience is the response of man’s moral consciousness to the divine revelation concerning himself, his attitudes, and his activities.

God tells us who we are in relationship to his word. And to have a clean conscience, a good conscience rather, is to have a conscience devoid of offense that hears the conviction of God’s spirit and humbles ourselves under God’s mighty hand and is indeed smitten as we sin against him. Apart from that good conscience, what we do is we justify our sins. God says that a good conscience feels the pricks of the Holy Spirit as he brings conviction to us, and it also feels the commendation of the Holy Spirit as he manifests the righteous deeds that we do in his power.

This love then that comes from a clean heart and a good conscience is also accompanied—in fact, motivated—by a faith unfeigned. A faith that is not hypocritical. A faith that does not have a mask on is the idea here from the Greek term. We come to church every Lord’s day and we put on our best clothes. We put on our best faces. We put on our best attitudes. Now, that’s commendable. There’s nothing wrong with striving. And when the Judge of Eternity comes before us in a special sense on the Lord’s day, there’s nothing wrong with paying particular attention to how we are that day.

But if all we do is put on a false front and then live the other six days of the week anyway we want, we do not have a faith unfeigned. We have a faith that is feigned and hypocritical. Apparently, the Starr Report will reveal that the president went to church on Easter Sunday in 1996, Bible in hand, departed church, Bible in hand, with his family, and went then to Elias that afternoon with someone else other than his wife. If these press reports are true, that is an exact example of a faith that is feigned or hypocritical—that is put on for the sake not of pleasing God but rather pleasing men—a faith that does not exhibit the fear of God, but rather exhibits the fear of men, that seeks to manipulate them through using churches and Bibles as photo opportunities and as a way to make people more sympathetic with them.

The scriptures tell us that indeed our faith must be unfeigned. It is faith not in some mystical truth. It is faith in the revealed word of God. We have at the heart then of the demonstration of love on the part of Christian leadership the word of God. God granting us faith in this word, this word directing all of our lives—that our faith not just being, “Yeah, we know it’s true, but we’ll live our lives whatever way we want,” but rather a faith that says this will determine how we live every part of our lives.

And as we do that, we apply ourselves to the good conscience devoid of offenses, and we work hard then at manifesting that faith through our deeds, and we open ourselves up to the critical examination by God and men in terms of our lives. And if we do that, then we have that clean heart that repairs and repents of its sins as it has been found guilty of them through the conscience and through the faith of God’s word. And that clean heart then is what issues forth the love that is the goal of the instruction.

Apart from a faith unfeigned, a good conscience, and a clean heart, it is useless. It is vain babbling to hear or to speak an exposition of God’s word to yourself. If you do not circumcise your ears and open them up so that you might have in the middle of your being a repentant attitude toward God, you will not manifest Christian leadership in the context of our world.

Faith drives all of this. To sum up, then, what Paul is telling Timothy in terms of Christian leadership: one commentator put it this way. “The substance accordingly of verse 5 is this. The essence of the charge given to you Timothy, which you by public preaching and private admonitions must convey to the Ephesians, is: pray and strive daily to obtain a pure heart, a conscience good, and a faith without hypocrisy. In order that these three, working together in organic cooperation, may produce that most precious of all jewels, love.”

Another commentator says it this way. “This is a noteworthy passage. This is John Calvin now: ‘In which he condemns as vain talking all teaching which does not aim at this single end, and declares at the same time that the talents and ideas of all who aim at some other object vanish away. Vain babblings, nothingness. It is indeed possible that many will admire useless trifles. And yet Paul’s statement stands that everything which does not build up men in godliness is vain babbling. We should therefore take the greatest possible care not to seek in God’s holy word for anything but solid edification, lest otherwise He punish us severely for abusing his word.’”

Biblical leadership knows the goal: the manifestation of the character of God. Biblical leadership knows that it applies itself to this goal by going to the word of God not out of idle curiosity, not for intellectual endeavors, but that the intellect might be used by God to come to an understanding of his word, that our character might be changed, that our faith might be less hypocritical today than it was yesterday, that our consciences might be cleaner today and a good conscience in a fuller sense today than it was yesterday, and that we might have a cleaner heart confessing our sins before Almighty God.

Now, I want us to turn to the story of Elijah as it begins to manifest itself. Turn, if you will, in your scriptures to 1 Kings 17 as an object lesson of some of these truths.

1 Kings 17

Now this is the beginning of the scriptures that talk about Elijah. This is the beginning of his story. He pops up onto the scene. Now the context is that Jezebel has come down from Sidon. Ahab has taken her as his wife. His wicked father Omri has developed this political religious union between the two of them. Jezebel has brought syncretism to the faith of Israel. And as a result, God’s judgment is in the midst of the land. And all of a sudden, Elijah with no introduction comes up on the scene in 1 Kings 17 beginning at verse one.

“Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, he will be the bomb of Gilead to this situation, said unto Ahab, ‘As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years or these years rather but according to my word.’ It’s not going to rain unless God tells me to pray for rain and then it will rain. In the meantime, there’s going to be a drought, King Ahab.”

And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, “Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.”

Elijah comes, makes the announcement of the word of God, and immediately obeys the word of God by going to the brook Cherith to be sustained by God in the wilderness as the indignation is passing, as it were, over the land. Elijah has that faith unfeigned and no hypocrisy. He doesn’t deliver the message and then forget about it for himself. His entire life changes based upon the word of God that comes to him. And as a result, he has that good conscience and he’s got a clean heart before God because he’s cleaving to this word. And we can interpret Elijah’s actions then as love.

He is the bomb of Gilead, albeit in a rough form, from God.

My first observation on the Elijah text is that leadership manifests itself in times of difficulty. Leadership manifests itself here in this account of Ahab and Elijah, and it manifests itself in a time of difficulty. We’re in a time of difficulty in this nation. We don’t know what form the continuing judgment will take. Maybe it’ll be Y2K. Maybe things will come to real trouble in a year and a half from now. Maybe it’ll be next week. Maybe a rogue element of the Russian army will throw some nuclear weapons. We don’t know. We don’t know. Maybe some virus will break out that we’re unable to stop. And it won’t now be just directed at the homosexual community. It’ll be redirected at those in the community who have allowed this other sin to continue to predominate and to continue to have mastery in the context of our culture.

When you see a leader such as our national leader, the president, manifesting the sort of character he does, you know judgment is here and it’s working its way through. Now is the time to build these attributes of Christian character into our children. Mothers, as you face this homeschool year, understand the significance of what you’re doing. You’re training up little Elijahs. You’re training up leaders who through the manifestation of unfeigned faith, a good conscience, and clean hearts, and the resultant love from them, they will be the leaders of the next generation.

You know, it’s good that Elijah’s prepared here. I don’t know if he knew where this brook was at first or not—if he’d scoped it out. I don’t know. But I know that God takes care of his people in times of difficulties. It’s good to prepare. It’s good to prepare with money or food, guns, gold, groceries—all that stuff. But the most, by far, the most important preparation we must do is to take the time that we have with our children and with ourselves to apply ourselves to the characteristics of godly leadership.

God does not call us to wait this out forever. He calls on us, as he did with Elijah, to wait it out for three and a half years, but then to make manifest and make produce the reformation in the context of the land that he did. We come back as leaders. We sang about having a two-edged sword in our hand. What does that sword consist of? It consists in that faith and in that conscience and in that clean heart and then the ability to speak God’s word into the arena of public policy matters, into every arena, and affect godly reformation.

This is where it starts. Leadership manifests itself in times of great difficulty.

Now, it’s interesting here because Elijah goes off. He gives the message and he takes off. He goes into isolation. He doesn’t stay in the midst of the problems. You know, some people have been critical of some in the Y2K movement for going off instead of staying where the problems become manifest. Well, it’s not always wrong to go off. I’m not advocating it. It certainly would be wrong to absence yourself from a godly community. But there is a time and a place for just keeping the head down and keeping the head low.

Again, as we sang today, until the indignation passes, Elijah manifests this kind of leadership through his imposition of the word of God to the king. Matthew Henry says that if providence calls us to solitude and retirement, it becomes us to acquiesce. When we cannot be useful, we must be patient. And when we cannot work for God, we must sit still quietly for him. There are times of activity for leaders and times of inactivity. And a leader waits for the correct time and the leading of God through his word in terms of the manifestation of what he shall do.

My next observation is that leadership sustains others as it is sustained by God. Let’s just read the text rather than me going through a paraphrase of it. God says that it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook, verse four, “and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.”

Interesting. The ravens are going to feed Elijah. They’re going to sustain Elijah. God sent supernatural provision for Elijah. He sustains Elijah. Leaders are sustained by God. Paul was sustained by God in many ways—spiritually, emotionally, physically—through all the difficulties that the Jews threw against him. Paul is sustained by God. And Paul then turns around and attempts to sustain Timothy. He feeds Timothy the word and commands him to teach it to others, to feed others the same word.

Now, ravens are an interesting choice for God here. Ravens are an unclean bird. But at the end of the day, Elijah wasn’t confused. He knew what the law of God was, and he knew that it wasn’t. Remember, Peter was confused on this point in the book of Acts. He thought that if something unclean, an unclean bird, touches food, the food becomes unclean, which was not true according to the law. Elijah stays in the context of the bounds of God’s law and knows that if God wants to use an unclean bird to bring him food, there’s nothing unclean about the food.

Then see, he has a faith unfeigned. He knows what the law is, but he doesn’t go beyond what the law says in his life either.

Ravens are a picture of curse. In the book of Proverbs, it says that the eye that mocks at mother or father, the ravens will pluck that eye out. An important verse for our children to know. The picture is not that you’re going to necessarily have a blackbird come down and start picking at your eye, although that’s a good image to keep in mind. The image is that when you reject and rebel against your Christian parents and the authority that God has placed over you, that he will send judgments from the sky, from heaven, upon you.

But just as surely as ravens are a picture of God’s curse, so here they’re a picture of God’s blessing. The same mechanism—the judgments that God brings in difficult times are judgments and condemnations to the wicked, but they are saving acts of God toward the elect, that they might indeed exercise leadership in the world. We should not be afraid of Y2K. We should not be afraid of a nuclear bomb attack if that happens. We should see the judgment upon this land as just, and as not just a curse upon all people indiscriminately, but rather that very judgment is the provision for God’s people to exercise leadership in the midst of a nation that shall be humbled under the mighty hand of God.

Leadership sustains others even as it is sustained. The food dries up, the brook dries. He goes and he abides by the word of the Lord. He goes, and he dwells by the brook Cherith before Jordan. The ravens bring him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening. And he drank of the brook. “Came to pass after a while the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Word of the Lord came unto him, saying, ‘Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.’”

Elijah is sustained first by the ravens, then by the widow woman. And what does he do? He turns around—you know the rest of the story, I hope you do. I hope your children do. He turns around and tells her. She’s willing to give all to the man of God. He comes to town. She says, “I just got a little bit of grain left. I’ve gathered a couple of sticks. I don’t even have fuel for a fire. I’m going to make a little cake. Me and my son are lying down and dying.”

It is at the end of probably a couple of years of drought and people are dying. They’re starving to death. And this woman is on the verge of starving to death. He says, “Feed me first. Make a little cake for me first and then feed yourself and your son and you’ll be sustained by God.” And she does.

We could talk a long time about that. The need to put God first. Seek first the kingdom of God. Pay your tithes first. Don’t expect it to be there at the end of what you’ve done. Pay him ahead of time to God. Take the best part of your time and give it to the study of God’s word. Take the first day of your week and consecrate it to God and he’ll sustain you with the rest. You may think I need Sunday just for sleep. God says, “No, I’ll give you sleep. But if you put me first, then I’ll provide you that sleep. If you don’t, your sleep will be troubled. If you don’t put the tithe first, your finances will be troubled. If you don’t put the prophet of God first, the word of God first, God himself first, you’ll be troubled.”

So she does according to what he says. And of course, her oil, her cruise of oil, and her barrel of wheat never empty the entire time Elijah is staying with her. He brings sustenance to the woman. He brings condemnation to Ahab, but he brings sustenance to this Sidonian woman.

Note the offensive that Elijah has taken here under the word of God. He’s gone to Sidon. He’s gone to where that wicked Jezebel was from. He’s gone to say God is king of Sidon as well. And He does miracles in Sidon and he brings a woman and her son to faith in Yahweh God though she’d be a Gentile. Our Savior talks about this later in the gospels. He says all lots of widows in Israel but only one widow that Elijah went to and she was a gentile widow.

That’s us. We’re gentile widows and Elijah comes to us. God comes to us and sustains us to the end that we would turn around as leaders for him and sustain others.

Elijah is sustained miraculously by God as a leader and he then turns around and sustains others even as he is sustained. The goal of the children’s instruction in school should be to teach others these same character qualities that surround the bedrock from which all the other materials they study grow forth. Remember Paul trained Timothy to entrust these things to faithful men. You’re sustained by the word of God, congregation of the Lord. You’ve received the assurance you’re forgiven in him. You’ve been sustained by the word of God. But it is not so that you can go out and for six days not sustain others. It is to the end that you might turn around and sustain your family, feed your family, feed friends, feed relatives, to take the truths of God’s word and minister them. That is the essence of Christian leadership.

It sustains others even as it is sustained.

My next observation on this particular text: actually, we’ll turn now to the second text. We’ll go to 2 Kings 22, if you will, please. And we’ll look a little bit at Josiah here. I’m looking at Elijah and Josiah because this is something my sons and I studied out a couple months ago. My oldest son is named Elijah Jason Terry. My next son down is Benjamin Josiah.

So, I’m trying to lead them through a study of these two people in the scriptures they were named after. And so we’re putting together Elijah and Josiah with this common theme of leadership manifesting 1 Timothy 1:5. So turn now to 2 Kings 22 and we’ll look a little bit at the story of Josiah.

Now just by way of introduction here: Josiah had a wicked father, and he was one of those examples from Ezekiel 18 where you know, a good father might have bad kids and a bad father might have good kids. Well, here we have this, and that happens throughout the story of the kings. Well, here in this line of the kings of Judah, Josiah’s father was wicked. He was so wicked that at the end of two years, his servants rebelled against him and killed him. And now the people then put those servants to death as they should have. As bad as the king was, rebellion against the king that God had placed in power by his servants was an act of anarchy and rebellion and had to be punished.

In the providence of God, he used the sin of the servants sinlessly to kill off the wicked king. So Josiah is preceded by a wicked father, and his servants actually kill him after two years. Then the people intervene and kill the servants, and they as a result get Josiah put into office. So he comes to reign as king when he’s only eight years old. And let’s pick up the account now in 2 Kings 22.

“Josiah was eight years old and he began to reign and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. And he walked in all of the way of David his father. And he turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.”

He walks in conformity to the law of God. He walks in conformity in everything that he does. Josiah is going to be a tremendous leader to the nation of Judah. Leadership then has a high regard for a worldview that is pleasing to the great leader. Josiah is a man who has no compartmentalization. He walks in the ways of David in all things. He does not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. He is a model to us of no compartmentalization—this is my Christian part, this is my other part, this is business, this is moral—more private morality and no compartmentalization occurs in the context of Josiah’s life.

He has a worldview that is one of a heartfelt desire to please God in all things. He has that faith unfeigned. He has worked and exercised himself to have a good conscience, and as a result he has a clean heart before God. He exhibits then the love of God in the context of his culture.

And I ask you today, Christian, beloved of the Lord Jesus Christ, can you say of yourself that you do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, that you walk in all the way of David, your father, and of Jesus, your greater Father, and that you do not turn aside to the right hand or to the left? Think of your week. Was your worldview compartmentalized? Did you have a tough time bringing your Christian beliefs into the marketplace or into your recreation, or into your educational pursuits? Are you compartmentalized, or are you—as a good leader should be—holistic in your worldview, pleasing to God, attempting to please God in all that you do and say?

My next observation on the story of Josiah is that leadership has a high regard for the worship of the great leader. He takes this worldview that he has applied results from his great desire to please God and to worship him.

“It came to pass in the eighteenth year of King Josiah that the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah the son of Meshullam the scribe to the house of the Lord saying, ‘Go up to Hilkiah the high priest that he may sum the silver which was brought into the house of the Lord which the keepers of the door have gathered from the people and he shall delivered into the hand of the doers of the work that have the oversight of the house of the Lord and let them give it unto the doers of the work which is in the house of the Lord to repair the breaches of the house unto carpenters and builders and masons and to buy timber and hew stone to repair the house. How be it there was no reckoning made with them of the money that was delivered under their hand because they dealt faithfully.’”

Josiah has this worldview that is a leadership position, but his leadership is manifested in a desire to repair the house of the Lord. He desires worship to be done in a way that is most pleasing and honoring to God. He knows that as a civil king, his best defense is to repair the worship of God and to repair the breaches of the temple of God where, at this particular time in covenant history, they had to worship at the centralized temple. The sacrifices had to be done there.

Josiah had in his clean conscience before God a heartfelt desire to repair the worship structures of Jehovah. And I’d ask you today about yourself again. What—on a scale of one to ten—how high do you rate the worship of God? How high do you rate the importance of a facility of worship, and of a means of worship, and preparing your hearts for worship that is pleasing and honoring to God Most High?

Now, we know God can be worshiped anywhere, but we know also that He manifests himself and delights in beauty. I know that this church has given sacrificially over the last couple of years toward the building fund. I don’t know specifically, and you don’t know, who did what. I know that in general this church has manifested this love for the worship of God to the end of supporting the building fund of Reformation Covenant Church. And you should.

The offerings were taken to use—this was not tithe money that Josiah was using. These were offerings that were being used to repair the breach, to keep up the maintenance of the worship facility as it was centralized. And I believe that it’s proper for us to encourage the congregation to examine yourself in this area and see how well you do in terms of your desire to see the worship conducted in a way that is honoring and glorifying to him.

Don’t be like President Clinton, if that report was true, who sees in the worship facility a photo opportunity, a way just to come and make himself look good with that faith that is masked or hypocritical. Don’t be like that. Be a leader. Recognize the importance of worship. As you train your children in homeschool this year, think about the worship services and what they need to know that their worship might be fuller and more obedient to God.

Sixth, leadership has a high regard for the great leader’s word. You know the story hopefully of Josiah. It meant a lot to this church at our beginning. We saw in it the story of ourselves individually and both as a church. He starts to repair the worship of God. He has this love for God. He has this unfeigned love, and this unfeigned faith rather, that issues forth in this love for God that seeks to worship him.

And as he does that—and this is what happens as we move to do what God tells us to do—he brings blessings into us. He brings more knowledge of who he is. And as they’re repairing the breaches of the house of God, they come across the book of the law. Neglected, thrown in a corner, maybe intentionally. Maybe not. We don’t know what part of the book of the law it was. We don’t know. He was probably working off of summary statements of the law in terms of the reforms of the temple. We don’t know that either.

But what we do know is when he receives the full book of the law—and some think it was those portions such as Deuteronomy 30 that we read that talked about the blessings and cursings to a people based upon their obedience or disobedience to God—he comes across a fuller revelation of who God is, just like many of us.