Trinity Presbyterian Church North Bay — Sermons & Sunday School

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/04/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

12/4/16

“Hospitable”

Today we consider the quality of hospitality. We see here in verse 2 that elders are to have the quality of being hospitable. So, what exactly is hospitality? Nowadays, when we use the word hospitality, we are usually referring to the hosting and/or entertaining of guests. This often is something done in our homes, though we can think of how we do it at church too. A lot of hospitality today involves serving food, which as someone who loves food, I find a wonderful thing. And so, biblically speaking, this kind of hospitality as we practice it today, is a good thing.

That being said, when we talk about hospitality in the Bible, it is important to notice that the Biblical notion is a little more focused. You see, our hospitality today tends to be shown a lot to people that we know. You might invite some close friends from church over to your house after church, and provide a meal. Your friends are guests in your home whom you receive and care for, and it is certainly a commendable form of hospitality. But the Bible’s most specific notion of hospitality is about the love and welcome you show, not to friends, but to strangers. Take for example the word for hospitable in verse 2. The Greek word there is philoxenia, literally “loving a stranger”. It’s basically a compound word, philo and xenia, philo meaning love, and xenia meaning alien or stranger. In contrast, you might have heard the word xenophobe before. That is someone who fears or hates a stranger or alien. But this word for hospitality here in verse 2, literally says we should show love to a stranger. Remember, that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so, who is our neighbor that we should love them? Well, this word for hospitality tells us that such love applies to strangers and aliens as well. They too are our neighbors that we should love.

So then, today as we study this topic of hospitality, we’ll be focusing especially on the way we should show it to strangers and aliens. In other words, an elder should lead the church by example in how we welcome people we don’t know who come here. This is a Christian quality of godliness that we should look to grow in and show. So then, for today’s study, I’ll have us first consider some New Testament teachings on this subject. Second, I’ll have us see how this principle is seen in the Old Testament. Lastly, we’ll spend some time applying it to us in Christ.

Let’s begin then with the New Testament. First off, we see this commanded in the New Testament for Christians. In Romans 12:13, in a list of commands to Christians, Paul tells us to be given to hospitality. In other words, this is something all Christians should look to be showing. Similarly, in Hebrews 13:2, we see it again commanded that we should not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. There it goes on to give us a reason to motivate our hospitality. It says that some, by doing so, have entertained angels without realizing it! Wow! We again see this command in 1 Peter 4:9 where Peter says we are to show hospitality to one another without grumbling. There are a couple great things to notice about Peter’s statement there. When he says we should show hospitality to one another he affirms that we can show hospitality to not just the strangers, but also to our fellow church members who we know. Peter takes that concept of showing love to strangers and says do that same thing to each other. I love that point. The other thing Peter highlights is our attitude. He says we should do it without grumbling. As soon as we start talking about being commanded to show hospitality, we know that we’ll be tempted to grumble. It is easy to show hospitality when it [...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 12/04/2016 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series combatting hyper-calvinism, speaking against the teaching that says that God is the author of evil.

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/27/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

11/27/16

“Sober, Self-Controlled, Respectable”

As we dig back into 1 Timothy and this section on the qualifications to the elders, we are starting to dig into the long list of qualities. You’ll notice that the first half contain only positive qualities that the elder should have; that’s in verse 2. Then the second half starting in verse 3 largely contains negative qualities that the elder should not have. And so today I’ll going to take the next three positively stated qualities in the list from verse 3. Last time we talked about being a husband of one wife. So, that means we’ll take the next three: temperate, sober-minded, and of good behavior. Or as I’m preferring to translate them as you’ll see in today’s sermon title, sober, self-controlled, and respectable. And I believe these three are helpful to discuss together. They have a sort of connection or relation that seems to make sense for us discussing them together in one sermon. So, these are my three points for today’s message. I’ll talk about each of these individually: what it looks like for an elder to be sober, for him to be self-controlled, and for him to be respectable. These are qualities the church should require of its leaders. But make no mistake, these are qualities every Christian should personally seek, so hopefully you will see the application to yourself throughout today’s message.

Let’s begin then in our first point to talk about being sober. The pew Bible has here the word “temperate”. As will become clear when working through these different qualities over the next few weeks, is there is a bit of a challenge to discuss words from dead languages when they are simply in a list like this. You see, context helps us greatly to understand the fine nuances of words from ancient, dead languages. But when a string of different words like this are placed in a list, there is not a lot from the context that will necessarily help us. What also becomes a challenge is that the three words for today that we are looking at, all appear only in the pastoral epistles and nowhere else in the New Testament. Yes, they do appear elsewhere in Greek literature at that time, so we know what these words mean. But they just don’t have the same context within the New Testament Greek that other words do that can help us understand their usage. And so, what you’ll find when you scan the different English translations, is that some versions will hone in on different nuances of these words.

So then, with this word which I’m translating as “sober”, you’ll see that several have “temperate”, the KJV has “vigilant”, the ESV has “sober-minded”, and there are others as well. When you look this word up in a Greek lexicon you can see the various range of meanings and usages. Lexically, it seems that the word in its root form is a word about sobriety. In other words, that you are not drunk or intoxicated. And so, when translations use “temperate” they are taking the nuance of this word that says how someone stays sober. You stay sober by being moderate with alcohol. On the flip side, when you have the translations like vigilant and sober-minded they are taking a more figurative approach to this word of sobriety. They are taking the nuance that one is to be alert, clear, and level-headed in their thinking. Some translations and commentators prefer this more figurative sense of the word because verse 3 speaks against people given to wine, aka drunkenness. The argument of some is that if verse 3 speaks against drunkenness, why would verse 3 commend literal sobriety? They ask, wouldn’t that be redundant? But the response is to remember the structure of this passage. There is first a list of positive traits and then a list of negative traits, a[...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/27/2016 in Novato, CA. This week we continued a series combatting hyper-calvinism, speaking against those who would affirm hard-determinism, and instead advocating compatabilism.

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/13/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

11/13/16

“Husband of One Wife”

If you have been here a while, you probably notice that my sermon style has changed slightly as we’ve been going through 1 Timothy. Given that it is a small book and the nature of it, I’ve been intentionally slowing down and often taking very small portions of it to preach on. When you do that, it tends to make the sermons more of a topical sermon than an expository one. But there are times to do that, even though I don’t typically do that. Well, I mention that because we are going to be getting more of this over the next few weeks. We are in that passage of Scripture that talks about the requirements for elders. As we start now to dig into the specific qualifications for elders, the messages will especially seem a bit more topical. But I believe it will be helpful for us to slow down on this occasion to consider each of these various qualifications.

So, in today’s message we will be honing in on verse 2 and its requirement that elders be the husband of one wife, literally a one-woman man. This is listed second here and obviously has a place of prominence in the list. This makes sense of course. Matters of sexuality have always been a hot issue in the church and its leadership. That is certainly still the case today. The church needs godly leadership in the areas of marriage and sexuality.

As we meditate on this requirement today, we’ll approach this in three points. First, we’ll consider what this requirement does not mean to be a husband of one wife. Second, we’ll consider what this does mean to be a husband of one wife. Third, we’ll see this applied in regards to sexual immorality in the church, in both the past and the present.

So then, first, let’s consider what this doesn’t mean. I’ll mention two things. First this doesn’t mean that you must be married to be an elder. Believe it or not, some have argued for this. Similarly, when they see the requirement in verse 4 to have their children in submission, the same people tend to think that requires the elder to also have at least two children. Now, I can appreciate why they might want to infer that. But that is handling language in a bit of a wooden way. That becomes clear when you use Scripture to interpret Scripture. When you do that, you see that singleness is not a sin. You also see that singleness is not a hindrance to being in ministry, but is a help for ministry.

We see this, for example, in 1 Corinthians 7. Turn there with me. In verses 1 and 2, he begins by mentioning that singleness is a good thing, but in general people should be married because of the temptation to sexual immorality. Verse 5 drives this home by commanding the married couple to not deprive each other sexually, lest they fall prey to sexual immorality. But in verses 6 and 7 he clarifies his position on marriage. He speaks of how some like himself may have the gift of singleness. Verse 9 explains that this gift of singleness includes the ability to exercise self-control in terms of sexuality, specifically that they aren’t just burning the whole time with sexual desire. Then if you drop down to verses 32 and 33, you see there that he talks about why singleness is better. He says that if you are single, you can focus on the things of the Lord. Verse 35 explains that this means you can serve God without distraction. He says otherwise, if you are married, you’ll have to devote time and energy toward serving and pleasing your spouse.

Jesus said a similar thing in Matthew 19:12, that some might not marry for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He added, “He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.” In other words, Jesus acknowledges that not everyone has this gift of singleness, but if you can use it fo[...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/13/2016 in Novato, CA. This week we began a new series speaking against hyper-calvinism.

Sermon preached on 1 Timothy 3:1-7 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/6/2016 in Novato, CA.

Sermon manuscript

Rev. W. Reid Hankins, M.Div.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

11/6/16

“If a Man Desires”

Often the question a Christian man asks himself, “Am I called into the ministry?” Too often people have tried to answer that in some mystical way, as if we could somehow learn the secret will of God for your life by some special supernatural revelation. But the protestant reformed position on answering that question is not mystical. It’s rather ordinary, and it involves wise, biblical discernment. And so we’ve typically understood this search for calling in terms of an internal and an external call. The internal call deals with one’s own personal sense and desire for the calling. The external call deals with what others think about that person’s fitness for the calling. And so, in discerning whether you are called into ministry, there should be both an internal calling and an external calling. Well, today’s passage deals with this regarding the office of elder. We will spend today reflecting on the internal call and the external call for an elder. And yet I would also mention that the very notion of an internal call and an external call has an application with regard to any job and calling someone might engage in. So even while we are specifically thinking today about calling into the office of elder, I hope we can also see how these principles can apply more widely to any daily calling someone has.

So let’s begin by thinking about the internal call to the office of the elder. We see at least part of this idea brought up in verse 1 when it talks about the aspirations and desires of someone to the office of elder. Someone who has an internal call should have some aspirations and desires for ministry. In the NKJV, the word “desires” appears twice in verse 1, but it’s two different Greek words. I want to talk about each because they both help us to think about the internal call.

So, for the first occurrence of desire in verse 1, I like the translation of “aspire”. The word is very colorful. It’s about stretching out your hands towards something. Imagine you are in a race, you are naturally going to be leaning forward and doing everything you can to get yourself to the finish line. Or if you are reaching to grab something that is almost out of your reach, you’ll have to really do everything you can to position your body and strain and stretch out your arm toward what you are trying to grab. And so the point is, that part of that internal call to the ministry is that you not only sense a desire to serve, but that you therefore make effort to obtain that desire.

Now, to clarify, this aspiration should not be sinful aspiration. What do I mean? Well, some people aspire for something that is not theirs to have, but in a power grab they find a way to take it anyways. In the same way, someone could aspire to be an elder and yet not truly be qualified or suited for the ministry, but they find a way to becoming an elder anyways. You could imagine someone who might not even be truly converted, but they think the prestige of position and honor that comes with the office in the church is something to achieve, and so they learn how to walk the walk and talk the talk and grab hold of an office they shouldn’t have. Certainly, that kind of aspiration would not be biblical.

But this kind of aspiration in verse 1 is affirmed, and so verse 1 must have in mind the godly pursuit of a noble call. By analogy, I think of 1 Corinthians 12:31, when Paul had been talking about the various kinds of spiritual gifts in the church. He talked about how certain gifts are especially useful and honorable. And at the end of the discussion, he on the one hand said we should be content with the gifts God gives us, but on the other hand says we should earnestly desire the greater gifts. [...]

Adult Sunday School class led by Rev. W. Reid Hankins at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 11/6/2016 in Novato, CA. This week we completed a series on covenant theology, continuing to discuss the New Covenant.