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Jonah – Sermon Manuscript

-If anyone knows any of the minor prophets, it’s probably this one! VeggieTales movie, topic of a host of debates about whether or not this could really happen.

READ/PRAY

  1. Jonah’s Journey

-Fact or fiction: one of the biggest questions about this book is whether or not this really happened. I had a friend in seminary who was convinced this was a myth, written just to teach a story and wasn’t historically true. I’ve read all sorts of commentaries arguing both sides of this, and even saw a video of a kayaker in Patagonia who got swallowed by a humpback whale and then immediately spit out! So apparently it is possible to be swallowed by a fish and spit back out. But the primary reason I believe it’s a true account of a real historical event is because Jesus seemed to think it was, and anytime there’s a debate going on, I want to side with the guy who’s the author of history!

–Matt. 12:39-41 Jesus is asked to perform a sign for the Pharisees, and here’s how He responds: the prophet Jonah is referred to as a real person, and it says not only did it happen in the past, but the people of Ninevah will in the future condemn those asking the question for their lack of repentance!

-Another component to this is we tend to view the world with an anti-supernatural bias, or question whether things we consider miraculous can actually happen. Is anything too hard for God? Think of just a few other things God does in the OT: He makes a donkey talk, He makes food both fall out of the sky and appear on the ground, and walls fall down in response to people shouting. Do you think it’s outside of God’s ability to have a fish swallow a man in the sea? I don’t!

-We also see Jonah appear in 2 Kings 14:25. So with all that evidence, I think we should take this as a real, historical account.

  1. Down to Tarshish (1-2)

-Jonah is an anomaly in these prophets. The other prophets willingly obeyed God, there wasn’t any questioning or doubting of God’s call on their lives, Jonah is literally the opposite of everything else we’ve seen.

-Jonah also has very different content than the rest of the prophets (which is part of the reason we tend to gravitate towards it!) Jonah tells a story, and it’s a story that feels bigger than life, doesn’t it? (theme of “great” throughout) A prophet (who is supposed to represent God to the people) who attempts to flee to the ends of the earth to escape God who gets swallowed by a big fish, then reluctantly preaches the bare minimum of God’s word to his assigned city and leads to a revival. The whole thing it crazy! And pay attention to the way the book intentionally contrasts Jonah with the rest of the characters.

-One of the ways Hebrew builds suspense (and so do we) is through repeated words. Another one of the comparisons in Jonah is down vs. up. The Lord calls to Jonah and calls him to go UP to Tarshish, and he responds by going DOWN to Joppa. And this isn’t just a casual “on the way I accidentally” this is an intentional running away from. He goes down even lower into the boat and stays down while the storm is raging. The captain tells him to come UP to pray, pick me UP throw me DOWN into the sea. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself! God’s command is 1 thing, but Jonah’s response is another. He’s commanded to go to the northeast, and he goes southwest, and then finds a ship going to what would have been considered the ends of the earth! Jonah’s not only disobeying God, he’s running as far away from God as he possibly can.

-One thing I noted in my sermon scraps for Amos is that the tendency at this time was to view gods as tribal deities, not dissimilar to the way we have NFL teams today. Yahweh was the God of Israel, Baal was the god of the Canaanites, and when they went to war it was seen as a battle of the gods, and whoever won the battle was the superior god. And that also impacted the sea! There was a specific god of the sea people would appeal to for safe travel.

-So when the text goes on to tell us that there was a great wind and a great storm, they all started appealing to any god they could think of for mercy, but it didn’t help. So they continued going on to throw out all the cargo. Compare the sailors to Jonah here. They’re doing everything they can to save the ship, and what’s Jonah’s response? He doesn’t care at all! He’s treating this like a cruise and decided his best course of action was to take a nap.

-So the captain wakes him up. He’s the only one who’s not trying to contribute to the crisis! Even though Jonah’s the main character of this story, he’s taken a completely passive role in this account. The prophet, who’s supposed to be speaking on behalf of the one true God is silent. They decide to do some work to find out which god is upset with them by casting lots. Jonah, as a good prophet, should have seen his chances of escaping getting even smaller. Prov. 16:33 tells us that God is even in control of this seemingly random event.

-This gambling (which God was in charge of, but friends, don’t gamble today! We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as our guide!), but this gambling leads to Jonah being found as the guilty party. They didn’t know much about him, and if you remember back to our first week, I shared that the role of the prophet is to speak on behalf of God, but Jonah remains completely silent until he’s forced to open up. They’d been calling out to all these random gods, but Jonah is supposed to be worshipping the 1 true God, who even rules over the heavens, the place where they thought all their gods were. Not only is He the God of the heavens, he’s also the one who made the sea and the land, so there’s no where you can escape from Him! But Jonah’s trying to do exactly that and run to the furthest reaches of the earth to try to escape!

-When the men hear it, they’re seized by a “great” fear and realize they’re toast! Remember what I said earlier about the various gods? They assumed that Jonah was just running away from a little land god, not THE God who you can’t escape! Since Jonah is the only one who knows this God, the sailors ask him how to deal with the problem. And Jonah says: it requires a human sacrifice. Do you see how Jonah’s trying to die? He would rather be thrown into the sea in the middle of a hurricane than go to Ninevah to tell them to repent. And not only is Jonah trying to die, he doesn’t even care if the sailors are taken with him! Do you see how even though the sailors know what’s going on, they still try to help him? They worked as hard as they could to save Jonah, who’s still passive.

-And now who cries out to Yahweh? The sailors! Jonah still doesn’t care! Where previously Yahweh was unknown to them, as soon as they learn which God it is, they’re all in. They throw Jonah in and the sea is calm. So what’s their response? They worship the one true God! Do you see how even in Jonah’s sin God is still working? Jonah, the guy who’s trying to escape God’s call on his life just mentions the name of this God, and their entire worship changes. Keep in mind what these sailors do: they offer a sacrifice and make vows (assuming to Yahweh)

-But Jonah can’t catch a break; God STILL won’t even let him die!

-This next chapter needs to be read with a strong level of irony. First, do you hear how much this sounds like the Psalms? Jonah knows the Bible! He knows the truth about God, but it hasn’t transformed his heart. Second, do you see how self-centered it is? Who’s the focus of this “prayer” God or Jonah?

-Look at what he says in vs. 2, he waited until he was in Sheol, the place of the dead to call out to God. Why didn’t he call out to God while he was in the boat with all those pagan sailors? And it gets worse! Look at 3 he says God threw him into the sea! He’s blaming God for his current situation. Just when it feels like it can’t get worse, he keeps going!

-Let’s look at the end of the prayer. He talks about those who cherish or love worthless idols and says they’re terrible and wrong. Who were the ones who cherished worthless idols in this story? Wasn’t it the sailors? But where did we leave them? Offering sacrifices to Yahweh and making vows to Him. Jonah’s saying the sailors are the problem, meanwhile He’s in the right standing before the God! He continues deluding himself! One scholar said, “these are the right words coming out of the wrong mouth!” We don’t see any accounts in this story of Jonah offering a sacrifice of any vows. The final irony is salvation does belong to Yahweh, which is good for Jonah because if it were up to him, no one except him would be saved.

-But God is faithful and shows His complete control once again by commanding this fish to vomit Jonah up. We see this as gross today, but I think it has deeper significance than just the disgust: throughout the OT, this word is used to describe God’s punishment on the Israelites for disobedience, the land vomits them out. This may be a way of saying this is a continuation of God’s punishment on Jonah.

  • Up to Nineveh (3-4)

-Déjà vu here, as God tells Jonah once again to go to Nineveh, but this time he’s learned his lesson and finally obeys.

-Just to catch us up again and understand this, Jonah has spent who knows how long trying to run away from God’s call on his life. He’s been swallowed by a great fish, been vomited out, then recommissioned with the same task, and the journey to Nineveh would have taken him about 30 days of walking to get to. So this story for us is condensed, but how happy do you think Jonah was on this journey? Do you think he spent the time skipping and jumping along to get to Nineveh as quickly as he could? Remember: God wouldn’t even let him die previously! I picture him grumbling the entire way!

-So Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh, and begins proclaiming the incoming destruction of the city. Other prophets had similar tasks warning that the day of the Lord was coming, a day of darkness and destruction. 2 things to note here: first the description of the size of the city: it’s huge! It would take 3 days to walk it! And how far does Jonah walk? 1 day, which means he doesn’t even get to the middle of it! And what is his message? 5 words in Hebrew, 7 in English. He doesn’t mention which god he’s preaching on behalf of; he doesn’t say why they’re going to be destroyed, all he says is destruction is coming. All he does is predict a certain destruction.

-And what’s the response of the city? Immediate repentance! Friends, this has to be the most unbelievable part of this story! This city of people devoted to destroying the nation of Yahweh responds the right way when they’re faced with the realities of their sin. They don’t make excuses, they don’t ignore it, they work to get right with God. And the repentance is universal! It says the greatest to the least: no one is left out! And the king led the way! Here’s the decree he made the everyone:

-Everyone (even the animals, keep that in mind) is to fast and put on sackcloth (a way of grieving), AND begin crying out “earnestly” to God. Do you notice that they’re not even sure which God they’re crying out to? Think back to the sailors, as soon as they heard his name they started crying out to Him, here they’re only told that a god is upset but it’s STILL enough for them repent. Notice the ending here: they’re concerned that it’s too late and they don’t know how God will respond. They don’t know which God, they don’t know how to please Him, but they’re willing to try doing whatever they can!

-And we know God, we’ve seen that He’s slow to anger and quick to forgiveness (we’ve seen that repeatedly through these prophets). So God responds as He always does: he relents. The certain destruction doesn’t happen. And if this were the ending of the book there may be a glimmer of hope still for Jonah. But we’re not done.

-Jonah is now great with displeasure, and contrast this with the question of the king. Who knows what this God will do? And what does Jonah say? I KNEW IT! This was the whole reason he tried running way! God always forgives, God will always relent from sending disaster for those who respond correctly. But that’s not what Jonah wanted. Jonah wanted grace and mercy for himself, but not for his enemies. Keep that in mind, we’ll come back to it in a minute. Jonah here is so upset that he finally just explicitly asks God to kill him. He tried running away, tried sleeping through a hurricane, tried drowning and none of those worked, so he goes straight to the source!

-And God asks him a question in response: but Jonah (as we’ve seen previously) just goes with the silent treatment. He goes to build a little shelter and watch the show. I picture him setting himself up like this:

-And God is once again kind and gracious. Jonah goes from being greatly displeased to greatly pleased because of the shade. Unfortunately the shade turns out to be a lesson for him, and God sends a worm (compare that to the whale!) to kill the plant. AND THEN God throws in some nature to make Jonah even more upset. So how does Jonah respond this time? Once again, he asks God to kill him. And God asks a similar question to His previous one: is it right for you to be angry about this plant?

-YES! I’m angry enough to die! That’s the last word from Jonah in this book. Jonah’s anger keeps bubbling up to the point where he’s so angry he wants to die because of a plant. Doesn’t that seem a little misplaced to you?

-But God gets the last word. Jonah CARED about nothing in the book except a plant. He didn’t plant it or water it; he was just the benefactor of it. If Jonah cares about this little plant, isn’t it even more important for God to care about Nineveh, a place with more than 120,000 people who are all created as the image of God? God’s people are commanded to care for humans above all the rest of the created order, but Jonah’s missed that reality and was only worried about himself.

-Not only is this city full of people, but it’s people who don’t KNOW the right thing to do. Jonah is the only one in this story who knows the right God, the right ways to live, and is the only one who responds with disobedience and sin. Every other character obeys; did you notice that? The sailors believe, the whale obeys God’s command, the Ninevites repent, the plant obeys, the worm obeys, the scorching east wind obeys, meanwhile, Jonah gets angry. The worst prophet in this series!

-And God’s final request is: if you can’t care about the people, would you at least care about the animals? And that question leaves the book unresolved, doesn’t it? We don’t know what happened to Jonah, and the ending of the book is meant to force us to ask that same question: who do you view as outside of the bounds of God’s mercy and grace?

  • Grace for Who?

-The question at the heart of this book is: how do you view your sin? Do you know that you need God to be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding I faithful love TO YOU, or is that just needed for other people who are worse than you? Isn’t the temptation for all of us to grade ourselves on a sliding scale? We compare our strengths to someone else’s weaknesses and determine they MUST be worse than us.

-You can see this with the whole NIMBY phenomenon, have you heard of it? It stands for not in my backyard. I’ve read it referring to someone that’s pushing for low-income housing, as long as it’s not in my backyard. They want to appear virtuous, but don’t want it to affect them. I think we also saw this during COVID: good for thee not for me, we excuse ourselves but enforce strong rules for everyone else.

-There’s a fantastic quote from a Croatian theologian named Miroslav Volf (who’s a professor at Yale Seminary) who wrote a book on reconciliation where he talked about forgiveness in this way:

-What’s he’s saying is we all place people in 2 different camps: those who are opposed to us (or we view as opposed to us) are less than human, meanwhile we elevate ourselves to the place where we’re more than human. That’s normal! We all do it! But Jesus gives us a different way: He goes on to say that when we look to Jesus our perspective changes. We go from wanting condemnation for our enemy to wanting resolution and reconciliation with them, and we go from pride to realizing that we, too, are in need of God’s grace.

-After all, this is what Paul says in 1 Tim. 1:15-17.

-He’s not saying he’s done the math and he got the worst grade, he’s saying that when you use the right standard, we’re all the worst! When we’re all comparing ourselves to perfection none of us can stand. At the end of the day, we’re all like Jonah, the temptation of the human heart is to give grace to yourself and condemn everyone else. But there’s a second piece to this that I think we also need to look at:

  • When Religiosity is the Problem

-Did you notice how when Jonah finally “prayed” he essentially just quoted the Psalms? He knew the right things to say, but it hadn’t gone the 18” from his head to his heart. Often Jonah is used to preach about ethnocentrism (or racism, if you want to talk about why I prefer the former term let me know), or it’s preached about the need to go into the nations and do cross-cultural missions. But I think that’s missing the purpose of this book. I think the warning is to those of us who are like Jonah, who haven’t let the truths of the gospel trickle down into our hearts and begin to transform us from the inside out. Jesus had some strong words to people like Jonah, who judged other people based on external compliance but didn’t take the time to look at the deeper reality.

-2 examples back-to-back in Matt. 23:

-First is the picture of people who clean the outside of a cup but leave the inside. One of my cousins when we were growing up was a major germophobe. He didn’t want to shake hands, refused to ever share snacks or drinks. But when he was done eating, he would literally lick his plate clean and stick it back in the cupboard. Do you see the inconsistency!? I know he sometimes listens to these sermons, so sorry if you catch this one! The point is: it’s gross, right!?

-The second one is making the exact same point: Jesus is accusing them of whitewashing tombs. Think of a house that looks beautiful on the outside, fresh paint, brand new roof, immaculate lawn, but you walk in and it’s a hoarder’s house. Jesus isn’t asking us to clean up our mess to present to Him, He invites us to come to Him so He can clean up our mess.

-Friends, this is why we need Jesus and not Jonah.

-Jesus, who also slept in a boat during a storm, but then cared more about saving his friends than himself.

-Jesus, who asked NOT to be killed, but willingly went to His death anyway, not because He was angry, but because we were angry.

-Jesus, who knows everything, and asked for God to forgive those who “didn’t know what they were doing,” even as he bore the penalty for every sin on the cross.

-Jesus, who then spent 3 days and nights in the belly of the earth, and then was “vomited” out because the punishment was done. Forever. Aren’t you glad that in a world full of Jonahs, we get Jesus?

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by mikethestrand on March 8, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 8, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/08/jonah-sermon-manuscript/

Joel – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the interesting things about these prophets is that all their names have specific meanings that tend to correlate to their role. Hosea’s name means “salvation” or “deliverance” which shows the way God’s people were saved or delivered from their sins. Joel’s name means Yahweh is God. But did you know the Jesus wasn’t the name of God’s Son? Jesus’s name in Hebrew was actually Joshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” So when the angel appears to Mary, he tells her that she should name her son Joshua because He will save His people from their sins. So why do we call Him Jesus?

-When the OT was being translated from Hebrew into Greek, there were some words that were transliterated (moved from Hebrew into Greek without translating, each letter for the corresponding letter in Greek). We saw this last week when our Bible’s transliterated the names of Hosea’s children. So Jeshua in the Hebrew became Iesous in the Greek. Then English came on the scene, and the first English translation put the name as Ihesus, which in the KJV became Iesus. So Jesus comes from a transliteration of a transliteration, and because of the impact of the KJV, we refer to Him as Jesus in all our English Bibles today.

-We’re going to look at the significance of Jesus’s name today, and it may surprise you that it comes up in Joel!

READ/PRAY (pg. 807)

  1. The Day of the Lord

-One of the repeated phrases throughout this book is, “The Day of the Lord,” a future moment where God would come in judgment to pay back the enemies of His people. It’s used in a number of other prophets in the OT, but it also makes some appearances in the NT. Some people call it just “that day” or will refer to it as “the great day of the Lord”

-Talked about in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, and most explicitly in Zephaniah. Now, this gets to one of the biggest questions surrounding Joel. Think back to last week when I talked about the dates of these books. Many of them begin with the name of the prophet, followed by the kings who reigned during their ministries, see here’s the first verse from Hosea. Compare that to the beginning of Joel. So there’s debate about where we should historically locate Joel, since there’s similar themes to some other books, is Joel using terminology from them or are they borrowing language from Joel? If you remember this chart from last week that placed the dates of the various prophets, you can see a question mark next to Joel. The big event in Joel is a famine due to a swarm of locusts, which could place it in any of these centuries.

-We’ll talk about this more thoroughly when we get to Zechariah, but I think we need to build a foundation of this “day” that the prophets are talking about here to help us understand the message of Joel! 

-At the time, the Israelites were anxious for the day of the Lord because it was viewed in a completely positive light, where the other nations who had defeated God’s people would be judged. But the message of the prophets is that the judgment would be negative, not positive! Look how Isaiahdescribes this day:

-And this isn’t just an OT focus, look how Revelation both describes the day and what that day is referred to as. So instead of being a positive thing, the prophets warn us that that the Day of the Lord is going to be terrifying! And where that Revelation passage ends is the question Joel will help us answer: Who can stand?

  • The Message of Joel

-The focus of this book is trying to prepare people for the day of the Lord by using the picture of the current disaster from locusts as a picture of what will someday be coming from an invading army.

-Now, because it’s the Bible and probably the most studied and dissected book in the world, there’s debate about what’s being talked about! The debate is what exactly is Joel talking about, and is it different between chapters 1 & 2, or is he just talking about the same event? Either Joel uses locusts to describe an invading army, or there’s no army he’s just talked about how destructive the locusts are, OR 1 chapter is locusts and 2 is an army of people. Again, it doesn’t help that we can’t specifically date this book, which slightly complicates figuring out what exactly Joel’s talking about. BUT I would take the position that Joel 1 is referring to a real ecological disaster that serves as a picture of what an invading army would do in Joel 2, followed how God will redeem and restore His people in Joel 3. Remember, Joel’s name means “Yahweh is God,” and it fits with his primary message of God’s upcoming judgment of the wicked and restoration of the righteous.

  1. Judgment in the Day of the Lord (1:1-2:17)

-The first reminder is that this event is supposed to be significant for the people, significant enough that it becomes a part of the family story. What’s amazing, to me, about this is that throughout the Bible, God commands His people to repeat stories down through the generations. 

-2 brief examples. My mind has been in Joshua a lot the past few weeks, and one of the amazing stories in that book is that the nation is able to cross the Jordan river on dry ground because God stops the river from flowing (similar to what He did when they left Egypt). Once the whole nation had crossed, God tells Joshua to take 12 stones from the middle of the river and bring them to their camp, and then set up another 12 stone memorial in the middle of the river as a reminder of what God had done for them. And notice how God describes it: 

The nation is supposed to talk about God’s provision for them.

-Second is in Deut. 6, as God tells His people how they’re supposed to live (just so you keep this in mind from last week, don’t miss that the one true God doesn’t leave us in the dark, He tells us how we should live!) And look what God says they’re supposed to do with these words: repeat them to your children. This is God’s way of saying: know your history, know your story, so that you can know how you got where you are today. AND as we see in Joel, don’t just repeat the good stories! Share the difficulties and struggles God has taken you through, don’t just give your kids or your friends the Instagram reel of your life, talk about the times and seasons where you weren’t sure if God was going to show up. 

-I’m not sure if you know this yet, but life is HARD! And one of the things I think we need to teach kids is that it’s possible to navigate and persevere through difficult things. Sometimes the difficulty is because of our own stupidity, and sometimes things just happen to us, but let your kids know that you survived!

-In the case of Joel, what has happened that the people had survived is a plague of locusts. Just a few years ago, locusts were actually in the news because in Kenya they were facing the destruction of their crops from locusts, the BBC called it “The biblical locusts plagues of 2020.” And look just how complete this plague is for Joel 1:4:

-Nothing is left, they’re facing starvation in ways that we can’t begin to comprehend today! And when their entire economy depends on agriculture this is like facing the great depression of 1930s (close enough that we have to specify which century now!) Joel goes on through this chapter to say the grapevines have been ruined, fruit trees are destroyed, even the animals are grieving and groaning. 

-And this was something that God had promised! Remember to last week where I said the primary role of the prophets was to remind the people what God had said and to call them back to uphold their end of the covenant? God always keeps His Word, both for His blessings and His curses. And in Deut. 28, God says:

-And what’s the proper response of the people? They’re supposed to wake up! (5), grieve (8), be ashamed (11), dress in sackcloth and lament (13), announce a sacred fast and a solemn assembly (14) Why? Look at vs. 15. This is the first time that phrase is mentioned. And unfortunately, even though this day is terrible, it’s not THAT day! It’s near, this plague is a picture of the judgment and devastation that will come from God on THAT day, so brace yourself! Look at the way the Lord is spelled out in your Bible, do you see the smaller font, but uppercase letters? In the OT that’s the way our modern Bibles note where the divine name “Yahweh” is being used, you can see it previously in vs. 14, 9, & 1. If the letters aren’t capitalized it’s using a different Hebrew word.

-And that warning continues in chpt. 2, he doubles down on the reality that the day of the Lord is coming, and look at how he describes it in vs. 2, and part of the reason I think this is referring to something in the future is because of his description of something that “never existed in ages past and never will again.” He’s using the plague as a picture of what THAT day is going to look like.

-And to see how complete this destruction is, look at vs. 11. Nothing can stand in the way of this army, nothing can stand against them, leading to God asking the rhetorical question: who can endure it? The answer is no one!

-And friends, apart from God’s miraculous intervention that’s where we’re stuck. Paul in Eph. 2 describes us as dead in our sins. If God hadn’t brought us from death to life no one would be able to stand in His presence. And we know that about God! The fact that we preach a “gospel” which means “good news” means there must be hope in the midst of this destruction, right? Let’s see the way God answers that question, who can endure?

-God’s people can, if they follow through on God’s commands to seek repentance. And do you notice that Joel calls out a false repentance? Friends, how easy is it to act remorseful but not actually be repenting? To grieve that you got caught, not that you were sinning. God invites us to repent and provides a way of dealing with that sin, not just looking the other way and ignoring or penalizing and holding it against you but casting it as far as the East is from the West. And how often do we see a fake response in our world? People apologizing “if you were offended,” or apologizing for hurting you, but not admitting that what they did was wrong. And that’s only if someone actually apologizes! Think of what we’re seeing with the release of all these Epstein files! I’ll be honest, it’s pretty hard for me to take most of the apologies seriously when these people have had years or decades to apologize, but they waited. Is there actual regret for what they participated in, or is it merely posturing – putting on a show so you look good to others. That’s the kind of “repenting” that God is calling out here. He wants true repentance from the heart, not a show of repentance without any inner transformation.

-And notice how it describes God: gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love. Church – this is why it’s so important for us to have good theology, a good grasp on who God is. Since we know that God is gracious and compassionate we can respond with repentance! If God was malicious or angry we should be afraid to admit we’re sinners, but that’s not our God. Our God is slow to anger and overflowingwith steadfast, faithful love (Hebrew words chesed which is very hard to translate). Sally Lloyd Jones calls it: “Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.” Think about that comparison: slow to anger. God’s first reaction isn’t in anger, it takes Him a LONG time to get angry. But God’s first reaction to true repentance is forgiveness. He’s slow to anger but QUICK to forgiveness. And if you think about that, isn’t that exactly what you’d hope for from Him? You don’t want him to be quick to anger and slow to forgiveness because we’re ALWAYS going to sin! If He weren’t slow to anger we’d be toast!

-Then with that reminder of who God is, the priests can call people to a true repentance (vs. 15-17) where once their sins are dealt with, God can be with them again.

  • The Mercy of the Lord (2:18-3:21)

-Now that the people know what God is like and they move to respond in repentance, how does God respond? Just as He promised! He will restore everything they’ve lost. God spares His people because they have responded in repentance. 

-God says He will repay His people for the lean years. God’s blessings will pour out on His people, but even more importantly than the blessings: 

-God will be present with His people. They won’t be looking to idols as their source of comfort anymore. BUT that doesn’t happen on this side of Jesus’s return! Which is what God goes on to predict, and this gets us to those near and far future fulfillments that we talked about last week but hold onto that for just a minute.

-The next key to Joel is that when that day of the Lord comes it will be marked by a revival among the people. Look at what He says in 28-29:

-Previously, God’s Spirit only indwelt people for a short period of time, not permanently, and it was primarily those who were tasked with leading the nation (kings, priests, prophets). But now God says He’ll pour out His Spirit on ALL humanity, and when He says ALL he means it! Sons and daughters (suddenly there’s no gender divisions in salvation), old men and young men (suddenly there’s no age or generational divisions), and male and female slaves (suddenly there’s no class or economic distinctions). God’s Spirit can live in any and every one! I think this is what Paul’s talking about in Gal 3:28 when he says: 

-And back to Joel, that’s what God says too: EVERYONE. 

-The final chapter gives the other perspective of the day of the Lord. There’s a different response from God to those who don’t turn in repentance to God. If you look at the footnote of your Bible, you’ll see that Jehoshaphat means the Lord will judge. God is reminding His people that even if it looks like the nations around them are flourishing in their defeat of them, the end result will be completely different for them. God will respond to their lack of repentance with judgment. But even in the midst of that judgment, look at how God describes Himself for His people: 

-A refuge and stronghold, a place where they can be protected and preserved from the incoming judgment and destruction of the nations. And look how God promises to pour out His blessings on His people:

-In order to understand how we should respond to this book, I think we need to see how the NT writers interpret Joel’s words, so there’s 3 key passages that I think help us understand what God is teaching to His people through all time:

  • The Use of Joel in the New Testament (Acts 2; Romans 10:13; Revelation 9)

-2 key changes that Peter makes:

-Peter says it is IN the last days, where Joel says “After this.” Peter is saying this is the sign you’ve been waiting for! The last days have started NOW, but those last days aren’t fully realized, just like the 2 mountains.

-He also adds in 18 that “they will prophesy.” Peter is saying what is taking place is prophesying, we think it’s just the future, but Peter is showing us that it is speaking in the power of God in unique ways, sometimes speaking to what’s happening right now. 

-More importantly, after quoting from Joel, Peter does a bit of logic building in the Greek to point out exactly how this salvation comes through a name. In the Greek, the word for Lord is kurios (no special marker in our English Bibles), so he begins with a reference to Yahweh from the OT, then he goes on to talk about God raising this Jesus in 32. Then he goes on to equate Jesus with the Lord (this is a key verse Jesus uses to describe Himself in Matt. 22) and lands by saying in vs. 36: God has made this Jesus the kurios, the Lord God. 

-The people are convicted, and they ask what they should do, and what does Peter say? Repent and be baptized (those are connected to each other), in what name? The name of Jesus. The promise that those who call on the correct name will be saved was hidden to Joel, but with the arrival of Jesus has been revealed! We know that name! We know who we should call to if we want to be saved!

-This is exactly the same argument Paul uses in Rom. 10.

-Lastly, just so we can begin to understand the way the day of the Lord works, listen to one of the things John sees in Rev. 9. 

-And there’s more descriptions of these locusts in later verses. In Joel, the locusts are described as lions (1:6), complete destruction in the front and back (2:3) perhaps like a scorpion, like horses specifically war hoses (2:4), their sound is described like chariots (2:5). Do you think there might be some parallels between what God revealed to both Joel and John? I tried emphasizing this point when I preached through Rev. in 2024, but how much of Revelation do we misinterpret because we don’t catch these OT references and allusions? And what if the verses in Revelation are supposed to remind us of what we just talked about as an application from Joel? Unless you call on the name of the Lord, you will be destroyed.

-So friends, as we conclude this sermon, the question before you is: what’s going to happen to you on the Day of the Lord? Today we’ve seen the reminder that unless we repent and believe in the name of Jesus we will not be saved.

-Peter says that there is no other name we should look to for salvation, there’s no hope for salvation from anyone or anything else.

-And because God is slow to anger, Paul tells us in Rom. 2:4 that that trait is God’s kindness and is meant to lead us to repentance. If you repent and believe, then the Day of the Lord is something to get excited for! It’s the day where our faith will be made sight, where the spiritual realm will be visible to us, where we’ll see our Savior and King returning to bring us home!

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by mikethestrand on February 15, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 15, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/15/joel-sermon-manuscript/

1 Timothy 4:6-16 – Sermon Manuscript

-There was an incredibly influential Scottish Pastor that served as a pastor from 1835-1843 named Robert Murray McCheyne. He died before 30 of typhus, was a beloved pastor for all of 5.5 years, came up with a daily Bible reading plan that’s still used by thousands across the world today! Another one of my favorite quotes from his is “Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely.” But another quote of his was written to pastors, and I want you to be thinking about how you think he’ll finish this as we work our way through this text. What does the church most need from a pastor?

READ/PRAY (pg. 1052)

  1. Labor in the Word (6-10)

-If you read Paul’s letters, there’s a general overview that starts to take shape. He begins with this rich and robust theology truths about God that warrant all sorts of study that lead to all sorts of debate, and then about halfway through he turns to the practical outworkings of that rich doctrine. We’re now at that place in this letter. We’ve seen all these debated things like: the proper use of the law, praying for everyone, including ungodly rulers, the ordering of men and women in the church, the leadership offices of the church, and a reminder to follow the true Spirit instead of the spirit of the devil. 

-This section, I read as Paul pointing a finger at Timothy. We’ve talked about some ways people distort the truth, but as for YOU! You have a job to do! What does it require?

-Point these things out: all the truths Paul’s been talking about previously, and then continues to talk about! Continue bringing these things up to the church. I had the privilege of conducting 2 weddings this month. One of the couples asked me to make sure I talked about Jesus during my message, and I told them you pick the passage and I’m going to connect it to Jesus! The whole thing is about Him. I love the way Spurgeon summarized this: preach the text, then make a beeline for the cross! Friends, every week you’re going to hear about Jesus! 

-The goal of Paul’s instruction: so that Timothy would be a good servant of Christ Jesus. 

-Servant, not the leader, not the king. Same word as deacon, but in this reference talking about the general practice, not the particular office.

-How do you know if you’re a good servant?

-Have followed: there’s a path that you’re supposed to follow, there’s others who have faithfully served throughout the centuries who have ministered and dealt with the same issues we face today! It’s imperative to remain on this well-worn path, not being distracted by the enticing things around you.

-But notice the way Timothy is nourished: words of faith, and good teaching. Those 2 things go together to remind Timothy that he can only endure by keeping the Bible his primary focus.

-He’s talked about these myths before in 1:4, there he said don’t pay attention to them, here he takes it even further: have nothing to do, here it’s translated pointless and silly myths, lit. he says “reject pointless myths and old wives tales”

-Blogs, influencers, mega-churches, “pastors” all these places that perpetuate ungodly nonsense. Have nothing to do with them!

-Unlike all these false teachers, Timothy is supposed to train in godliness. Notice all these actions that Paul uses in this section: train, (10) labor, strive.

-Have you ever gotten frustrated at how difficult Christianity can be? Do you ever feel like you were sold a false bill of goods that ended up being a lie? Turns out Christianity isn’t a cakewalk! 

-Christianity is simply, but it isn’t easy. There will be times and seasons of sweetness, where every time you open the Bible it’s like the Words jump out of the page and meet you right where you’re at. And there will be other times where it’s a grind. Paul knows that, he’s been a believer long enough, and he’s taking time here to remind his child in the faith, Timothy, that even when it’s hard, continue pressing on. 

-The training of the body had limited benefit. But it still has benefit! 

-I can’t tell you how many pastors that I respect seemed to have neglected this verse. Paul doesn’t say there’s no benefit, he says it’s limited, but the limitation is in reference to eternity. John Calvin died at 54 from overwork. Charles Spurgeon died at 57 (started getting gout regularly at 33), had to retired to the French Riviera every winter to recover from his schedule (plus the guy was huge! His chest measured 41”), I read a book that every pastor I respect has told me to read and I got so angry reading it because the guy said pastors must exert every ounce of energy on their ministry, and if they die from it, all the better because they died for Christ. Utter nonsense! Steward your body.

-But keep the physical training in check. Don’t let it consume you. Yes, take care of the body God gave you since it’s the only one He gave you, but don’t treat it as the ultimate thing.

-Instead, train yourself for godliness. But why? And friends, this is something that excites me more than anything else. Did you know that what you do today has eternal implications? 

-That’s what Paul is saying here: pursuing godliness will give you gains here and in eternity. That means every day, every decision you make has eternal consequences. I don’t know about you, but I feel like that just increases the potential of everything I do here!

-This gets to our whole purpose as a church, friends. We’re here to help people prepare for eternity, to help people take 1 step closer to Jesus today, because whether we realize it or not each day is 1 day closer to the day where we’ll see Jesus face to face. 

-That’s actually where Paul turns next in this section, too. And this should comfort you! We don’t have to come up with some creative campaign slogan, we don’t need a marketing department, or the best graphics. What we need is the Bible. Friends, the Bible tells us exactly what we’re supposed to be pursuing as a church!

-Here he says exactly why we work hard in our faith: it’s an overflow out of our relationship with the living God, who expects our everything. Our hope is in the one true and living God.

-Is Paul arguing for universalism here? Is he saying that everyone will go to heaven? Is he contradicting himself from Rom. 1:16-17? No! He’s saying that God’s common grace is extended to everyone, but there’s a different kind of grace given to those who put their faith in Him. 

-And there are literally cosmic implications to the realities of the gospel message Rom. 8 says that all creations groans waiting for Jesus’s return!

  • Live out the Word (11-16)

-Paul has just reminded Timothy to always keep eternity in view. Live as if we’re living for eternity! And then he has 2 verbs: command and teach. 

-Command connects to Timothy’s authoritative role. Remember: a faithful church will have a certain structure and ordering to it, with 2 leadership offices of elder and deacon. These 2 offices are God’s chosen means of helping the church to flourish, and we need to be careful who is chosen for those roles because they will determine the direction of our entire church body. Don’t affirm leaders that you don’t want to be like, but at the same time, when leaders have been elected, Scripture tells us to submit to them, to listen to them, which is why Paul tells Timothy to command things from the Word. 

-Some of where this gets difficult is the application of God’s Word is situational. Now, listen carefully: God’s Word never changes. Period. But the way we live that Word out does change. That’s one of the incredible things about the Bible! I’ve lost track of the times I’ve read through it, and still every week there’s something that I’d never noticed before. This is what Paul’s getting at when he says to teach these things. The application of this Word is going to change based on our people, our culture, our needs, and God’s Word is big enough for us to handle those different applications. Do you trust it?

-This verse has been the verse that has been preached at me for most of my life, and I figure I’m 3 years away from no longer qualifying for this verse. I’ve shared this story before, but before I was called here, I was told from another church that I was too young to be a pastor there. And it was an issue that came up when I was candidating here (believe it or not!) And just so everyone knows, when I was candidating I was 32, but as a professor at seminary says, don’t forget Jesus accomplished his entire ministry before the age of 33.

-And friends, there’s some truth to it! I get it! I haven’t had as many life experiences as some of you. But it’s also true that God’s Word doesn’t change, and I’ve devoted my life to the interpretation and application of this book. And as I said back then, I promise that I’ll do what I can to keep getting older! And I’ve kept my word!

-But the point to this verse is some commands, and they’re things that I’ve been praying for myself for the last few years. See, the way to ensure no one looks down on you in your youth is by setting an example. And the things that Timothy is called to are things that should be true of everyone who claims to follow Christ, but let’s look at them.

-Speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity. Now, I would argue that these are things that are particular temptations for those that are young. 

-Speech: it can be easy to be flippant or careless with words, not realizing the way that words can make or break a person and relationships. 

-Conduct: it feels like life is going to last forever, so why should there be any delayed gratification? 

-Love: you’ve probably heard that youth is wasted on young, and I think this is a particular area because there’s a level of pride of self-centeredness that comes with youth. I don’t think people know how selfish they are until they get married. 

-Faith: similar to love, there can be a thinking that you can wait until later to start taking Jesus seriously. Don’t wait! It’s worth it to chase after Jesus with all you’ve got now. 

-Purity: this feels like it could have been written today! With the rise of pornography use, the careless approach to sex. Church leaders must be marked by purity in all their relationships.

-And this is especially true of those who are young! And unfortunately, many who are young emphasize the first part without realizing they condemn themselves with the way they live. It’s on the young to not let anyone look down on you, but it requires you living a holy life that is faithfully following after Jesus. If any of you are young in here, don’t waste your youth on things you’ll regret as you get older. Choose today to set an example by pointing people to Jesus.

-Then Paul gives Timothy some more marching orders to focus on until he comes: Devote yourself, focus on, give everything you’ve got toward these things. In the Greek, these words have no conjunction, so one commentator said these 3 things are meant to be intertwined and inseparable, and notice that it’s again centered on the Bible.

-Public reading: we see examples of Scripture reading all throughout the Bible, and it’s supposed to take place every time we gather. One of the most discouraging things to me about our current church culture is how little the Bible is read! Friends, if you’re ever looking for a church count how many minutes it takes them to open the Bible. Same thing with the sermon, how quickly in the sermon is God’s Word read?

-Exhortation: God’s Word is supposed to be a mirror. We read something God says which has implications for us. Scripture is supposed to be used to exhort, to encourage to push us closer to Jesus. Similar to:

-Teaching: explaining what the text means. I’ve heard people say that what we do on Sundays is a modern invention, too influenced by education models. That’s just not true! This was adopted from the 1st century synagogue practice of publicly reading Scripture, then exhorting and teaching from the Bible. And in the 2nd century, Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist and philosopher, said this:

-Friends, the church has been fixated on God’s Word since the very beginning, and the act of preaching has been the primary focus of the church since then.

-Don’t neglect the gift that was given.

-This will come up again later, but I’m going to approach it from a different perspective there. Church leaders are called to be people of the book, but the book is also supposed to lead to a different way of living. Pastors must be people of the book, both in their study and in how they live. John Calvin begins his institutes saying:

-We have placed a high emphasis on knowledge of God for pastors. Looking for a seminary degree, an ability to know the Word. But how many pastors don’t actually know themselves? You’ve probably heard of IQ, but have you ever heard of EQ? We know about God, but who are you?

-The public affirmation of Timothy’s call – you can’t be a pastor without a church. You can claim whatever you want, but a pastor by definition needs a church, a pastor doesn’t get to self-identify. There are 2 aspects to a call: internal and external. Both of these are critical, if it’s just external you’ll question and doubt all the time, if it’s just internal you’ll probably end up disqualified from ministry.

-Just had my ordination council this past week, every person I know struggles with imposter syndrome in some area. And let me tell you just how affirming it is to have a group of your peers tell you that God has called you to ministry and a church, having both an internal desire to teach the Bible and an external affirmation from other pastors and a church that confirms that internal call.

-Not only are these things supposed to be markers of Timothy, he’s also supposed to grow in them, to get better at them. He’s supposed to practice them, and be committed to them. To continue growing in his understanding of God, and the way he’s living his life. And why? So that everyone can see his growth.

-Friends, you should see your church leaders continually growing. If your church leaders aren’t continually acknowledging their sins, working to fight against them, and finding new things to learn about God, something is off. One of my favorite questions to start asking potential pastors is: tell me about the last time the gospel emotionally moved you.

-There’s a pastor I really like (from afar) named Ray Ortlund. I onetime heard him say that he prays every time he preaches that it’s the best sermon he’s ever preached. Not out a sense of pride, but because he wants to live out this verse.

-This next verse really captured my mind a few years ago, and in particular the way the NIV translates it. 

-Life and doctrine: the 2 things that every Christian needs to be growing in. The way I think about this is like a train. Trains need 2 tracks in order to remain moving forward, just like we’re called to grow in both life and doctrine. That’s why we renamed our small groups to life groups, that’s why we offer equipping classes. These 2 things are meant to be linked together, but you also need to be taking time to pray and ask the Lord what you should be focusing on in at the stage of life you’re in. Maybe you need to be stretched to learn some new things about God, attend one of our 9 AM classes, or read a theology book (if you need suggestions reach out to me!). Maybe you need to work on applying something you’ve learned about God to your life – get involved in a small group, or ask to meet with someone sitting nearby you, or maybe start meeting with a group of friends to talk about what God has been teaching you. Friends, this can be done in a variety of ways, both formally and informally, but it requires intentionality and effort, as well as commitment to a local church where you’re forced to rub shoulders with a bunch of people who may not think or act exactly like you! And you need that to grow closer to Jesus. Friends, Christianity is a team sport. When God saves you, He brings you into a new family comprised of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

-And the reason Timothy is supposed to watch his life and his teaching (doctrine) is for the salvation of himself and his church.

-Once again, we know that salvation is by faith alone through grace alone, in Jesus Christ alone, but Timothy can help in God’s mission of seeking and saving the lost, or he can hurt it. There’s a pastor I really like named Kevin DeYoung who has shared that one of his pieces of accountability is thinking about his congregation, and fearing what would happen if he gave up. When I first heard him say that it bothered me, but as I’ve thought about that more, it’s absolutely true! The number of friends I have who have left the church because of a pastoral failure continues to grow! And the pastors who fail will someday give an account for both their failings and the ways their failings affected the whole body.

-Back to Robert Murray McCheyne. 

-So friends, as we come to the end of this, I want to leave you with this phrase: watch your life and doctrine closely. Where is God calling you to focus on in this season of your life? What things about God do you have questions about? Or what areas in your life are you struggling to live out what you know God has called you to do? Take some time right now to ask God to reveal to you what you need to be focusing on in the days and weeks ahead, and then I’ll close in prayer.

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by mikethestrand on October 26, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 26, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/10/26/1-timothy-46-16-sermon-manuscript/

1 Timothy 3:8-13 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the biggest struggles I have in my life, and ministry, is with delegation. It depends on the specific issue, but I generally just like to do things myself instead of asking others to do it, which has often not worked well for me. Yes, things get done in the way that I want them done, but I cheat others out of using their gifts, and I wear myself down. 

-And part of what has kept me going is that I’m in good company! In Ex. 18, there’s a story about Moses (who lead Israel out of Egypt and through their wilderness wanderings). Moses gets word that his father-in-law was coming to visit, and during the course of his visit he sees Moses’s work, where Moses would deal with any complaints people had. His father-in-law chews him out, and tells Moses that if he keeps trying to do it all he’ll wear himself out, that he needs to set up delegation who can deal with these little petty issues that people have.

-That picture is what we see in today’s text. Delegating various roles to people who are gifted so that all of us can use our gifts for the good of each other and the honor of God.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1052)

-Recommended books

  1. Deacons, Servants, Ministers

-Right out of the gate, we need to deal with what is the word for this role? Last week it looked like the NT writers were the confused ones, this week it looks like we English speakers who are the confused ones! Because the word is translated 3 different ways in English! And by the title of this point, you can see all 3 of them!

-It’s important to note that Paul is beginning a new train of thought here that is a subset of what he said last week. Last week was the qualifications for an elder/overseer. That thinking continues with this text as he says “likewise” to signify it’s a continuation of his previous thoughts. Remember what I said last week: a church that believes the 4 Gospels will organize itself like is described in the Epistles (letters), by calling elders and deacons as the leaders of the church.

-But just as there’s some confusion about what to call last week’s role, there’s some slight nuance to what we call this week’s role, and to demonstrate that, here’s a few verses that point that out. First, let’s go back to a passage I read last week to talk about leadership in the kingdom of God, Mark 10.

-Usually most translations have “serve” here, but it’s the same word that Paul uses to talk about this office in 1 Tim. And then, just so we get it, Jesus says it again in the upper room during His last night with His disciples. So right out of the gate we see that this isn’t something demeaning or belittling, this is something that Jesus Himself does!

-It’s also a word Paul uses to describe himself. In Col. 1 he’s talking about the church, and then describes himself as the church’s deacon (servant). And later in this letter to Timothy, Paul tells him that Timothy will also be a good deacon of Jesus. 

-So if we see all these examples of so many people being deacons, why do I think this is a separate office similar to Elder? Because of the logic of this passage, 2 other passages from Paul, and church history. Let’s work through each one of those.

-The logic of this passage. The purpose of this book is so Timothy can know how the church (household) is supposed to operate, with leaders called by God and affirmed by the rest of the congregation. The leaders begin with elders or overseers who “oversee” the church. But in order to receive help, they also need deacons (which we’ll see throughout this passage) to help manage the church. That’s why Paul connects this to the office of elders.

-The 2 other passages: the first (less convincing, but still necessary) is Rom. 16:1, where Paul (I believe) describes Phoebe who is a deacon of the church (hold on to that, it’ll become important later). The second passage is what clinches it for me, Paul writes a letter, but notice who it’s written TO: all the saints, including the overseers and deacons. 2 offices expected in the church.

-The final reason is church history. The early church quickly adopted and recognized these 2 offices in the church. In a document referred to as the Didache (teaching), they stated: And Pliny the Younger, a Roman lawyer toward the end of the 1st/beginning of the 2nd century said: 

-So what I believe we start to see through the Bible is 2 offices, 1 focused on the Word, the other focused on the works. Elders are to ensure the church remains committed to God’s Word, they teach and correct using the Word, while deacons focus on the physical needs to allow the church to be able to hear and receive the Word. So I would argue that many things people think the elders should do are better done by deacons! But we’ll get there at the end.

-While we’re all called to “deacon” each other, there’s a unique role reserved for qualified people that is recognized by the church. And just as Paul had a list of what should be true of elders last week, this week he has another list that sounds very similar to what we read last week. And this shouldn’t be a surprise to you if you’ve been coming the last few weeks, but there’s once again debate about the best way to interpret this passage!

  • A Faithful Deacon Is…

-Paul begins saying they should be “worthy of respect.” This word includes things like dignified, or worth following after. Similar to what we saw last week with elders, just as we need to be careful in our selection of elders, we also need to be careful in our selection of deacons, because we become like our leaders! And it only takes 1 bad leader to corrupt the rest of the group!

-Not hypocritical. While there’s many overlaps between this list and the elder list, this one is unique to deacons, and I think there’s a reason for that! Because of the focus on the “works” that need to be done, deacons are going to be aware of some sensitive information that’s going on in people’s lives. We don’t want someone who either doesn’t follow through on commitments or someone that’s going to be sharing that information with other people. 

-For example, one of the areas that I think should fall under the oversight of deacons is benevolence requests, money set aside to help church members in need. This means there’s going to be some people who know a bit about someone’s financial situation. You don’t want that person to be a blabbermouth, or to tell you they’re going to be helping you and not follow through! That’s why it’s so important for them to not by a hypocrite!

-Then we’re back to the same thing as elders: not drinking a lot of wine. As I said last week, this is someone who is self-controlled. 

-Not greedy for money. The word Paul uses is literally “shamefully greedy.” Someone who just wants more and more. I would connect this to the hypocritical piece: if this is someone who’s involved in the “works” of the church, some of them will have access to some level of finances, and if they’re greedy for that money they’ll look with suspicion on anyone else.

-This next one is where I believe we see the biggest difference between elders and deacons. Whereas elders are expected to teach, deacons are expected to hold onto the faith.

-Mystery isn’t like Sherlock Holmes, it’s a technical term that Paul uses to refer to the realities of the gospel message, something that had been hidden in the past that was revealed in Jesus.

-Clear conscience. Jonathan Edwards (American Pastor before the Revolutionary War) said the conscience is like a sundial, it only works when it’s viewed in light of the sun, other lights give false readings. Requires the community of faith living together to help you see yourself in light of the true Son of God! Our hearts will continually pull us away from that source of truth. That’s why we need Sundays and other people to pull us back and remind us who God really is! And deacons are supposed to be people who do that exceptionally well, who work to continually align their hearts with God.

-Last for this slide, they must be tested. This is similar to what we saw for elders that they must not be a new convert. This means they should have a life that models faithfulness. We’re not looking for someone who’s the best facilities person, the best finance person, the best business person, we’re looking for someone who is faithful in their walk with the Lord. Let’s not miss that Paul emphasizes this for both elders and deacons! Friends, churches aren’t just another nonprofit or institution! The requirements are different in the household of God.

-Are you ready for the biggest debate of this section? It’s the first word in vs. 11: wives or women? Dan Doriani (professor at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis) summarizes all the proposals under 4 options, with the most ink being focused on options 1 or 4.

-First option is that Paul is talking about male deacons, then focuses on women, back to men, then all deacons. There’s no distinction between men and women. 

-Second option is a different office that Paul is referring to, some people make a distinction between deacons and deaconesses as 2 unique roles the church is meant to fill.

-Third option would be women who help out the deacons, a lower role .That would mean they’re not the same as deacons, they come alongside to help the deacons.

-Fourth would be just translate this word as “wives” and call it a day! 

-I would argue that it’s option 1, for a number of reasons. First, what I mentioned earlier about Paul calling out Phoebe in Rom. 16 as a deacon, and church history also backs up the idea that deaconesses were a part of the early church. The second reason is I don’t think it makes sense for deacons to have stricter requirements than elders, if Paul was referring to their wives here then I believe he also would have had something about elder’s wives in previous text. 

-Additionally, I think Paul’s logic in the text is pretty easy to follow if you pay attention to a repeated word. This whole chapter is focused on leadership in the church, beginning with elders, which were supposed to be selected at every church. Then he continues his thoughts on church leadership with a word “likewise” when he starts talking about the second church office of deacons. And did you notice that he uses it again in this verse? So his flow of thought begins with elders, moves to deacons, then he has some specific expectations for women who are deacons before going back to male deacons, and finally ends with encouragement for everyone who serves as a deacon. Which gets me to the last reason I think it’s women and not wives, in vs. 12 Paul talks about their wives!

-All that to say, I believe Paul in this chapter is giving us principles for how to structure leadership in the church of Jesus Christ. Every church is expected to have elders, and then as the church grows a second office is introduced to help the church continue to pursue unity together: deacons. Deacons are comprised of men and women who meet these qualifications. And friends, some of where I think we’ve gotten off in the church is by not holding to these 2 offices as something God has called us to hold to. I think the whole women in ministry conversation becomes much more difficult when you don’t recognize that God has called women to leadership in the role of deacon. It is different than elder, but it is still an official leadership office.

-Now for the qualifications for these women deacons: I think it’s basically what we’ve seen of the expectations for the male deacons, it begins with literally the same word: respectful. Not slanderers connects to not being a hypocrite, self-controlled connects to not drinking too much, and faithful in everything connects to holding to the faith.

-Then Paul shifts back to the male deacons who (like the elders) are to be faithful at home as husbands and fathers because the church is just a slightly bigger family. 

-Finally, everyone who serves as a deacon acquires a good standing and are encouraged in their faith as they serve the church and point others to Jesus.

  • What’s the Difference?

-One commentary stated the difference as: elders serve by leading, deacons lead by serving. I think that’s a helpful summary! And part of the reason we need to talk about this is because there’s not a lot of clarity in the Bible about what each of these offices are supposed to be doing. AND there’s nothing in the Bible about what it means to be a nonprofit in the 21st century (nor is there a class in Seminary about that!)

-Language used: elders oversee, deacons assist. There’s recently been some linguistic work done on the Greek word translated as deacon, with the argument that it should be understood assistants to the elders. So the elders are tasked with leading the church (a Word based leading), and then they call and recognize deacons who help the elders focus on their ministry by partnering together for the good of the entire body. If you have questions about that, email me, I’ll send you some articles.

-Before we start to define what they should be doing, I want to briefly share some things that a Deacon is NOT. 

-Elders in training: these are meant to be 2 distinct offices that complement each other and minister in different but overlapping spheres of influence. This isn’t meant to be a steppingstone on the way to something bigger and better. Just like the youth pastor doesn’t just have to be a starting point for those in ministry (we had former Pastor Bruce there for 40 years, so we should know that!) Some people who are called to serve as deacons shouldn’t aspire to become elders!

-GCs: I believe facilities can be a part of the ministry of the deacons, but it’s not only that. So just because someone is good at fixing things doesn’t mean they should be a deacon, especially if they don’t fit the characteristics of a deacon that Paul gives us here.

-CPAs: once again, I think finances is an area that should be under the oversight of deacons, but that’s not all the deacons are supposed to do.

-CEOs: there are some business things that we need to do to function in the 21st century, like nonprofit laws, employee practices, etc. But just because someone is good at managing a secular business does not automatically mean they should be a deacon!

-And I added this last one because I’ve heard of too many people who say the elders are just “yes men!” Sometimes I wish that were the case! Deacons aren’t supposed to be a “check on power” of the elders, like the various branches of government. 

-So what is a deacon supposed to do? I think we see a glimpse of it in Acts 6. Now, this is contested because this passage doesn’t actually use the term “deacon,” but I believe it gives us the starting point of what eventually becomes deacons in the early church.

-It begins with a contested issue that’s threatening to divide the church. Things were not equal in the ways widows were being cared for. So the 12 (apostles) called a members meeting (see friends, even the early church had disagreements that required discussion at members meetings!). We see what the 12 are focusing their ministry on: prayer and the ministry of the Word. Don’t read the waiting on tables as a lesser than thing. That’s how we read these things, but that’s not how we’re supposed to. It’s not better or worse, it’s distinct. Plus, in God’s kingdom, the lowest is the person who’s going to get the most recognition in heaven!

-Now, keep in mind the complaint that led to this: Hellenistic Jews (Greek speaking) were upset about the Hebraic Jews neglecting them. So then we get to the next verse, and all 7 names are Hellenistic names, meaning the Hebraic Jews were working hard to preserve the unity in the church, laying down their preferences for the good of the rest of the body. So part of the role of deacons is to help preserve unity in the church.

-So the way I would summarize the distinction: elders are to focus on the ministry of the Word and prayer, the deacons are to serve in a wide assortment of ministries to help the church preserve unity.

-Most churches function this way, they just don’t use these terms, and we actually have people who have been operating like deacons, we just don’t call them that! People like: Erin, Tami, and Molly on staff, Glenn Sonnee and Roger Thelen. 

-While some people called by God and recognized by the church to serve in this office, let’s remember that all of us are called to “deacon” each other each time we get together. In fact, every time we gather as the church, we should be looking for opportunities to “deacon” each other, just like Jesus “deaconed” us.

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by mikethestrand on October 12, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 12, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/10/12/1-timothy-38-13-sermon-manuscript/

1 Timothy 3:1-7 – Sermon Manuscript

-Leadership in the kingdom of God. James and John’s mom asks Jesus to sit at His right and left hands in heaven.

Matt. 20:25 “24 When the ten disciples heard this, they became indignant with the two brothers. 25 Jesus called them over and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. 26 It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave;28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

-Church leadership has gotten a really bad reputation over the last decade, and I would argue it’s because many churches have gotten away from what we read in today’s text.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1052)

  1. Elders, Pastors, Shepherds, Overseers

-Paul begins by commending those who want to be leaders in the church, but we have to admit that being overeager probably is a disqualification! There should be a level of reverence and trepidation in approaching any leadership because the Bible has some harsh words about those who are in leadership. Look at what James says in James 3:1, or if you want a stinging rebuke, read Ezek. 34!

-There have been moves throughout the church recently to try to flatten any sense of leadership or authority within the church, and we should admit that anytime you have people in positions of authority, there’s going to be the risk of abuse. You’ve probably heard the phrase “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But friends, believe it or not, that is antithetical to the message of the gospel! The gospel message is that the one who had absolute power wasn’t corrupted, but instead took corruption on Himself and then gives His power to His followers to accomplish the tasks He gives them.

-Part of this flattening is good and right and true, the ground is completely level at the foot of the cross, it doesn’t matter your academics, your genetics, your personality, your gender, or whether or not you were a leader in the church. There there have been times in the past where the pastor was put on too high a pedestal where no human is meant to be! But in response to that, to say that there is no distinction is also incorrect! The Bible assumes that Christians will organize into churches, and that those churches will have leaders who meet the qualifications listed here!

-The other piece that I want to mention that also applies to last week’s text (women in the church), is I think we have tended to get leadership in the church backwards. Friends, the church isn’t like the world, so adopting worldly ideas and definitions of leadership is at best unhelpful and at worst sinful. If Jesus serves as our model, then church leadership is actually about service instead of power. The call to be a leader in the church is a call to die so that others can be raised up. I worry that we as the church instead tend to look for people who are impressive by worldly standards instead of impressive by God’s standards.

-There is some debate around what these leaders should be called, and even today different denominations (or even sometimes churches) will use different titles to refer to the same office (Baptist churches for a while only had 1 office that they called “Deacons” which is a different and distinct office from Elder, it’s vs. 1-7 or 8-13). And some of the debate is because the NT uses different words in different places. In our text today, it’s translated as “overseer” episkapa 

-But even he seems to alternate between a couple different titles, because if you look at Titus 1, Paul refers to the same office with 2 different words, this time adding in presbuteros (if you’re thinking about various ways the church has ordered leadership, you may have heard the similarities to 2 church governance proposals: episcopal, and presbyterian, taken from these 2 words)

-Just like Paul uses different words to describe the same office, Peter does something similar in 1 Peter 5, but this time he uses the word for shepherd, which he goes on to use a bit of a descriptor for who elders should model themselves after: the chief shepherd (Jesus). He also says something similar to what we saw in 1 Tim. This should be done willingly. 1 other piece here, is the call for elders to be examples. Hold onto that thought, because it will come up again!

-To further confuse you, in Acts 20, Paul uses all 3 words to refer to the exact same office! He summons the elders, then calls them overseers, then tells them to shepherd. Something else we now learn about this office from this text is that they’re supposed to be able to defend against false teaching. That idea will come up again later, too!

-The last passage to look at before we continue in our text in Eph. 4, there again Paul uses the word for shepherd (pastor), but includes it in the list of other provisions to define all the things God provides to the church. But it’s not just to have leaders, the goal is maturity in the body of Christ. The other thing we learn about pastors in this section is they’re connected to a teaching ministry. He has this list going, but then he connects pastors and teachers together as if the role of a pastor is to be a teacher.

-We see these 4 words used interchangeably throughout the NT to refer to this leadership office in the church. This structure isn’t meant to be applied to other organizations or institutions; it’s God’s design and structure for the flourishing of His people between Jesus’s 2 comings. The day is coming when the Chief Shepherd will come and we’ll all live in a theocracy, but until that day, we’ll need faithful elders to lead our churches. 

-We’ve already started to see some of the descriptions of what and elder is supposed to be and do, but Paul gives us more in 1 Timothy:

  • An Elder Is Faithful in His:

-And I hope what stood out to you as we read it this morning how basic it is. Like the bar (at first blush) doesn’t seem to be very high. He says things like: “he must not be a drunk.” Nailing it! All but 1 thing in this list is supposed to be true of every follower of Jesus. Carson quote. 

-Friends, this should comfort us! What that means, at least at the start, is that this is something that’s attainable for real life people like you and me. He doesn’t say he must have gone to Harvard or Yale (or the 1st century equivalent!), he doesn’t say he must manage a fortune 500 company, it doesn’t even say he needs to be incredibly successful, or even manage a business. What Paul describes here is what I talked about a few weeks ago: a normal, dare we say boring Christian. 

-And I would argue that we can summarize this whole this as faithful. I’ve shared with you all before that each year I have a word of the year that helps me focus my heart and mind for the year, but it’s always in addition to the word: faithful. And I get that from a parable Jesus tells in Matt. 25. These are the words I hope to hear when I see Jesus for the first time: well done. 

-What we should be looking for in a leader is faithfulness. Are they faithful in following after Jesus in their lives? When they fail (and they will), how do they respond? Do they repent and run to Jesus or run away from Him?

-And that gets to another piece we need to consider before looking at the list, and that is that as the leader goes, that’s where the church will go. You see that idea all over Scripture! When Israel has a good and faithful king, they prosper. When Israel has a wicked king, they suffer. And churches follow the same pattern, they reflect their leadership. In fact, in every membership class I teach, I tell those who attend to PLEASE take their affirmations of elders seriously, because that’s the only way we as a church are going to remain healthy! Our leaders must faithfully point others to Jesus in what they say and in how they live.

-Once again, D.A. Carson helpfully summarizes why this is important: “Christian character is as much caught as taught—that is, it is picked up by constant association with mature Christians.” Basics for Believers

-Church, you will start to become like your elders! So be careful who you pick!

  1. Character

-I spent way too much time this week trying to figure out how to condense this list down, so take this a proposal, subject to change in the future! We begin with faithfulness, but then move to character, which again could summarize all of them! And combining those 2 things gets us even closer to summarizing the whole message: faithful character. But in order to help us think through this list a little more carefully, I condensed the character piece to 6 of them: above reproach, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, not an excessive drinker, and a good reputation among outsiders (above reproach in the church, good reputation outside the church).

-First, are any of these things just for elders and not for the rest of the church? Nope! We’re all called to be holy just like God is holy, self-control is a fruit of the spirit, sensible is used to describe men and women in Titus, respectable is used to describe all women in last week’s text, Eph. 5:18 says no one is to get drunk, and Jesus in Matt. 5:16 says that we’re supposed to let our light shine before others so that they’ll see our good works and give glory to God. So these things aren’t unique to an elder, they’re just what Christians are all called to be!

-So why isn’t everyone an elder? I would argue that what sets elders apart is that they live the ordinary Christian life extraordinarily well. Elders are called to be normal Christians who are faithfully following after Jesus. People that you would want to be like in your faith! So let’s look at each one of these:

-Above reproach: does this mean that elders are going to be sinless? Ask any of our elders if they’re sinless, and if they don’t laugh at you, they probably shouldn’t be elders anymore! 

-Which gets us to another piece to remember in this: no leader is Jesus. I know that sounds kind of obvious, but let me tell you, as a pastor and leader in multiple churches it can be easy to start to think or feel like the church needs me. I have a friend who said a professor at seminary would regularly have the class repeat after him: “I am not the Christ!”

-This is someone who’s life is actually worth trying to copy. It’s someone that serves as a model Christian. I didn’t say perfect, I say model. Someone who is daily working to take steps closer to Jesus, daily striving to become more holy, daily confessing their sins and asking for the Lord’s help to remain faithful.

-Self-controlled: someone that can control their own appetites is the way one commentary summarized it. Instead of making hasty reactions to something, this is someone who steadfast in their responses. 

-Sensible: Paul uses an interesting word here that can be translated “holding no wine,” which doesn’t make complete sense since Paul talks about that issue later. Some scholars translate this as sober, that is careful in the way he approaches life, could maybe even say steady. Doesn’t easily get worked up about things.

-Respectable: this refers to someone who is held in high regard by others. Not sure if you’ve heard the leadership maxim that I think this gets to is: if you claim to be a leader, and look back and no one’s following you you’re not a leader! Elders are people that others actually look to and call out as leaders.

-Not an excessive drinker: as I said earlier, Paul talks about this for all believers in Eph. 5. Christians are not to be marked by drunkenness, or you could say a lack of self-control. Someone who is a drunk can’t control their urges or their appetites, so they shouldn’t be asked to be in leadership. Now, it’s important to note that Paul doesn’t say it’s wrong to drink at all! Drinking alcohol itself isn’t a sin, it can be a sin, but it isn’t a sin in and of itself. Story of Spurgeon and Moody. 

-Lastly for this section: A good reputation among outsiders. The church is meant to be on the front lines of evangelism. We’re always supposed to be sharing the gospel with those we come into contact with in all areas of our lives. How would it look if the church elects leaders who even those outside the church don’t respect? I’ve talked to pastors who have had men who were known as bullies in the community be brought up as potential elders in the church. Based on what we see in this list, do you think someone like that should be called to be an elder?

-I would summarize all of these as: faithful character! But we’ve got 4 more to go:

  • Marriage & Home

-How does he manage his house? What kind of a husband is he? Do his wife and kids flourish? Now as we’ve seen many times, there’s some debate about these expectations! And it’s led to no small amount of controversy through the centuries!

-Husband of one wife: does this mean that if someone has gotten divorced, they’re automatically disqualified? Some would say yes! But even Jesus said that divorce is permitted in some cases. The Greek is literally “one women man,” so you could translate that as “devoted to his wife.” Other people argue that this means elders are required to be married. But that would automatically disqualify Jesus and Paul from serving as elders (and someone like John Stott – a British pastor who served faithfully until he died), and bringing in vs. 4, I don’t think we’d argue that they’re required to have kids. Others argue that this is a prohibition against polygamy. And while it is that, I don’t think it’s only that! The way I would interpret this is: is this man faithfully devoted to caring for his wife. If he is divorced, there would need to be some more questions asked, but it doesn’t automatically disqualify someone.

-Hospitable. Here’s one we don’t often think about! In the 1st century this would have been literally opening your home to having people come stay with you, since hotels weren’t always reliable, and if you became a Christian it often meant social alienation from your old friends and family. Today, I would take this as someone who regularly has people in their home, do they welcome others in? And I think it connects to vs. 4:

-If an elder is hospitable, people will be able to see how he manages his house. Do his kids thrive under his leadership? Does he love on them, play with them, and train them up to follow after Jesus?

-And notice why Paul says that: because the church is just a larger family! The nuclear family is the proving ground for elders. Does this mean that if someone has unbelieving children they’re automatically disqualified? Again, no! Church, we need to remember that we can’t force anyone to become a Christian! As much as I would give anything for my kids to know Jesus as their Lord, I can’t, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job! What this is getting at is does this person create an environment in their home where their children are regularly hearing about God? Think of the shema (called that because of the Hebrew word for hear), does this father talk about God: in the house, when you walk, when you lie, when you get up, is God the way he orients his entire life, so that the children know who God is and what He’s like?

  • Teaching

-The 1 gift he MUST have. Doesn’t say business savvy, doesn’t say charismatic personality, doesn’t say gifted communicator, it says able to teach. And if you think about how God has chosen to reveal Himself, it makes sense. God has revealed Himself to use through His Word! That means that church leaders should be able to point people to His Word as our highest authority for life and doctrine! This doesn’t mean that they’re required to preach, teaching is done in a wide variety of contexts, but they need to be able to explain the Bible to others. Which leads perfectly into:

  • Correcting

-One of the primary purposes of having leaders is to ensure commitment to the Word. So not only is the positive given previously (able to teach), but they also need to be able to correct those who are teaching wrongly.

-First, not a bully. I love the way the NASB translates this word: not pugnacious! That is not someone who is quick to fight or argue. I actually just read an article this week that shocked me (I’m not even going to link to it because it was that bad), but the “pastor” who wrote it said some pastors today “are not pugnacious enough.” In contrast to that, Paul here commends being gentle. That’s not taking a soft stance, that’s someone who knows how to correct people in a loving way.

-Also, not quarrelsome. Not looking to fight.

-And also not greedy, not looking at benefit from this service, which connects to what I said earlier about leaders being the number one servants! 

-And why are these ideas so important? Well it’s up to the elders to help in matters of discipline! Look at Paul says what we’re supposed to use the Word for 2 Tim.: to correct, rebuke, and encourage. This means that there’s both the positive teaching what is good, true, and beautiful, and correcting, which is pulling people back from following what is false and pointing them to what is true. And all this gets back to the need for elders to know the Word! 

  • Faith

-Finally, how do you ensure that someone is living these things out? It takes time! Paul says this shouldn’t be someone who’s a new convert. Don’t take someone who has just recently been saved and throw them into leadership positions! They’re not ready for it! And I can tell you, as someone who was called into ministry young, this is absolutely true! You start to think you can do things in your own power and strength instead of relying on God!

-And this is why the author of the Hebrews holds church leaders up as such a high example. This connects to what we studied last week: we’re all called to submit to the leaders of the church because the leaders are keeping watch over our souls. 

-Leadership isn’t a bad thing, nor is it such a high bar that no one can reach it. We need to look for those who are living the ordinary Christian life extraordinarily well, and then follow their lead!

“Tom Carson never rose very far in denominational structures, but hundreds of people in the Outaouais and beyond testify how much he loved them. He never wrote a book, but he loved the Book. He was never wealthy or powerful, but he kept growing as a Christian: yesterday’s grace was never enough. He was not a far-sighted visionary, but he looked forward to eternity. He was not a gifted administrator, but there is no text that says, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you are good administrators.” His journals have many, many entries bathed in tears of contrition, but his children and grandchildren remember his laughter. Only rarely did he break through his pattern of reserve and speak deeply and intimately with his children, but he modeled Christian virtues to them. He much preferred to avoid controversy than to stir things up, but his own commitments to historic confessionalism were unyielding, and in ethics he was a man of principle. His own ecclesiastical circles were rather small and narrow, but his reading was correspondingly large and expansive. He was not very good at putting people down, except on his prayer lists.

When he died, there were no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcements on television, no mention in Parliament, no attention paid by the nation. In his hospital room there was no one by his bedside. There was only the quiet hiss of oxygen, vainly venting because he had stopped breathing and would never need it again.

But on the other side all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to the only throne room that matters, not because he was a good man or a great man—he was, after all, a most ordinary pastor—but because he was a forgiven man. And he heard the voice of him whom he longed to hear saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.””

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by mikethestrand on October 5, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 5, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/10/05/1-timothy-31-7-sermon-manuscript/

Church Offices – Sermon Manuscript

-Pre-marital counseling, part of the goal is to break down some bad ideas about what healthy marriage looks like

-Most of the time people either adopt the way their parents relationship worked, or react to that and refuse to do anything like their parents! But no 2 couples are the same! And all the best plans about splitting everything 50/50 get thrown out the window in about the first week of marriage when reality sets in. But it’s still important to talk about and ensure you’re on the same page: who cooks, who does the dishes, who cleans, who does the laundry, who balances the budget? 

-The reality is in marriage there’s no such thing as both person giving 50%, it takes both people in the marriage giving 100% every day, and the same is true in the church (of which the marriage and the family are supposed to serve as an example, a picture, as we’ll see later in this sermon). The church requires that you actually give something, it requires that you give of your time, talents, and treasures, and it requires all of us to do that so that we can be a healthy body. But when we think about the church, the way we structure and organize the church tends to be assumed instead of explicitly talked about (just as a husband and wife can begin to assume things about their spouse!) So today we’re going to explicitly talk about the roles in the church, the offices the Lord has given to us to function well, and the requirements of those offices in the life of our body.

READ/PRAY

  1. What is Church Polity?

-Just a fancy word to say structure of the church. Taken from GRK polis (city) think of Minneapolis: water (Dakota word) + city

-Many different ways the church has been organized throughout history, and all of them appeal to the Bible (in some form) for their position! 3 primary positions (of which there are some subsets of positions)

-Episcopalian (Episcopal and RCC) argue more for a natural outgrowth from the Bible instead of explicit biblical texts. Make a big deal out of the “bishop” title and make it distinct from elder (I, and many other scholars, would argue they’re synonymous) 

-Presbyterian: church elects elders (called a session), those elders are part of a “Presbytery” (state, city) (taken from GRK), some of the elders from the Presbytery are a part of the General Assembly (nation)

-Congregational: congregation itself is the highest governing body of the church, from the doctrine of the priesthood of ALL believers, corresponds to the way the early church functions (things are presented to the whole church), but among congregational there is a WIDE variety of thoughts and opinions, here’s the list of examples from Grudem’s Systematic Theology.

-I would like to propose a slightly different approach than any of these, and if you have sermon notes, you’ll find some blanks to fill it: Christ ruled, Elder led, Deacon served, Congregationally governed. I’m sure I stole all those pieces from somewhere, but I’ve lost track of where I found it! 

-I tried to make it look like Grudem’s chart here:

-First and foremost: Christ ruled. Unlike the way we Americans tend to think, the church is not a democracy, the church is a theocracy with a King who rules over us. That means our job isn’t to vote people in and out of office, our job isn’t to try to find a constituency who represents us, our job is to submit to His will. 

-Story of person who voted no to everything because nothing should be unanimous. 

-If we’re working to submit all our decisions to the will of God, and we’re all keeping in step with the Spirit, there should be unanimous votes on a regular basis! And notice the arrows connecting God to each position below: since we’re a theocracy, God is the one who appoints, the church looks to affirm and follow where God has called.

-Congregationally Governed: this means the highest form of authority in the church is the congregation, but again, this is not a democracy. The congregation is charged with affirming leaders in the church, looking for ways to honor each other, working to keep the unity of the Spirit in our midst, but it’s not their job to make every decision in the church. Instead, the congregation is called to submit to the leaders of the church (I realize that’s a 4 letter word today, that’s a topic for a different time)

-Elder led: God raises up qualified men to serve in this office (listen to last week for why I said men), and I put them at the bottom because in God’s kingdom those who are called to leadership roles are called to be the servant and others oriented. The world views authority through solely through the lens of power, exploitation and selfishness, but that’s not the way God’s kingdom works.

-Finally, Deacon served: God also gifts certain people in His body to help in various service-oriented roles to help the congregation operate well. We’ll get to that one in a minute too.

-I don’t see these offices as optional in the church of Jesus Christ – if God has given us instructions for how best to operate and function as His bride, we should follow them! So what are each of these 2 offices, and how did we come to have only 2 instead of the many others something like the RCC has?

-Other passages: Phil. 1:1, Titus 1:5, 

-Church history: Didache (GRK Teaching) (“The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations”)

-Definition of the officer, PUBLICLY RECOGNIZED. That means a pastor can’t be a pastor in his own mind, it requires the affirmation of a church, which means someday when I retire, I lose the title of “Pastor” and just become “Mike.” 

-1 office that no longer exists today is that of Apostle, because it requires 2 things: being an eyewitness of the resurrected Jesus (Acts 1:22) and being specifically called by Jesus to be His Apostle. The Bible doesn’t have any other leadership offices described in the Bible.

  • What is an Elder?

-First up the name. Throughout the NT these 4 words are used to refer to the same office (pastor is the word for shepherd, think of pasture)

-What you should immediately think of when you think of this office is a shepherd, which is connected to the word “Pastor.” These words have become incredibly convoluted today, with people using all sorts of different words (clergy, minister, teacher). My personal preference is: pastor to refer to those who are paid elders, elders to refer to unpaid (lay) elders. Same office, different time commitment and time expectations. But the primary focus is shepherd:

-Peter, in his First Epistle writes to the elders of the church:

-Notice a few things here, after the shepherd. First is whose flock is it? God’s! We’re only here for a season, Jesus oversees His flock forever. 

-Willingly: called by God and affirmed by the congregation (Hold onto that, we’ll come back to it)

-Eagerly serving, hence the elders being on the bottom of my chart

-Being examples: do you ever tell someone to be like you? Seems prideful at first glance, doesn’t it? But the Bible tells us to! Paul even says to imitate him just like he imitates Christ. And the reality is we’re all copying someone, the question is does the person we’re copying make us more or less like Jesus? This is why voting to affirm elders is such a weighty issue that should not be taken lightly! It’s not a popularity contest, not looking for representation of your pet project, we’re looking to affirm the men God has appointed to serve as the examples of this body. 

-Which gets me to another passage (briefly, then we’ll go to the main one!) Paul commands Timothy to not be quick in appointing elders, and that’s because of what I just said: we’re going to become like them, so be careful as you affirm elders in the church! Since we’re now in 1 Timothy, we’ll go back a couple chapters to the section we read at the beginning:

-There’s a similar list in Titus 1 that adds a few pieces, and putting it all together in a running list you get this (broken down into do and don’ts)

-There are 2 big things I want you to notice about this list, first is what in this list is unique to an elder that’s not the call of every Christian? 

-Carson quote

-Able to teach! Maybe “not be a new convert” because that would leave some believers out, but the rest of the pieces in here are what every Christian should be striving for, there are other passages that explicitly command these other pieces of all Christians. Let’s think of just a couple:

-Hospitable: 1 Pet. 4:9 “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” That’s for everyone! 

-Not be an excessive drinker. Do you think this means that because this is on the list for elders the rest of you can go get rip roaring drunk all the time? No! Eph. 5:18 “Don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit.” 

-One more: self-controlled. Gal. 5:23, if you are Spirit filled (all Christians) then self-control should be evident in your life. Do you get the point? The 1 exception is “able to teach” because eventually everyone will stop being a new convert.

-The second thing I want you to note is how many of these are character traits, and how many of them are gifts/skills? Once again, the 1 gifting or skill required is “able to teach.” That’s it! The rest is character traits that should be the markers of any Christian who is growing in Christlikeness, as Carson said the list is fairly unremarkable, isn’t it?

-Now, one piece connected to last week: because the skill is teaching, that limits this office to qualified men, which is why our elders are only men here. That’s not a way of looking to denigrate or demean women, it’s a way of following God’s good design for His church.

-Where I would argue the church has run into problems is by NOT using this list and instead adopting other expectations for what should mark leaders, and in many cases the other list is worldly.

-I think back to some of my experiences with elders in previous churches. One church I served at was in an area with an Air Force Base nearby, and the military’s idea of leadership is a little different than Jesus’s idea of leadership! One of the elders decided he needed to teach a Sunday school class on leadership because the church just didn’t understand it. He said leadership was about taking charge and telling people what to do (not a bully?), when I asked about Jesus’s example about washing the disciple’s feet I was told that was for a different context. 

-Friends, this list that God has given us isn’t an optional add on. And how often do our expectations for leaders adopt worldly models instead of biblical models? We look for a CEO or someone with business experience instead of someone who’s faithfully following after God, and what we read in Scripture is God chooses what the world thinks is foolish. 

-But as you remember, this isn’t the only office listed in 1 Timothy 3! Paul goes on to 1 other:

  • What is a Deacon?

-Once again, we start with the name. Deacon is used all over the NT, but most of the time it’s translated as “servant,” and once Latin became the common language, it got translated into “minister” (do you see why I think everyone’s confused about terms today!) Here’s a couple verses that you may recognize where the word is used:

-So in one sense, every one of us is called to “deacon” each other, we’re all supposed to look for opportunities to serve each other. But there’s a difference between a general gift and being called to a church office, and this is also true of the elder/shepherd role. I know some women who are MUCH more gifted than I am pastorally (as shepherds), but that doesn’t mean they should be serving in the OFFICE of pastor/elder. Same here, just because all of us are called to serve each other doesn’t mean everyone is called to serve in the OFFICE of deacon, offices are recognized by the church to help serve in some specific way.

-Not mentioned a lot in the NT (unless you count all the times “servant” is used), but notice that Paul specifically says “likewise” in 1 Tim. Connecting it to the office of elder, and I would argue that we see it develop in 1 other place that we’ll get to after we look at the qualifications of a Deacon.

-First, do you see all the similarities between the 2 lists? Again, nothing extraordinary about this list, someone who is living a faithful Christian life.

-Now, one thought that may be slightly contentious, but I would argue that the flow of this section matters greatly, because I would argue that this office is open to women. See, God’s design for the church doesn’t prohibit women from all leadership in the church, women are VITAL to God’s good plans, but the office that is also open to women is Deacons. Why do I think that?

-Vs. 11, I would argue should instead be translated at “Women” referring to women deacons, so then the flow of this passage is:

-If this office is only mentioned once, what should deacons do?

–Acts 6, while it doesn’t list the office of Deacon, most people believe this is the origination of the office, where we see what Deacons are called to do, as well as a glimpse of what Elders are to focus on. Remember, not better/less than, both are essential for a healthy church to flourish, and both are appointed by God and recognized by the congregation.

-Unity was being threatened, so a group was set apart from the congregation to work towards building the harmony that only comes about through the gospel.

-In our Western ears this sounds like it’s creating a class system: Twelve are too good to wait on tables, but that’s not what’s happening, it’s splitting the needs up so everyone can better serve in their giftings and callings. If the elders were busy dealing with the daily food distribution it would take time away from them focusing on prayer and the ministry of the word (their primary task), doesn’t mean they’d never wait on tables, it means that’s not their primary focus.

-I’ll tell a personal anecdote from my ministry. In my first role, I was tasked with leading a children’s VBS. Can I do it? Sure! But I absolutely despised every piece of it! I wasn’t particularly good at planning it out, wasn’t good at coming up with a theme, wasn’t good at engaging the kids, I’ll be honest this was not in my top 5 skill set (probably not top 500 skill set)! But it succeeded when I recruited someone who was both passionate and gifted at it! It wasn’t below me at all, but it wasn’t the best use of my time. Similarly here: elders are primarily called to Word based ministry (of which I’d say prayer is a piece) and deacons are primarily called to service based ministry, and look at the outcome of this:

-“The Word of God spread.” Because the church was following God’s design and plan.

-So my proposal: Christ ruled, Elder led, Deacon served, and congregationally governed so that the Word of God may continue to spread, that the church may be built, that the saints can use their gifts, and that most importantly God would be honored and glorified in us and through us. 

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by mikethestrand on January 26, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 26, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/01/26/church-offices-sermon-manuscript/

Gender Roles in the Church – Sermon Manuscript

-Swimming, going off into the deep end today, as there’s some issues that we can’t paint with a broad brush on. Today’s message is one of those. 

-Make sure you have your Bibles out! We’ve got a bunch of texts to look at today!

-We’ll also be dealing with some difficult hermeneutical issues where some verses at first glance seem to be contradicting each other, so it’s important for us to understand the way all the pieces of the Bible fit together, otherwise the Bible is prone to misinterpretation and mis-application. 

Today’s topic is: gender roles in the church. We have talked about gender roles in marriage before, in our series through Ephesians, but today’s topic is a little different, and the question before us is: what does the Bible say are the appropriate roles to which we’re called? Is there anything that’s off limits to anyone? 

-This is not a major, but it is a distinctive of the EFCA and of our church. Even if you don’t agree with us on this issue, you’re welcome to join us, get plugged in and involved, as long as you know this is where we land. 

-Before we dive in, let’s read the first thing the Bible tells us about gender:

READ/PRAY

As we begin to think through gender roles, there are 4 primary “camps” that have different conclusions about this issue. We’ll begin with those 2 on the outside: first – feminism. 

Feminism argues that women are superior to men, thus women should lead everything. 

-I’ve actually gotten into trouble with people on this label before, so let me clarify. If your mind goes to women voting, working outside the home, or being fully equal to men when you heard the word “feminism” that’s not what it means today. If you search “fifth wave feminism” you’ll see a few articles talking about the way feminism has shifted over the past 100 years to focus now on things like intersectionality, or some even argue that 4th wave feminism is reacting to being “postfeminist”

–Within feminism, there’s a tendency to appeal to cases of abuse, of domineering, and of aggression and use that as the reason why all men are evil. They also have a tendency to throw out the Bible for the sake of experience or philosophical ideas. NOW – experience in and of itself is not bad, nor is philosophy, the problem is when those become the measuring stick instead of using the Bible which is dangerous! This leads them to generally be pro-abortion and pro-homosexual marriage because the standard of judgment is simply what feels right or fighting for whomever is marginalized. 

Patriarchy is the other side that we want to avoid. 

This takes the opposite approach in that men are superior to women, thus women are expected to remain passive and unengaged while the men make all the decisions. This has led to some immense oppression and neglect for women, and has led to the detriment of the church because women have not been encouraged to use their gifts, meaning half of the church isn’t involved in the life of the church. Think of what it would be like if you neglected or marginalized half of your body! Unfortunately, many people view this and complementarian as synonyms, but they are distinct positions, and some who claim complementarian are actually patriarchalists, so it gets difficult to define.

-Neither of these are good, so we’re down to these 2:

Egalitarianism argues that gender distinctives were part of the Fall, thus in this New Covenant area that we currently reside in, there is to be no distinctive anywhere. 

Any role that is open to men should be open to women as well. Where this is distinct from feminism is egalitarians will actually argue from the Bible, which is good! They appeal to passage like Gal. 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave not free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Their basic premise is that any gender role distinctive in the Bible are exclusively cultural, thus they are not applicable to today. This was the view of the college and seminary I attended, thus I’ve had to wrestle through this issue pretty intimately!

Where the EFCA, and South Suburban land is:

Complementarianism:

Coined in 1987 in Danvers, Massachusetts leading to the Danvers Statement, Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CAVEAT) 

-QUOTE

-Complementarians believe that men and women have distinct and unique roles to fulfill in the home and in church. This is based on passages that we’ll dig in to later, like 1 Timothy 2:12 “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; rather; she is to remain quiet.” 

-‘Where We Stand in the EFCA’

-Part of the difficulty, then is the old question: how far is too far? It’s one thing to ascribe to complementarianism theoretically, it’s a different thing to ascribe to it in practice. That’s where some who claim to be complementarian are practically patriarchs, and others who claim it are practically egalitarians. Within complementarianism there is a different scale. So those are waters we’ll be swimming in during our time together today: what does it mean to be complementarian, and what does that look like?

  1. Both Men and Women Are Created in the Image of God (Gen. 1)

This is where God begin, thus it’s where we’ll begin, and it should be a bit of a “well…duh!” but if it’s important enough for God to say it, it’s important enough for us to be reminded of it. 

-Both men and women are created in the image of God. Neither sex can claim to be “better” than the other because we both are created in the image of God. And both being created that way is “very good.” It is very good that we have men and women. 

-But let’s look at 2:18, A helpmate, a companion, a suitable other. This isn’t demeaning or belittling to Adam or Eve, this is necessary. In fact, this word ezer helper here is used to describe God in places like Psalm 54:4 “God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life.” Psalm 118:7, “The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.” Adam needed Eve to fulfill God’s mandate in his life, just as Eve needed Adam to fulfill God’s mandate for her life. This is not a greater than/less than, this is a beautiful outworking of our genders for the fullness that God has intended in our lives. 

-This is why we throw out feminism and patriarchy, BOTH sexes are equal in dignity, value, and worth. There is no better or less than in genders when it comes to salvation, to gifting, or calling. “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.” In God’s eyes, no gender is superior. 

-At the same time, notice that Eve isn’t the one held accountable for her sin in Gen. 3, God comes to Adam and asks him what he’s done. 

-This means that for men, there’s liability or accountability that women won’t have. 

-Men – you will be judged for how well the set the spiritual climate of your home. Yet both men and women are called by God and used by Him, let’s look at some examples of that.

  1. Both Men and Women Are Used By God (Judges 4, John 4, Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12)

-This point should be another “Well…duh!” point for you! 

-Nowhere in the Bible does it say that ONLY one gender can be used by God to fulfill his mission of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. Think of just a few chapters later in Genesis 18 when the Lord tells Abraham and Sarah that they would have a kid in their old age. Sarah isn’t treated as lesser than or ignored, but God addresses her directly in confirming that they’d have a kid.

-Or think of Miriam, the sister of Moses in Ex. 15 after Pharoah and his army have been rushed by the Red Sea:

-Or one of the most often mentioned people is Deborah in Judges 4. 

-This is one of the most cited examples by Egalitarians for their position that every position should be available to men and women. 

-Question in seminary: “Deborah was a prophet, judge and leader in Israel. Does this affect your view of women in ministry today?” I didn’t score very highly on my answer, and the prof who generally didn’t interact with our posts sent me a lengthy reply about why I was wrong. So as complimentarians, what do we do with this idea that Deborah was a leader? It’s a GREAT reminder that we NEED to be encouraging women to use their gifts for the sake of the body! 

-Imperative to distinguish between that which is DEscriptive and that which is PREscriptive. 

-There’s a lot of things that are descriptive in the Bible that we shouldn’t emulate. Abraham had multiple wives. Moses had a temper and killed an Egpytian. Notice that after those stories it DOESN’T say “go and do likewise.” Or even closer to the story of Deborah – Samson, who was a hot mess! His life reads like a season of The Bachelor. Again, doesn’t say “go and be like Samson”

-One thing the text does NOT say: Deborah was a priest. Those who served as Priests in the OT HAD to be men. There is no instance of a women “priestess” in the Bible. So we already see that there is some distinction between the roles of men & women in the OT. But does that change under the New Covenant, as some have argued? 

-John 4 the woman at the well. Verse 27 Think of this woman’s testimony! And she willingly runs and shares it!

-Jesus thought both men and women were crucial for faithful ministry.

-Think of Mary and Martha and Lazarus in John 11:5, Again, we see that Jesus ministered to both men and women, and both men and women were used by God. 

-We also read that women traveled with Jesus and the 12 and supported Jesus during His ministry (Luke 8)

-BUT there’s again a distinction. 

-How many of the 12 that Jesus called were women? 0 

-Some have argued that Jesus didn’t want to upset the social norms, but do you really think Jesus had any issues upsetting the social norms that weren’t applicable to them? He seemed to push back to any and every issue that needed! Sabbath, tithing, lusting, giving, the law, relationships with Gentiles…to name just a few. So all that to say, that again there seems to be a distinction between the roles of men and women, even in how Jesus ministered to people.  

-Also important, is that spiritual gifts are not gendered.

Romans 12:3-8. Prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, mercy. None of these say only for women OR men.

-At the end of Romans, Paul beings by thanking Phoebe, a woman, and in the list of names are both men AND women who are using their gifts for the sake of the church. 

-1 Corinthians 12:4-13.

Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues. 

-Again, doesn’t say only for women OR men. Open to everyone, regardless of the gender.

-We’ve seen God doesn’t care about which gender you are in order to use you, and that God equips everyone regardless of their gender for the sake of the church. But, that doesn’t mean that any role in the church is open to anyone. 

-One of the greatest disservices in the church is encouraging people in areas of weakness for the sake of being “nice.” Front row seat to this with music, but you’ve all seen it on American Idol! I had a friend who only watched the first 2 episodes every season. 

  1. Everyone Isn’t Called to Every Role (Eph. 4, 1 Cor. 11 & 14, 1 Tim. 2)

-Before we dig into this, one note for us to keep in mind. God’s Word is sufficient, and I would argue a lot more clear on how the church is supposed to be ordered than many people want to admit. One of the things we need to realize is the church isn’t like any other earthly institution, it’s actually completely alien to the world! The church is supposed to be an outpost of heaven, therefore we need to order ourselves differently from the world and follow the Bible where it commands us, but no further, that’s where we start to get into trouble and start demanding people follow man-made rules.

–Eph. 4 Notice how the body builds itself up: “proper working of each individual part.”

-Don’t belittle or diminish your role and gift in the church! I think this is part of where confusion about gender roles come from, in God’s alien kingdom, one gift isn’t better than the other. Many of those gifts that aren’t seen are the most important. There are people that come here on a regular basis just to clean and organize this room! Yes, some gifts are more visible than others, but don’t belittle your gift at the expense of wishing you had a different gift. (1 Cor. 12:27-31 addresses this issue)

-There are a couple key passages that we need to deal with to understand this issue, and as I said, we’re going to go wading through some weeds here. 

-1 Corinthians 14:32-35. (1020)

At first glance, this seems to be quite restrictive, doesn’t it? So how do we faithfully exegete these verses, and then apply them to today? 

Remember: spiritual gifts are not gendered, so now turn back a page to 1 Corinthians 11. 

1 Corinthians 11-14 are all a part of the same section dealing with the question: what should we do when we gather as the church? What does it look like? 

-1 Cor. 11:2-16. (1017-1018)

-Notice especially verse 5. So this is in the gathering where women are praying and prophesying. 

-So how do we reconcile these 1 Cor. 11 with 1 Cor. 14? 

-Some have argued that Paul’s prohibition here is exclusively cultural, and not applicable to today. They compare it to a passage like: 1 Corinthians 16:20. “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” One commentator said, “Greet each other with a hearty handshake!” 

-3 words: context, context, context. 

-This whole section is a reminder that what we do when we gather is supposed to build each other up. Even the spiritual gifts that we are given are supposed to be used to build each other up and help us in our walk with the Lord. 

-Let’s read 1 Cor. 14:26-35. Orderly Worship.

-We’ve got this leadership that oversees and judges the prophecies that are being made. This is a position of authority in the church, thus it impacts who can serve in this role. Paul’s prohibition here doesn’t mean that women aren’t supposed to do anything but attend on Sunday morning, instead he’s saying that in the judgment of prophecies, women are not to oversee. We don’t have time to get into the nuances of what constitutes a prophecy today, that’s a discussion for a different time, but we do see that women are encouraged to pray and prophecy in church, but not sit in judgment about the validity of the prophecies. There’s a big distinction between the 2! 

1 Timothy 2:8-15 (991)

-Specifically verse 12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” 

-Once again, people have argued that this was contextual, and thus does not carry weight for us today. Letter was written to Timothy who was at Ephesus, primary god was Artemis who was a woman, thus many women in Ephesus were what we would call feminists. (false argument, Artemis also had male priests) But Paul doesn’t ground his reason for this in the Artemis worship – it’s grounded in pre-fall creation, signifying that as long as man is created first, and then Eve created second, this prohibition remains in effect. Meaning, it’s still in effect today, and will continue to be until Christ returns. 

-There is an element that is counter-cultural here, look at verse 11: “Let a woman learn” Women had no place to be taught and learn apart from the home.

-Now, we have to ask the question here: what kind of teaching? Because once again this cannot be an absolute prohibition because we’ve got other passages like:

Titus 2:3-4

2 Timothy 1:5

Acts 18:26

Colossians 3:16

-We see other places in the Bible, even in Paul’s writings, women are encouraged to teach! 

-Then what kind of teaching is Paul talking about restricting in 1 Tim.? Remember that we saw in the spiritual gifts passage that some people are given the gift of teaching. But not everyone is given that gift! So not everyone is called to teach. So just because you’re a man doesn’t mean you should be teaching in the church if that’s not your gift.

-James 3:1

-Doug Moo, “While the word [teaching] can be used more broadly to describe the generally ministry of edification that takes place in various ways, the activity usually designated by teach is plainly restricted to certain individuals who have the gift of teaching. This makes it clear that not all Christians are engaged in teaching. In the pastoral epistles, teaching always has this restricted sense of authoritative doctrinal instruction.” 

-Thus 2 Timothy gives us 2 restrictions: women are not to teach Christian doctrine to men, and they are not to exercise authority over men in the church. 

-That being said, when does a boy become a man? Where do we draw the line where we should be encouraging women to teach and serve in various areas, and not others? What constitutes Christian doctrine? What does it mean to “exercise authority over”? Great questions! I don’t have time to answer them today! I’m just trying to give an overview of this! 

-Part of the difficulty is this position and idea has been used throughout history to marginalize women, which goes contrary to what the Bible commands! I think part of it is because many people are scared to disobey the Bible (good concern!) but that leads them to forgetting to encourage and foster women to serve in the church. (except for in women’s ministry and the nursery…)

-So what does that mean for us? Here at South Suburban, you’ll see women helping us worship God through singing, encouraging us through praying, reading Scripture to us, sharing their testimonies of God how is working in their lives to encourage us, in fact our staff is primarily comprised of women using their gifts, BUT you won’t see a women preaching. Again I don’t have time for this, but part of it gets to the role of preaching in the church being one of authority and speaking on behalf of God to his people (not something to take lightly!)

But this is also why I don’t want to end with the prohibition passages! Because:

  1. Everyone Is Called to Serve Within Their Gifts (1 Cor. 12)

-Everyone here has been uniquely gifted by God for the sake of building each other up. Within the spiritual realm there is a unique sense of equality between all the gifts where we all need each other to function in a healthy manner. 

1 Cor. 12:21

-Similarly, men cannot say to women “I have no need of you,” or women to men “I have no need of you.” Instead, we all need each other to build each other up and encourage each other to become more like Christ.

-Friends, this means none of you are off the hook from using your gifts to serve Christ’s body here! It requires all of us to give of ourselves, it requires us to be obedient to what God has commanded, even the sticky and difficult parts, but, it’s also completely worth it. God’s ways are best, and it’s only be faithfully following in His ways that we’ll find life to the full.

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by mikethestrand on January 19, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Relationships, Sermon, Theology
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 19, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/01/19/gender-roles-in-the-church-sermon-manuscript/

The Called Out Ones – Sermon Manuscript

-Starting a new series for January that’s a continuation of what we’ve done the past couple years, “Theological Tune Up” but the tune up is only going to be connected to 1 thing: the church. 

-The 1 thing I’m most passionate about is the church. The church is what Jesus died for, the church is what Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against, and the church is what is going to last into eternity.

-The church isn’t viewed with a lot of trust today! Most people like to complain about the church, point out the problems in the church, run away from the church, but if God has promised that He will build His church, then if we claim to follow God that includes following Him in working to build His church.

-For today’s sermon, the most helpful book, and what I’m borrowing heavily from is The Local Churchby Edward Klink (EFCA Pastor in Roscoe, IL)

-We’re going to be looking at some important things about the church over the next few week: next week we’ll look at the practices of the church (baptism and communion), we’ll also look at how the church functions with men and women working together (complementarianism), and finally we’ll look at the implication of that in the offices God has called for the church to function (elders and deacons)

-It’s been interesting over my life seeing the engagement of people toward the church shift in some pretty dramatic ways.

-Growing up it was fairly trendy to engage in church. Even if you weren’t super involved, people still wanted some associating to the church (90s) but that’s looking back with slightly rose-colored glasses, because I was told that we were facing increasing hostility and persecution from the world (hence my parents homeschooling me to provide a safe environment for me). I even have a distinct memory of my mom telling me in early Middle School that it would break her heart, but even if someone were to take me away from her she wouldn’t be able to deny Jesus. You want trauma, let me tell you about it! 

-Starting in the late 90s into early 2000s came what became known as the “emergent church” movement. One of the leading churches was in Minneapolis called “Solomon’s Porch” (to the surprise of no one, it no longer exists). They started asking questions about the way church was run, so at Solomon’s Porch they sat on couches and had conversations, not sermons. I got to attend another emergent church called Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, where instead of having a platform on one side, they had a platform in the middle of the room. Asked TONS of questions of Christianity, but never seemed to resolve any of them, so pretty soon they tore down even the essentials of the faith (which is why many of them now are self-proclaimed speakers, writers, and activists)

-After that was what was called the “missional church” movement, where it was thought that the problem was the buildings and institutions, so we need to focus our energy outside the walls and become “missional” in everything we do. After all, God is a sending God (sent His Son, sends the Spirit, sends us as his missionaries). But if that’s true, then where and why do we ever meet? And why does Paul talk about the churches meeting in specific locations in His letters?

-And all this was before every church went livestream during COVID (remember those days??) and I think that even further revealed the ways we think about the church are so broken. I talked to some people who enjoyed being able to “attend” different churches each week because everyone was online!

-Also add in the rise of the EX-vangelical, the deconstructing of faith (including famous people like Joshua Harris who write I Kissed Dating Goodbye), the general distrust of institutions, and the church looks to be on either the losing side, or the wrong side of history. I even know of someone who used to be a pastor at an EFCA church nearby that is now working on trying to create “micro-churches” which are basically Life Groups that are all independent.

-So why on earth would someone devote their life to working in the church? What’s the point of fighting against these cultural tides and what should the church actually look like? Is the micro church more accurate than us gathering in a large room each week? 

-The reality is there are benefits to every component that I’ve mentioned, but they take either an implication or a periphery of what the church is called to be and make it the primary identity marker, which means everything is going to be off because of that.

-If you ever mow your lawn and pick the wrong spot in the distance to aim at, doesn’t your entire mowing line get thrown off? My back yard is a weird shape so I make it work, but it still bothers me! 

-We need to understand what God has called to the church to do and be PRIMARILY so that we can distinguish between the essential, the good or helpful, and the things that we really shouldn’t be spending our time on. 

READ/PRAY

-Let’s begin with what is essential: Belgic Confession of Faith (1561): 3 markers according to this. 

-EFCA:                

-Here we see some additional pieces, such as “all who have been justified” that is the members of the church must be believers. We also see the interplay between the invisible church and the invisible church. See every believer is immediately brought into the invisible church, but that also means they must look to live out that spiritual reality in the physical reality of a local church. 

-This is why I’ve talked so much and so regularly here about church membership since I first came! Whether you want to admit it or not, membership is the expectation for a Christian, it’s not salvific (just like baptism isn’t salvific), but it’s essential to your sanctification (growth in holiness). I’ve preached on this before, and we’ve got a membership class coming up on Feb. 9, so if you want to hear the whole reason I think membership is important come to that class! But to summarize, I’ll quote from the book I mentioned earlier: 

-Gospel, ordinances (sacraments), church discipline (which is a subset of the sacraments, and requires church leadership, we’ll get to that next week)

-These are the things that MUST be in place for a church to be called a church, if you don’t have 1 of those 3, by definition you don’t have a church. What’s fascinating to me is how often 1 of 2 of these get thrown out for convenience.

  1. Called Out By God

-When we talk about the church, we’re referring to the Greek word “ekklesia” which is a compound word made up of “from” and “to call” so literally the church is to be “called out from” or the “called out ones.” Generally in English we translate it as an “assembly,” “gathering,” or “church.”  

-But the key I want you to remember from this is that the church is meant to be those who are called out, and not just called out, but called out by God Himself. This is what the EFCA SOF is getting at when it says “The true church is manifest in local churches, whose membership should be composed only of believers.” 

-The difficulty is that there are people who come to church each week who aren’t believers, and each church is going to have strengths and weaknesses, just like individual Christians have strengths and weaknesses. 

-One of the most helpful things the elders have used on a regular basis in the midst of our conversations about the way we structure our church is this graph. On this side of eternity, there will be no perfect church ever! Even when people who are Christians spend time together, there’s going to be conflict and issues because sin impacts all of us. But that doesn’t mean we run away from the church, it generally means we need to double down on our commitment, confess were we’ve sinned against others, forgive as Jesus forgave us, and work through the issues TOGETHER. This is how we move to a more pure church, TOGETHER. You literally can’t have a church by yourself! And at the same time, at some point the lack of purity in a church means they move from being a church to not being a church. However, the bar there is fairly basic, remember 3 things: gospel is being preached, sacraments or ordinances are being practiced, and church discipline is taking place (often we don’t know when it’s happening, Matt. 18)

-Back to the called out idea, God has always had a group of people that He has called out to be His faithful representatives to the world. Starting with Adam and Eve, then calling out Noah, then calling out Abraham from among the nations, then calling out the nation of Israel, then calling out His Son, and then now He calls out people to move from the world into being a part of His Kingdom, which is represented by the church, as we heard when we read through 1 Peter (we’re getting close to getting there!) But first, a brief overview of God’s calling out throughout Scripture.

-First, God calls out to creation in calling it, he separates the skies, the waters, the lands. Then He calls out to a person (Adam) and commissions Him to join with God in caring for the creation and expanding God’s rule over the rest of creation. But then Adam wants to BE God instead of obeying God, and He chooses sin instead of obedience, and then we read this fascinating account of God’s response.

-Even in sin, God’s response is to continue moving toward His people.

-Then God calls out a specific person, and tells Abram His plans.

-And the book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham did this by faith, and in Galatians Paul tells us that this promise is fulfilled in the church.

-History moves forward, and Abraham’s descendants are sold into slavery in Egypt, but then God decides to save them through Moses, and God calls out to him from a burning bush while he’s working as a shepherd for his FIL.

-Last picture I want you to see of this is when God speaks to Isaiah to remind His people who has created them. 

-Friends, this is vital for us to understand. God is the one who calls and creates a people. It’s not something we do in our own power or strength, it’s only done by God’s sovereign hand. This is also true of the church! No person can create a church in their own power, it’s only done by God’s sovereign hand. So when we talk about the church, we ALWAYS need to remember that we are talking about God’s church. We’re just stewards, tasked with caring for a church in this time and place, but God is the only one who can claim ownership of every church. That’s why it’s so important for us to focus on the church!

  • By God We Are…

-With that, we can now come to Peter, where we see that the church has been called out from darkness into marvelous light. Look at all the descriptions: chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his possession, proclaim the praises, God’s people.

-4 things, seen in your outline, but before we see what we are, what does this mean the church is NOT:

-Church is not: 

-a social club. Not gathering to socialize around any human activity. Socializing is a component and will happen naturally, but that’s not the definition of a church. 

-a community organizing group. Not meant to create community, community is the byproduct of being brought into the family of God, but it is not a church

-merely a building. As we’ll see in a minute, the church needs a building, some kind of place to meet, and it helps to have 1 spot where we can gather, but the church can gather even without a building

-a voluntary society. This is why we need to remember that God is the one who creates the church. If we’re a Christian, we commit to the church.

-a political action committee. As Chuck Colson used to say “Salvation doesn’t come on Air Force One.” Jesus rules above any political conversations that take place in our world. Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, but Christ sits forever on His throne ruling through His church.

-a metaphor. We tend to talk more about the invisible church and give secondary importance to the visible church of which we’re participating now. Church isn’t just a reference to a theoretical idea, it’s referring to a real thing.

-coffee with friends. That’s an outworking of it (especially when it’s good coffee), but that’s not a replacement for the actual weekly gathering of God’s people.

-A human endeavor. Only done by and for God.

-Look at how the NT describes the church.

  1. Present – a chosen race 

-A component to being a part of a specific lineage or family is location. Think of how much time people spent on their ancestry (I’m 100% Norwegian, thank you very much). This idea that we are a chosen race means that we’re supposed to be God’s ministering presence in the world.

-Think of it like a country and an individual. Anyone who owns a home has a spot to call their own within the boundaries of a country. Similarly, each local church is a part of the universal church (visible vs. invisible), but God places each church in a location for a purpose! To shine as His marvelous light into the darkness.

-This means the south metro should know that we’re here! If we’re commissioned by God to shine as a light, we must bring that light into the world with us. We need to look for ways to be present and engaged in the area God has placed us. This is where we need to acknowledge the reality that the church is an institution AND an organism. NT wording lean toward organism (body, flock), but the rest of the NT writings lean toward institution (a way of conducting ourselves)

-Believing the truth of the Gospels will lead to organizing yourself by the way the Epistles describe.

  • Priests

-Priests work as a go between so humans can meet with God. 3 components to this: corporately, individually, restricted.

-Corporately: we are to be a blessing to the world. We work to bring good into every sphere of human endeavor in which we participate. If we believe God is God then nothing is outside His oversight. Work, play, eating, resting are all to be brought underneath His Lordship. 1 Cor. 5 describes us as ambassadors, God is working to reconcile the world to Himself through the church:

-Individually: each of us is responsible to do that in our lives. All of us are meant to know God’s Word and be changed by knowing and applying God’s Word.

-Restricted: some people are set apart, recognized by God and the church as leaders, we call these pastors/elders. Not better, just called to a higher level of service. I have the freedom to read and study with the hours that many of you spend working to provide for your families or take care of your home. It’s not better, it’s a different calling, we’ll get to that in a few weeks!

  • Pilgrims

-Not Thanksgiving pilgrims, “a holy nation” a people who aren’t at home here. The early church was actually described as living as foreigners, only making use of their earthly citizenship when it served to help them spread the gospel. We need to be careful to regularly remember that this world isn’t our home. We’re not primarily Americans, we’re primarily Christians, our heavenly home will never disappear! 

-Church is supposed to be a picture of that! An embassy in a foreign land where we’re reminded what our home looks like!

  • Proclaimers

-“So that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you.”

-Our response matters in light of who God is. We proclaim the truths of the Bible in order for us to be reminded each and every week who we are, why we’re here, and what our aim in life is. On top of that, the Word of God compels us to proclaim to the world those exact same realities: Jesus is the King, and only by obeying Him and entering into His church can the world make sense.

-The church matters, and should matter to us because it matters to God. And God also has told us how the church should function and operate, and it comes down to us living in the reality of God calling us out of darkness and into His marvelous light, where we’re now a part of a body, a temple, a new people who are under God.

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by mikethestrand on January 5, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 5, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/01/05/the-called-out-ones-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 3:1-22 – Sermon Manuscript

-New classes starting NEXT WEEK at 9AM:
-“Strange New World” how did we get to the point in a generation where the statement “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” not only makes sense, but has become the norm
-EFCA Denials and Affirmations: social justice, woke, CRT, Christian nationalists, transgenderism, gender roles in the church, annihilationism.
READ/PRAY
1) Sardis: Wake Up! (1-6)
-About the city: one of the most glorious cities in Asia, but it was well past its heyday.
-Almost an impregnable military stronghold. Sheer cliffs on 3 sides, steep approach on the 3rd side.
-Fell in 546 BC because some men climbed up the “unscalable” cliff and just opened the gates to the enemy. “Capturing Sardis” became common language to describe achieving something impossible. Happened again in 214 BC! Another guy climbed up the cliff and opened the gates!
-17 AD a terrible earthquake devastated the town, rebuilt by Rome, who then used the face of the emperor on their currency.
-Special interest in death and immortality, focus on the fertility cycle and bringing life out of death.
-One of the largest Jewish synagogues every excavated was found here, room for over 1,000 people.
-Jesus is the one who has authority and power in heaven, not the strong Jewish community (hold on to that idea, it comes up again at the end)
-Reputation for: literally “name is alive” How would you feel if Jesus’ commendation toward you is: you have a good name. But your name doesn’t match up to reality
-I think this a theme throughout Scripture! Think of the Apostle Peter (Rocky!) yet he might be the most insecure and weak of the twelve apostles because he repeatedly caves in to peer pressure. See Jesus takes what looks useless to us and turns it into something useful. Paul describes the gospel message as a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks. Yet that’s what we believe!
-How can this church turn it around?
-Be alert! Wake up! Just like the city left their backside unguarded, stop sleeping and start shoring up the weaknesses in their lives.
-Strengthen what remains: 2 Tim. 1:6 “fan into flame” think during the summer when you have a bonfire. If you don’t tend to it, it will slowly burn out. Then you’d need to blow on the smolder, throw some grass on it. Similarly, if there are good things happening, and God is working in some small area, feed it! They’re not dead yet!
-Remember what they have received and heard: think back to the truths of the gospel message they believed in. Don’t stray too far from that simple message that Jesus Christ died for you! Hold to that and live a life of repentance.
-If the church doesn’t stay awake, judgment is coming. No one knows when that day is, but judgment is guaranteed. Think of 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.”
-The whole church isn’t on the verge of dying: there’s a faithful remnant who are continuing to serve the Lord. Do you have the conviction to be that kind of person?
-What promise does Jesus give to the conquerors here?
-Dressed in white clothes: mark of purity, completeness
-Never erase: “At some point “the curse of the Minim” was added to the 18 Benedictions prayed daily by Jews in the ancient world. “The curse of the Minim” reads, “May the Nazarenes and the Minim suddenly perish, and may they be blotted out of the book of Life and not enrolled along with the righteous.” (Jim Hamilton). This Jewish commitment Jesus says has it backwards! And if Jesus writes them down, nothing can erase them. Matt 10:32-33 Whoever denies Jesus before others will be denied by Him.
2) Philadelphia: Love Jesus First! (7-13)
-The city: called “The gateway to the east” Volcanic soil fertile and ideal for grapes. (city of brotherly love, just like the one in Pennsylvania)
-Youngest city, founded sometime after 189 BC. Biggest issue: prone to earthquakes. Many people lived outside of the city because of that. Walls of the city were constantly cracked, building were built assuming they would fall. The pillars used would show signs of deterioration. While we don’t have any pillars left from the original, this is what they would have looked like (from archway of the church of St. John the Theologian in Philadelphia)
-After a big earthquake in 17 AD, taxes were removed for 5 years, in response the city renamed itself “Neocaesarea” and then also added the name “Flavia” in response to the imperial dynasty.
-Primary allegiance was to Dionysus, the god of wine.
-While Philadelphia was big and impressive, the church there was the opposite.
-Jesus is holy and true: don’t give in to the worldly standards or expectations, and don’t put your hope in the wrong places.
-Key of David: allusion to Isa. 22:22 “I will place the key of the house of David on his shoulder; what he opens, no one can close; what he closes, no one can open.” Entrance into God’s presence. The Jews had kicked the church out, but Jesus won’t.
-No negative word said about this church. They’ve remained faithful and haven’t denied Jesus’ name.
-Similar phrasing from Smyrna, but Jesus promises to be with His people in the midst of the hour of testing.
-“Earth dwellers” (CSB-“those who live on the earth) always refers to unbelievers throughout Revelation
-Remain faithful to Jesus, don’t deny, even unto death.
-Conquerors receive:
-Pillar in the temple: unlike the pillars that were prone to earthquakes, this pillar can’t be knocked over!
-Remember how many times the name of this city was changed? If Jesus writes His name it will never change, and they’ll be a part of a new city: New Jerusalem. Ties to the book of life where the names reside.
3) Laodicea: Let Jesus In! (14-22)
-This city: 2 major trade routes through here, a hub of trade and communications in the province. Allied closely to Rome, administrative and judicial center for the area. Eventually became the banking center adding wealth. Became the home to a textile industry known for producing raven-black wool. And a famous school of medicine that created “Phrygian powder” and eye salve.
-Also prone to earthquakes, destroyed in 60 AD, but refused help from Rome. The citizens paid to rebuild.
-No water supply, piped in via an aqueduct.
-Amen, faithful and true, OG:
-Col. 1:18 “He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”
-Not that Jesus is a created being, but think of what we learn about Jesus in John 1:3 “All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.”
-Works are neither hot nor cold. I remember being told that God wishes they were either spiritually on fire for him, or cold enough to be done with them, but that’s not the point he’s making.
-Just as He’s done other places, and for the same reason I will use illustrations from movies or events taking place around us to help us understand the text, Jesus here is saying that He wishes the people were hot and healing like the waters at Hierapolis (city 6 miles away), or cold and refreshing like the waters at Colossae (10 miles away), but lukewarm (like the water than came through the aqueducts) which was repulsive. Additionally, the water would pick up minerals as it was transported, so by the time it got to the city it was repulsive, literally vomit inducing!
-So because they are neither bringing the healing power of the gospel to bear in their conversations, or refreshing others with the message of the gospel Jesus is going to vomit them out. Be done with them! It’s because of how they define themselves:
-They think they’re wealthy, and they are! But only on earth.
-Remember, one of the purposes of Revelation is to help us change our glasses, or the way we see and interpret events that are taking place around us. Jesus’ goal with these letters is to give these churches a glimpse of what’s happening spiritually. So because of the immense wealth of this city, this church has started to imbibe that same thinking and think they need nothing. But spiritually, they are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. What an indictment!
-Jesus goes on to give them some advice: buy true gold (spiritually), white clothes (contrasted with the black wool or purple cloth that was a marker of wealth), and spiritual ointment to have their eyes opened to the spiritual world instead of only focusing on the physical/material world.
-This is similar to a story in Acts 8 – Simon the Sorcerer thinking material wealth gives you access to God’s kingdom. He actually asks the apostles to give him the ability to lay hands on people and give them the Holy Spirit! Peter responds “May your silver be destroyed with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this matter, because your heart is not right before God. Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, your heart’s intent may be forgiven.”
-Despite having all the material wealth they could need, spiritually both Simon and the church at Laodicea are spiritual bankrupt. The only way to get true and lasting riches is to repent of putting your hope and trust in God’s good gifts, and instead put your hope and trust and confidence in Him.
-We then come to one of the most quoted verses from Revelation that has been used in more evangelistic messages than I can keep track of! But it misses the point of what Jesus is saying here.
-Is this letter written to a person or a church? A church! Instead of Jesus standing at the door of someone’s heart, it’s painting a picture of being too wealthy and independent to admit their need for Jesus. It’s a terrifying indictment of a church! This is another way of saying this church has stopped functioning as a church and instead has become a social club.
-But this also paints a picture of an historical reality that the people would have understood. At this point in history, most cities in this area were so safe and secure that they never closed their gates. But that wasn’t the case in Laodicea. They wanted to protect and preserve all the wealth and prestige they’d accumulated so every night they’d close their gates. In fact, when the city was rebuilt, the gates had placards on them noting who paid for it. So the church would have had that image in mind when Jesus is condemning them in this way. Jesus had been shut out of the church the same way the city shuts people out of their gates. They think they have arrived and need no help, even from Jesus!
-If the church finally acknowledges their need of Jesus, and let Him back in (to where He belongs), He will come and eat with them. This is a way of signifying restoration of relationship. Eating together was the sign of close connection and relationship building. (think of the accusations of Jesus who ate with sinners) Jesus wants to be in close relationship with His church, but the church can become so independent that we’ve inadvertently thrown Him out and closed the door.
-The final call to the church is to sit in proper judgment. Don’t assume that because of material wealth that you have spiritual blessings! Jesus is the one who sits on the throne of judgment, and He invites His followers to sit with Him IF they remain faithful to Him
-What about us? Where are we at today? If we were to be given a letter from Jesus, where would we be commended, and where would we stand condemned? In 2014, an author and researcher named Thom Rainer wrote a book titled “Autopsy of a Deceased Church” that had some incredibly helpful information on it! And then he followed it up with “Anatomy of a Revived Church” in 2022. Look at the chapter titles of his first book:
-Let’s think about some of these: “the past is the hero.” Anyone ever heard someone say “we’ve never done it that way before!” That’s a good description of this issue. And because I’d rather talk about issues than dance around them, this has been an issue in our history! We have a tendency to look back on 04-10 as the “glory days” when our halls were filled, when attendance was up, but what we forget it he turmoil that was taking place behind the scenes. The past tends to be viewed through rose colored glasses, but God’s still at work here today! And we know from Revelation that the best is always in the future!
-“The budget moved inwardly.” As of today, 13% of our annual budget is given toward outside ministries, missionaries, or organizations. From a crisis pregnancy center to campus ministries to missionaries in China, our dollars aren’t just being focused on ourselves.
-“The Great Commission Becomes” the great commission is Jesus’ command in Matt. 28 “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.” We can summarize that as Make & mature disciples of Jesus. If discipleship isn’t taking place (either new conversions or people growing more like Jesus), then we stop being a church on mission with what Jesus has called us to do and be. Going means going into even our local community, our neighborhoods with the gospel message. (“from the edge of the parking lot to the end of the world”) It means we have to live different from the same worldly pursuits our neighbors are living out.
-“The preference-driven church” As soon as someone starts defining the church based on their preferences we’re going to die. Period. Unless we are willing to die to our preferences we have not hope of being a healthy church. As soon as you find yourself says “I don’t like __” realizing this is what’s happening in your heart. Whether it be the music, the class topics, the LG materials, the kid’s ministry, or even the preaching. When you start viewing the church through what you get instead of what you give you setting the church up to fail.
-“The church rarely prayed together” I read an article a few months ago that was titled “32 Random Thoughts About the Local Church” One of them says “Few people want to be part of a church that doesn’t pray, but few people want to attend a prayer meeting. You should ponder this conundrum.” Do you spend time in prayer for our church, or time praying with other members of the church? One of the commitments I’ve made since coming here is trying to end as many meetings as I can praying. Not every time, but a majority of the meetings I have I try to close in prayer. If we’re not praying, we’re not growing.
-There’s more that could be said, and I’m not trying to say this book is the same as the Bible, it’s not, but it gives us some time to pause and reflect on where we are as a church. Are we too complacent about what’s going on around us to be effective in witnessing to those around us? Are we too blind to the spiritual realities we’re facing because we’re too obsessed with earthly riches?
-Yes, these letters are to churches, but churches are comprised of individuals. So every single one of us needs to ensure that we’re keeping Jesus as the center and focus of everything we do, so that we as a church can move toward that same goal.

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by mikethestrand on March 10, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 10, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/03/10/revelation-31-22-sermon-manuscript/

Imitate Me – Sermon Manuscript

-‘Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building’

-“I want to be like Mike”

READ/PRAY (2 Tim. 3:10-17)

-Remember what we saw last week, the 4 Ps of discipleship.

-I got a great question this week from someone: “are we going to be changing our values now?” What’s the point of the 4 Ws? The 4 Ws honestly are communicating the same thing as the 4 Ps, just in a different way. One of the exercises the book gave us was to come up with different ways of communicating the 4 Ps, (4 Ss, SPUR) I chose 5 Ws!

-Proclamation of the Word of God (Word) Prayerful dependence (Worship –> prayer) People (We) Perseverance (Worship – continually)

-Nothing sacred about them, hold on to whichever one makes the most sense to you. It’s a way of trying to summarize the biblical message in a way that makes sense to us today, that’s all it is!

-Last week, we spent most of our time on the first one, today I want us to focus on the third one, and think of it in terms of imitation.

  1. People as God’s Fellow Workers

-God is always at work around us if we have the eyes to see it (One of the words we’ve been talking about recently in our staff meetings is: intentionality. What is it we’re prioritizing in our lives, in our families lives, and in the church? What are we intentional about?)

-Remember, we looked at God’s plan from eternity past, is to have a people gathered around His throne in worship and praise of Him.

-Lewis The Weight of Glory “There are no ordinary people, you have never talked to a mere mortal…All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.”

-Do you view your interactions with people in that light? Pushing people one way or another. One of the markers of someone who is moving closer to Christ is that they’re more willing to look for people further down the arrow who they can proclaim the excellencies of Christ to! Humility means you look to other people and their interests over and above yourself

-So often we miss that part of Christian maturity. “I have the spiritual gift of sarcasm” So do I, and it’s a sin I’m trying to rid myself of! We assume that because someone has attended church a long time it makes them more mature, or we equate biblical knowledge with maturity, but if that’s true, the Devil is the most mature being in all of creation! Part of the reason we gather together every week is to remind each other what’s really true.

-If you’ve ever read The Chronicles of Narnia series, when you get to The Silver Chair it gets fairly depressing as Eustace and his friend Jill are whisked back into Narnia to save a Prince who is captured underground. The witch queen of the underworld captures our heroes and slowly convinces them that Narnia isn’t real. Yet Puddleglum (the Eeyore of the story) rouses himself and responds to this wicked witch saying “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

-This is where we all come into play, we need the encouragement of each other, it takes all of us joining together as God’s fellow workers (1 Cor. 3:5-8), which is the amazing thing about being a part of what God has started since before the world was created. This is the story (HIS story) that we’re invited in to.

-A theologian I greatly respect refers to it as “the drama of doctrine.” We each have an integral part to play in God’s master plan for the world, a part that only we can play, but remember what we’ve seen the past couple weeks in 1 Cor. 3: we can plant and water, but who is that causes the growth?

-Ultimately God, God alone saves. We can point, we remind others, but we are not the savior. Think of John the Baptist, who regularly reminded people “I am not the Christ!” We have that same responsibility today, boldly proclaim the gospel message in word and deed, but remind people it’s only because of God’s grace that causes these things to be true.

-Reformation motto: “It is faith alone that justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.” I am somewhat worried that our culture today has so ignored the second half of that statement that we don’t think beyond the line of faith. Brothers and sisters, that beautiful moment where a dead sinner is brought from death to life is just the beginning of a whole new way of living! That’s why the great commission doesn’t stop at “go and make disciples” it goes on to say “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded.”
-We have a job to do! We now are meant to serve as a visible demonstration of what Jesus looks like to the world, and this happens the moment we’re brought from death to life. We’re caught up into an epic adventure of good vs. evil, we’re in the middle of the greatest story that has ever been written, and is currently being written! The end hasn’t come yet, which means we all need to be Puddleglum to each other (not the negativity part) We need to rouse each other out of the sleep the world lulls us into and remind each other the cosmic realities that we’re a part of every day!

-Really briefly, just because we covered this in Eph. 1, I want to look at the interplay between God’s job and our job

–Eph. 1:11-14. Predestined, yet we’re the ones who believe

–Acts 13:48 “as many as were appointed believed”

-This is 100% God’s job, and 100% our job. How does that work, don’t dwell on it too much on this side of eternity, because it’ll make your brain hurt!

-What is involved in being faithful disciple? What is required to make more disciples? Col. 3:17: word and deed. You may have heard a quote falsely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: preach at all times, and if necessary use words. You can’t disciple without words! Words are the currency of relationship.

-Think about is, how do we know who our friends are? They tell us! How do people find out things about you? You tell them! It requires words to build relationships. Same with our discipleship, it requires speaking to others to build them up, to use your interactions, conversations, and anything else you do to build others up (in LOVE)

-Why don’t we easily share what God is doing in our lives with others? At work, share something that stood out to you from the sermon. After church, share a passage you’ve been memorizing with the people you talk to. At a restaurant, pray for your waiter/waitress and be kind. (Culver’s with the student ministry) What opportunities are we missing because we’re not paying attention? What things are we focusing on instead of being attuned to what God is doing around us?

-There was a video I was made aware of in Middle School that made this point really well! If you’ve seen it, don’t give it away! Video of a basketball pass

-How many passes did you count? If you counted 15, way to go! But did you notice the gorilla in the video?

-Unless we’re reminded of the bigger realities of what’s taking place around us, we will miss them. That’s part of the reason we need to tell our stories to other people, remind them of what we’re caught up in.

-Really briefly, have you thought about the way we today get to fulfill some of the OT prophecies?

–Numbers 11 (you don’t need to turn there) Moses brings together 70 elders who will be tasked with sharing the leadership role of God’s people. God comes down to share his spirit with the leader, 2 of whom missed the memo and weren’t at the meeting, yet because they were supposed to be there they started prophesying. Joshua comes running up to Moses and says “STOP THEM!” And Moses replies Num. 11:29. Wouldn’t that be a day! When all God’s people were filled with the Holy Spirit speaking God’s Words to each other! Toward the end of the OT, God promises that exact thing to happen in Joel 2, and Acts 2, and 4:31 specifically talk about that idea being fulfilled then.

-If prophesy is speaking God’s Word to others, do you realize we can do that all the time now? The OT people literally dreamed of living in the time period we’re in today, and we forget or neglect it, or even get nervous of what someone would think of us if we start to share God’s Word with each other!

  • Two Pictures of Discipleship

-With all that in mind, of being more intentional to see where God is working and joining with Him in pursuing those realities I want to give us 2 pictures today of what that looks like in our day to day lives: following and imitation.

  1. Following

-When Jesus began his earthly ministry, as he was recruiting His disciples, do you remember the command He gave them? “Follow me.” (Matt. 4) What’s their response? Immediately they left their lives behind to follow Jesus. What is your response when Jesus asks you to do something? Or potentially another way looking at this is what changes has God asked of you to be a disciple of Him? You can’t follow Jesus as a disciple and keep anything else on the side, God will not allow that to be the case!

-There are entire books written on this idea! One by David Platt was called Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live. (In our library) This book encourages people to think about those whom Jesus called to follow Him. They didn’t have wealth, didn’t have prestige, didn’t have notoriety, weren’t “influencers,” they were normal, everyday people whose lives intersected with Jesus and then had their entire life trajectory changed.

-But notice as well, what did these early disciples give up to follow Jesus? Everything! They left their vocation, their families, their communities to follow after this new teacher who would go on to teach them a new way to engage everything around them.

-On top of that, look at how Jesus reframed their lives. Where they once were fishermen, Jesus was going to teach them how to fish for men. (Even Jesus enjoyed a good dad joke, very punny!)

-This tells us a few things about discipleship:

-First, it’s a call to follow Jesus and only Jesus. You don’t need anything else, in fact most other things will get in the way of you pursuing Jesus alone!

-Second, God will take our natural talents, gifts, wirings, and reframe/refocus them in a new direction. I’ve said this before, but it is no accident that you’re in the job you’re in. It’s no accident you’re in the family you’re in. It’s no accident you’re in the home you’re in. It’s no accident you have the hobbies and interests you have, God needs you to use them for His glory. He needs you to demonstrate Him in those contexts, so do it! Start praying about what it would look like for you to represent Jesus wherever you go!

-The next passage I want us to think about in relation to following Jesus is Mark 8:34-38. This passage doubles down on the idea that discipleship is a call to die to your old way of living in order to live for Christ.

-At times the things Jesus calls us to isn’t the easy way or the way we want to go, but it’s the right way. Jesus regularly tells people to count the cost of following Him. Have you ever done that? Or maybe a different way of asking it is what has it cost to follow after Jesus? Honestly, for most of us it hasn’t cost much, but it seems that the time is coming where it will (or is starting to) count a little more.

-I’ve talked to some of you about some of these things before, pronouns, rainbow pins, life altering surgeries. How do you engage these issues with the truth when the truth is liable to punishment in your jobs? Dear saints, that is counting the cost of discipleship! (Heard of a guy at Mayo yesterday wrestling through this very thing!) That is being willing to identify with Christ while here on earth, and I am at times worried that we’re not willing to do that, nor are we willing to do that together. I talked before about casting your cares on the Lord because He cares for you, but one way we can do that today is by casting our cares on each other, because we’re here to represent Christ to each other!

-The last passage I want to look at in connection with following is Luke 9:57-62

-One of the biggest problems I have with today’s Christian culture is the idea that Jesus just wants to take all your favorite desires and bless them and move them to the next level. Think of things you’ve seen with the #blessed on the socials. New car, new job, new house. But what happens when life doesn’t go the way you want, when you don’t get to just keep doing whatever you want? God wants us to realize that we live #blessed all the time, regardless of life’s circumstances because we have a new life in Christ! God wants to make us new people, not leave us to wallow in our tiny ideas of what constitute the best life!

-What we’ve seen abut following through these 3 passages is it requires dying to ourselves, it reorients our whole lives around a new person, and it requires sacrifice. It’s both the easiest and hardest thing you’ll ever do. Easiest because it doesn’t depend on you! Hardest because it requires you to die.

-Let’s now turn our attention to the second picture:

  • Imitation

-What does it mean to imitate someone else? To copy them, to model yourself after. I think we live in the most imitation heavy culture out there! Instagram influencers, how many followers someone has. Social contagion of tics because kids are watching Tik Tok videos from influencers who have facial tics that they’re emulating. Whether you realize it or not, you become like those you spend time with, you imitate them. There are 2 passages from Paul that I want us to think of in relation to imitation (even though the first one says follow!)

-Timothy was Paul’s protégé. Just as Jesus’ followers had other people follow them, so Paul continued the tradition with Timothy. There was imitation that was taking place, so much so that unlike the false teachers, Timothy was to follow Paul in his: (2 Tim. 3:10-11)

-Teaching: that which corresponds to the great tradition handed down from Jesus to the first disciples all the way down to today!

-conduct: the way Paul lived his day to day life

-aim in life: what is it we’re all aiming for? Maturity in Christ! (Eph. 4)

-faith: that moment where our lives radically change, we’re brought from death to life.

-patience: do you remain patient when things (bad or good!) are happening to you?

-love: the new Christian ethic where we love everyone!

-steadfastness: endurance, perseverance step by step, not giving up!

-persecutions: wait, even these?

-suffering: AND suffering? Paul goes on to say anyone who wants to live a godly life will face persecutions. All of us are guaranteed that in some capacity. Yet if even Jesus suffered, why would we expect anything different?

-Finally, the last passage we’ll look at today: 1 Cor. 10:31-11:1.

-Remember our definition of a disciple: a redeemed sinner learning Christ by increasing worship of God through every area of your life. So Paul starts with worship. Do everything to bring God glory, even something as mundane and trivial as eating or drinking! And use things as an opportunity to point others to Christ, not causing them to stumble (different topic for a different day!)

-But where does Paul land? Imitation. Friends, do you invite people to imitate you? If someone were to imitate you, what would that do to their spiritual development? Would it bring them closer to or further away from Christ?

-Notice that there are limits to this imitation, we imitate ONLY IN SO FAR AS the imitation is like Christ. What areas of your life are worthy of imitation? This week, today, take stock of your life, what areas should you be inviting others to come imitate you in? And as you do that, what areas of your life do you need to find someone you can imitate?

-I shared at the beginning of this message my desire when I was growing up was to be like Mike, but I’ll encourage you here at the end with that same message: Look at me, imitate me insofar as I imitate Christ. I’ll keep my eyes fixed on Him, I’ll keep striving after Him, and when and where you see me doing that, join with me in pursuing the same thing!

-This week, find 1 person that you can encourage (maybe it’s starting by praying for this) to imitate you, and then encourage them to find someone else who can imitate them, and pretty soon we have an entire church full of people who are disciples looking for every opportunity they have to make and mature more disciples. We plant, we water, and we trust the growth to God.

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by mikethestrand on December 4, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 4, 2022

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2022/12/04/imitate-me-sermon-manuscript/

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