I have to be honest, I'm getting pretty tired of voting. We've had, in the space of one month, we've had two elections, and it seems like only yesterday that we had our federal election. The whole election thing is in our newsreels every day, nearly, the whole government issue. And I'm just yeah. To be frank, I'm getting a little bit tired of the whole thing.
You know, scandals, corruption, mismanagement, infighting. We're talking about leadership. Leadership. And so this morning we're going to be discussing that. It's a hot topic at the moment.
It's a hot topic in our society in Australia. But if you're anything like me, you'll also be frustrated with the current system. And you might be wishing for someone special to stand up above the rest, to show something special, to be someone special. Be that someone that will be a breath of fresh air in our situation, but who is that person? What do they look like?
If you were to outline qualities of a good leader, what would you put down? If we put just the politics of government aside, who would you want as a leader in your church? Would they be the same qualities as the leader of a government? Are they any different? It's refreshing to revisit these questions this morning as we continue our series on the letter of Titus.
Jesus' church, we know, is a community. It's a family. It's a body of believers with a common goal. And because it's a community, it needs structure. It needs leadership.
In other words, in order to reach this common goal that we all share, we need things in place. We need a structure. We need an order. And this morning, we're going to be looking at what God has to say about leadership. We're going to be looking at the input that God has on how we choose leaders and how a community like the church is meant to be led.
So if you have your Bibles, let's open to Titus 1. We're going to be reading just a few verses, verses 5-9. Titus 1:5-9. Paul writes, the reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.
Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless, not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. As we get onto this letter, we see that there's a bit of cultural context that we have to deal with. Paul is an apostle.
Paul is someone that was a leader in the church that was sent to various places across the Mediterranean. And we see that he came on the island of Crete. He preached the gospel there, but he had to leave before there were adequate leadership systems put in place. He writes to Titus who was sort of his lieutenant in the area, and he writes to him and says, make sure that you put leaders in every town. In every town where there is a Christian community, make sure that there is an elder.
An elder is not how we think of elders right now. An elder was a leader. Elders in towns were the governing officials. Generally, they were more mature. Generally, they had a bit of clout, little bit of respect, and they became leaders.
And so Paul uses this term elder, and he doesn't necessarily refer to age because as we'll see later on, he doesn't mention anything about how old they have to be. But the idea is that they have a little bit of maturity, whether that is through age, whether that is through spiritual maturity, because we even know that Titus, himself would have been, maybe late twenties, early thirties. So he wasn't necessarily old to be considered an elder. We know that Timothy, when Paul took him on his missionary trips, he was late teens, 19, maybe early twenties. So these weren't old leaders.
They weren't elders by the, you know, true definition of the word. But Paul says, I've left you in Crete to appoint elders in different towns where the churches are. Straight off the bat, what do we see? We see that there is an expectation that every church has leadership. A church cannot be a church without leadership.
You know, I've been to many different churches and investigated all sorts of different models, but every church community I've come to has shown that there is some sort of structure, some sort of leadership structure in place. And so God's expectation is that someone will have the capacity. Someone will be given the capacity to lead Jesus' church in some way. Our style of leadership in this church, in our denomination, is based on biblical patterns that says that we are governed by elders, a body of mature gentlemen that take responsibility for the welfare of this church. They are the representatives of each person, of each family in this church, and they have the responsibility of keeping this church healthy, of making us achieve our goal.
And that goal is to proclaim Jesus to Brisbane, to proclaim Jesus to the Gold Coast, to proclaim Him to the ends of the earth. A church cannot be a church, Paul says, without leaders. So but he goes on, and this is a question. How, what do these leaders look like? And when I talk about elders here, I think these apply to leaders of any sort of calibre.
This is not the yeah. Like I said, Paul is not referring to the Christian reform church's order or hierarchy or anything like that. People who are in places of authority in his church. How do these leaders look? First thing that he says in verses 6-8 is that they are godly examples.
They are godly examples. They are leaders who lead by example. He says, the first thing they are to be is blameless. He sums up the whole list of things that they are to be and he says they are to be blameless. That's a pretty massive summary statement, isn't it?
Blameless. Now, going to the Greek, however, we see that it's not necessarily sinless. It doesn't mean sinless because if it was sinless, then no one would be a leader. As Christians, we confess that we are broken imperfect human beings. So that's not obviously what Paul is saying here.
The Greek refers to the word as being someone who is above accusation. Above accusation. In other words, you can't look at this person and see him as portraying an example of faith, living a godly life, so called, saying that he does or she does, but then seeing that they are off at the pub on Friday night getting smashed, or mistreating their wife, or being the worst gossip monger in the church. It's someone that is above accusation. That is what blameless means.
So it's someone that can't be accused of living inconsistently with their faith. If you want to be a contributing leader in this church, Paul is saying, in the church of Jesus, then your life should serve as an example of God's grace working in your life. If your life is filled with bitterness, if it's filled with greed, with anger, with jealousy, with envy, then the question is, is the work of God's forgiveness and His love really evident in your life. Paul mentions a whole list of criteria then. He says, this grace of God's work, the gospel should lead that leader to be the husband of but one wife.
A man whose children believe and aren't open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. They are not overbearing. They're not quick tempered. They are not inclined to get drunk nor are they violent or sleazy businessmen. People that promote dishonest gain, he says.
The truth is every person in this church has a call of God to be involved in this Christian community to some capacity. God doesn't call us from nothing into nothing. God calls us from emptiness, from pointless existence into His kingdom that is full of purpose, into His church that has a goal. We are moving. We don't just meet here on a Sunday because we have nothing better to do.
There's a purpose for us being Christians. There is purpose for us in being part of this church. Now as someone who's going to be an ordained pastor, God willing, hopefully soon ish, this sort of passage really rocks you. This sort of passage really challenges me. Am I measuring up?
I have to ask myself. Well, don't have to worry about the whole husband of one wife thing. That's not, you know, the issue at the moment for me. But I think it alludes to a more broad principle of is this person sexually faithful? If a leader is cheating on his wife or husband for that matter, is this leader having an affair?
Have they cheated in the past? Does he get drunk every Friday night? Is he in ministry to make lots of money? I can guarantee you that's not the case, if you know anyone in ministry. But, I mean, that's a valid question to ask is, you know, are they that unskilled that they can't do any other work so they try and get into the ministry?
If you know church history and times where, you know, the church was really in tough sinful times, people joined the ministry to have status and power and control and money. So, you know, the question is, are people in leadership to make a buck? You know, it's really interesting how little we focus on the characters of leaders today. When we look at, you know, voting in Campbell Newman, did we ever, you know, go up to him if we saw him and say, have you, you know, ever cheated on your wife? Or go up to Anna Bligh and say, how's it going with your husband and kids?
Do we see anything in the media about that sort of stuff? Talking generally about, you know, someone that needs to, I don't know, lead in some sort of capacity in your workplace. Do you ask them about, you know, how healthy are you? What are you eating? I don't know.
We don't ask those sort of questions. We ask what sort of applications do you have? Campbell Newman, oh, you're an engineer. That's great that, you know, you can help us build another 500 tunnels in Brisbane. Those sort of things.
We don't ask questions on character. And yet for us as Christians, a good leader needs to be one who has the fruit of God's work in their life. We don't judge on their qualification alone. We judge on the outlook of their character as well. A while back I read up on the code of chivalry in the medieval times.
Ben is agreeing. It's a pretty awesome idea. It was a traditional code of conduct for certain leaders in the medieval times. In the order of the knights. The knights were lords.
They were leaders. In the feudal system, they were apportioned bits of land from the king and under them had peasants working for them. These lords became knights and they signed up to the knights' code of chivalry. This code was a moral system. It wasn't based upon expertise or having the right qualifications necessarily.
It was a moral system that stated that all knights should protect others who cannot protect themselves. These people, and it outlines them, they were to protect the widows, they would protect the orphans, the children, the elderly. All knights needed to have strength and skill to fight wars, that was given a given. But knights not only had to be strong and extremely disciplined for the sake of being strong and disciplined, they were expected to use their powers to protect the weak and the defenceless. Knights, in their code, vowed to be loyal, vowed to be generous, vowed to tell the truth at all times, I don't know how they manage that, and to respect the honour of women.
In the dark ages, these horrible times that we keep hearing about, knights were to protect the rights and respect of women. Isn't that interesting? Really interesting I found. The code of chivalry. Imagine if our government took this code on board.
How differently would it look? No more sexual harassment allegations that we're dealing with today in our parliament. No more misused union funds to sleep with prostitutes, which we are dealing with today. Friends, God calls His people to serve His church, not simply because they passed all their Bible college exams. Not simply because they are excellent businessmen who know how to run an organisation.
God calls His people to serve His church because they are people who have been radically changed by the gospel. People who have seen God heal their brokenness, wash them off the terrible things that they have done in their life, the terrible things that has caused them to be broken and imperfect. But God has not only washed us and cleansed us, He has given us new hearts, the Bible says. God has saved us into something, not from our sin alone. He's given us hearts that want to do the right thing, lives that are so astoundingly different to the lives of those around them.
That's what God has done. In other words, lives that are blameless, free from accusation of wrongdoing. That's what God has done. This world needs leaders like that. We need Christian politicians.
I'm never going to be a politician, but good luck to the one who wants to be. Our world needs leaders like that. Our church needs leaders like that. Paul goes on to say in verse 8 that these leaders should be hospitable, should love what is good, that should be self controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. They must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that they can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.
Paul said that he, you know, he gives us list of how we're not meant to act. What we're not, what these leaders aren't meant to do. But then he says, this is who they are. This is who they are, and this is so great. It's so practical.
I love it. It's so great. We are to be hospitable as leaders. We are to open our houses to have people that aren't as fortunate as us in. We are to incorporate them into our families.
Give them a place to crash. We are to give them meals. We are to look after them as if they're our own. We are to be hospitable. We are to love what is good.
To promote and encourage what is wholesome. What is healthy. To promote healthy eating, to promote good sleeping patterns, to promote healthy relationships, to promote what is good. We are to be self controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. It means not gratifying every urge that comes across our path.
Every, you know, whatever. Every Maccas that you drive past perhaps or drinking alcohol for shady motives, you know, talking to especially sort of young younger people that are moving to that age of going out with friends and stuff like that. If you need to drink half a carton of Jim Beam and Coke to dance, then you're probably not very good at dancing and you shouldn't dance at all. You're going to experience, and I'm talking to guys here especially, that's a massive pressure. It means that we don't gratify that urge.
That we are self disciplined. There's a lot to be said about disciplined lifestyle. A lifestyle that is based on good, practical, healthy choices that's outlined in God's word. There's so much of it in there. We cannot have the excuse that I didn't know.
I don't know how to live healthily. We're hopefully going to make available, yeah, like I said, some of this sort of stuff and that's, towards wholeness is another aspect of that. We might have to re talk about the whole May 19, May 20 thing. That might not work. We can discuss that sort of stuff because that's a massive weekend for everyone.
But some really practical stuff that we can make available, that session wants to make available to you guys. Anyway, so Paul wraps up all this in verse 9. This is where he brings it all together. He says, what's the reason? What's the reason for elders, for leaders in the church?
Why should they be people who exemplify the radically changed renewed lives which God gives us in Jesus Christ? He says, well, because they are to be trustworthy people. They are to be trustworthy people who carry a trustworthy message. That message is that Jesus saves us from ourselves. That Jesus saves us from our sin, our brokenness.
He saves us from a pointless existence. Just look at me and see how much I've changed. This is who I used to be. This is what I've struggled with. This is who I am now because of Jesus.
That's a powerful message. If you were to do any studies in postmodernism, I don't know if anyone has done anything like that. Postmodernism is sort of the mindset, the world view that all of us, if you're under 70, probably have. That says that in terms of communication, we value the messenger more than the message. In a modern way of thinking, the message, if it was truth, it was to be accepted.
If I said the sky is blue and it was truth, doesn't matter who it is that says that to you, you accept it because it's truth. Postmodernism, well, if you don't live life according to this statement that the sky is blue, I'm not gonna believe you. I'm not too sure about that. More and more people are beginning to see the message in the messenger. The messenger becomes the message.
In other words, our postmodern scepticism distrusts the message because we're like absolutely bombarded with all these messages just flying at us all the time. We trust the message that is rooted in the life of a messenger. That's interesting. The message becomes the messenger. For example, we'll trust Lance Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, a Victoria Cross recipient, when he tells us that you need to be physically fit to be in the army.
Why will we trust him? Well, because he's a fit guy, but because his story, the reason that he got his Victoria Cross is he saved his whole platoon through an amazing action of, you know, fitness and speed and endurance. So you trust him and what he says. If he was to say that, I don't think he has. You trust him because of what he is and what he stands for.
I think every person involved in the church family should be involved in this sort of exemplary leadership. Having being trustworthy messengers with a trustworthy message. And we're going to be looking at what this message is later on in this series. It may be leading an entire church, being a pastor of a church and leading it. Or it may be cleaning the toilets.
It may be leading people in worship. Or it may just be inviting your neighbour every week, taking them, picking them up, and bringing them to church. That's leadership. Put simply, our church is here as a community with a common goal, and that needs leadership. We're just gonna chuck on Narang's mission statement just to remind us of what this goal is.
What are we on about? We are to grow in the kingdom of God and to fulfil God's call over us as His people. That is what your leadership, your eldership have determined from Scriptures to be the call on Naren's existence, what our goal is. To grow in the kingdom. How we do that is on the next slide. We are to win, build, and send.
Win, build, and send. We are to grow by taking the message of Jesus to people and welcoming them into our community. We call that winning people to a living faith in Jesus Christ. We are to build. We grow in God's kingdom as we mature in our understanding and faith in the Lord Jesus through our interaction with each other on God's word.
We call that building a community of believers in Christ. We are, lastly, to send. We grow in God's kingdom as we mentor and encourage each other to serve the Lord Jesus Christ using the gifts He has given us to bring the message of Jesus to the world. We call this sending well equipped disciples of Christ to serve Him with the gospel. This morning, we've seen how God sees eligible leadership in His church.
Any individual who's been called by God to serve in His kingdom is to live by this code. To live by this code. It's not the code of chivalry. It's a code of JC. Code of Jesus Christ.
It's a code of leadership that is astoundingly different to what we're used to. Amazingly different. But it's the code of leadership that God wants and that will ensure that we achieve our goal, which we've just seen. Naren Community Church lives in exciting times. We've got amazing opportunities.
We've prayed about, and John mentioned our tithing. If we are to grow, we need to reassess that. It's the part of discipline that comes into leadership. Part of self control that becomes a part of it. If we want to achieve our goal, God calls us all to be involved in leadership.
Let's pray for that right man who we're looking for to come and lead this church. Let's pray that God raises leaders in this church. Let's pray that God will have His way in us.