Our passage this morning is taken from Titus chapter 1, so you would do well to turn there as we look at leadership in the church. Peter called the elders shepherds of the flock. And when speaking about elders, you may hear the term under-shepherd. because of what Peter said in chapter 5, verse 4, when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. The leaders of a church are always to be under the guidance of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the chief shepherd. No pastor, no elder is given free reign to do what just seems best to them. The elders are to submit to guidance of scripture. And there are too many examples of men who have not functioned under the authority of the chief shepherd. And when that happens, things eventually go awry when undershepherds pretend that they are the overshepherds. In order to avoid the devastation that occurs in a church when the leadership goes bad, the Bible gives elder qualifications. The Bible tells us what kind of men are qualified to lead the local church. There are two main passages on elder qualifications here in Titus 1 and then also in 1 Timothy chapters at the end of chapter 2 and then into chapter 3. We'll look mainly at Titus 1 today, but we'll refer also to the First Timothy passage. Let's start with reading in Titus, and we'll read verses one through five. Well, you'll hear the introduction that Paul wrote to Titus as he introduces the subject of placing elders in the church. Titus 1.1. Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth, which accords with godliness, and the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began, but has in due time manifested his word through preaching, which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior, to Titus, a true son in our common faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior. For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. So the apostle Paul wrote instructions to Titus, who was living on the Isle of Crete, where there were a number of churches. apparently in every, at least, major city. And Paul commanded that elders be established in all of those churches in Crete. Local churches need elders. And when the Bible talks about appointing elders, it speaks in the plural form. Appoint elders in every city. And we believe that the biblical model for churches is to have more than one elder. Nowhere in the New Testament is there a suggested number of elders for any given church. At Bethel Christian Church, we have three at this time, and we don't distinguish the role of pastor and elder, so the pastor is also considered an elder. In the New Testament, there are other terms used for elder. You saw one in 1 Peter, overseer, pastor, shepherd, and bishop are all titles used for elders in the church. And keep in mind also that And various churches would refer to elders differently. A couple other terms used to describe elder in other churches would be, for example, a bishop or presbyter. All right, what does an elder do in the church? We can't go over that too much today, but basically an elder teaches the Bible. protects the church from false doctrine, leads the church toward unity, and leads people to biblical maturity. Teaches the Bible, protects the church from false doctrine, leads the church toward unity, and leads people to biblical maturity. In order to carry out these responsibilities, elders must display godly character. That's the point of elder qualifications. The elder qualification list in Titus comes in verses 6 through 9 of chapter 1, and you can read with me starting at verse 6. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or subordination, for if a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine to both exhort and convict those who contradict. So let's study this section a bit closer, starting with the word blameless. If a man is blameless, now that's a bit intimidating, isn't it? It sounds like a leader in a church would have to be perfect, you know, without fault. And we know there is no such person. And the word blameless here doesn't suggest perfection. The word means unaccused or hard to, difficult to reproach. An elder needs to be a man with good character. The elder can't be a man with a poor reputation. His name can't conjure up shame and disgrace. So, it's a man that is not known for immoral or ethical behavior. It's not the kind of man that you could say about him, oh, you mean the guy at the bar every Friday night checking out the ladies? Or, oh, you mean the guy that never pays his bills and gets taken into small claims court? Or, oh, you mean the hothead that yells at his wife and children? A man with that kind of reputation is disqualified from being an elder. because he's easily incriminated or he's easily reproached. A true elder, if someone were to talk poorly about a poor elder, the person listening would think or say, no, that's not the man. That's not the man I know. The man I know is a good man. What follows in the next verses is 15 ways to know when a man is a good man and whether or not he's blameless, whether he's hard to reproach. The elder qualifications are not meant, at least in my reckoning, they're not meant as a checklist. but as a guide to evaluate the character of a man so that no one who's easily reproached becomes an elder in the church. All right, first category talks about the elder's family. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination. And we can know a lot about a man by observing his wife and his children. And knowing how a man leads his family tells us a lot about how he would lead in the church. But before we delve into this more, let's face a controversial question head on. The question is, can a woman be an elder in the church? 50 years ago, this wasn't really much of a question. To my recollection anyway, it was assumed that the elders in the church would be men, but that was 50 years ago. So this week I looked up statistics in the church in America, and right now about somewhere between 10 to 13% of churches have a female pastor. In this verse, Paul said of the elder, if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife. But should we assume, as some people do, that we could just as well translate this, well, if a person is blameless, the spouse of one marriage partner, he or she could be an elder. Did the Holy Spirit, through Paul, carefully choose the gender? Here, indicating that elders are to be men. Well, proponents of allowing female elders usually stake their argument on one of two suppositions. First, there are biblical examples of women in important positions. Deborah, the judge, Huldah, the prophetess, Phoebe, a servant in the church, Priscilla, a fellow worker. In the Old Testament, there were many women in prominent positions. In addition to Deborah and Huldah, The one role that we never see a woman play in the Old Testament, what is it? Anybody know? Priest. There were no female priests in the Lord's Temple. as the Bible is specific about men serving as priests. I hear that, for example, in Leviticus 7, 33 and 34. He among the sons of Aaron who offers the blood of the peace offering and the fat shall have the right thigh for his part, for the breast of the way of offering, now talking about animal Animals that were sacrificed and the breast of the wave offering and the thigh of the heave offering I have taken from the children of Israel From the sacrifices of their peace offerings and I have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons From the children of Israel by a statute forever It seems to me the best equivalent to a New Testament elder looking into the Old Testament is the priest and Now, the second on the screen, the second supposition, the restriction on female elders was a result of patriarchal norms specific to that particular time. Now, regarding the claim that the early church existed in a time of patriarchalism, that may be true, probably to some extent or another. My concern is not what cultural norms are or were, but what does scripture teach? Paul taught that the reason for elders to be men is not rooted in cultural norms, but in the purpose of God in creation. And that's found in 1 Timothy 2, 12, and 13. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. And right after this verse in 1 Timothy, Paul went directly into elder qualifications. So Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, linked his insistence on men being elders or elders being men to God's purpose in creation. And God's purpose in creation is not subject to changes in cultural norms. For this reason, Bethel Christian Church, in our constitution, we limit the role of elder to men. Here is that. taken from our Constitution. It's under elders' wives, actually. Bethel Christian Church, per 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 7, will fill pastor and elder positions with men, but we also believe strongly that women are essential to effective ministry and counsel in the church. For this reason, we consider that when we commission an elder, we are also expecting his wife to be a helper and counselor in the church. There are some times in the life of a church where we need elders' wives. We need wise women to play a role. One example might be, for example, if there is an abusive situation in the church, an abused woman might not come to a man to express what's happening in her life, but she might go to a woman in the church. Additionally, there's also times where there's sensitive types of counseling that need to occur, that it would be inappropriate for a man to counsel a woman in some of those situations, and so you need elders' wives in those situations to be able to step up and care for some of these needs. And that is the role that we ask elders' wives to fill. All right, number one, he needs to be a faithful husband. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife. There are a number of ways to interpret what Paul meant by husband of one wife. Here are three ways this has been interpreted. I'm sure there's more, but this tends to be three main interpretations. Some people say that, what Paul meant was he can't be a polygamist. Historians tell us there were a few polygamist Jews in the first century. The practice, as you know, had been common in the Old Testament where we read with some level of consternation, you know, all these Israelite kings that had multiple wives, many sometimes. But the practice of polygamy began to diminish when the Roman Empire, gained power in the world. And by the time of Paul's writing of Titus, it's likely that the practice in the New Testament times was probably somewhat uncommon, but there were some. So now, no doubt Paul would have objected to a man with multiple wives being an elder, but I believe he meant more than just number one. Second, some people believe that Paul is describing the kind of husband the man is. In other words, a one-woman man, a faithful husband, not flirtatious, not lustful, not involved in pornography. He's dedicated to his wife. He's trustworthy. His wife can count on him. She doesn't have to worry when he goes to work. She doesn't have to worry when he goes to the store. A third way to look at the husband of one wife is to suggest that, historically speaking, the man has only been married once, and that's to his current wife. It eliminates men that have been divorced, but it doesn't eliminate, that would not eliminate, men that have had live-in relationships and never just, never bothered to marry that person. In fact, it wouldn't eliminate a man that had many live-in relationships. People that adhere to the third definition often add qualifiers to this. They might suggest, well, you know, only one wife historically, unless she died, you know, and then he can be remarried and so then that would be okay. Or only one wife unless he was, you know, married and divorced before he was saved, you know, then we could allow him to become an elder. You get a pass, so to speak, if your first marriage was before you became a Christian. Now, if a person adds these kinds of qualifiers to elder qualifications, just understand that these are not coming from scripture. They're our specifiers. We're not given in scripture, but that begs the question, if God didn't add those specifiers, does he really want us to add those kinds of specifiers to his word? It's not a good idea, I don't think, to add specifiers to God's word, generally speaking, or we could end up teaching for doctrines The commandments of men, see Mark 7-7. Now one problem with number three on the screen is that it forces, it focuses on externals and then it sends us on a hunt to dredge up a man's past. Dredge up his marriage history. But we don't do that for the other qualifications listed in the elder qualifications below. We're going to get to one that says that an elder can't be quick-tempered. Well, when we look for an elder, we don't say, oh, yeah, he had a bad temper 30 years ago. So now he can't be an elder today. So I think what Paul means is that the elder needs to be a faithful, trustworthy, loving husband, aligning fairly closely with number two on the screen. On one other note, while we're on the matter of marriage, a man's wife can disqualify him from being an elder. Paul gave qualifications for elder and deacon wives in 1 Timothy. Chapter 311, it said, likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. And so, an elder's wife should be honorable, free from malicious gossip, and vigilant, watchful, and trustworthy. The words of Solomon in Proverbs 12 prove to be true regarding a man who desires to be an elder. An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones. So faithful husband, but also faithful father. Having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination. So what is dissipation and what is insubordination? Dissipation is a word that means Usually in Greek it means uncontrolled debauchery. It usually referred to what happened at drinking parties. Maybe some aspiring elders would have had children living in this lifestyle. More likely, he used the word in the sense of a child that does whatever he or she wants to do without regard to the consequences and without regard for the future. And subordination, I think, is similar somewhat. That means not subject to rule, unwilling to be governed by any authority. The picture here is of an impulsive child that does whatever he wants, and no kind of discipline helps him to rein in his behavior. A father with a child like that is not a good candidate for elder. And the reason for Paul's logic in this matter of faithful children is stated in the elder qualifications he gave in the book of 1 Timothy. One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? So the elder qualifications are highly practical. A man who knows how to run a healthy home can likely run a healthy church. Before we move on from discussing the elder's family, let's address two other questions. First question, how old are the children Paul referred to here? A number of years ago, a friend of mine Quite a few years ago, a friend of mine came to me distressed because at his church, there was a movement afoot to remove an elder because his adult son was in some unfortunate behavior. Heavy drinking for one, and I don't remember what all else. Probably he was, he was probably about, the son was probably about 30 years old or so. Does that disqualify him from being an elder? And so it would be nice to know what age this word, I think it's technon in Greek, what age is, you know, is referred to. But unfortunately, the, The word does not carry necessarily a connotation of the age, young or older. It's really the same with our English word children. As when my children were ages 1 to 11, people would ask me, oh, how are your children doing? Now they're ages 22 to 32, and people ask me, how are your children doing? So my answer to this question is something others might disagree with. My belief is that a potential elder's children should be taken into consideration so long as they are the father's responsibility. They're living at home. They're answerable to their children. They're answerable to their father. I don't believe a man is responsible for decisions that his adult children make. But is that father keeping the behavior of those young children in his home that are his responsibility? Is he keeping their behavior under control? All right, question two. Must an elder have a wife and children? So if we use the elder qualifications as a checklist, we could check certain men off. They don't have a wife, they don't have children. And right away, they would be dropped from consideration. And my belief is that the elder qualifications are not primarily to be used as a checklist, but as a way to help evaluate character. When a man has a wife and children, that gives the church a tremendous advantage. And when it comes to evaluating character, When a man brings his family into the church, right there in flesh and blood, you see living examples of what kind of person this man's leadership is developing. But I don't believe, strictly speaking, that a man must have wife and children to be an elder. Do you think the Apostle Paul met elder qualifications? Because he didn't have a wife. and apparently didn't have children. Paul may not have called himself an elder, per se, that I remember, but he functioned as an elder. in regard to his ministry in the church in Corinth. He continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them, and then a statement from Acts 20, 31 about his ministry in Ephesus. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. I think Paul functioned as an elder in Corinth and at Ephesus. In addition to his work, it was also Paul that wrote the words suggesting that people remain single. His belief was that there were many advantages to remaining single, and he said in 1 Corinthians 7, but I want you to be without care. He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But he who is married cares about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. So in some, I would say, I think it's an advantage to have the experience of marriage and raising children in the office of elder. It would be hard for me to imagine dealing with a married couple or dealing with a parental situation if I hadn't been there. So it's an advantage. I also believe in its advantage, a big advantage for the church in being able to evaluate a man when he has a family. It's easier to evaluate character, but I don't strictly believe that a man must have a wife or children and children to be an elder. All right, that takes us to the second section where Titus talks about disqualifiers. Verse seven, for a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money. And so you can see there five, I think, character traits which disqualify a man from being an elder. Again, he has to be blameless. He's a man with good reputation. And there you see there he used a synonym for elder in this case. He put in the word bishop. The reason an elder has to have a good reputation is because he's a steward. A steward is a person who cares for the possessions of someone else. The church in this case. The church is God's possession. It's the bride of Jesus Christ. And so the person taking care of God's possession has to meet certain character traits if he's going to be a caretaker for the church of God. First one, not self-promoting, not self-willed. The word means self-pleasing. An elder's not in his position to advance himself in any way, not financially, not in fame, not in reputation, not in popularity. And we can all agree, I think, that too many pastors have become enamored with the popularity or prosperity that came with having a public position. The publicity itself is not the problem. Many great preachers have become very well-known and public figures. It's the motivation that is the problem. Elders that are desiring self-promotion are a problem when it comes to being an elder. Not hot-headed, quick-tempered in the wording of the Scripture today. It's very important that an elder not be hot-headed The first time he blows up in a meeting or you know if he meets with a couple in the church and starts yelling He's gonna lose respect. He's going to lose trust. He loses effectiveness as a leader. It's even worse if he blows up in the pulpit and Now, all of us get angry at times, and a person doesn't disqualify himself, I don't think, with one incident. You have one incident where a man loses his temper, what do you do? You go, you ask forgiveness, you make it right, and we all move on. But what about the third? and fourth time. Then we have to look at the advice of Solomon. A man of great wrath will suffer punishment, for if you rescue him, you'll have to do it again. Isn't that true? Paul said that man has no business being an elder in the first place. Now, on these five disqualifiers, there's an element of judgment that's involved. You don't think I wouldn't eliminate a man after one offense, and you wouldn't want to eliminate a man from being an elder who's actively working on controlling his temper with God's help. And God doesn't give us an inventory. with 10 questions to score. Under 30, you're good. Over 30, you can't be an elder. That's judgment. Again, the elder qualifications are not as much a checklist, but a way of evaluating Christian character for fitness and church leadership, and it requires judgment, requires judgment. All right. Number five, not addicted, not given to wine. Ephesians 5.18, do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit. See, being addicted means that the person is controlled, not by the Holy Spirit, but by that substance or whatever else the person is addicted to. He's controlled by the habit. It could be alcohol, it could be drugs, it could be medications, could be gambling, or it could be pornography, or any such thing as becomes addictive in a man's life. By the way, more and more research is showing that addiction to technology is becoming a huge problem, huge problem, especially among younger people. Not revengeful, the word here in the text, is not violent. And violence can take two forms. One can be immediate, that hot-headed response. But it can also be the person who holds grudges and seeks to get even. A violent person is not always a hothead. He could be very cool-headed and very calculated in getting back at people that he perceives offended him. Violence is not always physical. It can do violence to a person's reputation. All right. The last one among the disqualifiers. He's not mercenary. He's not greedy for money. So an elder, if paid by the church, should not be too focused on his pay. and life outside the church, he should not be overly focused on riches either. Jesus said, no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. What do you mean, Jesus? You cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6, 24. The word mammon means wealth and the pursuit of wealth. It's always, as far as I know, it's always used in a negative sense. It's associated with excess. So Jesus said, you can't be all about money and truly serve God at the same time. So a man that's all about wealth shouldn't be an elder in the church. All right, those are the disqualifiers. And then he went on to a list of traits that do qualify an elder or would be highly desirable for an elder, the qualifiers. But he's hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled. The first of those six is charitable. charitable toward others. The word is hospitable, generous. You know, a person who seeks to meet the needs of others. When we use the word hospitality, we're often specifically talking about hosting guests. Which is true, if you think of the first century culture, that makes a lot of sense. There were travelers, there were not many inns. The inns that were, were squalid places often, and plus travel was slow, and to stay at inns night after night after night became expensive. So Christian brothers and sisters in those days provided a place to stay, hospitality. Current cultural needs are different, but an elder is a man who desires to help others. Promoter of good. The elder must be a man who loves good men. That's what the word means here. He promotes good, he promotes good men. The elder's church or a good elder's church should be a place where doing good becomes the pattern, not the exception. A verse to consider is Galatians 6.10. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. Next word that we have is sober-minded. This means sensible regarding appetites. It means temperate, not overdoing things. What are you tempted to overdo? And we're not talking about sinful things here. In this case, we're talking about excess. Too much food, too many sweets, too many video games, too much time watching or playing sports, too much time scrolling on the internet, too much time on Facebook, too much TV, too much pop music, too much money spent on my hobby, too much attention to appearance, too much attention given to career. Oh, there's 100 things. There are a hundred things that vie for a man's attention. Is he caught up in them? Any one of them. For an elder, there should be two primary focuses in his life. Jesus said it this way in Mark 12, verse 30 and 31. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, this is the first commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So that's what an elder is supposed to be caught up in, loving, serving God, loving, serving others. Not that you can't do any of these others. You know, that would be out of balance as well. We need recreation and hobbies are good and healthy for a person that Paul's not arguing against them. He's just saying be sensible in regard to your appetites because any one of these can occupy more and more and more space in your life. And pretty soon on the stage of your life, this interest is crowding the Holy Spirit to some tiny corner backstage, hardly seen, hardly heard. So all the other appetites need to be contained within reason. All right, just, in dealing with people, the word just means right with people, honest, fair, equitable, not tricky, not a con man. But think for a moment about how many passers we hear of on the news. Generally, the ones we hear about are from larger churches, but think about how many of them actually turned out to be con-mad, out for money, behind the scenes involved in scandals. Pure in dealings with God, the word here is holy, reverent, worshipful, always honoring the Lord. back to this matter of using judgment. When assessing a man for the office of the elder, a congregation must evaluate a man's relationship with God. That feels uncomfortable to some of us because, you know, of that, oh, you know, oh, you can't judge. We can't judge. Well, actually, Jesus indicated that we must judge the character of a man. in order to avoid false prophets. This is Matthew 7, 15, and 16. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. How am I gonna do that, Jesus? You'll know them by their fruits. So we have to evaluate the fruits in a man's life. When choosing an elder, we have to evaluate a man's character as it relates to his relationship with God. Well, how do we do that? You look at the fruit in his life, starting probably with the fruits of the spirit. How much love emanates from him? How much peace? How much joy? How much patience does he have? How much kindness? How much gentleness do you feel coming from him? Pure in dealings with God. And self-controlled. Strength in restraining sinful appetites. Temptations will come. They'll come every day. For most of us, temptations will come because we all have a fallen nature. The question is, what does a person do when those temptations come? An elder must not be a person who rolls over and gives in to those temptations. An elder has to fight temptation. He has to show a determined refusal to be enslaved by sinful lusts. Many church leaders have fallen because they were enslaved to their own lusts, and their fall from grace is often monumental. All right, let me move on to the last section. The last two elder qualifications have to do how with the potential elder interacts with the Bible. The first one, he believes in scriptural authority, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught. The elder must absolutely refuse to ever give ground on the authority of scripture. Now, the truth is that what the Bible says about what constitutes sin will become more and more culturally unpopular. There's going to be tremendous pressure on elders to back down on lines that scripture lays in the sand. And this is already happening, as you know, in churches across the land. Church leaders are unwilling to stand their ground and say, No man comes to the Father except by Jesus Christ. Church leaders unwilling to stand ground on sexual matters. Multiple churches won't call out living together before marriage. Multiple churches endorse LGBTQ behavior as if it were sanctioned by God. Church leaders unwilling to stand ground on the dignity of life and won't condemn abortion. Church leaders must be willing to stand on the authority of scripture and refuse to back down, even if necessary, under the pain of death. And there are Christian brothers and sisters across the world, our brothers and sisters and friends, who are under pain of death because they stand with Scripture and the gospel. So the elder must stand firm against attacks on the veracity of scripture. Scripture is under attack. People say, well, we can't trust scripture because there were errors in translation. We can't trust scripture. The prejudices of the writers come through too much. We can't trust scripture. It's culturally outdated. It's not relevant until we update it. And scripture is going to come under attack because of the power system in this world. We know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. We know that we are of God. We also know the whole world is under the sway of the wicked one. The Bible's going to come under attack. Some attacks occur through negligence. where churches and elders and pastors ignore the Bible. People are biblically illiterate. Even people that have been in church for a long time sometimes are illiterate when it comes to the Bible in place of Scripture. In some churches, you may hear feel-good stories, you may hear promises of prosperity and health, you may hear the social gospel all about humanitarian efforts, you might hear political agendas, you might hear anything other than Scripture. And should the Bible ever fail to be taught here in this church, whether under me or whether under someone after me. Please, get out. Don't wait. Don't wait to pass go and collect $200. Just go. Just go to somewhere where the Bible is. is respected and believed and taught. All right, last one for today. Able to teach that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. So the elder is skilled at teaching sound doctrine, ensuring that people understand basic scriptural truths. What sin is? What is repentance? the Trinity, the atoning death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, his second coming, how to pray, what is the church, and how does it function. Now this number 15, able to teach, is different than the first 14, because this one is actually a spiritual gift. All the others are matters of character. that in addition to the needed Christian character, an elder also must be able to teach. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, 28, that God has appointed these in the church. He's talking about spiritual gifts, elders, or apostles, prophets, teachers. After that, those that work miracles, gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues, And so the elder needs to, you know, have the ability to teach, but of course not all teaching happens publicly. Sometimes it happens quietly behind the scenes. So part of the teaching of an elder is to impart good doctrine, and another part is to rebuke persons contradicting sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those that contradict. We haven't, fortunately, had to deal with too much of people contradicting sound doctrine here at Bethel Christian Church in the recent past, but once in a while, once in a while. So why is it so important for the elder to insist on scriptural authority and to be able to teach sound doctrine? And the answer is in the next two verses, if you have your Bible open to Titus 1, verses 10 and 11. For there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision whose mouths must be stopped who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. In this world, evil is restless. Evil is restless. The minute sound teaching goes out the door, subversive things come in the door. There won't be a vacuum. Sound teaching goes out the door, subversive teaching comes in the door. Well, that's a look at what elder qualifications are. And it's very sobering, very sobering for me to look at those. And someday, presumably, Jim and Carl and I, we're not so young anymore, but someday this church is going to need to know about elder qualifications. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for instruction that you've given us in Scripture. I thank you for this church and for the interest in Scripture and for the weight that these people give to Scripture. May we never back down. May you always be working on developing godly character day by day as we mature through the Holy Spirit and through reading your word. And we ask that you would be with us as we continue to worship this morning as well. Father, I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.