Published: November 26, 2023 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: Worship 1 - Part 12 | Scripture: 1 Timothy 3-5
Transcript
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this is the separation of authority okay so when we talk about and one of the reasons why I'm standing up here but I don't go stand
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upstairs is because I have been entrusted with the authority to open these things to you in an informative context but I have not been ordained as an elder an elder to exort you and to exort uh exert the
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authority of the word preached as a command over command over you I was talking uh actually to Chuck as I Was preparing for this saying this is what I thought I would fill in today and he said for him was he was
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considering this question this is the point at which he was he draws the line that women are no longer eligible is preaching being an elder who stands up
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and preaches is exerting in authority over the people of God it is exerting authority over your fellow men um and that is where he would bring in Paul's command saying I would not have a woman
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to exercise authority over a man meaning as an elder in the context of preaching particularly but again an elder who is ordained to do those things an elder who is ordained to proclaim a message not
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your own and to use it to shape and to exhort and to guide the body in that way as opposed to the teaching which is more
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informative um so when we talk about this and this is the the question that I sort of came to it at and I I put it here at the end and we only have a few minutes left for you guys to to lob things at me if you want um but the
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question is is the charge given to the teacher versus the preacher any
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different and I would say yes sort of which is to say but both the teacher and the preacher must be grounded in the scripture they must both be feeding the people with nourishment
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with things that are useful to them they ought to both be treating the word with um respect and using it skillfully um not wasting
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not wasting time but that the teacher does not have the authority in the same way that the preacher does to command to uh call for change to wield uh the power of office
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in command over the people anybody want to argue the point of point of Elder yeah and and this is another not
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to pick on Presbyterians I went to Presbyterian Seminary so it's where I have heard most of my but the Presbyterians do in fact uh draw distinction between what they call Elders ruling Elders who are
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administrators more or less and teaching Elders who are allowed to stand up and preach as long as they're licensed
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um Paul in his his requirement specifically says that Elders those worthy of the office of Elder must be apt to apt to teach which again I would say it's not
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quite all nearly all preaching has teaching in teaching in it not all teaching has preaching in it elely first in the AAR well your
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comments are making me think you're saying that you can only have preaching
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a also I guess most mostar that's a larger question that would be difficult to answer in the
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short time that we have I will say briefly that's going to really depend on who you who you ask in the scripture nearly all the the
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missionaries that we see are sent out from some from some particular congregation some City some church literally commissions them and says go um or Christ himself in the
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example of the Apostles I can say from recent comments um the chuck would say the same thing that the idea of uh missionaries who
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sort of float in some sort of denominational context is is not biblical or scriptural um so in the sense of preaching they ought to be ordained and sent out from a body from a
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church um because it is in that context and this is one of the things I think he's been trying to drive home in the study as a whole is the importance of the community of a of a body a a local
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manifestation of Christ's body however that's not to say that only an elder can stand up and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a preached
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word I would say that the current Church um thought or or frankly practice of just sort of lobbing new Christians out
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there and saying go stand on a street corner and preach the word is is both wildly dangerous unbiblical and and frankly I'm not even sure you can really call that preaching
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even though it is an attempt to be persuasively speaking it is not it is not grounded either in the church context or in the basis
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one of the reasons why we have strived to have multiple Elders here basically for the entire history of the church is
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the safety mightbe is the wrong word but the it's almost like we call in in US government checks and balances the idea of having of having different branches of government that counterbalance each other their their
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strengths and weakness is a similar idea in having multiple Elders to say one person does not have all of the authority one person does not have all of the uh basis to sort of uh
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uh subvert if that's the intention um the the biblical grounding of the word and there is opportunity for continued instruction one to the other inside of
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that context that context because you know if you go back to the the biblical origins of the church it was much more out of the ogue context in which there would have been multiple
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Elders who were there and who were responsible for teaching and preaching those who came in and desired to hear the word the word um so no I won't say only and strictly
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that that preaching can only happen in the context of the church but I will say I think it should be relatively narrow exceptions in which it's happening outside the context of
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yeah I mean I would say you know you look at Paul on Mars Hill that is a sermon he is almost entirely surrounded by non-believers but he was also specifically commissioned excuse
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commissioned excuse me to Herald the gospel to un uh to the Gentiles to those who had not previously heard excuse
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but particularly in our context where we're
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soon the difference is more the question of the formats that we're looking at right you had your hand up before I'm sorry it's gone voice is
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assembly and only ever hear the sermon for years and years and years start to doubt whether well just hearing a guy speak for 45 minutes what's what's for me I'd say that that's actually a problem created by the fact that you're
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to the to the sermon you're not participating in the life of the body and receiving the kind of common teaching that we do with one another you're not receiving the more um we'll
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say expert uh teaching that's being done in this format with some some feedback convers if you're not getting the whole plate then you're going to end up
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um I will try to answer that question here there's a reason why again I'm not going to say it's dead center but there's the reason why chuck
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had this couched in the context of the other things we do as a body all of this instruction is for the the nourishment of the body all of these things come from a place I'm
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not over there throwing darts at my bookshelf saying okay what am I going to do for my next study it's intended to feed and to to give information for things that I think we as a body can benefit from um you had your hand up and then
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then I'll get to your question oh okay I don't see from the scripture anywhere that women are given the
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authority to preach I don't know that I would say I don't feel comfortable saying every proclamation of
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the Gospel is a sermon particularly if you do it in a one-on-one context a sermon generally implies a a group a whole a body to which you are are preaching
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um in our day and age and in our context street preaching has a lot more phariseeism in it than it does have Pauline uh
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Pauline uh motivation does that make sense it has a lot more to do at least in my experience from what I've seen seen and from what I've heard has a lot more tendency to be um in a lot of Senses performative to
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other believers than it is strictly beneficial to those people that you are theoretically preaching
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to I have choose my words carefully generally speaking the unbelieving world around us in our day and age in in America is aware of what a church is and what we're getting at a lot of churches are falling down on
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that but if they want to hear the word they know where to go there's a lot more to
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do how do I say this my personal feeling on this and I'm not being dogmatic by any means my personal feeling on this is there's a lot more to be gained in the day-to-day
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witness in a one-on-one context of how you behave your attitude the things you say versus going down to Main Street in Greenville during Fall for Greenville
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and screaming at the top of your lungs and annoying and annoying everybody does that make
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sense there are certainly examples of proclaiming the proclaiming the word and I'm out of time but I will say it's my understanding that evangelist is a whole separate
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category of category of calling at least the way I read the scriptures and the words they're using those who are called to be evangelists I'm forgetting the reference there but
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but effectively there are Elders who lead churches who are also very much evangelists there are also people who are evangelists who are sent out I mean
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I I would hold up um octave bouris that we support in Turkey is the most thoroughgoing example of a
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missionary I think I've ever met he of kind of he was actually part of largely he was part of Covenant um more
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than he was a member here um he was supported by a coalition and we supported him and basically everybody else dropped away and we continue to support him so it does qualify some of
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my earlier comments a little bit but he is there basically whether anybody's going to support him or not he is there whether somebody attacks him on the road while he's on his motorcycle or not he
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is there in one of the most difficult languages to languages to learn giving it his all to spread the gospel in a in a difficult
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place I think very much he has the spirit of an um I guess that's what I have to say about it is I think evangelist is a separate
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category is a separate calling sometimes it has it has overlap but those called to go out specifically to proclaim the gospel is a little bit different and really the
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thing that we have the most onus on to worry about at the moment is making sure that the witness that the church has is upright is biblically sound
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is Godly um we're 5 minutes over let's close in close in prayer father we do thank you for your word we thank you for giving us um under
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Shepherds who desire to live rightly and to preach well to deliver the gospel to deliver the command that you have for us to help us understand better who you are
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and what you are doing and how we ought to imitate you how we ought to conform ourselves to Christ Our elder brother Our Savior our glorious Lord so father I
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ask that you would bless the time of worship this morning that you would bless Mark's preparations as he prepares to preach that it would indeed have the effect that your spirit desires that it
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ought to on the assembled body I ask all of these things in Jesus name