What God Requires of Your Pastors Part 2

Well this morning I get to pick up where Pastor Milton left off last week, the exact same sermon title What God Requires of Your Pastors. We're going to be looking at a portion of verse 2 and verse 3. But I want to start with a little quiz that we're calling Name That Elder. Just to see if who our elders are.

And just shout it out. Kumi, this is Paul Kumamoto. He's the chairman. Of the board.

We're starting with the most distinguished 5 elders, and then we'll work our way down from there. He is also known for filet mignon and he is the You young adult ministry elder, this guy and his family. So Janassi's Kevin Janofsky. He's our ballistic miss missile specialist.

And he's our secretary of the board, and he is overseeing children's ministry. Bill Payne, Bill Payne, we also refer to him as Ringo Starr. He's our inreach elder. He's overseeing our Team Uganda trips, and he leads the team in gray hair.

So, which is a biblically a good thing, right? That's a compliment. That is a great compliment. Alvin Davis, who is here posing with his family and a very famous baseball player who is Ken Griffey Jr.

Alvin's also a famous baseball player. And this is Alvin trying to make a comeback, but his fastball only registered at 68 on the gun. And so he wasn't able to come back. He is head of our finance ministry and he's our treasurer.

We also have an elder who's currently finishing up seminary and he's already published his first book. Carlos Cuellar. Is Carlos here in the service? Anywhere.

Carlos made this. He made this. So this is what Carlos does during elders meetings. And then there's the other 3.

This is what Steve McCullough does during staff meetings. This is Steve McCullough's production. Now let's play Where's the Kiwi. That's a Carlos right back there.

Notice he's the head on the icon. So Kiwi is in charge of care groups and counseling, nacho, adult ministry facilities, Escalito Sunday worship. Do you guys feel loved? Yeah, last week Milton said when we read 1 Timothy 3:1 to 7, we should feel loved.

Because God cares about his sheep so much, He has certain qualifications. One of which is not to wear leotard to dress up like a lucha libre. That's, that's adding the scripture. But we're gonna talk, we're gonna continue on with where Milton was rolling last week.

We're gonna talk about 7, yes, 8 things God requires in the proverbial language, 8 things that God requires of your pastors. And John, are you able to take it from here? OK. and I'm just gonna review without any explanations, the ones that Pastor Milton went over.

Children, you're gonna want to write fast if you're trying to fill these in. They must be above reproach. That's the egg that opens up and everything else that comes out explains what do we mean by above reproach. They must be a one woman man.

Number 3, they must be temperate, which is just general, not given to excesses. We're going to talk about a specific area in which elders are not to be given to excesses. for there to be prudence. 5, they must be respectable.

The idea of orderliness, attractiveness, which has been thrown into question this morning, at least on my part. 6, they must be hospitable. And then 7 is, is where we're gonna pick it up this morning is that they must be apt to teach or able to teach. In the middle of these moral qualifications, we have the only professional qualification in the list which gives us a hint as to what elders are really to be about.

They're to be about teaching. If you guys remember the context, Timothy is overseeing the ministry in Ephesus, and he's the one that's supposed to be establishing these elders. And if you remember back in Acts 20 when Paul had left the elders in Ephesus, he warned them about wolves that would come from without and also wolves that would come from within. And so it was going to be very important for those elders to be ready.

And equipped to watch out for themselves, but also to watch out for the wolves to protect the sheep, and that gives us a bit of a clue as to what it really means to be apt to teach. Titus 1:9, a parallel passage. Paul's writing to Titus and giving them, qualifications for elders, says this Titus 1:9, holding fast to the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching. So that he will be able to do two things to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.

This is a good summary that a lot of commentators would point to as a definition of what it means to be apt or able to teach. An elder must be someone who holds fast the faithful word. They're holding fast to the key components of scripture to doctrine and the gospel. They don't have any questions about the key doctrines of the Christian faith that's been handed down from the apostles and historically it has come down to us.

And they are able to take that and do two things. They're able to exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. Exhort would be the more positive idea, refute the more negative idea. John Calvin says that a pastor needs two voices, one for gathering the sheep and the other for driving away wolves.

And thieves. So to be apt to teach, an elder needs to be one who is equipped and ready to gather and exhort the flock and drive away wolves. And both are important. Both happen all the time.

Unless there be any misunderstanding, the refuting part is not just an idea about some miscellaneous heretic that walks into our church once in a while. Every one of us has areas in which we need to be refuted, right? Every one of us have areas in our hearts in which we're not fully believing the gospel or we're misinformed. And so part of a pastor's job, part of an elder's job is to exhort and encourage, but also to help brothers and sisters see those areas in which we're all misinformed and not believing the gospel the way we should.

Sometimes we have it in our head and it's not being practiced. Sometimes we're just misinformed in our head and we need to be refuted or encouraged to change our viewpoint. So I love this quote from Alexander Strack, who has written a book that's been very influential on us as an elder board. In fact, we have an abbreviated version of it at the information booth that you can buy after the service.

He says this It doesn't matter how successful a man is in his business, how eloquently he speaks, or how intelligent he is, if he isn't firmly committed to historic apostolic doctrine and able to instruct people in biblical doctrine, he does not qualify to be an elder. An elder is about teaching. An elder is about understanding what the word of God is, having a passion for the word of God, passion for God's people, and exhorting and refuting. So if Donald Trump were to walk into our church tomorrow and say, I'm here to share all of my wisdom and abilities with you.

Could I be on your elder board? I don't know him real well, but our, our initial answer would be. No, not yet. We appreciate the fact that you are a mighty man of business, but unless Mr.

Trump, you can demonstrate to our body that Christ and that God's word and you're able to exhort and refute with the word of God, you do not qualify to be part of the most significant organization on the planet in all of history, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this is, this, this is the one of the qualifications, the standard that the Lord holds out to us. To flush this out a little more, what it, what it involves is an aptness to teach. Obviously the implication is that an elder's going to have a knowledge of God's word.

He's going to have God's word in his mind. And he's going to have a knowledge of God's people. He doesn't just have the data and do a data dump every Sunday. It's like there's a growing knowledge of God's people and marriages and children and how and the needs that people have and the weakness and you've got people that are really hungry and they want to grow and they want more challenges.

And so an elder's growing in his knowledge of people and he has a willingness to teach God's word. To God's people, elders are not those that have arrived in their knowledge. They're those that are apt to teach with the knowledge that God's given them, and they're willing to do it. So we have 8 elders at this particular church, and I want to just tell you that every one of those guys is apt to teach.

Every one of those guys is committed to the doctrine that has been handed down to us from the apostles, the apostles down to this day, from the Lord Jesus Christ. There isn't any man on our board that questions the doctrines of the historic faith. Nobody's questioning whether justification by faith alone is true. Nobody's questioning solar scripture, whether the Bible alone is true.

All of us are committed to faith alone and grace alone. All of us are committed to the gospel. And so you can rest assured by God's grace that we have at this point in our church's history, 8 men that are committed and faithful to the Word of God, and that these guys all have a desire to exhort God's people and to refute those who contradict. Does this mean that every elder has the exact same area of giftedness?

Does this mean that every elder is expected to be an orator from the pulpit on any given Sunday? Do all of us have to achieve the oratory skills of a CH Spurgeon or a DL Moody in order to qualify to be elders? Absolutely not. First Timothy 5:17 gives us distinctions amongst a group of elders that is very helpful for us to understand with the way that the Lord has orchestrated things in his economy in the church.

Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:17, let the elders who rule well, be worthy or counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word of doctrine. And many commentators, myself included, would look at this, and you can see 3 divisions of elders from this one passage. You have elders who rule. They're ruling and given their giftedness and the time allotted, they're ruling and they're doing a good job.

But then you have elders who rule well, and those who rule well are counted worthy of double honor. That doesn't mean two slaps on the back. It actually means that they get paid and we'll look at that later when we get to this particular chapter. But those who rule well are worthy of double honor, but especially those who labor in the word and doctrine, and those that labor in the word doctrine are those that are giving themselves wholeheartedly to the study and the preaching of God's word.

So Pastor Milton particularly would be the one that is laboring in the word and doctrine most frequently from the pulpit on any given Sunday. And yet we have other elders that would be worthy of double honor who are ruling well, though they may not be in the pulpit every Sunday. And we have other elders that are ruling and doing a great job, but they are what we would call more lay elders. They're not necessarily getting the double honor, but they are receiving the honor of the ministry.

And so is every elder required to be an orator according to scripture? No, but every elder is required to be apt to teach. And so this is one of the requirements. Now obviously, these 8 elders that we have right now in our church aren't necessarily going to be here forever.

we've had turnover over the years. We've had men that have had opportunity and time to serve and then they've had to move on to other things. The Lord has risen up new leadership. But what are we doing as a church?

What can we do to educate prospective elders in the word to make sure that we've got a group of men growing up in our church that are apt to teach? I want to suggest three areas quickly. Of, of equipping and education to make sure that we've always got a fresh flow of leadership here at Cornerstone. And the first area is within our homes.

It's within Christian homes, where we find the most important training ground as Mom and Dad are imparting to little boys and little girls, the word of God and doctrine on a day in, day out basis. Nobody can replace what Mom and Dad does. Pastor Milton gets up here and preaches an hour a week. Sunday school time, we have an hour a week.

Nobody can replace what mom and dad does at home. And it's what mom and dad do at home that is raising the leaders for the next generation, both elders in the church and deaconesses and women's leaders, people that can move and shake this church, church, and move and shake the country. J. Gresham Machin is one who credits his mother above any other training that he received as being the one that put him in such a, an incredible place of ministry as a scholar of God's word.

The local church is called to do its job to raise up men that can pass on the gospel. 2 Timothy 2:2 says, and the things that you have heard from me, Timothy, among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Paul passes on to Timothy. Timothy passes on to other prospective elders, and those guys are going to pass it on to others.

The local church ought to be. A factory of production of raising up leaders for the church. And so at Cornerstone we've got a number of people who are care group leaders currently that aren't elders yet but are prospective elders. We have people that are attending our Thursday night men's leadership class and Bible studies.

Pastor Milton is currently meeting with a couple of men that we're hoping will eventually turn into our future elders. And you can be praying for that, but every one of us can be participating in the home aspect. If you think the Lord may be calling you to eldership, I'd encourage you to, to get involved in the care group and, and take leadership and, and, and the Lord, Lord willing, he would raise you up to be a care group leader or be involved in a Thursday leadership class and so on.

And then it's very important for us just to be about reading God's word ourselves and equipping ourselves.

So the 7th requirement is that elders are to be apt to teach, able to teach. Every elder ought to be ready to, they're, they're, they're holding on to God's faithful word that's been passed down to them and historic Christian faith. They can exhort, they can rebuke. And And they're, and they're ready and willing to do that.

Now, I, I wish, You guys could just be a fly on the wall at some of the elders' meetings that we have and some of these prayer meetings. It's just amazing to see how the Holy Spirit will work. Before I became an elder, I had this concept that whatever they did at those mysterious meetings probably involved everybody sitting around and listening to Milton talk for about an hour while he gives them all the duties and then they go out and do them like Milton would tell everybody how to dress.

It just so happens I'm dressed exactly like Pastor Milton this morning.

Coincidence. He does that staff meeting, not an elders meetings. no joking. But, in the elders meetings, you have these guys who love the Lord, love God's word, and love God's people who are rallying around different issues, instructing one another.

And it's so interesting to see the various giftedness in the room. And to see how the guys will bounce ideas off each other and over the years we've got battle scars that we've that we've in the trenches of ministry we've gotten those scars together. There's been times where we've gone through difficult things and we've cried together. There's times where we've gotten upset at each other and had to ask for forgiveness and all kinds of neat fun things in ministry.

And yet you see these men instructing and exhorting and And so on with God's word and it's not all about just one guy. It's not all about the guy that's the orator normally on a Sunday morning. It's about 8 guys that the Lord has called to this office that gathered together and minister to one another, and I would, I would feel woefully afraid for myself, and I know Pastor Milton would echo this if somehow if Milton was the only guy that was calling the shots and the only guy that everything ran through, or if I was the only guy.

But we've got the Lord has given us a plurality of elders, and there's a security in that and a blessing in that, that each one of us can watch out for each other and lift each other up and, and keep and keep pointing at each other back towards you guys to do what we're supposed to be doing.

So that's, that's the 7th requirement. Let's move on to the 8th, and we're only going to hit 2 this morning, so we're already done with 1. Number 8 is that elders must not be addicted to wine, must not be addicted to wine. It's right there in the first part of verse 3.

The literal idea here is, is there not to be someone who sits long beside their wine. Which is an idiom for basically they're not to be drunkards. They're not to be slaves of drink. and I'm sure we've all seen the proverbial movies of the priest who's pulling the wine, the, the little bottle out, and it seems like, a lot of these movies that portray religious people or pastors or priests have somebody, drinking the booze and, getting sloshed between services or whatnot.

not to be, not to be. the Bible gives severe warnings for drunkenness. drunkenness is universally condemned as an evil throughout the scriptures. And not just drunkenness, but even association with drunkards is, severely cautioned.

You look at a verse like Proverbs 23 on the screen here, I believe, verse 20, the writer of the proverbs says, do not be with heavy drinkers of wine or with gluttonous eaters of meat. For the heavy drinker and the glutton will come to poverty. It is an interesting phenomenon that in many places in Scripture drunkenness and gluttony are coupled together as equal and weighty sins. In our culture we're very sensitive to the drunkard, but give the glutton a pass.

On the pages of Scripture, both excesses are to be condemned and we're warned against. The destructive trail of drunkenness. The statistics are all over the place. I'll just list a few of them for you.

Over 15 million Americans are dependent upon alcohol. 500,000 are between the ages of 9 and 12. Each year the liquor industry spends more than $2 billion on advertising and encouraging the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Each year students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol, more than they spend on soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, coffee, or books combined.

Alcohol is involved in 50% of all driving fatalities. Among spouse violence victims, 3 out of 4 incidents reported involve alcohol use by the offender. We look at these statistics and we say with the proverbs, wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise. On the pages of Scripture we have 17 warnings in the Bible against the abuse of alcohol.

19 examples of abusing alcohol as early as Noah. All the way back in Genesis, we have Noah, Lot. We have the example of King Herod. We have the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 11, coming to an agape feast and getting drunk before everybody shows up.

Imagine showing up at the cornerstone on a communion Sunday and half the church is just blitzed, before you show up. That was actually going on in Corinth. So drunkenness is obviously a modern problem, not just a modern problem, it's obviously been a problem for a long time, all the way back to Noah. We could go back to ancient Egypt.

There's all kinds of evidence in ancient Egypt of, of worship using alcohol. we even have, the earliest evidence of someone dying of alcoholism in ancient Egypt. The abuse in ancient Greece and Rome is infamous with their gluttony and with their actual worship of Dionysus, for instance. They would worship the god of wine in alcoholic frenzy, and throughout history you can see the problem with drunkenness.

Today is today any worse than the past? I doubt not. There's nothing new under the sun. Drunkenness has been a problem from the very, very beginning.

Satan has always had his ways to mess and ruin people's lives. And, it gives us pause when we think about people in our own church who have Be rescued from the sin of drunkenness. We have many people in our church, people sitting here right today that have been rescued from drunkenness, rescued from drug addiction and other excesses. And remain.

Sober to this day, we have other people in our church that have repented and found great victory and then fallen back into it. We have other people who have struggled continuously and have never, been, have never repented of the sin of drunkenness for any length of period. It is an evil. It is a mocker.

It is something that universally on the pages of scripture is condemned, and we need to have great compassion. for those that struggle with the sin and great concern for our culture that is cheating in drunkenness. One pastor, a pastor I respect greatly, John Piper has this to say. About his response to the sin of drunkenness in our culture.

And here's what he says. If people can go on hunger strikes to make a political statement, boycott Nestle products to make a statement about child nutrition, third world exploitation, if people can go without lettuce for the sake of solidarity with Southern California farmer workers or swear off white bread and granulated sugar, is it really so prudish or narrow to renounce a highway killer, a home destroyer, and a business wrecker? John Piper's position, his personal conviction is that because of the evils of drunkenness and because of the evils that he sees in this culture that he will boycott.

That particular practice because of all of the evils that he sees.

In that we can all see And yet it's interesting if you look at the title of this sermon, the title is Total Abstinence and Church Membership. And you may be interested to know that in this sermon, while John Piper is vigorously preaching his own conviction, The real point of this message is to change the Constitution away from an abstinence position. His first year of ministry when John Piper came to Bethlehem Baptist, their constitution read that they would not allow anybody into membership that took a sip of alcohol.

If anybody was a wine, wine drinker, a beer drinker, or any such drinker, they could not be received into membership.

And while John Piper held an abstinence position, he vigorously fought for their constitution to be changed because he believed That to force that particular conviction on the whole congregation, and to disallow membership into the body of Christ was legalism. And he changed the constitution. It actually went on to be a little more specific, not just drink it, any excess that someone is sold to or enslaved to, that they need to strive not to be enslaved to those things in order to be a member.

Could somebody join Bethlehem Baptist today and have the position of moderation, drinking with moderation?

Yes. Can someone join Bethlehem Baptist today and have the position of prohibition or abstinence? Yes. Can somebody join Bethlehem Baptist today who is an unrepentant glutton?

No. You cannot join Bethlem Baptist today if you're an unrepentant glutton. That's, and I, I respect John Piper for the way he's approached that. And that leads me to this, this question that I want to ask.

Of the text. And that is with all that we know about the evils of drunkenness. With all that we know about the destruction and tragedy that drunkenness has caused, In world history Why doesn't Paul command total abstinence in this passage? Why does Paul say, do not be drunk with wine rather than do not drink wine?

It's somewhat befuddling if you think about people in our own church who have had their lives wrecked by drunkenness. And yet Paul will not go there. Why? Why will Paul not go to that particular Position.

There are reputable Christian organizations that take the absence viewpoint and not necessarily because of legalistic reasons. They just feel like as an organization this is the standard that we have. We know that we don't believe necessarily that we can make a hard fast case from the Bible that everybody abstained, but this is the way we want our people to do it and you can respect that. An organization like the Salvation Army would be one, or if you were to go to Southern Seminary, that'd be another one where they would want you to sign something that says at least while you're involved in this organization, that you will abstain entirely from alcoholic beverages.

But Paul In order to become an elder does not go there. Why? And I want to suggest 3 reasons. There could be more reasons than this.

And not everybody in this room may agree with all these reasons, but I want to propose to you, I believe all three of these reasons are thoroughly biblical. What with such potential for drunkenness and destruction, why doesn't Paul teach absolute prohibition? First, because teaching absolute prohibition would contradict the Old Testament teaching that wine is a blessing from God. Let me say that again.

Teaching absolute prohibition would contradict the Old Testament teaching that wine is a blessing from God, not a curse. There's many scriptures that support this. I'm just going to list a few, but Psalm 104, for instance. Say you cause, speaking to the Lord, you cause the grass to grow from the livestock and the plants for men to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man's heart.

When you survey, all of Scripture, there are 59 references to the commonly accepted practice of drinking wine and strong drink with meals. There's 27 references in the Bible to the abundance of wine as an example of God's blessing. There's 20 references to the loss of wine and strong drink as an example of God's curse. There's 25 references to the use of wine in offerings and sacrifices, 9 references to wine being used as a gift.

All in all, there's 145 documented positive references to wine and strong drink in Scripture. And I want to propose to you that the apostle Paul, who has a respect for the Old Testament, and would not contradict the Old Testament unless he was instructed to by the Holy Spirit for dispensation, dispensational reasons. will not add to the scriptures. Deuteronomy 14.

Notice what Deuteronomy 14 says. Moses writing in the law says in verse 26, and you may spend the money for whatever your heart desires for the oxen, sheep, wine, or strong drink. Strong drink, some people believe, refers to beer. or whatever your heart desires, and there you shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice.

All by yourself. Is that what it says? No, you will rejoice, you and your household in the presence of the Lord. What Moses is saying here, he's given instructions to the 2nd generation of Israel before they cross over the Jordan, and he says, when you get over the Jordan, get into Canaan, and you find that place where I'm going to set my name, that, the tabernacle in Shiloh at first went to a couple other places, and then it settled in Jerusalem.

When you go to that place to worship where I set my name, I invite you to come and eat and enjoy, and wine and strong drink and in the presence as worship to the Lord, with your household, and implied all of Israel. This was part of their worship to God Almighty. Wherever the Lord sets his name, I want you to worship. God accepts wine and strong drink as part of worship.

Proverbs 3:9 says this, I've, I've, I've quoted this verse a million times and never really thought about its implications for the, for wine. Proverbs 3:9, honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of your produce. So your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. You give to the Lord first, and he's going to bless you with food and new wine.

Let me just say, do a little bit of research in your Bible encyclopedia and you'll find that new wine does not mean grape juice. New wine means the best stuff and actually a little bit more fermented and actually quite a bit more fermented than the average wine. God says, if you give to me first, I'm going to bless you, your barns, and I'm going to cause your vats to overflow with new wine. Isaiah 55 is a passage that describes the gospel and uses a lot of symbols to invite us to come to the gospel to come to Christ.

Isaiah 55:1 says, Oh, everyone who thirsts, Jesus says, anyone who thirsts comes to me, right? This is full on gospel stuff. Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you who have no money, come by and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money.

And then later he says eat what is good and delight yourself in abundance. The gospel that wine is an Old Testament symbol for the gospel, for enjoying the gospel. It would be befuddling for something that is utterly sinful to be used as a symbol for the gospel. Now, let me make sure you understand me.

Drunkenness is sinful. Wine is used as a symbol for the gospel. There's a difference. Later on in Jewish history, the Passover began to be celebrated with wine.

So what is one of the reasons why Paul does not forbid elders? Why doesn't Paul teach a prohibition viewpoint to elders? Well, first of all, he'd be contradicting the teaching of the Old Testament, but secondly, because, teaching, he'd be teaching, teaching absolute prohibition would contradict the practice. Of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Paul, there's no way that Paul would want to be adding to or contradicting. The practice of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a well known fact that Jesus' first miracle at the wedding of Cana was turning water into wine. And when you read the story, he didn't make cheap wine, he made good stuff, right?

Remember they said you've brought out the wine, the best wine at the end. And when you have the people who know all the mathematical calculations, they say that Jesus made about 180 gallons of wine for his first miracle. He uses parables in a number of different places that involve wine and wine skins and doesn't seem to bother him to use those kinds of terms to communicate spiritual truth. these days you hear people say, Well, what would Jesus do?

Is that, does anybody say that anymore? What would Jesus do? or is that totally out? Is that old?

OK. What would Jesus do? OK, I want to ask you guys this question. What did Jesus do?

What did Jesus do in the New Testament when he's responding to some of the criticisms of the Pharisees? He says in Luke 7. That John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say he has a demon. So here's John the Baptist who by the inspiration and direction of the Holy Spirit takes a life of abstinence, a legitimate biblical choice.

He doesn't drink wine. He's not eating rich foods. He's eating, locusts and honey. Not my preference.

and he's, he's not wearing rich, soft clothing. He's living as an ascetic lifestyle for the glory of God, legitimate life choice, as the forerunner of Jesus Christ. Verse 34, the Son of Man has come eating and drinking. And you look at him and say, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

The only way that you can explain such an accusation is that Jesus really ate with sinners. He ate good food, not locusts and honey, and he really drank wine with sinners. And it wasn't just with a bunch of spiritual folks, but he drank with the dregs of society. He went down, as it were, to the local pub and hung out with sinners.

Now did he get in on the on the terrible conversation? Did he, do all kinds? No, obviously not. Christ went in and he was a perfect light as our God, our Son of God would.

He was, he demonstrated holiness. He demonstrated love and kindness, but he entered into this place that opened him up to accusation. He actually put himself in a place that gave him disfavor in the eyes of the religious establishment. That's what Jesus Did John the Baptist abstained.

Jesus did not abstain. So how could Paul tell elders that you need to abstain when everybody knows full well that Jesus didn't live that way? The Old Testament doesn't teach that. And thirdly, Paul wasn't going to teach total and absolute prohibition because teaching absolute prohibition would contradict the ordinance of communion as practiced by the early church.

Jesus gave bread in the cup, and the cup is obviously a metonym for what's inside the cup. And what's inside the cup, we sang about it this morning is wine, right? The early church all throughout the early church, it's really a recent phenomenon that we use grape juice as opposed to wine, and I don't think personally that there's anything that demands that we use the fermented grape wine in order for it to be legitimate and so on and so forth. There's lots of churches that do use the fermented grape, and that's fine, and there's others that don't.

The point is that in the early church and for several 100 years, the only option was wine. And so if Paul were to say elders cannot have a sip of alcohol, he would, he would be saying, in essence, you cannot take communion. Now the thing that's interesting later in this book we're going to see that he tells Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach, so he's also favorable towards medicinal uses. But when you look at like something like 1 Corinthians 11, for heaven's sake, people showing up at the love feast, and getting drunk.

Before other people show up, one of the things that demonstrates is, is the type of stuff we're talking about in the New Testament times wasn't grape juice. I know there's debates about how much it was watered down and whatnot, but it was enough to where people could show up a little early to the Agape feast, and they got drunk, for heaven's sake, in the Corinthian church of all places. And all Paul had to do to get rid of this baloney is just say knock it off. Let's just have none of this wine thing in the house of the Lord.

Does he do that? He doesn't do that. Why doesn't he do that? Because Paul knows he's informed by the Old Testament.

His conscience is informed by Christ. His conscience is informed by communion, that wine is a blessing from God, and it's the devil that has corrupted it. It's excesses that have corrupted it. Food is not bad, gluttony is bad, sex is not bad, fornication is bad.

Wine is not bad, drunkenness is bad. And let me just give you some quotes here from the early church that established this. As Again, not the universally accepted viewpoint, because honestly there were people in church history that took an abstinence position, and that's, I think, a legitimate choice. But Jerome is an early church father, Here's what he said.

He says, priests given the wine, we'll, we'll give them that one, we'd call it pastors given the wine, are both condemned by the apostle and forbidden by the law. So priests given to wine, in other words, getting drunk is forbidden. I do not say that they are to be condemned, or that, that we are to condemn what is a creature of God or a creation of God. The Lord Himself was called a wine bibber and wine in moderation was allowed to Timothy because of his weak stomach.

Now here's Jerome as a pastor saying, Here's my instruction to you here in the 4th century. And he is the big dog in the 4th century. At, at this time, he is the guy. He says, I only require that drinkers should observe that limit, which their age, their health, and their constitution requires.

Jerome in the 4th century is basically saying the same thing that Paul says Drunkenness is forbidden in old and new. But let's not forbid what God's created. What God's created is good. But just let's, let's be sensible about this.

How old are you? How's your health? How's your constitution? Have you already struggled with the sin, then it's probably not a good idea.

Have you struggled with the sin of drunkenness, then it's probably not a good idea for you to participate in this blessing from God. The Bible does not forbid the enjoyment of God's blessings, because they can be abused. And there's a bigger issue here that we need to be careful about. On the one side, we need to take those warnings against drunkenness very seriously.

But there's another warning that we need to take very seriously, and that is adding to scripture things that are not there. one author says this, Daniel Whitfield, he says, adding sins to the list is strongly discouraged in the New Testament. Jesus was much more critical of religious people, adding prohibitions to the burden of the common man than he was of sinners. He never called prostitutes, adulterers, or drunkards, vipers.

We need to be careful that we don't fall into the category of, of being, of falling in the category of the Pharisees and adding things that Paul would not add. I was reading this last week and a gal, a blogger who was describing how she was taught all of her life. That alcohol is always in every condition a sin. Any drop of alcohol is sinful.

And then as she grew up, she got into the inner workings of the church and began to realize that there were lots of people in her own church that drank alcohol, not to excess, but they, they drank it. But they drank it secretly. They'd signed on the dotted line the Constitution saying they wouldn't drink, but they really didn't think there was anything wrong with it, so they drank anyway, but they did it secretly because they didn't want it to stumble anybody. We know who they stumbled was that girl.

Because she had grown up thinking that this is what the Bible teaches. And now I'm finding out this is not what the people in my church do. And as I'm looking at the page of Scripture, I'm starting to question whether that's what the Bible ever taught. And if I can't believe what my pastor taught me on this subject, can I really believe what he taught me on those other subjects?

And she went through a crisis of faith. You might not think that that's such a big deal, such a, something that would touch her so severely, but it did. Praise the Lord that she came out on the other side in a good place. Let me give you this wonderful quote from Martin Luther.

I love his quotes. I just had to throw this one in. He says, Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Man can go wrong with wine and women.

Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? So, And so Luther obviously fell into the moderation viewpoint. And even some people would question his moderation, but. What, let me just finish with this, OK, so I hope you understand what we've said thus far is drunkenness is an absolute sin.

But the Bible describes wine and strong drink as a blessing from God. And you can have things that are given to us that are meant to be a blessing, and yet they can be turned into a big problem. And yet that doesn't require nobody's requiring anybody. The Bible doesn't say you have to drink wine.

The Bible never says you have to drink strong drink. The Bible doesn't say you have to drink, eat rich foods as long as it's not in excess. You have guys like John the Baptist who did not eat and drink for the glory of God. You have guys like Jesus, the Lord Jesus, who did eat and drink for the glory of God, whether you eat it, and this is the exact context in which Paul says this verse, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of the Lord.

And in the previous context, he says, if you eat, eat to the Lord. If you don't eat, don't to the Lord. If you, if you do drink, drink the Lord. If you don't drink, drink, don't drink unto the Lord.

full context. But here's the question I want to answer to finish this, this thing up. What about the weaker brother? What about the weaker brother?

When the Bible says weaker brother, it doesn't mean it doesn't necessarily mean Somebody who has previously struggled with alcoholism, and now they could be tempted to fall back on alcoholism. That's not what it means. A weaker brother is someone who in their theology, believes that eating meat or drinking wine in a temple or any other thing is wrong, even though the Bible says it's OK. That's a weaker brother.

The Bible says you're free, but they think I can't do that. And Paul says, if you think you can't do that, it is sin to you. Your conscience demands that it is sin for you. That's the weaker brother.

What do we do, About making sure that we don't cause someone who is a weaker brother to stumble or somebody who they understand exactly what the Bible says that theoretically, they have freedom to do that. But they're like, I can't go there. That's, that's death to me. Notice what Paul says, and I want you to track with me because this is, to me, this is the crux of the issue for our enjoyment of, of God's blessing in this doctrine, both as elders and his, and members of this church.

Romans 4:3, Listen to what Paul says. Let him who eats regard, not regard with contempt, him who does not eat. Now he's talking about eating, this can apply to drinking and he will apply it to drinking later. But so the person who has freedom to eat because there's, they know there's nothing wrong with that meat.

is not to regard with contempt the one who's not eating. He's like, Oh, come on, there's nothing wrong with that meat. You're not to do that. And let him who does not eat.

not judge him who eats, for God has accepted him. The the brother who's like, I can't eat that. What in the world are you doing? You shouldn't be eating that either.

He's not to do that. Who are you to judge the servant of another to his own master, he stands or falls, and stand, he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand. That that whole verse is spoken to the person that's judging the other brother who's eating. Verse 5 One man regards one day another.

Now he's going to another issue where people can debate. One man regards every day alike, let every man be convinced in his own mind. Let's summarize here, and then we're going to move to the end of the chapter. Three things that we can summarize, I think all of us can agree on and what Paul says in these 3 verses.

1, The partaker, the one who eats, should not look down on the one who abstains, the one who does not eat. Do you agree with that? The partaker should not look down on the abstainer, and while he's talking about meat here, he's going to apply it to drink later. Everybody understand the partaker should not look down on the abstainer.

2, the abstainer should not judge the partaker. The one who abstains from meat or drink or anything else should not judge the other party. That's the second point that Paul's making in this passage. And the third point, which is his, his, this is where he's driving at is let every person, each person be convinced in his own mind.

In other words, there is a scriptural category of personal conviction. That does not need to be enforced on everyone else. Paul recognizes that there are categories of thought and doctrine that are black and white for everybody, the Trinity, the incarnation, salvation by grace alone. And there are other issues within God's economy and for his own glory, where God is pleased for people to have personal convictions.

And that's OK. And I don't have to enforce my personal conviction on you. And you don't have to feel like you've got to enforce your personal conviction on me. I can be an abstainer, and be OK with you being a partaker, and vice versa.

Let's look at the last part of the chapter, verse 21. Paul says, it is good not to eat meat, or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles. It's a good thing to withhold yourself from that freedom. Verse 22, but he finishes up.

The faith which you have Have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. Do you see what Paul is saying here? Two points that he's making.

It's a good thing not to stumble your brother. It's a good thing within the body of Christ to say, what, I could take a drink in front of this brother, but I'm not going to. I could eat this meat, but I'm not going to. I could put this Christian rock and roll in the CD right now and just blow this guy's brains out, but I know he doesn't like it, so I'm not going to.

I can hold myself back from certain freedoms. I believe the Lord's given me, and vice versa. But the second point that Paul is making is the faith you have, you can have happily before the Lord as your own conviction, without forcing it on your brother. We can be happy about our own convictions.

I want to ask you a question. Can I be happy about my freedom in Christ to eat meat? If I feel like I've got to run around in secret and run off to the east coast to eat it, Is that, is that the way I, can I be happy that way? So what is Paul contemplating here?

Is Paul contemplating a situation in the church? Is he suggesting that nobody should ever eat meat out of fear that he could possibly be found out and somebody walks into his house? Oh, you're eating meat. Oh.

Is that what Paul's contemplating? What Paul is contemplating, I want to suggest to you is a local church life where people can hold personal convictions, and hold them happily before the Lord. And yet when they come into, into relationship with those brothers who hold different convictions, they can happily hold themselves back. I can happily be a partaker when I'm with other partakers in this body, and we can rejoice before the Lord together, but then we come into contact with someone in the church who's not a partaker, and we don't say.

Man, that guy's got a weaker conscience. Come on, man, why don't you have some meat with us? Let's listen to some Christian rock and roll, man. What's up with you?

No, we don't do that. We happily rejoice. In, in withholding that freedom that we have in Christ. And what a joyful place the church is meant to be where people can hold personal convictions, and know that we have differences in the in in the church, and yet we're not hiding in our closets, our convictions.

And we can be happy about the things that the Lord's given us and recognize that that's God's design. Let me just give you an example here. And we are just about done. The example here, obviously we can apply it to drinking, but let's apply it to something like Christian rock music.

I personally can get really happy when I listen to Christian rock music. Particular kinds, there's certain kinds I don't like, but there's certain bands I can listen to. Well, there's this one rap group, what's, I can't remember the name, what's the name of it, John? The Cross movement.

And they do this song called I Am That I Am that has some of the most incredible lyrics about the attributes of God. I can remember sitting in John's car or truck one day, and just bawling. I'm listening to this rap song, just worshiping the Lord, and just bawling because these incredible lyrics, that's just putting on display the, the glory of God. But I know people.

I'm friends with people who do not get happy when they listen to rap music. And I'm not going to, when they come into my car, I'm not going to just full on slam that rap CD in and say, You've got to hear this. And if they don't like it, I'm not going to be like, what's wrong with you? If I'm applying the gospel, I'm going to recognize where they're at, and I'm not going to do that.

And they're going to recognize where I'm at, and they're not going to judge me if they happen to catch me listening to rap music, right? Can you see how that, that can be exciting stuff that we just were able to bear with one another's convictions. If you were a, a missionary in Mexico, if you were in Mexico City, where it's perfectly acceptable for women to wear pants, and you want to go minister up in the High Sierras, you will not get anywhere if you wear pants. You gotta wear a dress and you need to be willing to do that if you're gonna go reach out to these brothers and sisters.

And I just, I, I get excited when I think about Paul's vision for a local church like that, where you can have different convictions, and we can be happy about those convictions and be happy about holding ourselves back when we're going to, be an offense to one another. So how does this apply again? What does this look like as far as our elders go? Let me just, this is it right here, I promise.

So what is required of Cornerstone's elders in respect to this particular requirement? Our elders are not to be given over to excessive drinking, or eating, or spending or sleeping or anything else. We're not to have any drunk pastors at Cornerstone. We're not to have any gluttonous pastors at Cornerstone.

We're not to have any spendthrifts at Cornerstone on the elder board. But secondly, our elders are to be filled rather with the Holy Spirit and to be drunk with the Holy Spirit. Our elders are to teach, so as to inform your conscience with biblical truth, which is what I've been trying to do this morning. And our elders are to shepherd the body in the loving respect of different convictions represented in this family.

Not to despise the abstainers, not to judge the partakers, and our elders can help us find that unity as they teach. God has not intended that every one of us would have the same convictions on every issue. let me just, this is, I already said this was the last thing. Have you In recent memory, have you abstained from something that you have the right to do, but you pulled yourself back from it because you just want to be a blessing to your brother or sister?

That's a good gospel practice. There's something that you enjoy before the Lord, but, I'm not going to, I see that brother coming or I'm going to be meeting with his sister later, and I'm just not going to do that because I just want to be a blessing to him. That's a good gospel practice. Is there someone in your circle of friends who's struggling with excesses?

It doesn't have to be alcohol. It could be food. It could be spending. It could be entertainment.

Have you been able to withhold yourself from judging someone who has the freedom to do something that you abstain from? Have you come into contact with a brother and sister and been able to apply that aspect of the gospel where you're able to say, what, I abstain from that, but what? I'm going to rejoice in the fact that they can partake of that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna worship God for their ability to partake.

That's gospel stuff. And that, that's, that's crazy stuff that I, that I, I know that we can accomplish together. Now, I know the burning question that you're all asking is, am I a partaker or an abstainer? And I hope we have this.

I wanted to show you a picture here that's going to be in the Cornerstone Enquirer tomorrow, and It was taken a few years ago, and I think you should get a look at it before it comes out in the paper. This is me with my grandpa, and if you can't see up there, I'm holding a pipe. And an empty bottle of beer and I just, for some reason I wanted to take this picture with my grandpa of us holding our pipes and an empty bottle of beer, but I wanted you guys to get a look at that before it comes out in the Enquirer tomorrow.

If you want a real answer to that question, talk to me later.

Let's go ahead and let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your goodness to us. We'll have our ushers come on down, worship team come on down. Lord, we thank you for your goodness to us this morning.

We pray, Father, that You would help us to grow. These things. Not everybody in here is going to be on the same viewpoint. We've got people all over the map in this local church on any number of issues of partaking, abstaining.

I pray, Father, that each of us will be able to apply the gospel, help us be good Bens as we study these issues. And to, just be very gracious with one another as we grow in that respect. Help our elders, Lord, to grow in their ability to teach and help our elders, Lord, to, avoid excesses in every area. And may we each, each of the elders, shepherd our people in excesses and also shepherd our people and, being able to not look down upon and not judge.

And as we pray in Christ's name and ask that you would also receive our gift. You tell us that if we give the first fruits to you, you promise to fill our houses with food and give us wealth and to fill our vats with wine, we pray that you do that in Christ's name. Amen.