So we're in 1 Timothy 3. As we read these qualifications for elders, don't tune out. If you don't have any aspirations to leadership, you're not off the hook. All these character qualities should be true of every mature Christian man, all right? So you need to be thinking, shining a mirror on yourself as we study this. Also, ladies, these are the kind of things, if you're single, that you ought to be looking for in a guy. Okay, so this is mature Christian man kind of stuff here. So we're in 1 Timothy 3, there's a parallel list in Titus 1 that we won't teach through separately, I'll just make some references to it, it's very similar. Most of these qualifications fall into the area of character, all right. There's only two abilities listed in this passage. So let's read it, and you pick out the two abilities for me. All right, I'm gonna start with 1 Timothy 3, verse one. The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach. The husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with dignity keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. All right, somebody give me one of the two abilities he's gotta have. That's it, the ability to teach. And what's the other one? Yeah, he's got to be a good manager. Thank you. In fact, the title overseer all by itself is a management word, isn't it? Okay, an overseer. So those are the two of the things he's got to be able to do in addition to these important character qualifications here. Now Paul starts off by saying, this saying is trustworthy. This was a favorite thing for him to say in this letter. He said it three times in this letter, and he says it again when he writes some stuff in 2 Timothy. So when he opened with these words, this saying is trustworthy. What saying is trustworthy? Is this trustworthy saying about the desire to serve as overseer? Or is this trustworthy saying about the task of overseer? What's trustworthy here? Well, it's the main emphasis on the desire or the task. Well, they're close, aren't they? But if I had to come down to it, I would say what's trustworthy is this information he's about to say about an overseer. What do we learn about overseers or the office, as it says here, of overseer from verse one? Two things I can learn about it from verse one. Okay, it's noble. If you have a bad elder, it'd be like Chernobyl. And what's the other one? Well, it's gonna learn about an overseer or the office of overseer from this verse. Okay, it's a task. It's a job. The Greek word is work. Erg, as in energies. It's work. It's really not an office to be filled. It's a job to be done. That's what it comes down to. So that's what's trustworthy. So this saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Now, when Paul wrote anyone, how do we know he didn't mean women? Well, one is, you've got to be married to a woman. OK, so first off, it's hard for a woman to be the husband of one wife. OK? What else? From other scriptures, how would we know that? He does not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man because he does not command her to see a woman. Thank you. And the creation order, man created first. All right, so one of the jobs of an overseer is to teach. How can she do that if she can't do it? And another thing we talked about, the word overseer all by itself is a management word. And so how can a woman have authority? She's not supposed to have authority over a man. And yet, if you're an overseer, that's got something to do with authority. So for all those reasons. Want to add anything to it? Well, First Corinthians says women have to be silent in church, and that's a pretty hard to teach and be silent at the same time. Yeah, all right, now, so going back to our verse, the saint of trustworthiness, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Is the desire to be an overseer one of the requirements? Well, y'all might be right, but he doesn't say that. He just mentions if someone desires to do it, it's a noble task. I don't know why anybody in his right mind would wanna do it. It's a lot of work. The reason I think Paul was motivated to say this, go back in the first century. It's an illegal religion. You're persecuted by the Jews and by the Romans. Most of these churches are so small, you're not going to make your living off of this as an overseer. So you've got to be bi-vocational. You've got all these time pressures. You've got persecution going on. Plus you got the problems, just people problems. People are problems. You know, we got trouble right here in River City with a capital T and that rhymes with P and it stands for people. So some people are crazy enough to want to do it, but you shouldn't be forced to do it. Peter goes on to say, I exhort the elders, shepherd the flock of God, not under compulsion, but willingly. So I think there are people who don't want to be an elder, because it is a headache, but they're willing to serve the Lord and do that if the church wants them to, that's all right. And they shouldn't be forced to do it, you shouldn't have to be pressured and guilted in to do it, not on a compulsion that way, but on the other hand, if you're crazy enough to want to do it, that's okay too. And so Paul's saying if anybody wants to do that, it's a noble task. I would disagree that it's a requirement. Maybe it is. But it's okay. We don't have to agree on it. Now, he does call a church leader an overseer. I didn't write that up here. The Greek word is where we get our word episcopal. Epi, like an epilogue, means over. And the other word is skopos. You get a word scope from that. Overseer comes from that. So an Episcopal church is so named because it's church government in a pyramid like the Catholic Church is, where you're ruled by overseers. But this word is synonymous in the Bible with two other words for leaders. What are the two other words in English? OK, pastor. And what's the other one? Elder, right. So I won't show you the verses on it, but they're all used interchangeably. And if you want to kind of rearrange it, these two are functions, and this is, again, a character quality. So Elder, Presbuteros, we're going to work Presbyterian, it means old man. You might have heard of Presbyopia. So this is a quality. You've got a mature man, and that qualifies him to do these two functions that kind of grow out of that. to be a manager over the church, and then pastor, it's the word shepherd. We don't use pastor much except in a religious context, but this wasn't a religious word. It meant shepherd. So that's caring for, feeding, leading, guiding the church. Does that make sense? So in a modern church, if there's any distinction in these three titles, it's completely man-made. It's convention. The King James, by the way, doesn't put overseer here. What does it put? Bishop. Yeah, now that's another word we don't much use. That's kind of a high church Anglican word, really. But sometimes you'll hear bishop. So anyway, all these words are interchangeable. It's the same person, and they're co-equal. So, that said, going back to this word overseer, it is a manager. And if women could be overseers, she wouldn't be a manager, she'd be a wominger. So I'd mess his word up. But I looked it up. Homer in the Iliad used this word as the guardian of a city. So you see the protective role. And so Gerald and I are always looking out to protect the church against Bad eggs. We even took the address off the website. So people just don't show up. We don't know they're coming. We can't pre-qualify people before they come. They have to call, find out where we meet. So that's just one. We lock the doors to keep bad actors out, give us time to respond. You know, just to protect her, spiritually and physically. I know an Anglican priest, you know, they always wear those funny, what do they call them? Schmocks or something. Anyway, he's got a revolver inside of it. And he said, it's my duty to protect the flock, both spiritually and physically. Anyway, now, in classical Greek, the episkopos, the overseer, it was a reference to the gods as guardians of the truth. So, okay, there we go again. So, overseer, guardian, that's the idea. Theron, his lexicon said, it was someone who is charged with the duty of seeing that things to be done are done rightly. So let's imagine we have stinky music. Whose job is it to be sure it's not stinky? The overseer's job. And let's suppose we're sitting here and it's freezing cold and the lights don't turn on. Whose job is it to be sure it's not freezing cold and the lights do turn on? The overseers, that doesn't mean he has to do it himself. Have you ever noticed when you come in, it's generally clean in here and the chairs are straight, right? Who's in charge of that? The overseers. But what if we don't bring enough food every Sunday? We run out. Whose job is it to browbeat everybody to bring more food? He doesn't have to go out and buy it himself, but he's got to talk to people about it. You see what I'm saying? Okay, somebody's got to do that. Every group that succeeds has some kind of leadership going on in it. So that's what he's doing. And he does say it's a task, and I've already mentioned the Greek word is ergon, erg, an erg of energy. It means work, that's what it is. So to summarize verse one, the ministry of an overseer, it involves management, it's a noble thing to do, and it's a lot of work. Paul said that's a trustworthy saying. That's relief. Boy, what a great question. I don't see that in scripture anywhere. OK. I'll just ask. Oh, you should ask. The idea of being called to the ministry is as extra biblical as saying there's a difference between an overseer, a pastor, and an elder. I would add, though, that Ephesians 4 passage, where he gifts these men of the church, that included in that is the shepherd. So I think there is a- A gifting. Yeah. A gifting. Yes. we wouldn't call it a calling, but we would say that the Lord is gifting this person to the church. Aside from the gifting aspect, because some people are gifted as pastor teachers, say, now this guy's got to be able to teach. That's a little different than the gift of teaching. I see you, Alan. Hang on. So I would say I am no more called to lead this church than you are to be an electrician. You say to somebody, what's your vocation? Right. That's from the Latin vocative, to call. What has God called you to do? See, and I hate to be cynical, but I think a lot of this call to the ministry comes from the fact that I gotta justify making my living from this thing, so I got some special anointing from the Lord that you need to give me money. But point is, there's nothing more special about what I'm doing than what you do. It's a matter of what God's gifted you to do. You see? All right. That's my opinion, you can disagree. Alan. Jesus had a prophet, priest, and king, division in his religion. Yeah, I think it's mixing apples and oranges, just like Old Testament prophets were called. And the preacher's trying to make himself a prophet. That's what's happening there. But to your point, we try to do church's New Testament as we can. And most churches don't really care about that. So they start adding on and doing things in a different way than we see in the New Testament. I'm not saying that's sinful. I'm not saying it's anti-biblical. It's extra-biblical. And when you start doing things in a different way than you see in the Bible, you have to start creating things that aren't in the Bible, like distinctions between these three names. And so it's like sociologists will tell you, when you get over, they say it's 150 people in any group. You have to layer on management and complexity. I was having a big talk with one of the local pastors. I was at the meeting. You're supposed to introduce yourself. And I said, I'm one of three. co-equal leaders in our, I think I said three co-equal pastors in our church, and that ruffled a few feathers. And one of them wanted to be sure and point out, well, we have to make a distinction between the senior pastor and the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and it's all about management and control. He's like the CEO of a corporation. Well, they have to do that because they've already departed from so many biblical examples that we see. So that's where it comes from. Yes, sir? In fact, it says the office of overseer. There's no Greek word for office in it. It's a ministry. It's not an office. Tell me about kinda. Oh. I thought I must have missed something. Okay. Thank you. Right. All right. There you go. Now, that's first one. I can tell. Well, Gerald, I'm going to challenge your 26-week thing. All right. Not really. We are now about to launch into 14 qualifications that I certainly won't finish today. Look at the first one. an overseer must be above reproach, and on it goes. What's the significance of the word must? M-U-S-T, must. This is a requirement. The Greek word is dei, D-E-I. It's necessary, it's binding. You don't want to fudge. Now that said, back in the days before cameras, Lee Sheen tells me, that all artists tried to paint photographic images of people and events and what they looked at. Well, once the camera came out, Well, it's a big deal. You don't need somebody to paint with that precision. So people like Monet started painting more abstractly. And there's a Monet out in the hallway there, and it's fuzzy. You know what it is, but it's dots. And that's when more modernism and all that jazz came out. Well, anyhow. you can argue, is he painting here a Rembrandt photographic list, or is this more of a Monet? Now I'm gonna argue, even though we don't wanna fudge on anything, I'm gonna argue this is really more of a Monet. A lot of these things are overlapping and a little bit hard to precisely identify. So as we go into it, it is an important thing, but I think it's more of a Monet that he's painting here. So anyway, I think it all hinges on the first qualification. What's the first qualification? above reproach. So what does that look like? I think everything else in this defines what it means to be above reproach. I'm gonna keep coming back to that. If we were to go to Titus chapter one where the same list is there, he starts with above reproach and he ends with above reproach. He brackets it, that's his frame. So we got this Monet and what's the frame? Above reproach. This is what it looks like to be above reproach. You with me? So again, guys, you're not off the hook. If you don't desire to be an elder, it's irrelevant. These things should be true of your life if you're a mature Christian man. Alright, what's the difference between above reproach and sinless? And it's your public reputation. Everybody sins. We do, but it's your public reputation. The King James, New King James says he's blameless. You're not perfect. Nobody's perfect. Don't screw up, all right? So the Greek word is the Greek word not jammed in with the Greek word on, jammed in with the Greek word to hold. In other words, you can't take hold of anything. There's nothing on this guy to grab hold of that's a legitimate basis for accusation. Imagine the grease pig contest. Some people might illegitimately accuse him of something, but there's nothing legitimate you can accuse him of that's a stain on his character. And what was that word you said, Joel? You said it's his reputation. That's it. Yeah, Gerald? among the body as opposed to looking on a website and finding somebody. Because if you look on a website, you don't know the person's reputation. They may have all the domain qualifications, look great, let's hire him, here he is. And then, boom, you realize, man, this was the best. What have I done? Whereas when the person's coming from within the body, like Chris has been with us for a couple of years, we know. It's not like there's any surprises hidden under that stone that later gets unturned and we all think, oh, no, what did we do? That's well said. Amen. I think of Job, there was a man whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. He was above reproach. So anyway, the rest of this defines what it means to be above reproach. So the next on our list, one aspect of being above reproach is he must be the husband of one wife. What does it mean to be the husband of one wife. Is this something about divorce? Is this something about polygamy? Is this something else? What is it? Currently. Currently the husband of one wife. Not a woman chaser. You don't have a wife and a girlfriend on the side. Okay. Well, some things are more clear than others. There's a Greek word for divorce and it's not here. But let's talk about Jim Baker. That's an old example. He only had Tammy Faye as his one wife, but he was not a one-woman type of man. He had other women. There's a lot of those cats like that, right? So here's the point. The Greek says he's got to be a one-woman man. Now, there's no dedicated Greek word for wife. It's only the word woman. They'll usually put a the in front of it, the woman. That's usually your wife. But here it doesn't have that. So when you don't use an article, it can indicate that it's the character quality of a thing. So in other words, the idea seems, in my opinion, is he's a one-woman type. He's a one-woman type of man. Jim Baker wasn't a one-woman type of man. Bill Clinton certainly wasn't a one-woman type. But he still only has one wife. So you see the difference? So I don't really think at this point it has anything to do with divorce. You could maybe bring that in later. It doesn't have to do with polygamy. That wasn't a problem in the Roman Empire. They just didn't practice. The Romans didn't. They had so many concubines and affairs going on. You had one wife for legal purposes, but you might have been terribly immoral. But the Romans weren't into polygamy. And I'm not for it either. But I'm just saying, I don't think that's what Paul's talking about. So you want a guy that's morally pure. Yes, sir, Jason. The woman and the man, does that mean he has to have a woman? Oh, that's a great question. Are we saying, let's say, a single man that's never been married, is he saying he can't be an elder? Well, let's have a yes to start with, and then we'll have a no. Why do you think that? Besides the fact that it says this. There's things that are dependent on it. It is proof, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. Well, no, you're right. So the best testing ground is if his wife's not happy, that's a problem there. He might not be the cause of her unhappiness, but he's certainly got his hands full if she's not happy. All right, so yeah, now are you for or against? Well, that's the question. What if a guy was a general in the United States Army and he never had been married? Well, he's probably got management abilities, but he might not be very loving. What if he's... Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right. So we got a yes and probably maybe a no. All right. Ooh, what about Paul and Timothy and Titus? And Jesus, we would never let Jesus be elder in this church. All right. Well, that's right, though. What about that? No, he was higher than that. He was an apostle. I know, this is not inspired, but the ESV study Bible, if you have one, you can look it up in your own notes. It says, Paul is speaking here of the ordinary cases and is not absolutely requiring marriage or children, but is giving a picture of a typical approved overseer as a faithful husband and father. So it's the exception not to be married. Most of the time, this is an academic question, although it does come up upon occasion. And so run that either way. But back to Gerald's main point, it ain't enough to have been to seminary. You've got to somehow have proven character. You know, a lot of single guys, I mean, if he's single, okay, still, he needs to be a one-woman type of man in the sense that he needs to not be running around. So I think the issue right here is not marital status, it's moral purity myself. Yes, sir? Yeah, I was just going to say, I knew a guy that was going to Fort Nation and did all the doctrines and this sort of thing and gets to the end. Next time you do this, you're going to have this part of your denominational process. You need to find out about that stuff. Yes, it will. Thank you. Amen. That's well said. It was really hard for us to have others in small churches. I guess if I had the air on one side or the other, I'd rather have the air on that side. This is in the framework of a buffering approach. Yes. Yes, right. That's right. Boy, that really looks suspicious. I don't know what's going on with this guy. And so the idea is, being above reproach, he needs to be able to handle his relationship with women in a pure and honest way to where he's not going to be accused of something because of the way he's acting around it. Thank you. I agree. That's well said. Now, the next requirement, another facet of being above reproach in verse 2 is to be sober-minded. Now the Greek word for sober-minded is literally not drunk. The opposite of drunk is sober. What's the difference between sober and sober-minded? Okay, all of you here are sober, I think. But what does it mean to be sober-minded? Level-headed. And somebody over here said temperate, right? What's temperate? OK, carefully considering pros and cons. Right. Good judgment. That's right. Yeah. That's good. So to use the drunk example, if at this moment a drunk driver was going down Cowan Road out here, he's going to be swerving from one side to the other. He might run the stop sign. He might hit up on the curb. He's not well balanced. He's not using good judgment. So his life has got to be well balanced. Good judgment. He's weighed pros and cons. He's thought through things. That's right. So if you've got a guy that's real moody and he has mood swings, he probably shouldn't be an elder, for example. Or if his life is just a wreck and he's hopelessly in debt and his car's always broken down because he don't get around to fixing it and you go to his house and there's a hole in the roof that's been there five years and the grass looks like you could make a Vietnam movie in it. OK. He's probably not sober-minded in these things. I saw a hand. Who was that? Oh, yes, sir. James talked about being double-minded. Oh. Yes, that does fit very well, not double-minded, that's right. So I looked up words, and you know, when I was looking this up, it says, he's to be level-headed, well-balanced, stable, freed from excesses. So in that sense, he does have authority, but he shouldn't be authoritarian. He has to make judgments, but he shouldn't be characterized as being somebody that's judgmental. And certainly, people come to him for his opinion, but he shouldn't be opinionated. That's not being sober-minded. OK. That's right. That's right. Well, this is written in Greek and it's not drunk in Greek. Yeah, I don't know what sober is etymologically in English, but I do in Greek there. All right, so now we're still in verse two, right? The next one is self-controlled. So part of being above reproach is to be self-controlled. See, that's very similar to sober-minded, it sounds like to me. What situations can you think of where it would be important for an elder to be self-controlled? Okay, everybody is losing their heads. You need to have a cool head. That's very good. There are a lot of issues that people can get really worked up over. What else? Yeah, what kind of temptations? Okay, take more power than you need. Well, I was thinking too, first century, most of the church leaders were bivocational. What does that mean? Yeah, in other words, they weren't full-time as church leaders. He's got a lot less time than a full-time person would. So he's got to have self-control when it comes to what does he do with his free time? How does he manage his family and his business? When does he have time to study? Does he make time to study? Does he have free time to counsel? So he's got to be a man of self-control. One of the big duties is teaching. Well, look, if he never spends time to study, he's gonna be a pretty cruddy teacher, probably. Hudson Taylor, you know, his famous missionary, way to go to China, isn't that right? He said this, it touches on both points. He says, my greatest temptation is to lose my temper, self-control, his temptation is to lose his temper, why? Over the slackness and inefficiency so disappointed in those on whom I depend. So he was frustrated because the other missionaries were slack and inefficient. They should have been having self-control. And the good thing, he did have self-control because it tempted him to lose his temper. He goes on to say, it is no use to lose my temper, only kindness, but oh, it is such a trial. The Greek word for self-controlled is the word saved, jammed together with the word thinking. Literally, you would translate it, he's got to have saved thinking. It doesn't mean that like it does in English, but it came to describe someone who was reasonable, sensible, had a sound mind, and from that, the idea of self-control. So Proverbs says, a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. The NAS here doesn't say self-control, it says prudent. What does it mean to be prudent? There's a prudential life insurance company. What do you want from a life insurance company? Trustworthiness, wisdom in investing money so that they can help you in your time of distress. So it means marked by wisdom, shrewd in the management of practical affairs. And so one commentator said, the ministry is no place for the man whose life is a continual confusion of unaccomplished plans and unorganized activity. All right. Let's go for one more. Are we still in verse 2? Yeah. Alright. Oh yeah, here's respectable. You remember Rodney Dangerfield? He always said, I don't get no respect. To be above reproach includes being respectable. So how would you describe someone who is respectable? Worth paying attention to? Actions lead to fruitful outcomes, usually. Yes. Okay. Well, according to the dictionary, or actually the internet, it said respectable people, this is convention, right? They're polite. They're authentic. They're determined. They're empathetic. They're helpful. They're confident. They're open-minded. They're honest. level-headed, humble, optimistic, and decent, as in moral. So as you see, Gerald and I will soon be resigning from being elders. Nobody can make that up. But we kind of know it, right? We bank on Main Street under Tandem Bank. When you go into your bank, you're not going to see a guy behind the counter covered in tattoos with a nose ring and long stringy hair taking your money. See, that's not respectable. They're going to at least hire people who look respectable. They might be just as crooked as anybody, but you see what I'm saying? We know respectable. when we see it. Now the Greek word is kosmos. We got our word cosmonaut or kosmos from that and it means orderly or proper. And so an overseer's life is to be well ordered. He's got to have his act together. Honorable would be a definition for this Greek word. It's the opposite of dishonorable. When a soldier gets a dishonorable discharge, that means he's had some bad conduct. That's not respectable. So he's gotta be a man worthy of respect. I tell you what, I'm gonna do one more and I'll quit, because I can do it quickly. An overseer must be above reproach in the area of, what's the next one in verse two? Hospitality. What does it mean to be hospitable? Yeah, the ability to serve is good. Loving different people. Yeah, that's right. Inviting. Approachable. Approachable is a good one. Very good. Were you going to say that? Good. Accessible, yeah. The Greek is a Greek word, affection, and the Greek word stranger, jammed together. And affection for strangers, fond of strangers. Again, I looked it up, it says, it involves extending warmth, kindness, and generosity toward guest visitors, or even strangers, creating an environment that fosters genuine human connection and a sense of belonging. True hospitality, watch this, it extends beyond the confines of professional settings. Somebody wrote a book, Open Heart, Open Home, that's what it was. And so the idea of hospitable, literally, an elder is a type of person whose home is open. People stay there, they come for counseling, for training, for meals, for prayer meetings, for Bible studies, that kind of thing, or to host itinerant workers. So you remember, Jay was telling us that he was a member of a church for 10 years, but never once. was he invited into the home of another church member of that church. That's a little too cold for me. So we ought to all be hospitable, right? But especially a leader, because he sets the tones for the church. So I went to another church. I was invited to be on an ordination committee. I didn't know this guy from Adams off OX. And I thought, why are they inviting me to come to this ordination committee? But I went. I could ask him theological questions. I got there, and they all knew each other. I was the odd man out, okay? So I go in this room with about 15 guys, and they're all sitting there quietly, waiting for it to start. Nobody said a word to me. Hello? Who are you? How are you? No interest in me or getting to know me. And they all obviously knew each other. And so then the guy came in, you know, everybody asking questions. And then they all left. I might as well have been invisible, but I think a pastor sets the tone for a church like that. If he's cold, the church is going to be cold. See what I'm saying? It's risky because you don't know the person. You don't know the people. So I think maybe the idea could be that this is a man who used his stuff, flew in his home. That's not his stuff in his home. He's kingdom minded, and that he's willing to take that risk to have people in his home, not knowing whether he's going to benefit from them in any kind of way. But he's doing it because he wants to love on them and minister to them. And it is risky. I think the leader is willing to take that risk as an example to the other people. But it's worth the risk. That's right That's right. And remember, too, house church was de rigueur at the time, all about home meetings. And as churches become more like businesses, they become more professional. And that's why I read this part, hospitality that extends beyond the confines of professional settings. Actually, some seminaries advise the students, you know, like in the military, officers do not fraternize with enlisted men. And we had a ministry at our church in Memphis to one of the military bases, and the officers wouldn't even ride in the van. We'd get enlisted men, and the officers would come separate. And there they are in church, and they wouldn't fraternize together, which I always thought was pretty weird. But anyway, in seminary, sometimes they're told, you do not be friends with church members. You get your friends with other pastors in different churches. You do not be friends with church members. This is crazy thinking. That's just wrong. Chris, I'm going to close after you say something. I just thought I'd share one of my mentors early on. The church growth movement told me, do not visit the home of your members. Wow. There you go. Because it'll sidetrack you. And the thinking is familiarity breeds contempt. That's why you wear a tie. I got my act together. I'm professional. Don't get too close. All right, well, I think we'll stop there. We've got plenty of material and we certainly won't finish today. Now next week, we're gonna go with the last qualification in this first, which is able to teach. And so we're gonna look at what does it look like when an overseer is not above reproach in his teaching ability? That's what we'll be looking at. This message was produced by the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, reforming today's church with New Testament church practices. Permission is hereby granted for you to reproduce this message. You can find us on the web at www.ntrf.org. May God bless you as you seek to follow Him in complete obedience to His Word. May your faith in the Lord Jesus be strengthened and your daily walk with Him deepened.