Kootenai Church Sunday School: Christian Ethics

This episode continues the series on Christian ethics, focusing on the duties of elders within a church. Dave Rich discusses the responsibilities of elders, including protecting the flock from false teaching and sin, teaching, leading, caring, and protecting the flock. He emphasizes the importance of the congregation's role in supporting and assessing potential elders, and the need to protect elders from false accusations. Rich also addresses the ethical obligation of elders to rebuke and remove sinning elders, and the congregation's duty to submit to and support elders. The episode concludes with a reminder of the congregation's role in supporting and encouraging elders, emphasizing the importance of fulfilling one's duties within the church community.

In the latest lesson of the series on Christian ethics, Dave Rich, from Kootenai Community Church, delves into the qualifications for elders in the local church. He begins by discussing the plurality of elders in every church and moves on to the qualifications for elders, which serve as a list of virtues for all Christians to cultivate. Rich explains that the qualification 'not addicted to wine' means someone who is into alcohol, but not necessarily a drunkard. He uses biblical texts to argue that drunkenness is a sin and that the qualification is about someone using wine to excess. He also discusses other qualifications such as not being pugnacious, leading a household well, having a good reputation, being a new convert, being righteous, being holy, and being self-controlled. Rich emphasizes that these qualifications are not ethical obligations but necessary requirements for those aspiring to be elders. He concludes by suggesting that these qualifications are essential for maintaining a healthy church and that all Christians should strive to meet these standards.

Dave Rich, from Kootenai Community Church, delves into the biblical qualifications for elders in the church, focusing on the three terms used: elder, overseer, and shepherd. He emphasizes the importance of elders being trustworthy, above reproach, and male, and that they must be able to teach. Rich provides a detailed list of qualifications from 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, explaining each one and its relevance to the role of an elder. He also touches on the duties of elders towards the congregation and the responsibilities of church members towards elders, concluding with a prayer for the church's continued vigilance in upholding these biblical principles.

In Lesson 42 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament, Dave Rich turns from the duties children owe their parents to the duties parents owe their children. He lays out five dimensions of parental duty: love, provision, instruction, modeling, and discipline.

Rich shows that Scripture assumes parents will love their children as a gracious gift from God, and he traces how that love shows up in providing for a child's intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social growth, not just their material needs. He works through the biblical case for instructing children in the Lord and walks through the arguments for public school, Christian school, and homeschooling, weighing each against the parent's God given responsibility for a child's education.

The lesson also covers modeling godliness for children who will imitate their parents whether they intend it or not, and it closes with a careful look at discipline. Rich explains what the rod refers to in Proverbs, why discipline must be free from anger, and how correcting a child's behavior becomes an opportunity to teach them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Parents raising children in a Christian home will find a clear, biblical framework for thinking through everyday decisions about love, provision, teaching, and correction.

Dave Rich turns to the fifth commandment in Lesson 41 of Christian Ethics and the Old Testament, examining what it means to honor father and mother in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16. He traces the Hebrew word kavod back to its root meaning of weight and substance, showing why honor calls for treating parents as significant rather than dismissing them.

Using John Calvin's framework, Rich breaks honor into three parts: reverence, obedience, and gratitude. He distinguishes between honoring parents, a lifelong obligation for every child, and obeying parents, which applies most directly to children still living at home. From there he addresses gratitude in concrete terms, including the biblical case for adult children providing financially for aging parents and respecting parental property, drawn from the parable of the prodigal son.

Rich also considers the promise attached to the commandment, weighing its original corporate meaning for Israel against its application today, and closes with the limits of parental authority. Since parents hold derived authority under God, children are never required to obey a command to sin.

Listeners walk away with a clearer framework for honoring parents at every stage of life, along with practical direction for navigating difficult family relationships with biblical wisdom.

Do Christians have to take one day off a week, or don't they? Lesson 40 wraps up the fourth commandment series by laying out the two major Christian views on Sabbath observance.

Teacher Dave Rich presents Sabbatarianism and non-Sabbatarianism as summarized by Wayne Grudem, tracing Sabbatarianism through the Westminster Confession's strict rest and worship requirements, and non-Sabbatarianism through Luther and Calvin, both of whom saw the fourth commandment as fulfilled in Christ rather than binding in its Old Testament form. Rich frames the debate around three questions, whether Sabbath rest is a creation ordinance built into Genesis 2, whether the law of Moses still legally binds Christians, and whether New Testament silence on the Sabbath means it was repealed or simply never repeated.

Rich lands on the non-Sabbatarian side, arguing the Sabbath was not a creation ordinance and was specifically addressed and set aside in the New Testament, while noting how much common ground the two views actually share in practice, worship, rest, and works of mercy. He closes with a lighter look at how Christian liberty applies to holidays like Easter, Christmas, Independence Day, Halloween, and even birthdays.

This lesson gives listeners a clear framework for thinking through a commandment that divides sincere, careful readers of Scripture.

Why is the fourth commandment the only one of the Ten never repeated in the New Testament? Lesson 39 argues that its complete fulfillment in Christ is exactly the reason.

Teacher Dave Rich works through the key apostolic passages on the Sabbath, the Jerusalem Council's silence on Sabbath keeping in Acts 15, Paul's treatment of the observance of days as a disputable matter in Romans 14, and his warnings in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2 that observing special days can become a dangerous return to law rather than grace. Taken together, Rich argues, the New Testament epistles do not support treating Sabbath observance as binding on Christians.

Rich then turns to Hebrews 3 and 4, showing that the rest God offers is ultimately rest from working for salvation and resting instead in Christ's finished work, which is why the fourth commandment alone goes unrepeated, its symbol is fulfilled. From there he traces the New Testament evidence for why the church shifted its regular gathering from the Sabbath to the first day of the week, Christ's resurrection, the early church's practice in Acts and Corinthians, and John's reference to the Lord's day in Revelation.

The lesson closes on a point every view agrees on, whatever day is chosen, Christians remain obligated to gather regularly for worship.

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Jesus broke more Sabbath rules than he kept, and that's exactly the point. Lesson 38 continues the study of the fourth commandment by turning to what Jesus himself taught and did on the Sabbath.

Teacher Dave Rich starts with a recap of the Old Testament material, then previews the rabbinic Mishnah's 39 categories of forbidden Sabbath activity, oppressive extra-biblical rules governing everything from tying knots to closing a door on a stray deer, to show the burden Jesus was actually confronting. Rich then works through Jesus's own Sabbath practice, his regular attendance at synagogue, his declaration that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, and his repeated Sabbath healings that provoked murderous opposition from the Pharisees and scribes.

Rich draws out several conclusions from Jesus's teaching, that ordinary work was restricted but works of necessity and mercy were not, that man-made additions to the law were not clarifications but distortions, and that Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath, holds final authority over how the commandment should be understood. Rich is careful to note that Jesus never explicitly commands ongoing Sabbath observance in its Old Testament form, setting up next week's look at what the apostles taught.

This lesson reframes the Sabbath not as a burden but as a gift.

The fourth commandment might be the most debated of the ten. Lesson 37 launches a multi week study of the Sabbath, starting with the text itself before any application.

Teacher Dave Rich compares Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 side by side, showing that the shift from remember to observe reflects timing rather than any real difference in meaning, and that the two different rationales given for the command, creation in Exodus and redemption from Egypt in Deuteronomy, actually work together rather than in competition.

Rich then works through Genesis, the giving of manna, and a series of Old Testament examples, including the man stoned for gathering wood on the Sabbath and Nehemiah's confrontation with merchants trading on the Sabbath, to establish the two essential elements of the commandment, rest from ordinary work and worship through holy convocation. He also raises the long list of questions the class will eventually address, including how the Sabbath applies under the new covenant and what day, if any, Christians are bound to observe.

This lesson deliberately holds off on application, laying the Old Testament foundation before next week's look at what Jesus and the apostles taught about the Sabbath.

Is a dirty joke automatically a sin, and is all humor off-limits for Christians? Lesson 36 wraps up the study of the third commandment with three practical topics: filthy talk, humor, and irreverence.

Teacher Dave Rich works through the Greek behind Paul's lists of prohibited speech in Ephesians 4 and 5 and Colossians 3, unwholesome, filthy, foolish talk, and coarse jesting, and shows from several Old and New Testament examples that the Bible itself uses blunt, even bathroom language when it serves truth and clarity. The real issue is not the word itself but whether speech is truthful, loving, edifying, and appropriate.

Rich then turns to humor, arguing from Scripture's own use of absurd and funny illustrations, gnats and camels, a sluggard too lazy to feed himself, that laughter and wit are not inherently sinful and can even be commanded by God.

The lesson closes back at the heart of the third commandment, irreverence, whether in worship songs, careless prayer, casual preaching, or common phrases borrowed from sacred biblical language. Rich challenges listeners to speak, sing, and pray with a settled awareness that they live and speak in the presence of God.