If Any Man Aspires

Some of you may say, well, I don't know what that is, and some of you may be like, yeah, I was wondering if we were going to do anything for that. And then there's also just that we're working through 1 Timothy, and should we just keep going with that? I thought it best to make an invitation to talk about the discipline outside of the sermon today and not take time to preach on it this morning, but sort of to take the other two things, Reformation Sunday and our normal text in 1 Timothy and sort of combine those because I think the text is appropriate for the day. So we're going to be studying 1 Timothy chapter 3, just one verse, verse 1. This chapter in its entirety is about the government of the church. It's about elders and deacons and their qualifications. Paul instructs Timothy about how to select pastors or elders as well as deacons to rule over the church. And what this means then is that this chapter of scripture is full of distinctions. It's full of standards.

It's full of qualifications. And as we begin to look at those standards, I want us to realize that whenever there are standards and distinctions drawn between men, judgments are not far behind. If I were to read to you and say, well, an elder is supposed to be like this and like this and like this, and he's supposed to possess these gifts and these attributes, it would be natural and normal for you to go, I have elders. Do I think they meet those qualifications? I have a pastor. Is he qualified? Those would be normal. When we get to deacons, you should ask the same question. That would be normal.

The danger is that you would become proud in your judgment and you would begin to look down on everyone saying, they're not qualified and they're this and they're that and the other. And so discontentment and judgmental judgments can abound unless we acknowledge them and then we work to fight against them. And so as we study the qualifications for elders and deacons in the coming weeks, I caution you against becoming... Overly judgmental. If you have questions, I'm happy to ask them. I expect that there will be questions. It's the part of 1 Timothy that I'm least comfortable preaching because I have to look every week for a number of weeks at the qualifications of pastors and elders and think about myself and think about our elders and it's like my job. And I get to do it quite a bit. And so it's the part of the book I've been going, it's going to be heavy. It's going to be real, if you will.

And so I've expected that, but I also have another expectation, is that as we talk about the qualifications for office in the church, I actually expect that God will use it to have you thinking about yourself. And most of you men are not officers in the church, and I expect that one of the things that ought to happen is you ought to start thinking, huh, huh. So as we work through it, I want you to be thinking about that. Now, am I saying everyone should be an officer in the church? No, actually, most people shouldn't. We'll get to that in the sermon today. But it ought to stir a question in your heart and your mind of what you desire to be, what kind of man you want to become, and what's necessary to become that kind of man. And so if you have those sorts of questions or those sorts of thoughts, my encouragement to you is not to despise them or to suppress them, but to work through them. I'm happy to talk to you about those sorts of things. I've had men come to me before and say, do you think I should be a pastor? And if the question was, do you think I should be a pastor today, then the answer is simple, no.

You're 19 or whatever. No, you're not ready. But if they're talking about an aspiration or a desire, do you think I should be considering the ministry? Well, that's a longer-term question. And it is a question that I think men, faithful Christian men who take Jesus Christ seriously, it is a question that they ask. And so I hope that our time this morning is helpful to you. If you've had that question or wondered that question, or if it's just now breaking over the horizon in your mind as a question, I hope that the sermon this morning is helpful in processing through that. Again, I'm happy to talk with you at another time, personally, if you do have questions to that end. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from 1 Timothy 3, verse 1. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. It is a trustworthy statement.

If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it's a fine work that he desires to do. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I told you last week that I don't normally just preach on one verse, and here I am back preaching on one verse again. Next week I won't preach on just one verse, I hope. We'll see. But I think there's quite a bit in here, and this verse is sort of the foundation that the whole rest of the chapter is built on. And it's coming right on the heels of Paul's instruction about who is able to teach in the church. And you say, well, he wasn't talking about who's able to teach in the church. He was talking about who's not able to teach in the church, namely women. And he says in chapter 2, verse 12, you know, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over man. And then he gives the reasons. For it was Adam who was created first and then Eve, and it was not Adam who was deceived but Eve. And so then he goes on and he says, you know,

Women will be preserved through the bearing of children, that their holiness and the way that they're working out their salvation as a woman is going to be largely through the work of being a mother. But the bigger context was teaching in the church. And in the beginning, or in chapter 2, he was saying, well, this is not something that women are allowed to do. And now he comes back and he says, this is who it is for. It's for men. And so this work is limited to men, and yet I want to say to you, it's not limited to all men. In fact, most men, will not be qualified or called to be overseers in the church. And that doesn't mean that there's necessarily some deficiency in them, though sometimes it does. And so what I want to say to you is it's not only women who are barred from teaching in the church. Actually, anyone who's not called and tasked with that work is barred from teaching in the church because of the responsibility and the nature of the work that goes along with it.

In James 3, verse 1, he says, Let not many of you become teachers, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. And that's supposed to come as a caution to those who want to become teachers, but who take lightly the responsibility and the weight of becoming a teacher. He says, Let not many of you become teachers. Don't take it lightly. Don't think it's some little simple easy thing that you can do. Know that it comes with a greater responsibility, a higher standard, and that you're going to be judged with a more stricter judgment. And it's meant to be sort of a pulling back on the reins of, of men who think, yeah, I can teach. No, I want to do that. He says, well, are you sure you want to do it? I remember in my studying this week, I was reading, and one of the guys I was reading, he says that the most foolish are often the most eager. And I thought, that's a helpful thing to say to a man. The most foolish men are often the most eager. And I don't want you sitting here thinking, that means I'm not supposed to be eager. That's not what it means. It doesn't mean you're not supposed to be eager. It just means that those who don't understand the weight or the consequence

of an action are usually the ones who are most apt to do it because they haven't counted the cost sufficiently. And so I want to talk a little bit this morning about the, not just about the fact that this office is related to men, but the nature of the work. What does it mean to be an overseer, to be a pastor or an elder? I want to ask you a question about men and women. Why do you think that it's limited to men only? In the last chapter, Paul gave a couple of reasons about why women are not allowed to teach or exercise authority in the church. And it was because of the creation order before the fall, as well as Eve's falling into sin, her propensity to be deceived. Is there any other reason, is there anything that nature would teach us about why this work should be limited to men? My contention is that there is. I've been a pastor now for...

of this church for 10 years, worked in ministry for a few years before that in other places. So I've got some experience, not decades and decades of experience, but enough to be able to say it's really hard work. It's really hard work. And a lot of the burdens that you carry and a lot of the things that you work with as a pastor and elder, most of the people don't know about. And that's as it should be. I don't say that to say that there's something wrong because you're not, you don't know all the stuff that the pastors and elders deal with. It's a protection to you that you don't. But it's a hard job. It's a weighty job. Because when you're, talking with people about their lives and their marriages and their sins and their struggles, the present, the past, and all of that, you end up carrying a lot of weight. And it can, at times, can be overwhelming. And I want you to know that Scripture speaks that way. That Paul in Corinthians talks about those very things. He says that it's overwhelming, the amount of work, the amount of weight, the amount of responsibility. Who's sufficient for these things? And that is the, that is the, the, the,

The reality of an overseer is that he spends a lot of his time saying, who is sufficient for this? Because he's going, I'm not. I can't carry this on my own. I can't figure this out. I can't bear all of these things. I don't know how to handle it. And yet I think that men are more equipped to carry those sorts of burdens than women are. There's conflict constantly as a pastor. Whenever I talk to men about ministry, or they say, well, how'd you become a pastor? One of the questions that comes up is they say, well, where were you trained? It's a good question. I like answering the question. They say, where were you trained? And I say, well, our sending church had a pastor's college and they trained us for ministry. And people kind of look at me and like, well, that's kind of strange because they're used to either your church just deciding you're a pastor and making you one, or they're used to you going off to seminary and getting an MDiv, you know, Masters of Divinity. And so when you say I was trained in the local church, it was a three-year program, it was academically rigorous, but there was this thing that the seminarians said was lacking in seminary.

And the thing that was lacking generally in seminary was that you didn't get taught how to work with people. You got taught how to preach, perhaps. You got taught a method of preaching. You got taught something about administration. You got taught something about how to read and study the Bible. You got taught a lot of Bible content. You probably learned some stuff about the original languages, enough to mess it all up. And then they said, you can go be a pastor. Now there's a huge... thing missing in that training. The vast majority of a pastor's work is not with a book and a computer. It's with people. And it's not sitting around with people saying, oh, how are you doing? And it's so nice. And don't you like the Colts? It's often sitting down saying, so how are you doing about that trouble you're having? What about work? It's dealing with the conflict. How's your marriage? What about that child of yours? It's often dealing with conflict and they don't train you for that in seminary.

Men who've been through seminary, I'm in a couple of groups of pastors online, and the questions that they ask often revolve around the idea of, how do you deal with conflict? What do you do with conflict? Because that was the one thing they were never taught in seminary, is what do you do when someone's threatening to fire you because of the way you're preaching? They don't tell a pastor what to do about that, how to handle it, what are the landmarks you need to be paying attention to. What should your expectations be for the church? How do you adjudicate conflict? How do you lead an elders board? They don't talk about that stuff in seminary. So I like to tell people, I was trained academically. It was rigorous. We did a lot of reading. We did lots of writing, just like you would in seminary. But we also had a lot of mentorship and apprenticeship. We spent a lot of time sitting as a fly on the wall in counseling meetings and elders meetings, listening and watching other pastors do their work and going, oh.

They asked the question that was on my mind that I didn't think anyone in their right mind would ask because it's so embarrassing. But they asked it because it was the question that needed to be asked. And so a lot of a pastor and elder's work is dealing with conflict. There's other work associated with what the elders do in our church, but the most difficult work is the conflict. It's dealing with sin. And in situations of conflict, generally speaking, I think men are better at keeping their eyes on the facts and making a clear-headed decision without getting distracted or offended by the sideshow that always attends conflict. Whenever there's conflict, there's one of the things you look for. It's called the presenting issue. There's something that people will be mad about. They'll come and they'll say, I'm mad about such and such, or my wife this and that, or my husband this and that. And that's the thing that brought them to you. There's a presenting issue.

And the work of a pastor and elder is to process that, but what we're looking for is we're looking for the real issue. What's the real problem? Because there's a real problem that's just cropping up in this way over here, and if all I do is talk about this thing over here, it's just going to crop up in this way, and then in this other way, and then in this other way. Well, to be able to do that sort of work, you have to be able to keep your eye on the ball, and you have to be able to say, what caused that? What's the real problem? And people will get angry, and they'll get defensive, and they get upset when you ask them questions, and they think that it's none of your business.

And this is the work of ministry. And it is necessary when you're dealing with people's souls. And it's very important you remember that that's what pastors and elders do. They deal with your soul. My primary concern, Dan's primary concern, is not that you would be comfortable all of the time or that you would be affirmed all of the time. It's that you would know Jesus Christ and that you would love him. And so if there are times and areas in your life where that's not apparent, We're going to put our finger on it and we're going to make you look at it because you need to. And we want to help you in that way. And we realize that we may cause you pain. And this is why I'm convinced Paul said, have I become your enemy in telling you the truth? Because there's a real propensity in pastoral ministry and in the work of elders for the people that you care for to get angry at you. For you making them see the thing that they don't want to see.

And mercy in that situation and compassion, as God defines it, is bringing them with grace and mercy to help them see it. And if they refuse to look at it, you say, no, you have to look at it. And you have to see it. And you have to talk about it. And you have to stop in whatever ways that's necessary. Generally speaking, men are better at doing that sort of work. How many women would be afraid to say something because they might hurt somebody? It's not a fault of women. It's how God's made them. He's made them relationally, and there's all kinds of burdens and troubles and things that they will bear for the sake of not offending someone, not hurting someone's feelings. And that's as it should be, but that sort of gifting is not suited for leadership and working through conflict when it gets gnarly. This is one of the reasons this work is for men, and he says it's a trustworthy statement if any man aspires to this work. It's not something women are built for. It's something men are built for. When you go to the doctor, what kind of doctor do you want to go to?

Well, you want a doctor who's going to have a good bedside manner, who's going to have some tenderness, who's not just going to walk in and, you know, bark at you for 30 seconds and then walk back out. You want him to have some care and concern for you. But most of us would be willing to sacrifice in that regard if they'll tell us the truth. If they'll tell us, this is what the problem is. You know, if you went to a dentist and he goes, oh yeah, it's nice to see you again. All your, you know, it's obvious you're not taking care of your teeth.

You want a dentist who's going to tell you, these things are going to fall out of your head if you don't start taking care of your teeth. You drink too much soda. You eat too much candy. Whatever it is. I'm not a dentist. Abram could tell you. But there are things that he could tell people and he can just go, yep, you're heading for a mess. And a good dentist will tell you that before the mess comes. Right? Now, how many of you like dentists? Abram likes dentists. His daughter likes dentists. Right? Well, Abram would tell you that he spends his whole day having people tell them how much they hate dentists. And by extension, how much they hate him. And he's supposed to work in their mouth. But a good dentist has your best interest in mind. And he's willing to cause you a little bit of pain, or maybe a lot of pain, for your long-term good. That's the kind of dentist you want. You wouldn't want a dentist that sat there and the whole time they said, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Does that hurt? I'm so sorry. Oh, well, we don't have to do that because it hurts. That's not a good dentist.

Because the problem is still there and it still exists. And so if you want a dentist who's willing to cause you a little bit of pain or a doctor who's willing to push where it hurts so they can figure out what's wrong and help you get better, then you ought to want the same thing from your pastors and elders. Because they won't do you nearly as much good if they're not willing, when it's necessary, to push where it hurts. And generally, as I said, I think men are better suited to push where it hurts and to have a longer-term view of what health and getting back to it looks like.

then women will. So what men are we talking about? Well, Paul says, any man. If any man aspires to the office of overseer. Now, I want to talk a little bit about aspiration. What's aspiration? Well, it's a strong yearning or desire. It talks about what he wants. And in this context, we're talking largely about, or exclusively rather, about a pastor or elder in the church. But the question of aspiration is something that, is suitable to all men. Every man should have aspiration. What's the opposite of having aspiration? Well, he's just apathetic. He has no drive. He has no ambition. He has no desire. He's just a bump on a log. And that's no good. Now, does every man have to aspire to the office of overseer? Nope. But they ought to have some aspiration. They ought to have something that they're working forward and towards and sacrificing to get to. So what does it mean if a man has or he aspires to the office of overseer? Well, it's kind of a slippery slope because that desire can come from a lot of places, and some of them are good and some of them are bad. Some of you grew up in Baptist churches, and there's this basic understanding that when a young Baptist boy becomes a Christian, what is one of the first things that will be recommended to him or questioned about him? You don't know. You're not a Baptist. But Tim knows.

What is it? Are you called to the ministry? This is the question in Baptist churches. If a man becomes a Christian, are you called to the ministry? And then the men are all like, I don't know, maybe. And they say, well, you need to go to Bible college to figure it out. Bible college, Bible college, Bible college. Well, we knew you weren't going to be a minister. You're a woman. But you went to Bible college. Men go to Bible college. There are other men I know, I'm just pointing to the ones in this room that I'm aware of, who went to Bible college because they're like, am I supposed to be a pastor? I became a Christian. Am I supposed to be a pastor? There's a certain cultural expectation in that circle that if a man becomes a Christian, maybe he should be a pastor. Now I want to ask you, let's be real specific here, where does that question often come from? It comes from his mom. His mom wants to, I wonder if he's supposed to be a pastor.

I wonder if my little Billy is called to the ministry. Her little boy. So does that man aspire to the office? If that's all there is, no. He doesn't. Is there something wrong with him? No, but that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about someone aspiring to the office. When we talk about aspiration or aspiring to the office, there's basically two things that have to be present. One is an internal call. Sometimes men will say, I think God's calling me to be a pastor. And if they're sober-minded about it and they have some idea of what that means, then I think it's probably a good place to start. If they're just doing it because they've got somebody propping them up and pushing them forward, then I think we're headed down the wrong path. Sometimes men will think they're called to ministry and they'll run from it, like Jonah did. Or maybe not as dramatically as Jonah did, but they'll say, no, no, no.

I've seen ministry, and I know what the terms of it are, and I don't know, no, no, no, no. And they've decided they're not called before they've even asked the question. The answer is no. Now, I'm sorry, what was the question again? That's not a good way to decide or to discern whether you're called to the ministry, to be a pastor or an elder. It's a real question. And it's not wrong that men would ask it of themselves and say, am I called to the ministry? Do I think that God has this in store for me? There's a sense in which there ought to be, there needs to be an internal call, a desire to do the work. It needs to be an informed desire, but there needs to be some sense of internal call. There also needs to be an addition to that, and this is where I think a lot of people get, just don't know what's going on. When there's a call to ministry, there's an internal desire and there's an external confirmation. Someone other than the man has to say, yes, I think you're called to ministry. I think you should pursue that.

The question is, who is suited for that work? And the simple answer is, without going into a bunch of detail, is to say the church is called to that work. It's the church's job to confirm that sort of thing. It's not only mom and dad's decision to say, well, we think that our son might be called to the ministry. It's actually the church's job to say, we recognize the qualifications that we're going to get into in future weeks. We recognize that you... have them in some form, and we'd like to see them cultivated. I'm going to tell you what I think is a funny story. In France, in the 1500s, some of you guys have heard of John Calvin, right? He's a pastor, great theologian, and very, very helpful in the work of the Reformation and reforming the church. Now, how many of you know how John Calvin became a pastor? Do you know? Raise your hand. Do you know how John Calvin became a pastor? Okay, the vast majority of you don't. I'll tell you.

John Calvin, his aspiration and his desire, he was a lawyer, and his desire was to go away with his books and write, to read and to write and to be a scholar. That's what he wanted to do. And some of you might say, I could never want to be that. And I say, that's fine. He might go to what you want to be. But that's what he wanted. So he's passing through Geneva. It's a little town in France. And William Farrell, I don't, is that, that's right, Daniel? William Farrell. There's a guy there and he came to him and he said, you need to be the pastor. We need a pastor and you need to be the pastor. And John Calvin says, I don't want to be the pastor. I'm not going to be the pastor. I'm not called to this and I don't want to do it. And you know what Will Farrell said to him, William Farrell. He said, I want, Calvin says, I want to go and read my books. And he looked at him and he says, God damn you and your books. Go to hell if you don't stay here and serve as a pastor. Then that was John Calvin's call to the ministry.

He had a man tell him, curse him, if he didn't obey the call that God had placed on his life. And so what did Calvin do? He stayed in Geneva and was the pastor because he didn't want to go to hell with his books. So is it appropriate that sometimes an internal call will be cultivated by some external pressure? Yep. Sometimes it will. Sometimes the external confirmation or recognition of the gifts will come before the internal call, and it will be used to help cultivate the internal call. And sometimes you'll find men who just go, I don't want to do it. And I just want to tell you that that doesn't mean you ought not to. It's a real question whether God calls men to ministry. And a simple, well, I don't want to do it because it's hard, or I don't want to do it because of this reason or that, is no reason to just dismiss the question. It's a real question.

Why does the church need to be the one to confirm the call? Well, because the church is objective in a way that your mom and dad or your camp counselor or whoever it is that said you should think about the ministry isn't. They don't have a vested interest in you being a pastor. The church does. And so the church is the one who ought to confirm or test or evaluate a sense of call. You know, I became a pastor. Now many of you know I'm not going to tell the whole story, but I didn't grow up in a Christian home. And when I became a Christian, I thought, I want to help people learn and see and know and believe the things that I've come now in my life after much pain and trouble to know and see and believe. And I didn't know if I could be a pastor because of the life I'd led. And so I thought, well, let's see. And so I went to the pastor's college down in Bloomington at our ascending church. And they...

To go to the pastor's college, you had to pass a Bible knowledge test. Now, mind you, at the time, there were large portions of the Old Testament I'd never read. Not even once. And I had to take a Bible knowledge test. And I thought, there's no way I'm going to pass this test. I'm going to get 60% of the questions wrong. I was scared of this test. And I thought, well, it'll be part of the confirmation or not. Well, I passed the test. Barely. But I passed the test. And so then I'm good to go to the ministry, right? Here we are. It's all said and done. Nope. Now you can start the work of the test. They said, okay, we're going to put you in ministry. So I started working with the youth group. Reza was in the youth group. Taylor was in the youth group. Nick, were you there? But, you know, you came after me. Gabe was. A number of people that were here that used to be in Bloomington were in that youth group. And I worked in it for four years. And I sat in elders meetings and I went to the pastor's college.

And I had to read and I had to write. Now, mind you, I never went to college. And I barely got through high school academically because I just didn't do any of my work. And now I'm having to read, oh, 250 to 400 pages a week. It's a lot. And then you have to write. This is not anything I've ever been trained for. And hard reading. Well, what are we doing? Well, we're testing the call. Can he read? Can he write? Can he understand what's going on? So you go to the pastor's college. You're in ministry. You're dealing with people, loving them, caring for them, and all the rest. And what's going on at that point is the church is working to confirm the call. They're saying, does this man have the gift? Okay, so you get through pastor's college and then you graduate. So now have you made it? No, because you don't have a job. You don't have a call. No one has said, we want him to be a pastor. No one has said, we think you should go be a pastor over there, plant a church. And there's steps all along the way that God uses to either,

to install men in the ministry or to remove them, to keep them out. There were a number of men that have gone through the pastor's college that I went through who, after their second year, were told, we don't think you should continue. We don't think you have the gift of pastoral ministry. There are also men who graduated and then didn't receive calls. And part of that was because they'd been told, you can graduate, but we don't think that you're cut out to be a pastor at this point. Now that's a hard thing to say to somebody, isn't it? You've worked for years, and we don't think that this is, you know, we've been working to discern the call on your life, and we don't think that it's there right now. So you have to find something else to do. And it's different in this way than, say, a lawyer or a doctor. When those men are trained, they have a season of education, they have a season of practical hands-on, doing their rotations and stuff, and then they go into a field of particular expertise and training. At the end of it,

or at some point in there, I don't know when it is, Christian could tell me, they have to take a test. And if you don't pass the test, you're out. Right? And they say, this isn't for you. Or you have to re-up and take the test again or something like that. Same thing's true with dentistry. Same thing's true with law. There's a test. And then once you pass the test, you're qualified, right? You had the requisite knowledge. And Christian's sitting over here going, well, I don't know, and that's exactly right. But there is a question that says, you have now passed confirmed that you're supposed to be a doctor. You can be a doctor. You have permission to be a doctor. All you have to do is be able to pass the test. You have to be able to get a job too. And what I think in those fields is that the standard is more objective. If you can pass the classes and if you can pass the test and if you can make your way through that stuff, no one's going to question your ability to be a doctor. Until later, if there's malpractice or if you do something wrong.

Then they think, well, maybe he wasn't cut out to be a doctor. Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a lawyer. But that judgment comes long after the fact. I knew a man once who was a doctor, gone through law school, or not law school, gone through med school, became a doctor. And within 10 years of being a doctor, he was in prison for selling drugs because he had the ability to write prescriptions. So should he have been a doctor? No. somebody should have been around, some governing body, some authoritative structure should have looked and said, that guy is not qualified to be a doctor because he's got problems in his life because he did harm to people as a result of it. All I'm proposing with regard to the ministry is that those judgments, that that judgment be acknowledged as being made at least for the first time at the beginning. And that simply possessing the knowledge of how to preach or what the Bible says or having good theology is not sufficient to qualify a man for ministry. It needs to be confirmed by the church. They need to say, yeah, we actually think not only are you able to study and read and preach and teach, we actually think you're able to work with people. We think you're able to handle conflict. We think you're able to bear with and lead the people of God. And it would be better to have that judgment made at the beginning than years later. And it'd be better for that man.

And it would be better for that church, it would be better for everybody, for that judgment to be made at the beginning where you say, you know what? In the process of evaluating your calling, we don't think you're called to it. It's a grace and a kindness to tell some, for a man to find that out in his 20s than to spend 10, 15, 20 years doing it only to find out it's not for him. So what does it take for a man to aspire to the office of overseer? Well, he has to have a sense of call. He may not like the call, like Calvin didn't like the call, But there has to be some sense of the work. We're going to come in the following weeks into the qualifications. How do we evaluate? But from the beginning, there needs to be a sense of call. He feels called to this work, and that call needs to be confirmed by the church. Different churches will do it in different ways. If men were going to become wanting to be an elder in this church, we wouldn't just go, you, you can be an elder. No. If we thought a man might be fit for eldership,

we're going to give him work to do. Long before he's an elder, we're going to give him work to do. We're not going to say, hey, we're doing this because we want to see if you're going to make it as an elder. You just give him work and you see if he's qualified. See if he does it. He's got to carry heavy weights. Does he know how to keep his mouth shut when he ought to? Does he know how to deal with people in conflict without pulling his punches? Is he willing to do unseen work? Because a lot of the work the elders do in this church is unseen.

I'm the one you see every week, but the work that Dan and Abram and John and Daniel do, tons of it is unseen. And you benefit from it, but you don't know that they do it directly. And you don't know how long it takes them to do it. But they do it because they love God and they love you. Is a man willing to do work that's unseen? There are things you start giving men things. Hey, you want to lead a small group? Well, I don't know. Okay, that's a good answer for me to know. It's a really helpful answer. Willing to host a small group. These are just two examples.

Is the man willing to take on responsibility? Is he willing to care for other people? Is he willing to make the sacrifices that we know the offices of the church require? If he says, no, I don't really have time for that, then I say, okay, well, good to know that now so that we don't get five years into this thing and have to deal with the fallout of you not really having time for it or a desire to do it. If there's an aspiration that's lacking, we want to know on the front side. The last thing I want to talk about is the work. Paul says it's a trustworthy statement. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it's a fine work he desires to do. It's a fine work. It's a good work. It's an honorable work. You could translate that word fine as any of those. Good, honorable. In short, it's profitable. Now, the hard thing about leadership in the church is it's very hard to quantify. A lot of the work you do is intangible. You're in turning dials and pulling levers and knobs spiritually with people.

but the widget doesn't come out the other end for months and years, and it's hard work. And so when you go into ministry, you can't go into it thinking, there's going to be all this great stuff, and there's going to be all these changes, and I'm going to do so much for the Lord. A lot of the work is bearing with and caring for people over the long haul. Making disciples is a long-term, lifelong work, and elders and pastors are tasked with the work of doing that. And so we, each week, whenever we're together with you, we're thinking we want to make this person, you, into a disciple. Where do they need discipleship? And it's not some 12-week class and then you're done. It's the rest of your life. What does it mean for you to grow into observing all that Jesus has commanded you to do? When do you pour time in? When do you decide, no, this is not the time or the place to pour time into them? And so you have to have men who are willing to take a long view and to bear with the work.

If you think about it in your life, so much of what goes on, you want to be done quickly. I think most of us do. I'm willing to do hard things for a short time if I receive the benefit at the end of it. And some burdens in life are that way. Having a baby is that way. There's a season of intense difficulty and then there's a baby and then there's other burdens and things that come. But that difficulty is over and the reward has been realized. But now you've got to raise that kid for the rest of your life. And a parent has to stick with that forever. They're never done.

Even when their children are out and married and having their own kids, they're still mom and dad. They still love their kids. They still identify as parent. God uses it to teach them long-suffering and patience. That's one of the reasons that a man who is qualified has to manage his household well. He has to be willing to stay in it and bear with it, not only when it's easy or when it's glamorous or when it's exciting, but when it's hard and when it's slow. Paul describes this as a fine work. He does not describe it as an easy work. It's interesting when you talk to men about why they want to go into the ministry. You start to say, well, why do you feel a call to go into the ministry? Why are you interested in that? They often don't tell you the truth because they don't know the truth. But if you read old guys about pastors, they all say the same things. And for the couple of things they say about ministry, in terms of the reasons men go into the ministry, they say men go into the ministry because they want honor, they want the reputation,

They want to be a Pharisee. They just want people to look up to them and listen to them. That's why they go into the ministry. It's their pride. They say another reason people go into ministry, they're lazy. They don't want to work hard. They think the ministry is easy, so they go into the ministry so they only have to talk for a few hours a week and then they're all done. It's easy. They want to avoid hard work. They don't want calluses on their hands and scars on their elbows. They don't want to work long nights and early mornings making sure the project gets done. They just don't want to work hard.

Why else do men go in the ministry? Well, because they think that they've got something to give to other people. And they think that's the best platform that they can get to influence people with their wisdom. And God rejects all of that. No man who's given to those things has any place considering the ministry. Because there's nothing in the ministry that aligns with those desires. The man who wants to go into the ministry, who aspires to the office, is deciding, I want to pour my life out for Jesus Christ and for his people, and it's going to hurt. But I love God and I want to serve him in this way. That's what aspiration to the ministry starts to sound like. And I don't just mean for pastors, I mean for elders. Sign me up to suffer. Sign me up to help the people. Sign me up to pray and fast. Sign me up to get slandered. Sign me up to get threatened. Sign me up. Where do I sign? You went to the military, wasn't that kind of like what it was? It's all great and big and glamorous, right? Huh, huh, yeah.

especially when they didn't let you sleep for 72 hours. There's something in men that is stirred when you talk about there being something to push against, some sort of difficulty, some sort of hardship, but some sort of glory that's attached to it. And they say, yes, I'm willing to suffer for that end. I don't know what the particulars will be, but I wonder if I'm not called to that. I'll go where you've called me. I'll follow where you lead. That man might aspire to the office. But if you think you're God's gift to... the people of God, you don't belong in the ministry. You don't belong in the ministry. The most helpful thing a pastor can do to discipline himself is to think, you know what, I want a church where if I died tomorrow, the church would carry on. Because it's not dependent on me. It's not a cult of personality. It's not so bound up with the man that if he falls, then everything just falls apart. It's his job to say, I'm not the man. Jesus is the man. If I'm here,

I'll help you to look to him. And if I'm not here, we want someone else who will. I want to do all of the work so that God will receive all of the glory. That's what aspiration to ministry sounds like and feels like at its most basic sense. I'm willing to work and to labor because I love God. And I'm willing for when all of it's said and done and someone says, thank you so much. You saved my life. You say, no, I didn't. Jesus did. Thanks be to God. Look what he did. I'm glad he used me. I hope he keeps using me, but glory to God.

That's what it sounds like for a man who aspires to the ministry. So it's not an easy work. It's a hard work. It's not busy work. It's slow work, but it's not busy work. You think of the troubles and the struggles and the hardships that you might have in your life and how long you've been bearing them. And know that your pastors and your elders, faithful ones, are bearing them too, right along with you for weeks and months and years. They're not simply saying the things they say to you and doing the things that they're doing because they have to. They're doing them because they want to, because they love you.

Because they love God. It's a serious work that should be understood to be serious by all those who aspire to the work as well as those who don't. If you don't aspire to the work, if God's not called you to the work, that doesn't mean that you ought to hold the work in disregard. You go, well, yeah, that's fine. You know, he's one of the elders. They're full of bad motives. He's an elder. He wanted to be an elder because he wants to have authority and lord it over us. That's not the case. It's a serious work and it's a good work. And the reality is all of us need overseers.

All of us need dads. All of us need people to come and to say that thing, that thing, that thing, until we go, what thing? And they say that thing. That's not okay. And here's why. We all need people in our lives to do those sorts of things for us. And if we don't have those sorts of people in our lives, it'll be to our harm that we don't have them. And so our desire ought to be that God would raise up men, giving them a desire for this work. to continue on the work of reform and building God's kingdom here in our church and in our city, in our state, in our land. That his kingdom would grow. And the way it'll grow is through men having this desire and seeing the goodness of the work of the ministry and saying, I want it. Am I called to it? How can I tell? What do you think? And then giving themselves to that work. This ought to be our heart's desire because we need shepherds to look after our souls.

We need faithful shepherds who are willing to meet us in where we're at and to have difficulty with us when it's necessary. And we need shepherds who are willing to come with us and pick us up and dust us off when we're too weak to do it ourselves. We need men who love us and care for us and lay down their lives for us in some way similar to the way Jesus laid down his life for us. It ought to be our desire that God would give us men who have that desire in their heart so that God would be glorified and we would be protected.

and his kingdom will grow. Let's pray.