Welcome to Bible Believers Fellowship and the ministry of bbfohio.com. I'm Pastor Greg, and I welcome you to our study in 1 Timothy 3, verses 8 through 10, titled, Likewise Must the Deacons. Yeah, you know, I hear every once in a while, somebody says, you know, I've never studied the Bible like that before. And I've never heard this stuff even talked about in church before. And well, it's real simple, you go verse by verse, you're going to hit it. So it's what we're doing here tonight, Likewise Must the Deacons is what we're titling this one. We continue our study in 1 Timothy 3, but this week we look at the deacon slash elder. And so let's read and then we'll talk more about it. 1 Timothy 3, 8-10, just read all three verses with me. Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience, and let these also first be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon being found blameless. Amen? So we look at the idea or the ideal that elders are to aspire unto. Just like with the bishops and the pastors, it's not, you know, something to hold them to and use as a way to get rid of your pastor or anything like that. But really, most of what we read, Jenny said this last week after we studied, you know, that most everything in there is really all Christians should be aspiring to. And the same thing is true here. we'll see in verse 8, it's similar to what's said about bishops. They're to have a biblical faith and life, and they're to be proven and blameless as a result. Now, deacons and elders, the titles of deacon and elder are used interchangeably and synonymously, just like bishop and pastor is. the deacon and elder, two words that you hear some people claim they're not the same office, but if you read, just do a word search and look up all the uses of deacon and all the uses of elder, when it talks about ordaining, it is obvious that we're talking about the same office. Now why is more than one word used? That's true about just about every You think about apostles, they're also disciples. Not all disciples are apostles, but you have bishops and pastors. Not all pastors are bishops, but a bishop is a pastor. And so that's why we use the word pastor. Like we said, bishop would probably be the better word to use, but it's been so perverted that, you know, you don't want the baggage. Deacons and elders. I would prefer using the word elders because the word deacons, we'll talk about that in a little bit, The office of deacon in most churches doesn't really reflect what the Bible teaches about it. So, just for the record, I don't bring up Greek very often, but you'll hear people say that a better translation would be, and that's all bogus. You can see the English transliteration of diakonos. Diakonos, deacon, doesn't that sound very, that's all, the word is deacon, diakonos in Greek, and to say that it should be translated something else is just absurd, but you'll hear that from time to time when you, if you listen to other people teach on this in other texts where the word is used. The American Track Society Dictionary has this good information. The original meaning of this word deacon is an attendant, assistant, a helper. It is sometimes translated minister or servant. Now, I'm going to tell you, if you've been in very many churches and you know the deacon board, you'll find out that a lot of the deacons are anything but this. They actually think that they as a board rule over, and the bishop is the overseer. The deacon is supposed to be the helper of the bishop. In an ideal situation, the bishop has a board of elders or deacons. They're kind of like his right-hand men and not ruling, helping, assisting. And then if you have larger churches, you have to have that because there's no way one man can handle all this. So you go to a hospital. Pastor can only make so many hospital visits. If he has funerals, if he has weddings and that kind of thing on top of that, you got to have some deacons who can step in and minister in basically in the name of the local church for the cause of Christ, but they're a helper to the pastor to do those things. Sadly, that's the opposite of what the deacon has become in many churches today, as I said. And there are some churches where the deacons will rule the church so hard that they can't even find somebody who's willing to be their hireling. So there are churches who go years without a pastor. and they'll have deacon boards, and the deacons will pay men to come in and fill the pulpit, and then if one or two or more of the deacons feel like they can teach, they'll take turns, and there's no, what's it say, where there's no vision, the people perish. I was probably, I think I was 20 years old, 21 years old, and I had no desire to pastor. I wanted experience. I knew what the Bible said. I knew I was still a novice, you know? I still needed to learn a lot. but there was a little church outside of town. And really it was about the size of this building. And they only had about 15 people on if everybody showed up. And they asked me to be interim pastor. And so I said, what's that mean? Well, you'll just fill the pulpit. And then of course, if there's something where somebody needs a visit or something, we'd ask you to do that. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, I'll be willing to do that. Well, after about six months of this, I went to the board and I said, you know, I'm going to have to ask you to either hire me as your pastor or cut me loose. And so they knew that if they brought me in as pastor that I was going to want to go, you know, radio, internet. tracks, you know, all the things you do. They knew I was going to do that and they didn't want that. They wanted their little group, you know, and they didn't want to see, they love to see people get saved as long as it didn't mean their church got any bigger. That's really what it was. So, they did kind of like the Oregon coach did. Saturday, some of you might have seen that, where what he did wasn't illegal, but it was considered unethical by some, it was considered an abuse of the rules. So in that little church, he pulled off the same kind of thing, is they had had about six people coming after I started being interim pastor, so they were running up, close to 30 actually was coming. Well, they hadn't put them on an official membership So when they had their election to vote whether I was going to be pastor, only that core group that didn't want to see any growth voted. I still only lost by one vote. But that was all they needed. It was ugly. There was a handful of people that started crying. I didn't want any of that. That's what you get when the church is not functioning biblically and you have a bunch of deacons running things. And that church, for years, didn't have a pastor. And I've seen a number of churches like that. The deacon elder, I'm calling that, you know, synonymous terms, is to live under no less a standard than the bishop slash pastor. And we see that, similar qualifications. And we begin with two qualifications for the deacon not specifically mentioned. in the previous list for the bishop and pastor. Look at that in verse 8. Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued. Grave does not mean he's Reverend Droopy. All right. Please, no laughing. No laughing. We're going to be serious about this. You know, that's not grave doesn't mean that it's some guy that just walks around and never smiles. You know. You rang? You know. Lurch. What grave means, and grave and double-tongued, I'm putting them kind of together in this note here, it basically means the elder deacon must be a man that others take seriously. He's grave, meaning that he's a serious person. He can be funny, he can be a joy to be around, but he's serious. He's not a goofball. You know, how many people you know that they act funny, they try to be funny and everything, but they're just not serious even when you talk about serious things. That's what it means. To be grave is to be somebody that you can talk to and you can take them seriously. And of course, you can kind of tell with people like that when they're joking and when they're not. And also not double-tongued, meaning, let's come back to that. I forgot I had these little notes, but it's synonymous with what we saw under the qualifications for bishop being sober. It's more than just not being drunk. Because there's another phrase about not being given too much wine, which would refer to being drunk. Sober meant the similar, I guess you could call those synonyms too, cinnamons. Grave and sober, it's somebody who you can take seriously, just like I can say things that make you laugh, sometimes not even on purpose, doesn't matter, but you know that when you can talk to me about things and you can take me seriously, and if you don't know that, I shouldn't be your pastor. And the same thing is true with a deacon or elder. And then also being double-tongued. And this is something that being self-contradictory and given to exaggeration or misstatements that must constantly retract. I should have put in the word constantly because all of us say things from time to time. I mean, again, this isn't talking about perfection. All of us can say something and have to retract it. Once in a while you might, you know, in the past I had to really work on something because I would say, all the church is this and all the Christians that. And then somebody would say, well, is it all? And I'd say, no, Jenny, actually it's not. But it was before I met her even. But even since we met and I've been teaching, there's times where I've said things, I'm thinking, well, I need to tweak that a little bit. We shouldn't be painting with brooms. It's just weird how many people you run into as you're out there walking around, door to door, just talking to people. and they don't go to church, and you ask them why. Well, because all the Christians, everybody's a hypocrite. Churches are filled with hypocrites. Everybody, like, really? Is it really that bad? See, when you talk like that, you actually start to think like that, and it's not true. So you're really not thinking honestly. And if you are talking in those kind of terms, people hear you talking, they're not going to take you seriously. And that's why I changed doctors so many times over the years. Because they would tell me things and either I already knew or I'd look it up and be like, that's not true. It's hard for me to trust somebody when they exaggerate or talk in terms that I know aren't true. Like COVID, go back to that. The number of people who died, nowhere near the numbers they were claiming. The number of people, because they were lying about people, they would die of a heart attack. And then if they tested positive for COVID, they counted them as a COVID death. Then they lied about the injuries to the vaccine. We knew they were up here and they were pretending they were down here. So what's that do? I just saw a news bit last week about how they were telling how people don't trust doctors and the pharmaceutical companies anymore. Good, because you shouldn't. They have earned that distrust. And as pastors, deacons, we should not earn that distrust. Yes, Johnny? That's the same thing we're seeing with the identity politics thing. They'll try to paint all of one group a certain way. Whether it's all men or all women or all people of a certain race or all people of a certain political party. And it's both positive and negative. Like the Democrat Party right now is trying to paint all the black men not voting for Kamala a certain way. Like they're all supposed to be thinking exactly the same. You know, yeah, that's the same. So when we see two things repeated from the list that we first saw two that weren't repeated, now we see two things repeated from the list and that is not given to much wine, not greedy, a filthy lucre. Now, I'm just going to say it again. If it was a sin to ever drink wine, it wouldn't say not given to much wine, it would say doesn't touch wine. And if wine is grape juice, then what does it even mean? Not given to much grape juice. Why would that be? I mean, unless you're a diabetic, the only bad effect of that is you're going to get up in the middle of the night to pee. I'm speaking from experience. But as you get older, that becomes a thing. But the deacon should not be a drunk or a lush. Because there's some people who get to where they drink every day and they're not actually really drunk, but they're always kind of under the influence to an extent, and people kind of get used to it. I don't know of any pastors like that, but I know, well, that was kind of Dean Martin's act. They said a lot of times he's just drinking tea. And his family said he didn't sit around drunk all the time like that. But that was part of his act. So you shouldn't have a pastor like that. Everybody loves somebody sometimes. But he also should not be fleshly or a money-driven man. All this speaks of the flesh. You don't want a pastor like that. You don't want a deacon or elder that is obviously drinking to excess in any way, shape, or form, or fleshly or money-driven. I haven't seen, as I said, many drunks on deacon boards. I'm sure it's happened. But I haven't seen many drunks on deacon boards, but many are packed with businessmen who then turn the church into a money-driven outfit. And a lot of guys, pastors, and some guy hasn't even been saved very long. professing Christian and he comes in, he finds out the guy's in real estate or a CEO somewhere or something like that. Next thing you know, he's on the board. Well, he knows how to deal with money. Well, make him treasurer or something, but don't put him on the deacon board. And then what happens? You'll see that church become driven by numbers and income and folks most all the denominations. If they have a headquarters, and they have like a bishop or an archbishop or a superintendent, almost every one of those is run like a business. And they encourage their boards to be filled with businessmen. Now listen, if you got a businessman who is a real Christian, and you see the demonstration of the Spirit in his life, by all means, But if I got a guy who doesn't know business very well and can't hardly even handle his checkbook, but he doesn't bounce checks, you know, he shouldn't bounce checks, but you're not bouncing checks, you're not stealing or crooking people, and I see the demonstration of the Spirit, I don't care that you're not a businessman, that's the kind of guy you want on your board. The deacon elder is to have a full grasp of biblical faith and fully committed to living it out. If he's a businessman, that's great. but don't get the businessman cart before the spirit-filled horse, so to speak. So that's what verse 9. It's a short verse, but it says, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. Holding the mystery of the faith. There are three points that I will just run through real quick. Holding the mystery of the faith. That the is very important. First of all, it refers to the revelation of the gospel of Christ. It's not about unsolved mysteries. The word mystery isn't used in that sense. Well, I'll come back to that in a second. And it says, the faith. refers to fundamental doctrines of the faith, not faith in general. There are some people who have faith in a general sense. They believe God, they believe in the power of prayer, and they're committed to the extent they can be without, then you talk to them, it's without a real depth of understanding of the faith. The faith is fundamental doctrine. The faith includes creation, the Trinity, the doctrine of God specifically, the doctrines of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of salvation and eternal security. I believe dispensations, the rapture, Israel in the church, eternal things, heaven and hell, and the millennial kingdom, at least in a general understanding of that, a general basic understanding at least of what's coming in the Great Tribulation, and so that they can then discern the times as they're seeing it. That's the kind of thing we're talking about when it comes to leadership. And number three, it's called the mystery because it was not revealed in the Old Testament, which was all folks had as this epistle was being written. When this was being written and sent out, there was no New Testament. You had the Old Testament, and you could only get that by going to the synagogue and having the scrolls rolled out for you. They didn't have a Bible, even an Old Testament like this. It wasn't accessible. And you couldn't, didn't have phone apps. or a DVD with Alexander Scorby reading to you, or anything like that. You think about it. How spoiled we are. And back then when this was being written, man, it was a mystery. The Bible itself was a mystery to most people because they didn't have access to it the way we do. And even when they went to the synagogue, by this time especially, but even by the time Jesus came, they already had a veil. So the teachers really didn't understand a lot of what they were teaching. So that's why it says, holding the mystery. of the faith. And just in case someone thinks I made all this up and that it's Gregology, I'll go out and check the elders, the other teachers who've been around for years, just to see what they had to say about it. And it's almost what I said verbatim. J. Lerner McGee said this, the mystery of the faith means the revelation of the gospel of Christ. When Paul says the faith, he is not speaking of the abstract quality of faith, but of the doctrines of the faith. He speaks of it as a mystery because these doctrines were not revealed in the Old Testament, but are now revealed in the New Testament, end quote. I just like it when I'm thinking and putting my thoughts together, and then I go out and read one of the great teachers of the past, and it's like, yes. Not that I have to, if they contradict me, but I think what I'm seeing is biblical, that's where I stay. Anyway, verse 9 goes on to say, in a pure conscience. That's something we can only see, as far as us, when we're looking at a deacon or elder or we're looking at anybody else, we can only see as it is revealed in their actions. This is something that only the deacon or the elder in question has to look at himself in the mirror and say, he has a pure conscience. The rest of us will find out in action. And that leads us then to the fact that the deacon elder is to demonstrate the above that we've all talked about so far coming down to the last point. He has to demonstrate that in his life. He has to be proven and blameless. Look at verse 10. Read that with me. And let these also first be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon being found blameless. Now, I've had people say, well, I don't believe there's anything such thing as an office of deacons or elders. Everybody loves to think. Well, if you're thinking biblically, that's great, but if you're not, it's bad. And if something comes out of your mouth, and I'm telling you, I've had that conversation, and I take them right here and say, what is Paul talking about then when he says, let them use the office of a deacon? It says office of a deacon. It's an office. There's nothing bad. There's nothing wrong with that. Just because a lot of denominations have set the office up and made it something it shouldn't be doesn't mean that the real thing isn't there. So this relates to the idea of a bishop as we talked about related to the bishop, not being a novice and having a good report. See the similarity there? It says, let these also be proved. They shouldn't be novices, they shouldn't be inexperienced, and they should have a good report. Among Christians, the good report is that he's faithful, he's loyal, he's of sound mind and doctrine, and so forth. Of the world, it should be, oh, I hate that guy. He's a nice guy, but he's a hater. He hates my sin. Amen. And then it says, then let them use the office of a deacon being found blameless. So you notice a man must be a deacon or elder by his acts or actions before you can then use the office of a deacon. You don't go find a man and make him a deacon and then expect him to act like a deacon unless he was acting like a deacon before you put him in the position. That's a good rule. You don't go find a friend and hope that they become a good friend if you don't see evidence that they're already a good friend. The same thing's true with husband and wife. The same thing's true with churches and pastors. I know people who go to churches and sit under pastors and they don't have any evidence that this church is doing anything biblically and the pastor's doing anything biblically, but hey, they got, you know, nice, they got good coffee and the chairs are much more comfortable than those pews down at BBF and that kind of thing. You have to have your priorities right, but you also have to know what you're looking for. And it should be demonstrated, and I've told young people this, don't wait for someone to come along. Be the person you should be so that when they come along, you're ready. And they want to be with you. And too many people, I'm trying very hard not to name names, but too many people I have known who were lazy and didn't have the kind of relationship with the Lord that they should have had. And then when that person came along, they didn't want anything to do with them. And they tried real hard to make up lost time. That's not the way to do it. But of course, it's not just relationships. There's going to be people come in your life that you're going to need to talk to about things, things that we've taught here. And if you weren't paying attention and you weren't preparing, they'll come across your path And I've seen this so many times and someone says, oh, I remember when the pastor taught on that. But if they were honest, they'd finish by saying, but I paid no attention. And then they have to go back and try to find it online or call me or text me. What was it you said about that? Now, I'm trying to be very careful with that because I know some of us are forgetful. I'm not talking about, the natural lack of recall that we all have. But I'm saying that, you know, there's a way to learn, there's a way to prepare so that when people come along, you're ready to deal with that. That's where all the above. The deacon is that kind of guy. The elder, he's that kind of guy. He's preparing even before anybody even suggests he should hold an office. And we should remember to understand all of these things in the context of the local church congregation. I see, again, somebody posted something, and I think it was on Rumble. I clicked on it when I watched it. After that short video went off, another video came on. And it's some guy sitting in his house, all alone, telling everybody why they shouldn't go to a local church congregation. And in his view, all the churches are apostate, they're painting with the moon again. And it's dangerous to go to a local church because you're probably going to be deceived. Well, I didn't have time to look at all the stuff he believed, but he's probably a heretic and that's why all the churches look apostate to him. You got a lot of guys out there who think that dispensationalism is false, Israel is wicked, the rapture isn't going to happen any moment, and so on. They got all these doctrines that they hold, and so that's why they think all the churches that they go to are apostate, even when they come someplace like this. But you can't get away from the fact we're reading an epistle to a man who was placed as the head of the Church of Ephesus. and that his church was given an epistle called Ephesians. These are all local church connected and based. And so that's what, when we think about all these things, you have to think about it in the terms of the local congregation, the local church. God didn't save anybody to be a Lone Ranger. Amen? And so Philippians 1, I wanna close there. Philippians 1 gives us, I think a little bit of a picture of this mentality that I'm pitching here at the end as we think about all these things we've been studying the last three or four weeks. Philippians chapter 1, verses 1 through 6, read the even with me. I'll start with verse 1. Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel. from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Amen? And we have some people right now watching online, but there'll be people listening to this and watch this in the weeks and months and years if the Lord tarries, and they can't find a local church within driving distance. And God does not expect people to drive two or three hours and that kind of thing. And a lot of people. we can't just pack up and move, especially these days, it's almost impossible to move with finding a house you can afford and a job and everything. So God has, it's just so happy, isn't it kind of strange? It's almost like God allowed the internet to come about at just the right time when so many churches went into apostasy. So few churches are out there for people that believe the Bible and teach sound doctrine, and here we got this internet thing. And so I just want to say that there are those who can't go physically to a local church. But if anyone here finds yourself at some point for some reason living out away from any good local church, then you should connect in whatever way you can with a local church and you connect with that church and you not only do you give your tithes and offerings to help support it so that you can have that local church online and on the radio and such, but we have people who get their own tracts and get a stamp with our web address on it and stamp it and hand out tracts and you can help the work of the Lord in that way. And there's a number of things you can do, including on social media, sharing links to our messages and everything. And you say, well, you're just promoting your ministry. Well, if this isn't it, find it. I'm just saying, find a local church. Doesn't have to be this one, that's between you and God, but you need to find a local church and really connect with that local church and think in terms of God is dealing with you as an individual, but he wants you in fellowship. What does verse five says? For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. The fellowship is, what's the tie that binds? Our salvation in Jesus Christ. We're all saved by the same Savior. We have the same Holy Spirit in each of us. And then we come together as one body and we work together for whose glory? For BBF? No. For Pastor Greg? No. We work together for the glory of Jesus Christ. and we're like a lighthouse right here in this part of the, this neck of the woods. And because of the internet and radio, we're shining in places we never dreamed we would, but there's still a lot of dark spots out there. So we need a bunch of other little lighthouses like this when they're out there, they're out there. Little churches just like this all over the place, doing the same kind of work we're doing here. And that's how God's work is being done throughout the entire world. There are places where what we're doing is against the law. So they're meeting in houses and in garages and in caves and out in the woods. But however, wherever you're at, whatever your situation, you do what you can, but you do it as a body. You do it through the local church. Amen. So in the meantime, aspire to grow, always ready to serve. Amen. Father, we thank you, Lord, for this time in your word and just pray that your word really finds lodging in our hearts and minds. Your Holy Spirit stirs us to do what we can. And as each one of us do what we can, a lot gets done. And without our names even attached to it, all for your glory. We want people to know Jesus. We want people to hear that gospel. Even if every single one of them reject you, we want them to reject you having heard the pure, biblical, simple gospel message, at least to have had the opportunity to hear it clearly. Use us, we ask. Help us to be the vessel that you use for your honor and your glory. In your name, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.