Trinity Presbyterian Church North Bay — Sermons & Sunday School

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:8-13 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 1/15/2017 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:8-13

1/15/17

“Likewise Deacons”

We come today to the next section in 1 Timothy. After spending a considerable amount of time going through the last section on elder qualifications, it is my goal today to cover these deacon qualifications in only a single sermon. I don’t mean to shortchange this diaconal passage, yet many of the deacon qualifications are the same as the elder qualifications and so there is no need to repeat myself on them. However, I will spend some time reviewing what is similar and different between the two sets of qualifications. I will especially hone in on today on a deacon qualification which I could call “genuineness.”

But before we do that, let us make sure we understand what the office of deacon is. The Greek word for “deacon” in verse 8 is diaconos and literally means “servant”. And so, the office is one of service; one that leads the church in various service ministries. In the New Testament, we see the precedence for this in Acts 6. There, seven qualified men were chosen to oversee the charitable food distribution to the widows in the church. In doing this, they alleviated that responsibility form the apostles so the apostles could focus on spiritual leadership in matters such as preaching and prayer. A fuller definition for this office can be summarized in the words of the OPC Book of Church Order. It says this:

Deacons are called to show forth the compassion of Christ in a manifold ministry of mercy toward the saints and strangers on behalf of the church. To this end they exercise, in the fellowship of the church, a recognized stewardship of care and of gifts for those in need or distress. This service is distinct from that of rule in the church. (FG XI.1)

And so, that’s a basic summary of the role and purpose of the deacons. Deacons will ultimately be under the oversight of the elders. They will support the elders by offloading various physical and mundane tasks from them, so the elders can focus on the governing and shepherding of the church. The deacons will focus on these physical matters, especially the care of the poor, so the elders can focus on the spiritual needs of the church.

So that’s a brief word about the work of a deacon. Let’s now turn to consider in our first point the similarities and differences we see between the elder qualifications from verses 1-7 and the deacon qualifications from verses 8-13. Observe first that the qualifications are largely of the same sort. Largely, the qualifications for deacons have the same general concern that the elder qualifications have. Both seem most concerned that the officers possess a high degree of Christian virtue that can be observed by others. In other words, both lists of qualifications are concerned more with virtue than say skill set or experience or specific talents or spiritual gifts. Yes, there are some of those other things too in these passages. But first and foremost, both sets of qualifications want spiritual maturity in the potential officers. This should be reflected in the fruit of the Spirit that is demonstrated in their lives.

And so, for example, both sets of qualifications look for reverence aka dignity, verses 8 and 4. Both speak against drunkenness, verses 8, and 3. Both speak against love of money aka greed, verses 8 and 3. Both say the candidate must be blameless or above reproach, verses 10, 1, and 7. Both speak of how the candidate must be faithful to their wife, must be a good parent, and manage their house well, verses 11-12 and verses 4-5. So, again, these are all dealing with virtues. Similarly, we see a concern for maturity in these virtues when verse 10 talks about the deacon being tested before becoming a deacon. This is somewhat akin to the elder qualificatio[...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 1/15/2017 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series combating hyper-calvinism, discussing the topic of prayer in light of God’s predestination of all things.

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 1/8/2017 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

1/8/17

“Not a Novice”

Today is our last day on this passage about the qualifications of elders. We conclude our study of this passage by looking at verse 6’s qualification that the man must not be a novice. I’ll begin then with an analogy. In my garden this year I grew both summer and winter squash. With summer squash you pick them when the fruit are young. You eat them right away because at that point the skins are thin and thus they don’t have a long shelf life. But with winter squash you let the fruit age much longer on the vine. So, when you finally pick a summer squash you don’t have to eat them right away. At that point they have very thick skin and thus have a very long shelf life. For the winter squash, the extra age on the vine gives them added protection. Well, I hope you see my analogy here. A more mature squash has greater protection from the bad things that would ruin a squash. Well, there’s a truth there for Christians too. The longer someone has been a Christian, should be giving that Christian time to mature. That Christian maturity should ordinarily offer at least some protection from the temptations that would afflict a Christian. This is true in general for Christians, and Paul says that means we should not promote Christians to the ordained offices who are young Christians. This is our topic for today.

So, let’s begin then by defining this term of novice in verse 7. This word literally refers to something newly planted. In other words, this is plant imagery being used here metaphorically to refer to a new convert to Christianity. If you know what the word neophyte means, that’s actually the Greek word used here: neophytos. A neophyte in English is just what I said, a new convert to Christianity. And so, to clarify, what we are talking about is spiritual age and maturity. We are not saying you have to be of a certain physical age or physical maturity in order to be an elder in the church. Not only does this passage not speak of physical age, we also know from 1 Timothy 4:12 that Timothy himself was a younger man physically, but Paul said that no one should despise Timothy because of his age.

And so, when talking about being a novice, we are talking about people who are new to the Christian faith. That is clearly a concept in Scripture. We can think of passages that talk about what it is like to be young in the faith. For example, Hebrews 5:12 says that people who are young in the faith will need the milk and not solid food. What it means there is that the young Christian will need to begin in their learning about God with basic and elementary doctrines of the Bible. But as they grow, they can then start to take in more advanced doctrines of the Bible. Similarly, we see 1 Corinthians 3:1 describe new Christians as being more concerned with the flesh and less concerned with the spiritual. That description is not a very positive description, of course. But there is a truth there. A young Christian is still growing to properly know the way of the Lord versus the way of the world. So, there are passages like these two that speak of the idea of being young in the faith. And in passages like these you can see very clearly that we should desire to be growing and maturing spiritually. We should not be content to be like newborns in terms of our Christian maturity.

Okay, so this verses gets us to think about spiritual maturity, and as I mentioned the Greek word here uses plant imagery. I think that is helpful imagery because there is a lot in the Bible that speaks of spiritual maturity and growth in terms of such imagery. For example, you have Jesus’ parable of the sower. There it talks about the seed being God’s Word and that depending on the type of soil [...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 1/8/2017 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series combating hyper-calvinism, discussing the topics of sanctification and perseverance and how God’s sovereignty versus man’s responsibility play into these.

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 1/1/2017 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

1/1/17

“Rules His Own House Well”

We continue today going through the list of qualifications for elders. Today we will be dealing with the quality of “ruling his own house well” found in verses 4 and 5. We see here that when considering a man for the office of elder, we should look not only at him, but also at his household. To be clear, we are not evaluating his family’s fitness per se. But we are looking for how his leadership is reflected in his family and the management of his household. This becomes an issue of stewardship ultimately. How has this man stewarded what God has already given him, in terms of his house affairs and especially his wife and kids.

Let us begin considering this topic today by considering the phrase “ruling well”. That’s a key part of this. He must rule his house and he must rule it well. The word “rule” here is the idea of being set in charge of his house. The man is to oversee and manage and provide leadership in the affairs of his house. What is being assumed here is spelled out elsewhere in Scripture, that the man is to be the head of his house. He is to lead his wife and together they are to lead their children. In our egalitarian society, this notion may not be popular. But it is an idea spelled out in various passages. The household codes of Colossians 3, and Ephesians 5-6 are certainly some initial passages to point you to. 1 Corinthians 11:30 is another good one which speaks of a husband being the head of his wife. I could go on. But for today, please recognize that this passage is rightfully assuming that in a household, the husband and father is to be the head of that household. Consequently, he must rule or manage that household well. It is a matter of stewardship. Of course, part of why our egalitarian society has fought against this notion of a man being the head of his house, is because too many men have not ruled their house well. They’ve ruled like they are some tyrant king or harsh dictator. But the husband who rules like that is not ruling well nor is he obeying the Bible when he rules like that. Rather, the Bible commands him to love his wife and not be harsh with her, and commands him to not exasperate his children in his parenting of them.

So, a man of God must rule his house and he must rule it well. The word “well” can be translated as good or even beautiful. The idea is that the management of his house is done commendably. So, what does it looks like for him to rule his house well? What should we look for to know if he is actually managing his house in this commendable way? Well, our passage gives us one good place to start. Look at his children. Does the fruit of his parenting demonstrate a job well done? Since this passage specifically draws our attention to that, that will be our second main point for our sermon today. But before we get there, I would like us to recognize that parenting is only one aspect of managing a house. There are many other items to highlight, biblically speaking. I’ll try to highlight some of the more important aspects.

First would then be to quote the words of Joshua from Joshua 24:15. There, Joshua told Israel, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” When evaluating if a Christian man is managing his house well, surely this is the first place to start. Can this be said of his house, that he is running a Christian home? As a leader, the most important leadership he can provide for his family is spiritual. There are many things to look for in this one aspect, but for starters, is there family worship aka family devotions going on? In other words, is he leading his family in prayer and in studying the scriptures and in praising God from their home? Similarly, is he making su[...]

Sermon preached on Luke 2:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/25/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

Luke 2:1-7

12/25/16

“A Decree Went Out”

As I prepared for this message today on the birth of Christ, I was surprised to find that I had never preached on these seven verses yet. Though, I can understand why I might not have chosen to preach on these specific verses. You see, when it comes to the Christmas story, there are a lot of extraordinary, supernatural things. You have the virgin conception by the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary. You have angels appearing and giving special revelations to people like Mary and Joseph. You have John the Baptist leaping from within the womb when pregnant Mary walks into the room. You have prophets prophesying over Jesus, like the words of Simeon and Anna. You have some out-of-the-ordinary celestial event where Magi from the east see a special star and know to follow it and find Jesus. And you even have angels in the very next passage appearing in great glory praising God in the highest. I could go on. The Christmas story is full of the miraculous and the supernatural.

And yet here, in this passage, there is none of that. Maybe that’s why I’ve not chosen to preach a Christmas message yet from these seven verses. No, these verses are not about the supernatural or the out-of-the-ordinary. These verses are about the ordinary, at least in one sense. Yes, to bring about the birth of Christ, God used a number of extraordinary things. But here we see that at the same time, there was also God’s ordinary providence at work. Here in his ordinary ways we find God accomplishing the extraordinary thing of Christ’s birth. As an example of what I’m talking about, I point you to the book of Esther in the Bible. That is a book that doesn’t have a single reference to God in it. There is also nothing explicitly supernatural mentioned in the book. And yet the church has rightly received it into the canon of Scripture. That is because the church reads the book of Esther and sees in it a glorious display of how God can use his ordinary providential care to accomplish amazing and wonderful things. In Esther’s story, it’s about how God providentially preserved his people when they were threatened with genocide. And here in our passage we also find no reference to God, nor any explicit reference to the supernatural. Yet we see God’s providential working through it all. Here, the Hope of Israel was finally being realized, even with these ordinary circumstances of life.

And so I want us to see God’s hand of providence in these seven verses and in the birth of Christ. Let’s begin then with the first two verses. Verses 1 and 2 tell us the overall setting for Christ’s birth. We are told that Christ’s birth took place during the time of the Roman Empire, when Emperor Caesar Augustus was in power. He reigned from 27 BC to AC 14. Furthermore, we are told that this happened when someone named Quirinius was governing Syria. From the records that remain, history does clearly know of a census that took place in Judea in 6 AD when Quirinius was governing Syria. That doesn’t fit the rest of the Biblical time table, however, since we know from Matthew’s gospel Jesus was born when King Herod the Great was still alive, but Herod died in 4 BC. Some liberal theologians have proposed the Bible is in error here. And yet the answer probably lies with the word “first” in verse 2. As many translations bring out, the idea of verse 2 is that this was the first census during Quirinius’ reign. That, given with the fact that there is at least some historical reason to believe that Quirinius reigned in Syria earlier as well, would fit that there was some first census under Quirinius probably around 5 BC, and thus the one in 6 AD was the second census under Quirinius. I love how when liberal [...]

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/18/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

12/18/16

“Qualities Not to Have”

As we continue to work through the qualifications for elders, we will focus today on verse 3 in this list. You may recall that a couple sermons back I dealt with verse 2’s qualities of being sober, self-controlled, and respectable. At that time, I mentioned that the list of qualifications starts off with several positive qualities that we should have, followed by a list of negative qualities that we should not have. Well, verse 3 is largely that list of negative qualities. These are qualities we should not want to have as Christians. These are qualities that our elders must not have. And so, we see those qualities in verse 3. I’ll summarize and translate them into these four charcteristics that you don’t want be: not a drunkard, not violent, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money.

Now before we dig into these negative qualities, let me explain how I’m going to cover them together in one sermon. I think we can group these in the sense that these are all lusts of the flesh. Or similarly, these are all idols of the heart. These are things that people can have an inordinate desire for. They can so crave these things that these things begin to control them or rule them in some way. What’s interesting is that each of these things, alcohol, money, even violence and quarrels are not inherently wrong in and of themselves. There is a time and place where each of these things could be used in a right way. But the negative qualities that we will discuss today are a perversion of these things. They are a wicked use of these things. Instead of these things being in service to man, when people are exhibiting these negative qualities they have taken these things and begun to serve them essentially. Or let me say it another way. We talked about being sober, self-controlled, and respectable. Well, these qualities we shouldn’t have are taking these like alcohol, money, and conflict and using them in a non-sober way, in a non-self-controlled way, in a non-respectable way. This is what these negative qualities have in common. They have become for the person possessing these negative qualities a lust that they must fill.

And so, I will now walk us through these negative qualities using the order you see on your outline for today. We’ll talk first about the negative quality of drunkenness. As mentioned when we talked before on verse 2’s qualification of soberness, we said that the use of alcohol is not inherently sinful. Let me begin by mentioning at least two non-sinful uses of alcohol. One, is it can be use medicinally. At the end of this letter, Paul even tells Timothy in 5:23 that he should be drinking more wine to help his stomach ailments. Another use of alcohol is for enjoyment purposes, in moderation. We discussed that before from Psalm 104:15. You could also add a verse like Ecclesiastes 9:7, which says, “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart.” So, there are non-sinful ways you could make use of alcoholic beverages. But you must do so in a sober, self-controlled, and respectable way.

Yet, this negative quality reminds us that there is a temptation toward alcohol becoming a lust of the flesh. As our pew Bible translates, someone could be “given to wine”. In other words, they become a lover of it so much, and of its intoxicating effects, that they use it sinfully. They become drunk off the wine because they have so lusted after it. The Bible is full of bad examples of people getting drunk and bad things happening. Some of the most egregious examples I cringe from even mentioning publicly before the children. Look up Genesis 9 and see what happened when Noah became drunk, resulting in him cursing the desc[...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/18/2016 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series combating hyper-calvinism, discussing the distinction often referred to as utter depravity versus total depravity, along with the topic of common grace. We discussed applications to the civil use of the moral law.

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/11/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

12/11/16

“Able to Teach”

Today we continue going through the list of elder qualifications. We are at the end of verse 2 with the qualification of being “able to teach.” What is nice about this qualification is that it queues us in on a key function of an elder. They are teachers in the church. That is why they need to be able to teach, because they are to be having opportunities to teach in the church. Now to clarify that, we see in 1 Timothy 5:17 that not all elders teach the same amount. In other words, 1 Timothy 5:17 speaks of certain elders who specifically labor in the Word and doctrine. That’s why we distinguish between ruling elders and ministers. As a minister, I’m a full time elder who labors in the Word and doctrine. Of all the elders, I especially need to be able to teach. And yet it is nonetheless a qualification for all the elders because it is part of their job to teach the Word and to make sure sound doctrine is being held to in the church. The other elders especially are to watch over my preaching and teaching and make sure I am staying faithful to the Bible.

So, I’d like to begin today’s message by saying that, at least in general, the ability to teach is a gift and not a fruit of the Holy Spirit. What do I mean by that? I mean that in the Bible, we see that all Christians have the fruit of the Holy Spirit which cultivates certain virtues within us. Galatians 5:22 is a verse that describes these qualities and includes qualities such as love, patience, and kindness. And so the fruit of the spirit are these virtues that every Christian should have and should seek to grow in by the grace of God. But when the Bible talks of gifts of the Holy Spirit, we see that not everyone has the same gifts. 1 Corinthians 12:4 says that there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. That passage goes on to talk about how the Spirit gives to some Christians one gift, and to other Christians another gift and so on. These gifts are different special abilities that the church needs for its work and growth. But the idea is that not every Christian has every gift. And so, that’s the difference between fruit and gifts of the Spirit. Every Christian should seek to have the fruit, but not every Christian needs to seek to have each and every gift of the Spirit. And so, when talking about the ability to teach, we are saying that this is a gift, not a fruit. In other words, this is not something that every Christian has to possess.

I think that is helpful to notice when we compare this with the other qualifications for being an elder in this passage. Generally speaking, these other qualities are fruit that we each should strive for. For example, being temperate, sober-minded, and hospitable are qualities not only for elders. All Christians should strive for such things. But when we come to the quality of being able to teach, we recognize that there are passages of Scripture that put that in the category of a special gift that only some will have. 1 Peter 4:10-11 is one such passage that says this teaching ability is a gift only some will have.

And so generally speaking, the ability to teach is something that is a specific gift to only certain Christians. That being said, you’ll notice I said “generally speaking.” I add that qualification because there are passages like Colossians 3:16 that speak to all Christians and call us to teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. That doesn’t have in mind the public teaching ministry, but it reminds us that all of us are to share the Word with each other in our various conversations. That’s just simply a matter of Christian fellowship.

Well, as we are talking about the idea that the ability to teach is a gift, let me add one further [...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/11/2016 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series combatting hyper-calvinism, continuing to speak against the teaching that says that God is the author of evil.