Amen. Alright, grab your Bibles and stand together please. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3. 1 Timothy chapter 3 in your Bible. So Brother Ramsey, whenever I say at the end of the service, like whenever we do a Bible study and I Go with like Q&A or whatever, and we're going to cut the live feed or whatever. All you're going to do is go to the invitation or the altar call or invitation slide and mute the audio so that way people can. People can still respond to the message when they're not on and then just let that run for a little while and then we'll cut it off or you can come back during the ending prayer. But that way, you know, it's not it doesn't just cut it. Yeah. That's fine. I'm just saying when we when I say let's cut the live feed and go to Q&A like at the end of tonight, you know, you're not exactly. Yes. So. All right. First one. First Timothy chapter three, verse number one, this is a true saying. If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you so much. for your blessings and your goodness and your mercy and your grace. And Lord, we thank you for your word and we pray that you'd help us tonight as we look at the next distinctive that makes us Baptist. And we pray, Lord, that you'd help us to apply these things to our lives and live them and believe them, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. All right, so, We've been going through the Baptist distinctives. We're getting real close to the end. We have one more. Man, you know, I really feel like we might. have a normal service on Sunday night, Sunday afternoon next week. It won't be Sunday night because we're having early evening service. It'll be after lunch and games or whatever. I think we'll just come back in here and have the last point. So that way we finish it up and go into the tent meeting time and then we pick up with a new series after the tent meeting. We good with that? I think we're good with that. Y'all pray for wisdom on the next series. I'm praying about what to do. I'm considering the book of Acts. I'm considering another book of the Bible, something like that, to do on Sunday nights. And so, y'all pray, and if you have suggestions, let me know and I will pray about that. All right? So, tonight, we're looking at The seventh distinctive before I say what it is. What was the first one? The Bible is our authority. Second one. Autonomy of the local church. Next one number three priesthood of the believer number four. Two ordinances and what are they? Baptism and the Lord's Supper, yes. Number five. Individual soul liberty. That is our liberty and responsibility in relation to God. And every person has their own individual liberty and responsibility toward God themselves, not forced. All right. Number six. saved and baptized church membership and tonight anybody want to the two offices there you go two offices pastor and deacon so what we're gonna do just this we sang a bunch all right and the message tonight there the lesson tonight is not gonna be long all right I'm gonna try to try to make it short And so, in 1 Timothy chapter 3 here, now, we believe, and Baptists believe, that there are two offices in the local church, and they're mentioned in 1 Timothy chapter 3. The two offices in the church, and we're not talking about a room that someone sits in, we're talking about officers, okay? The two officers of the church are The actual title of the office is not pastor, it's bishop, okay? In 1 Timothy chapter 3, it says in verse number 1, this is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop. The other office is not listed as an office in this passage, but it is mentioned in this passage, and that is deacons, all right? So the two offices are bishop and deacon. Now, we often say pastor and deacon. Let me clarify for you the terms pastor, elder, and bishop. They often refer to the office of the bishop. However, they are not the exact same thing. What you got, brother? That's right. Verse eight and on. Likewise, must the deacons be and then it goes on to the. the statements of qualification or qualities of the deacons. You have the qualities of the bishop from verse one through seven, and the qualities of the deacons from verse eight through 13, yeah. So we're not gonna go through those qualities. We could spend time doing that. We have done that. We've done that when we talked about it before. We've gone through the Baptist distinctives before and we've spent more than eight weeks on it, trying to keep it to eight weeks and trying to keep it simple. If you want to get deeper into this study, when we go through our church statement of faith, we've got that on video. We've dealt with these topics as well. We've been dealing with that on Sunday mornings in Sunday school. Also, as we've gone through the Landmarks of Baptist Doctrine, we've done that. And we've had another study that we've done, and that's the ABCs of Christian Maturity. ABCs of Christian Maturity. Someone asked if we could go through that again as a church. It's gonna be a while before we do that again. That specific study took five years. five years to go through. So if we do it again, it's going to be on another cycle. So when I say another cycle, you know, churches go through cycles. The cycles that churches are supposed to go through, I know this isn't necessarily relevant, but it is, cycles churches are supposed to go through is you have new believers, Right? Churches go through cycles based on the believers. As a pastor or the bishop of this church, that's the office, I have to understand and put to practice these cycles. You have win the lost, right? Evangelism. Folks get saved. They get baptized. They join the church. That's when that cycle begins, their basic discipleship begins. We start them through the basics of being a Christian. Then we take them through the ABCs of Christian growth. That's step two of basic discipleship. After they've gone through the ABCs of Christian growth, we can either send them through the videos of ABCs of Christian maturity or They just plug into all of the church services because then we start. We continue to go through what we believe as Christians, what we, how we practice our walk with the Lord. And then we do book studies through the books of the Bible. And so that's what we're doing on Sunday mornings through the books of the Bible. Probably when we get done with Revelation, we'll go back to Romans. I'm not real sure why, but I believe that the Lord has put the cycle for Sunday mornings, Romans to Revelation. It'll probably get upset. We'll probably do Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. Maybe we'll continue through the epistles again. Or maybe we won't. Maybe we'll go somewhere else, but it seems like the Sunday morning follows that. How many of you were here when we went through Romans? The first time. That was in 20. 14. My wife's the only one that was here, so when we go through Romans again, guess what? It'll be new for most of us. And Travis was here, yeah. So we go through Romans again. First Corinthians, same. None of y'all were here. Matter of fact, most of you came after we were in the middle of Hebrews or further. So most of you missed all of that. Now, by the time we get back to Hebrews, the cycle of where all y'all jumped in, Many of you, not all of you, but many of you will be ready for your next step in the ministry. For some of you, it'll be being involved in another church plant or being involved in some other missionary work. That's the way that if a church is going to be strong and full of the Spirit of God and actively serving God and continually growing, The cycle is you basically, over a three to five year period of time, someone gets saved and they grow and they learn, and then they're involved in the next step in their ministry and the Lord's work. And that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody, that the whole congregation comes and goes in five years, but a large portion of the congregation will. And some will stay and it'll and the core will continue to grow. But the idea is that the people who are are growing toward the top end of discipleship there, they've got to eventually. some of them will become the core group of other church plants or some of them will be a pastor. Some of them will become deacons. And as far as the men are concerned, ladies will be married to those folks or part of a core group either here or the next church plant. Does that make sense? That's a kind of a cycle type thing. And so, as we talk about these cycles, a very important factor of church cycles is going to be the officers of the church. We must have a bishop. The bishop is what we call the senior pastor of the church. That is the office. Not every person in the church that we call pastor is in the office of the bishop. That may go contrary to what some people feel like. I've heard a lot of Baptists say that, and a matter of fact, in my notes here that I got from somebody else, all right? Sometimes we do that, right? We go through studies of somebody else. I would give them credit, but I don't know where it came from. They didn't tell me who they were. It was just a part of other studies that I've accumulated over the years. In their study here, they say the terms pastor, elder, and bishop or overseer all refer to the same office. That's only partially true. The office is bishop. A bishop must be a pastor or shepherd, teacher, and a bishop must be an elder. He must be mature, a mature believer, able to lead, right? But the office is bishop, overseer. So we have mature believers in the church that are not in a position, in an official, in an office, official position. Does that make sense? So we have, men and women who have grown and have and have followed the Lord. And now you all know my wife is an elder lady in the church. She's not. She's not an old lady. She's an elder lady. Thank you. That was that was perfect timing there. She's she's an elder lady in the church. She's a mature believer of mature female believer. The pastor's wife is not an office in the church. The pastor's wife is not a position in the church. Pastor's wife is a position in the pastor's home. Okay, she doesn't work for the church as a pastor's wife, but she serves in the church as an elder lady. Okay, that's not an office. but it is an opportunity, right? It is a service that's provided just the same as our assistant pastor is not in an office. He's a pastor, but he's not a bishop. But he is also, we have ordained him, so to speak, as a deacon. That is an office, okay? So that's, and by the way, when we have assistant pastors, I typically, if it fits, We make them a deacon also because we want them to be in an office, but we recognize biblically that pastor is not necessarily an office. It is if it's the senior pastor, that's the bishop of the church, right? So he, as assistant pastor, he is a shepherd. He is a shepherd in the flock. but he doesn't hold an office as assistant pastor. He holds an office as bishop. Make sense? His wife does not hold an office, though she is an elder lady in the church, and she then has a ministry in the church, right? There's a difference between offices and ministries, okay? And then we have Brother Ramsey back there. Some people may think that he's a deacon. He's not been made a deacon. But he's an elder, and it's very obvious that he's an elder. He's very active in the daily ministry of the church, and he is an elder in the church, not a pastor. But he does do some shepherding functions as an elder. Friday nights, some of the other ministries that he does, sometimes he will have some shepherding aspects of the ministry. Does that make sense? So it's not like official or an office. But in his maturity as a believer, he's able to take on the level of things that he's able to take on as he's grown, right? Various other people in the church, I'm not gonna go through every single person and say where you're at on all of that. various other people in the church. They have particular talents and gifts that God's given. And some some are elder. Some are younger, not necessarily younger in age, but younger in the faith. Right. Sometimes we have older people who are younger in the faith. Makes sense. And then we have we have some folks who are younger people, but elder in the faith, right? Sometimes there are teenagers. Sometimes there are teenagers that are young. But they're mature in the faith, right? We want to develop that we want. We want to have young men that we can say, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity. We want them to be able to be elders as young people, right? We want young ladies to be able to be elder ladies in their spiritual maturity and in their actions, right? That's difficult when they're physically immature or sometimes even emotionally immature or whatever, but as young folks grow older, And maybe in their late teens, early 20s, they really ought to be able to take on responsibilities as they become elder, not older, but elder, okay? Now, that might not be the way our society goes today. Our society, you're not an adult until you're 18, and then you're really not an adult, really. Because we train our children, for whatever reason in our society, we train our children to remain children into their 20s. In fact, we train our children to remain children into their 30s. When I was 19 years old, I was told that a man does not become a man until he's about 35. That was back in the early 2000s. That's changed. Sometimes now, oftentimes, a man doesn't become a man until he's 40 something. And sometimes he never becomes a man. Sometimes men are always children. That's a terrible thing for our society. It's terrible. And by the way, that's same for women a lot of times. But here's the thing. You know, it wasn't very long ago, y'all realize that like the turn of the last century, it was not uncommon for everyone to be done with school at eighth grade. That's why I like and we we kind of like joke about the ignorance of folks who who say, you know, I graduated the eighth grade, you know, back folks from Kentucky. A lot of times, you know, I graduated eighth grade. What's that? And people make fun of that, but you know what? People graduate 12th grade with no more knowledge than the people who finished 8th grade today. In fact, most students, if they're good students, could get to 8th grade and pass the high school equivalency exam with an 8th grade education. Most students could. Now, when I say with an eighth grade education, I don't mean like, you know, public school education. I mean, if they applied themselves and they know what an eighth grader is supposed to know. You know, high school was always considered secondary school. It was optional. Now it's required because, you know, they want to raise your kids for you and control them and indoctrinate them so that, anyways, what's that have to do with the two offices in a church? It has a lot to do with it, by the way. Young folks, y'all know that it was not uncommon. How old do you guys think Timothy was when he took his first pastorate? So, Paul referred to his youth. called him a young man, his son in the faith. I would say that that would probably put him below the age of 20. Today, folks looking for a pastor, I had an evangelist reach out to me, not recently, it was a few years ago, and he said, hey, there's this church in Texas, they are looking for a pastor that I think you fit the description, how old are you? I was 30 something, 38, I think. And he said, well, I think that with your experience level and education and stuff that you they'll probably overlook how young you are. But they really would like to have a pastor that's at least 40 years old. Like, wow, at least 40. Huh. Now, I get it, it says they're not a novice. A novice has nothing to do with your age. It has everything to do with experience. So, I mean, we, for whatever reason, we think that you've gotta be old to be qualified. But that's not, there's no biblical support for that. Timothy was probably late teens, early 20s. Now think about that. Now you can't look at our youth group because they're out doing their youth group things, but think about that. If, let's see, Isaac's 16, I'd give him a couple more years. but imagine the kids graduate from the youth group, a young man graduates from the youth group after following his pastor and goes and plants a church. What kind of world would that work in? Well, the kind of world that a church trains their young people. and a family trains their children. Biblical times, by three years old, a boy starts school. Now we kind of, sort of, we have pre-kindergarten or preschool, something like that now at three years old. But by three years old, a boy starts school, and by that time, the requirements aren't that you're potty trained. That's like, whatever, you know, that you should figure that out already. But by three years old, a boy has some responsibility in the home already. Chores and stuff. at three years old. A three-year-old boy is expected, and a girl too, but a three-year-old is expected to already answer, yes sir, yes ma'am in the home. Already have an understanding of how, what is expected of them. Now, it doesn't mean that they're perfect and they don't, and they, you know, follow all the rules and everything. but they know what the rules are, and they know that they're to follow it. By five years old, they're supposed to have some more understanding of those things. In fact, by the age of 12, a boy becomes a young man, biblical times. By the age of 12, a boy becomes a man, a young man. And he's expected to start doing, by 13, he's expected to be involved in his father's trade. manly things adult things like working right and so used to be you would finish eighth grade and you would go on to your apprenticeship or your tech school or whatever your secondary education was going to be right it would be you would have your secondary education then you'd have post if you if you decided to go on to do education or something you would have post-secondary education which would be your undergraduate degree and then you if you decide to go on to a graduate degree you'd get your master's degree and then if you want to go for a post-graduate degree for a doctorate But those degrees were designed to be, your undergraduate degree was designed to be something to teach you if you've gone beyond trade level, like a journeyman, you would get your undergraduate in that sense of a trade. If you're going into education, that would be you're learning all the things that you need to know to be able to teach secondary school. high school, your bachelor's degree or your undergraduate degree. And then if you wanna teach undergraduate, you would go on to learn the master's program that would give you the ability to teach undergraduate or bachelor's degree. And then if you wanna teach teachers, Then you would go on to get your doctorate and you would master the things that you're teaching. You'd go on to get the doctorate, the doctors then teach the master's degree programs, master's degree programs teach the bachelor's degree programs, bachelor's degree programs teach secondary school. And back in the day, all you had to have in order to teach elementary school was a secondary school education. Yeah. Yes, sir. Young. Yeah. Now, young men, oftentimes it would be different for young men than it would be for young ladies. So age for getting married back then would depend upon whether or not he's completed the apprenticeship to the point where he can provide for a family. Now, today, I mean, some men never get to that point. Really, it would be, you would finish your, you would start your training for that, probably around the age of 13. It would usually take three to four years, and so you'd be 16 to 18, 16, 17, 18, something like that, to where you've mastered your skills to where you can now begin to prepare for a home. So, 17 to 19 was probably a common age for a young man to be ready to be married. We won't talk about ages for young ladies from a biblical perspective. It was a little bit younger, but within the mature age range. OK, so, but maturity in that sense was from a physical perspective. because maturity from a mental and emotional perspective was different then. And the reason is because we have dumbed down and squashed what maturity means today. And so for us to think about these teenage adults, it doesn't make any sense to us today because we've got a society of children in their 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s, and they're still children. Back then, you grew up early, and you were an adult, and you were an addition to society. The vast majority of people were, okay? So I say all these things because the reason that we have trouble today with filling the offices in a church is because people don't mature. until advanced ages. And you end up with pastors who are the only way you can have a pastor is a guy who's lived his life and worked through his life and now he's he's beat up and and torn down and all he's got left to give to the Lord is his leftovers. And He, and in order to do it, the other thing, the other side of it is in order to be a pastor, a lot of times today, you've got to, you've gotta be retired a lot of times if you're gonna, and that's why a lot of churches are looking for retired men because they have some retirement income and they don't have to take care of the guy or, you know, something like that. Now, and a lot of times pastors can, grow a church faster once they reach retirement age because they have the time to do it. There's a whole matter of philosophy of ministry. We have set a philosophy of ministry around here of volunteer pastoring, and that's the way that I do it. That's not the only way that it works. In fact, the Bible has a lot to say about a church taking care of their pastor. Every time I go through and I've talked pastor about it yesterday, even every time I go through the thought process and everything and think about what it would take for me to set aside some of my business things and focus more of my time on the church. The Lord just reminds me that He set certain things in my life for a reason. And so it's not necessarily, it's not that it will never be that way, it's just that There's times and talents for certain things, right? And so, maybe we stay doing what we're doing for a while. For the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years maybe. I don't know. Maybe when it's time for me to retire, I retire and full-time pastor or something. But y'all know that there's no such thing as a part-time pastor, right? Every pastor, even if he's working outside the church, he's full-time. So, the offices here. The offices here, and I apologize that this has been a lot of additional things to go with this, but it all ties together because churches need officers. We live in a day that a few different possible scenarios are in place. One, sometimes we set the qualifications for the office higher than the Bible does. And so no one is qualified. It's an elite. small, tiny group of people who can be qualified. And so we set the standards so high that we can't have pastors at any church because no church will accept a guy because he can't fit their standards, right? We also have churches where pastors are afraid of deacons taking over the authority of the church. And so they don't want to have deacons. It happens. Unless they have a big church, most of the small churches I know of have no deacons. Most of the small, independent Baptist churches have no deacons. If I think through all of the churches, all the pastor friends of mine, most of them don't have deacons. Would you say probably most of them don't have deacons? The smaller churches? Yeah. We expect, of course, deacons to be active, right? Not just, well, let's see, we need a deacon. You, you know, draw straws or whatever. No, we expect. Yeah, so we expect deacons to be active and actively involved in the ministry and, you know, a part of the work. And so that's something I have no problem with a small church having deacons. I think it's a biblical office in the church. If you can qualify someone to it, if you can train or ready someone and get someone in the place, then it's a good idea to have deacons. It's absolutely necessary to have a bishop in every church. It's absolutely necessary. I see, man, all the time, there's like all these listings online, churches seeking pastors. all over the country, all the time. There's like four churches in Michigan right now that if they don't get a pastor, they're gonna shut down. Now, does that mean that we need to go send people to Michigan? No, probably not because unfortunately, you probably would go candidate there and they'd say, no, you're not what we're looking for, right? That's nine times out of 10 right now. People wanna hang on to the power They want to hang on to the property. They don't want to preach and they don't want a preacher. They want a puppet. And all those started with P. There you go. That's right. And so you know, that's. That's the thing that you you end up with scenarios like that where churches end up shutting down because. They need a pastor. But they really don't want one. They want a puppet a lot of times. But sometimes, and this is what my pastor used to say, you know what? Some of those churches just need to shut down. It's sad. It's terrible that over a generation or two, sometimes a church starts and grows and they The Lord provides, and they have property, and they've got resources and things, and then they stop reaching the community, and they die out, and they shut down. Their property goes to some other ministry, sometimes not even the same type of ministry. Sometimes not even biblical. And it shuts down. It's sad. But sometimes it's better. you let it shut down and a new work start. Now, what would be amazing is if we could somehow network the ones shutting down with the ones wanting to start new works and somehow the folks that are shutting down be willing to say, you know what, you're gonna do something here, take it and do something. And then they can get up and going on it rather than having to go through the whole process of planting and renting and then finding a place. And I'm telling you, when you go through the process, you'll see it. but the two offices in a church that biblically and historically Baptists have believed in the two offices as opposed to having a hierarchy, a presbytery, an equal elder rule. That's a whole other thing that there's a, the Presbyterian rule of church government is equal elder rule where they have multiple men, that nobody is, maybe they have a presiding elder sometimes, or they'll have, you know, there's all these different polities or political establishments of how the government of a church runs. There's also churches that have Like an appointed person by an outside source that takes away the autonomy. Various different types like that, right? sometimes you have regionals and you know there's all these different things and some are pure are purely congregational and there's a difference between being a congregational like in the sense of congregational polity and pure congregational polity and that so Basic congregational polity is the church by the word of God and the leadership of the Lord and leadership of the spirit Choose who their leadership who their pastor is going to be right that's congregational rule in that sense but then there's full congregationalism and that is that the church as a whole makes all the decisions and the pastor, the office is just a figurehead. It doesn't make any decisions. That guy preaches and that's all he does and that's his only job, right? They don't recognize any scriptural authority. Within the Bible, the Bible does give us concepts of rule. The word rule is actually used and over you is used if you look at Hebrews chapter 13 and verse number 7. In fact the word bishop and the word for bishop means overseer, right? In Hebrews 13, seven it says, remember them which have the rule over you. How do you know who those people are? It says, who have spoken unto you the word of God. Now that's not just anybody that's spoken unto you the word of God, but those who have the rule speak the word of God. Says, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. In verse number 17, it says, obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves. For they watch for your souls as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you, right? And then over in, 1st Peter chapter 5. He says, now he's speaking to elders, some of which are bishops and some that might not be. But he says here, the elders which are among you, I exhort who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God, which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, he shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." And then it goes on to talk about the younger and so on. This concept here is a concept of leadership structure, but not lords in that sense, right? Nobody's the landlord here. Nobody owns the property. Nobody owns the church. Nobody owns the congregation, but the chief shepherd does, Jesus, right? But there's still a matter of leadership. And so there's a balance of that, right? And leadership, as I mentioned in Sunday school, it is a matter of service, but it's also something that those who are under the leadership need to place themselves under the leadership and follow. Does that make sense? So the two offices, you have bishop and you have deacon, right? What do deacons do? We gotta bring this to a close soon. What do deacons do? Assist, pray for the pastor. Is that what you said? Okay. It's like Aaron and Hur holding up the hands of Moses. so that he could hold the rod up and the children of Israel could win. That's a good example of help ministry, right? Somebody else say something? Assist the bishop. What did you have? Learn from the pastor. Now they have other tasks too. The first deacons in Acts chapter 7, right? They're giving work. We're not going to go through the whole thing, but. What is it that they're doing? They're handling the daily ministration. They're they're administering in the sense of taking care of the. Physical needs of the people. Right in some churches they will. They will have the deacons handle all of the physical aspects of the ministry. I don't know that that's what was intended. In other words, you know, some churches, the deacons are basically the maintenance men. and in charge of everything having to do with the building and the property and and assets and all of those things. That's that's not. That's not the biblical model. The biblical model is helping to deal with the physical needs of the people looking out for those things, being responsible for those things, and in some cases in our church, what we often do now, of course, I assign a lot of things to Pastor G because he is. an assistant pastor also. And so I assign a lot of things, a lot of shepherding aspects to him as well as some of the ministry in the sense of the ministering to physical needs, right? Um, so a lot of those things I'll say, you know what? He'll say, what do you think I should do? Sometimes I give him an answer. Sometimes I say, whatever you think is best, right? You know, Why? Because the church has given the authority, the Bible and the church have given the authority to the bishop and to the deacons to deal with those things, right? And so, Brother Travis, I'll assign things to him sometimes. Now, he's not, at this time, an assistant pastor, but he's a deacon, and I'll assign things to him and say, okay, you're gonna do this, you're gonna focus on that, and you're gonna deal with these things and whatever. From a deacon perspective, right? but he's currently outside shepherding the youth at the moment. So although he's an elder and he's a deacon, he's not officially from our perspective a pastor, although he may have pastoral duties or assignments, right? Just the same as sometimes I'll do, I'll, you know, take an elder and say, hey, Take this fellow under your wing and help him out with discipleship. That's going to be some shepherding aspect, but not officially a pastor, right? So anyhow. I'm trying to make sure that we kind of get the nuts and bolts of how these things, how we deal with these things. From that perspective and not necessarily going into all of the ins and outs of qualifications and setup and all of those things. Does that make sense? All right. It's been more of a talk.