Thank you.
Alright everybody. Welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. Glad you could make it here tonight.
Let's go ahead and take out our hymnal to 134. You should find one under your seat there.
My anchor holds.
Song 134.
134, my anchor holds.
Though they hang research as role
On my tempest driven soul
I am peaceful for I know
While they though the winds may blow
I'm an anchor safe and sure
That can evermore endure
And it holds my anchor holds
For your wildness in old gale
On my voice as small and frail
By his grace I shall not fail
Oh, my anchor holds
My anchor holds
Mighty tides of comfy speed
Perils lurk within the deep
Angry clouds will shake the sky
And the tempest rises high
And I stand the tempest strong
For my anchor grips the rock
And it holds my anchor holds
While the sandal gale
On my voice as small and frail
By his grace I shall not fail
Oh, my anchor holds
My anchor holds
I can feel the anchor fast
As I meet his sudden last
And the gable though unseen
Bears a heavy strain between
Through the storm I safely ride
Till the turning of the tide
And it holds my anchor holds
For your wildness in old gale
On my voice as small and frail
By his grace I shall not fail
Oh, my anchor holds
My anchor holds
Troubles almost wealth the storm
Stormy bones, tempters seek to lure
Out of strength, storms of score
The night of day, but in Christ
I can be bold, I've an anchor
That shall hold, and it holds
My anchor holds
Oh, your wildness in old gale
On my voice as small and frail
By his grace I shall not fail
Oh, my anchor holds
My anchor holds
Amen. Good saying. Let's pray a prayer.
Lord, we thank you again that we could be here tonight to hear the preaching of your word.
I pray you speak to us through the message, help our ears to be open and to apply these things to our lives.
And preach your word faithfully to us in Jesus' name, Amen.
Next is going to be 132, right next door, Never Alone.
We've got a new one for you tonight, so many of you
may have not heard this one before, so you can learn it with us together.
132.
All together on the first.
The lightning flashing, and heard the thunder roll
I've felt since breakers
dashing, trying to conquer my soul
I've heard the voice of Jesus
Telling me so to find home
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
The world's first bands of glory
I feel the peace
And knowing my Savior's in between
He stands to shield me from danger
When earthly plans are gone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
When in a fiction's valley
There has been a dairy
My cosmic habit to bear
My feet entangled with briars
Ready to cast me down
My Savior has promised never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
He died for me on the mountain
For me to pierce his side
For me he braided in glory
Seen it upon his own
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
No, never alone
He promised never to leave me
Never to leave me alone
And we're working on the entire chapter. We're on verse number seven.
And so you still have plenty of time to
work on this and if you're able to quote the entire chapter you can
receive a prize and we just try to encourage people to memorize
the word of God and it's going to really be a blessing to you. John has a lot of great verses
in it. On the inside we have our service times and our soul
winning times and then down below we have our church stats. I'm going to get a quick
count of any salvations to note for the last few days.
And I guess technically our salvation total could even
get a little bit more because I think a few of these days were from last year. Was there anything
in the report from this past Thursday?
Nothing? Okay, what about Friday? Anything
from Friday? Alright, nothing from Friday.
What about Saturday?
It's like seven
for Saturday. What about today? I know the church van
had three. What was outside of the church van?
Another one? Okay, two. Alright, so five for today.
Keep up the great work on soul winning on the right. Please continue to
pray for all of our expecting ladies. We have several ladies there that are expecting. Also
we have our prayer list. If you'd like an additional prayer request you can
either submit that via our email or you can fill out one of our communication
cards and you can just slip that right into the offering. On the back we have
the note about our upcoming events. The ordination
of Brother Tanner Fur in our Oklahoma City church plant.
We have Steadfast Baptist Church OKC. He's going to be
officially and formally ordained as an evangelist on January 16th
God willing. And so he's been doing a really good job up there
and I think he's a really good fit to just carry the torch for
that church until eventually they have a complete
independent break. They have their own pastor that's qualified and everything like that.
He's doing a really good job and so I think that will be a great blessing for
them and for the church and that the work of the Lord would go forward. I'm going to actually
preach a sermon on ordination this evening and
kind of talk about just ordination in general and so hopefully that will be a blessing
to you. Also we have a baby shower for Miss Tina
Galasso January 29th. That's here at the church down below
has got some of the details. We have the congratulations to Shane and Laura Warner
on the birth of their son Noah Ezekiel. He was born on Friday
December 31st 2021 at 3.27pm. Weighing 8
pounds 3 ounces and measuring 22 and a half inches long. Congratulations
to them. I believe there should be a meal
train online if you'd like to help. It would be a blessing to that family.
You could get them a meal. You could see either
my wife or Mrs. Milstead. Typically
she helps organize a lot of those for us.
That's pretty much all I had for announcements. Let's go ahead and go to our
third song for the evening. 154
in your hymnals. Song 154
Blessed be the tie that binds
Again that's 154
Blessed be the tie that binds
All together. Blessed be the tie
that binds our hearts in
Christian love. The fellowship
of kindred minds
Is like to that above
Before our father's throne
Before our heart and prayers
Our fears, our hopes
Our aims, our want
Our comforts and our cares
We share our mutual woes
Our mutual burdens bear
Often for each
other Clothes a sympathizing tear
When we
Asunder bond
It gives us inward pain
But we shall still be
Joined in heart and hope to
Meet again. Amen. Good singing.
As the offering plates are passed around please turn in your
Bibles to Matthew chapter 20. Matthew chapter 20
We're going to read the entire chapter before the beginning of the sermon. Matthew chapter 20.
The Bible reads in
Matthew chapter 20. For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that
is an householder which went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his
vineyard. And when he had agreed with the laborers for a penny a day,
he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw
others standing idle in the marketplace and said unto them, Go ye also
into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their
way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour and did likewise.
And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle
and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto
him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye
also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right, that shall you receive.
So when even was come, the Lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call
the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.
And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
But when the first came, they supposed that he should have received more.
And they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it,
they murmured against the good men of the house, saying, These last have wrought
but one hour, and now hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden
and heed of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do
thee no wrong. Didest not thou agree with me for a penny?
Take that thine is, and go thy way. I will give unto this
last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will
with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
So the last shall be first, and the first last, for many be called,
but few chosen. And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the
twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go
up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests
and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall
deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify
him, and the third day he shall rise again. Then came
to him the mother of Zebedee's children, with her sons, worshipping him and
desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou?
She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the
one on thy right hand, and the other on the left in thy kingdom. But Jesus
answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup
that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized
with? They say unto him, We are able. And he saith
unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized
with the baptism that I am baptized with, but to sit on my right hand and
on my left is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared
of my father. And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation
against the two brethren. But Jesus called them unto him and said, Ye
know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,
and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be
so among you, but whosoever will be great among you, let him
be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him
be your servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed him, and behold
two blind men sitting by the wayside, when they heard that Jesus passed by,
cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David.
And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace. But they
cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David.
And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you?
They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened.
So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes, and immediately
their eyes received sight, and they followed him.
Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.
Father God, we thank you for the evening service at Stedfast Baptist Church,
and I pray now that you fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit, give him clarity of mind,
and enable him to preach a sermon for us with boldness.
And also I pray that you give us ears to hear, soften our hearts, Lord, so that we can
accept the point of the message, and also that we can
learn and apply it to our lives. And we love you, and thank you
for our church, and in Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
The part of the chapter that I want to focus on is here in the beginning, where we
have this parable, and I want to walk through it again real quick,
but it says in verse 1, For the kingdom of heaven is like unto
a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire
laborers into his vineyard. When he agreed with the
laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his
vineyard. So the parable has a certain man who
needs certain people to work for him, and he ends up going out, finding
people that he wants to hire, agrees with them, hires them, and
pays them a penny. Verse 3, He went out about the third hour,
and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto
them, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right,
I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out the sixth and the ninth
hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour,
he went out and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand
here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man
hath hired us, he saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right,
that shall ye receive.
So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his servant,
Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.
When they came that were hired about the eleventh hour,
they received every man a penny. When the first came, they supposed
that they should have received more, and they likewise received every man
a penny. When they had received it, they murmured against the good men of the house, saying,
These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal
unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong.
Didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that
thine is, and go thy way. I will give unto this last,
even as unto thee. Not lawful for me to do what I will
with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?
So the last shall be first, and the first last,
for many be called, but few chosen.
So there's a lot of things we could learn from this parable, but essentially we kind of
have the idea of the person going out and do the hiring is God.
That God is going out, and he's hiring servants, and we see that
some servants are called at the beginning of the day, and they work a full
day's wage, and agreeing to earn essentially a full day's wage.
But not only that, he ends up hiring people later in the day,
and when it comes to the time for him to end up paying them, they all get the
exact same wage. Whereas the people that work the whole day kind of get frustrated
or mad about the fact that they had worked the entire day, and
they received the same, as someone who basically was just last minute
ends up just getting to work just a little bit, yet still receive an entire
day's wage. Now, one way you could look at this parable,
and I think there's a lot of ways you could look at this parable, one could just be simply salvation itself.
In the sense that someone who gets saved is a young child, and
someone who gets saved on their death bed, they're both going to heaven. You know, it's not like
there's a special heaven for the people that got saved at a young age
versus old age, and really everyone that believes in the Lord Jesus
Christ is saved, and is going to receive the exact same
salvation, the exact same eternal life, the exact same Holy Ghost, and
some people might think like, well, I served you my whole life, I was saved my whole life,
you know, why don't I get something extra special? Well, it's just a reasonable
service to believe the gospel, whenever that is. And really, how can you
complain about the fact that you're not going to hell, regardless of other people,
and really it kind of just shows the disdain and the hatred for
other people if you don't want them to get the same salvation or go to heaven when
they get saved later in life, right? But another way you could look at
this is the same, is the idea that just your works being
rewarded. I think another way you could look at this is the fact that, you know, God is not
going to reward people according to their works the same way that we think
in our minds. Some people might think like, well, I've given, you know, X amount
of dollars to church, therefore I'm going to receive this huge reward,
and this other person's only given a little bit amount of money, so they're going to get less
of reward. In fact, the Bible teaches that the poor widow woman who gave only
two mites, he's going to have more treasure in heaven than most
people that gave way more money than her, simply because she cast all of her living in.
So God is not even necessarily going to judge people based on the quantity
or the output of their goods, but rather the heart and what they
had and the opportunities that they had. So someone could serve God their whole life
and do a lot more quantity than someone that gets
saved later and just does a smaller portion, and yet God ends up
rewarding them the same or even more, just because, you know,
we don't know how God's going to reward people, and it's really a foolish idea
to try and quantify it ourselves or try to figure out that before the judgment ourselves.
You know, our reasonable service is just to serve God, period, and we should want other people
to serve Him regardless, and in fact, this is to me a great motivation
to say no matter how late you get to the game, you can always be used
mightily by God and even receive the same kind of rewards as
other people, because think about it. Most people that get saved, you know,
at a young age, it's probably because of their parents.
You know, it's probably their parents that took them to church or got them saved
or something like that, and a lot of people that don't get saved as a child,
their parents don't end up getting saved. It's someone else. It's later in life, maybe a
soul winner. They go to church or a friend or something else. Later in life
gets them saved, but it was really that person's kind of like first real opportunity
to get saved, so then why are you harboring all this ill will to this person
that didn't have the same opportunities and weren't afforded the same advantages
that you were as a child? These guys standing here, they were idle,
but it wasn't because they wouldn't have worked all day. It's the fact that just no one came to hire
them, so as soon as someone did come to hire them, they got right on the job.
They were ready to do work. In fact, they agreed to do work not even knowing
what they were going to get, if you think about it. They didn't even know what they were going to get.
He's just like, hey, just work for me, and we'll figure it out later, and they're just like, let's go work, you know,
because that's really what we should do. Now, here's another way that I like to
interpret this parable is I like to think of it in the timeline of
history, where you kind of have people that
were set before us way before. You've got like Abraham and
Isaac, and you've got a lot of people, you know, that we look to, and they're
kind of the first laborers, and they're doing a lot more of the hard labor, the hard
effort, the hard work. I mean, they didn't have the whole Bible just handed to them. They didn't
get to stand on the shoulders of giants before them, and a lot of people
that came later are end up going to be even greater rewarded
than some of those people. Just think about it. When Jesus is talking
about the twelve tribes being judged, it's going to be by the twelve disciples.
Now, from a picture of the history of the timeline, are the disciples
at the beginning or the end? They're really kind of more towards the end, yet they
get these great positions of authority, and they basically are
going to be rewarded greatly, even though they're standing on the shoulders of giants.
And arguably, you know, none of them were even living that great of lives until
Jesus called them. I mean, Matthew the publican,
Peter the fisher, you know, like these guys weren't just like on fire
for God, just, you know, really, you know, zealous for the Lord.
We don't know exactly their life, but I mean, when Peter's confronted with Jesus,
he says, Lord, depart from me, for I'm a sinful man. So I don't think that guy was like really
just like super pious and super devoted. It seems like
God just kind of called certain guys out, you know, from
really not doing much for the Lord, maybe just being kind of focused on secular things.
And I'm not saying they were bad guys. I believe they were all saved,
and I believe they were all hardworking individuals, and they were intelligent.
They just weren't very spiritual yet. They're going to go through a three and a half year process
of becoming very spiritual and being used by God. And you say, well, why?
Because they were simply picked. Many are called,
but few are chosen. And here's the thing.
When it comes to being picked, you know, another word that you could use
that's a biblical word is being ordained, okay? And what I want to really
prove, and this is my first point, because my sermon this evening is called Ordination,
is that being ordained means that you've been chosen, okay?
And we see here in the Bible that the good man, he goes out and he gets to pick
whoever he wants to come work for him, doesn't he? He just gets to pick whoever he's going to have.
And when it comes to ordination, one aspect that's pretty important
is the fact that they're just chosen. Now go to Mark chapter three for a moment.
Go to Mark chapter three. When it comes to being a disciple of Jesus Christ, when it comes to being
one of the apostles, it was frankly just you were chosen by Jesus.
There wasn't like some application where you went and filled it out.
There wasn't just some opportunity for you to just be in a lottery system
or something like that. You know, it was simply Jesus showed up
and just said, hey, you follow me.
You know, I'll make you fishers of men. And really, if you get chosen
to do something for the Lord, you should take that as a great honor
and as a great privilege to then serve the Lord.
You know, I think there would have been a lot of men
that if Jesus had walked by and said, come and follow me, they probably
wouldn't have done it. Or they would have burnt out or they would have quit.
And evidenced by that is Judas. Judas was pan-picked because he was going to betray the Lord Jesus Christ.
But why did God pick the other 11? Because he knew
that they would end up being successful. He knew that they were going to be
the right kind of guys to pick and to use for the service.
But one thing is super clear, Jesus picked them. They didn't pick Jesus.
Now look at Mark chapter number 3, verse 13.
And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him
whom he would, and they came unto him. So Jesus just goes up
to the mountain and says, I'm going to pick whoever I want to come up here.
And he ordained 12. So notice, whoever he picks
or whoever he calleth is whoever he ordains.
He's ordaining 12 that they should be with him and that he might send them
forth to preach. Now when you're being ordained
what is the point if you're being chosen to do something?
There's some kind of task, there's some kind of role, there's some kind of job
that you're being hand selected, hand picked to do, that's a
type of ordination. And these 12 were ordained
to be with Jesus and to walk with him and he's going to give them power.
He says in verse 15, to have power to heal sicknesses and to
cast out devils. And Simon, he surnamed Peter, and James the son of Zebedee,
and John the brother of James, and he surnamed them Boadronis, which is
the sons of thunder, Andrew and Philip, and Bartholomew and Matthew
and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, and Simon the Canaanite,
and Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him, and they
went into an house. So when you read through the gospels you find out
that the 12 disciples were simply just hand selected,
hand picked out of the crowd, out of the multitude of the people
that were following Jesus Christ. Not everybody that was following Jesus Christ
got to be a disciple. He hand picked them, he ordained them,
he chose them out of the crowd. Now, go if you
would to John chapter 15, John chapter number 15.
So my first point this evening is really simple. What does it mean to be ordained?
It means you're chosen, right? It means you're hand picked.
It means that you are selected to end up doing the job.
Now, why do I bring this up? I bring this up because a lot of
Christians today and a lot of denominations have a weird idea on what
ordination is. And in fact, you know, you've got denominations like the
Pentecostals or other Christian denominations where they basically
tell you that they were ordained. They walk up and they say, hey,
I just felt the Spirit come on me and God picked me to be a pastor or a preacher or whatever.
And it's like, how did that work?
How do we know that you're not lying to us? How do we know that that's legitimate? How do we know
that that's real? You know, you just walk up and say, God told me X, Y,
and Z I'm going to be a pastor or a preacher or whatever. You know, that really doesn't fit
the model of ordination. Imagine someone walking up to Jesus and said, hey, I'm your 13th disciple.
I decided. God told me. Jesus is like,
really? I'm God. So actually, no, I didn't, you know, like it wouldn't make
any sense. And as weird as it would be for someone to walk up and say, like, I'm
the 13th disciple or whatever is to me the same as
a hand picking yourself to be any other job description in the Bible.
All of the men of God, all of the people that are used in
positions for the Lord are sent by God. God ends up
talking to them. God ends up picking them. You know, Moses didn't
end up just deciding to rescue the children of Israel. God hand picked
him. Now, when he tried to do it himself, it failed. He ended
up committing murder. He ended up fleeing. He ended up completely failing at it.
But then God decides to hand pick Moses and allow him to go
and do that task. When you see the prophets of God throughout the Old Testament, they're
visited by God. They're visited by angels. They're sent by someone very
specifically. Someone comes unto them and hand picks them. You know, Elisha,
who is the servant of Elijah. Elijah shows
up and is like, you're my guy. And he's like, well, let me kill all the oxen
and let's, you know, go. And you kind of see that picture of what
a disciple is like, where he just kind of lets go of the world, lets go of all his things
and goes and follows the man of God. You know what? An ordination
in the Bible is very clearly just being picked,
being chosen, being hand selected. Now, that
helps with the fact that it's God doing the work through the individual.
Because you think about it. You've got a man of God, you know, praying and seeking the Lord
and asking the Lord to help guide him. And then he's hand picking people to do the service
of the Lord. Therefore, it's still God kind of doing the prompting. And that's how you
know that God is calling you to do the work of the Lord. A lot of people say,
like, well, I don't know if I'm being called. And it's like, well, did you ever get a real
literal physical call? No. Then you're not.
It's that simple. And you say, well, but if
I really just feel it in my heart, though, I feel like that's what I need.
You know, really, you should just live your life just serving God. And then if you get called,
you get called. And if you don't, you don't. You know, it should be that simple. It's that
easy. And we need to emphasize the fact that
when you get that call, though, that's how God works. That's how God
operates. And that's how someone is called of God, chosen of God,
ordained of God, is through the men of God. Look at John, chapter
15, verse 14. You're my friends.
If you do whatsoever, I command you. Notice you're not automatically a friend of
Jesus, okay? Verse 15, henceforth I call you not servants, for the
servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends, for all things
that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
Ye have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you and ordained you
that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain,
that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name,
he may give it you. Notice Jesus making it really clear.
You guys didn't pick me. I picked you. And I'm
sending you out to go and to preach the gospel and to do these
works and to be an apostle. So how does someone become an
apostle? You have to be hand-picked by Jesus.
Literally, okay? Not only do you have to be hand-picked, you have to be
hand-picked before and after. Because you basically, well I guess Paul
is kind of an exception there. But at least you have to see the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ,
otherwise you're not going to be a witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That's the whole point of being an apostle, is that you've been chosen and selected and
hand-picked to go out and be an eyewitness of the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, and we have a lot of those throughout the Scriptures.
The apostles, okay? And there weren't just the 12,
because he ordained others, and we have people like Barnabas also being mentioned as an
apostle. And I've heard really garbage sermons and really stupid sermons
from people like Adam Fanon, saying that, you know, Paul was
ordained an evangelist by the congregation. And I'm like,
how does that even work? Did the congregation, like, become like a transformer
and turn into the resurrected Jesus and then hand-pick him? Because, you know, that's
not how someone becomes an apostle. You know, people don't just have the power.
I can't just walk up to some random stranger, you know, me and like five
people from our church, we can't just walk up to a random stranger and be like, you're an apostle today.
We just all decided, you know, no, no, no. The apostles are already gone anyways.
Okay, the apostles have already passed on. We don't have any apostles today.
We had them. We're built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
You know what? Now we have different roles, different tasks, like
pastors, like deacons, like
evangelists that we have in Scripture, we find them, and I believe
these are the offices, the jobs, and the roles that God has left for us
to fulfill. So if someone's going to be chosen to be a pastor
or a deacon or an evangelist, one thing that needs to be
a part of that mix is they need to be hand-picked, they need to be chosen
by the man of God. You know, and it's not a self-picking,
you know, it's not like the guy calling you and saying, hey, I'm going to be ready
in six months for you to pick me. That's Adam Fanon again, sorry
for all of you that don't remember. Sorry, this sermon, you know, is a sore subject
for him because he's a loser that self-ordained himself. But, you know,
at the end of the day, you know, why would you even want that kind of ordination?
How could you even know that it's legit? How could you know that you didn't just make it up
in your head or make it up in your mind, that you just decided that you were called?
I mean, every Mormon decides that they got this burning in the bosom, that the
Book of Mormon's legitimate. How do you think that happened?
You don't think that other people could be tricked or deceived by their own heart?
I mean, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it is what the Bible
says. So, you know, where do I get that confirmation? You get that
confirmation from a person saying, hey, it's you. You know,
come on down, right? I mean, you don't get to just walk up to, you know,
the price is right and just say like, hey, I picked myself, you know, I'm here.
It's like, no, no, they call your name and then the camera comes and looks at you
and, you know, it's like scanning and it's like, there he is, you know, and he's coming to run down the aisle.
I mean, that's what it's like to be ordained. That's what it's like to be handpicked or selected, okay?
They just don't have all the music and everything else.
Go back to, go to Acts chapter number one now. Go to Acts chapter number one.
But when it comes to being
ordained, I could show you a lot of places and I'm going to keep proving this point over and
over, but I just wanted to make the first point real simple. It means to be chosen,
okay? It just means to be picked, appointed. There's a lot of words
that are kind of meaning the exact same thing. Called, you know, it's kind of the
same, it's the same word essentially just manifested
in different ways. Now, in Acts chapter number one,
we're going to get a little bit more specific as far as why someone would
be chosen, right? We kind of identify the Bible saying Jesus
picks people, right? Well, why then? They just, you know, like, I like
the name Simon, I like Simon, but let's rename him Peter. You know, let's just pick some random
people. You know why he called him Peter? Because he's a rock.
You know? We see verses where he says that thou art Peter and
upon this rock will I build my church. And arguably from a humanistic
perspective, who builds the New Testament church? It's Peter.
I mean, literally Peter is the leader of the 120
at the very beginning. Peter's the one that's going out and preaching.
Peter's the one standing in the face of the chief priests and the elders
and they're, like, demanding him not to preach in Jesus' name and he says,
we ought to obey God rather than man. He's constantly being thrown into prison.
And I mean, his sidekick is John. I mean, if you're going to talk about
probably, I mean, if you're going to argue one of the greatest men to ever live,
it's probably John. And notice who's the chief in a lot of these
examples. It's Peter. Because Peter is the rock.
Peter is that stone. And look, obviously, Jesus Christ
is the rock, too. Okay? We're not trying to take away from who Jesus Christ is.
He's the chief cornerstone. But in a building, there's more than one stone.
The chief means that he's, in the corner, means he's the first,
the primary, but then we're built upon the apostles and the prophets.
And guess what? We're built upon Peter because he's an apostle.
So he's one of those stones that's also been laid. And we're basically
getting to be laid on a further down the road foundation
of the house of God, of the temple of God. Okay? Now,
Peter's not the first pope because he's not Papa. Okay?
He's Pedro. Okay? He's Peter. He's the rock. You know, if you know Spanish,
rock is like piedra. Right? And so it's even
easier to understand that doctrine when you're reading a Spanish Bible because it's like, thou art
piedra. Upon this piedra will I build my house, or whatever. Because that's what his name means.
That's what Peter literally means is rock. That's why he's changing his name from Simon.
He's no longer just, you know, tossed to and fro with the wind. Now he's a rock.
Now he's solid on Jesus Christ. And we kind of see that conversion of
Peter after the death, burn, and resurrection because before he's
kind of like Simon in the sense that a little girl comes and asks who Jesus is
and he's just like, I know not the man. Right? But then
after the resurrection, he's just a rock. He's looking right at the chief
priest. He's looking at all these people that want to kill him. And he's like, we ought to obey God
rather than man. You know? We're going to preach in the name of Jesus Christ. He had a pretty
big conversion there, didn't he? Not being able to say Jesus' name, not
being really strong, not being really steadfast. So now he's unmovable.
Right? And that's what we want to be, is we want to be like Peter and follow in that
example. And that's why Jesus picked him.
Jesus knew that Peter was going to be Peter. He knew that
he was going to be the rock. He picked John because he knew who John was going to be.
And when you read in Genesis chapter number 18, when the Bible talks
about Abraham, the reason why he picked Abraham is because he knew that he was going to
command his house after him. And that he knew he was going to be the leader that he was going to be.
He knew he had the faith that he had. And so when God is hand picking someone,
it's often with foreknowledge, okay, admittedly.
But it's because he knows the guy can do the job, he's qualified
for the job. Now look at Acts chapter 1 and look at verse number 20.
Now, in Psalms, it's like office.
So we see that a bishopric is kind of like the office or whatever.
And we're talking about Judas. Judas ended up killing
himself because he stole money. Well, he didn't steal money, but
he basically took money that he shouldn't have taken
because he didn't want to take it. He didn't want to take it.
He didn't want to take it because he didn't want to take it.
So he took money that he shouldn't have taken to sell out the Lord Jesus Christ.
He tried to give the money back, but he's already condemned.
He was already basically damned for taking it.
He throws the money back at the church, back at the temple, but you know what?
The blood money has already done its task. He just goes and kills himself
because there's nothing left for him to do but go to hell.
And because they're down a disciple, they're like,
We need, you know, we need our tight end or whatever.
We need to get somebody back in the rotation here. We can't just be 11.
So they're going to pick another person, and it's based on Scripture even.
Think about it. They're not just making stuff up here. They're saying,
Hey, the Bible said let someone else take this guy's job. So
let's pick someone. Isn't this kind of still fitting with our ordination?
If you're going to ordain someone, how do you do that? You pick them, right?
If you're going to pick someone, did you just pick anybody? Well, let's see what he says.
These two thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry
and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell,
that he might go to his own place, meaning hell, and they gave forth
their lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.
Now, a couple important points, and here's my second point
about ordination, is that there should be qualifications for the ordination.
And notice that they have very clear qualifications.
They say, we're not just going to pick anybody. It has to be someone that was
with us from the very beginning. It was someone that was there,
there from the baptism of John, all the way to now,
and basically there's only two guys that meet that bill.
Notice there wasn't very many people that were willing to be a disciple of Jesus when they weren't
hand-picked. And that's the sad thing.
A lot of guys won't end up doing a great work for God
unless they basically get picked, unless they get the title, and they get all the accolades
with it. But notice, by having just a good heart and just doing that which was right
and following Jesus anyways, they end up being qualified to actually take that job
later in that position. You know, this is another idea,
when it gives the qualifications of a pastor, whether you're going to be a pastor or not,
you might as well just fulfill all of those roles, all of those
job duties, all of those tasks, and not just be like, well, I'm never going to be a pastor,
so no point in trying to keep up with that. No, no, no, no, no. Just go ahead and do it
anyways, right? And these are two men that were not hand-picked by Jesus
at the first, but yet they still meet all the same qualifications.
They were there with them. They got to see the miracles.
Arguably, you know, they didn't necessarily get all the same training
because sometimes it's pretty clear Jesus is just with his twelve specifically,
yet they saw a lot, obviously. They probably still got a lot of training.
They might even been in those seventy that were ordained.
I don't know. I can't necessarily say. Probably not.
But they were definitely faithful guys, right? He shows guys that are pretty
committed, pretty steadfast. I mean, not only have they stuck with them
for like three and a half years, they're still with them. You know, they're still there,
they're still wanting to serve the Lord, and so these guys are qualified.
Now, they don't have Jesus here to hand-pick themselves, you know,
to pick the guy. So they're kind of having to come in and play this role,
but you could still argue very clearly that Jesus is kind of doing this.
Now, go if you would to Proverbs chapter sixteen for a moment.
Go to Proverbs chapter sixteen. First of all,
the only reason they're even doing this is because of what the Bible said.
The Bible told them, let another take, right? It was saying, hey, we're going to follow
the Old Testament scripture that says someone should basically come into this role,
so they're doing what the Bible said. To me, that's still Jesus picking them,
in the sense that Jesus is basically guiding the affair. They wouldn't have decided to do
that on their own. They're just trying to follow what the Bible said. Secondly, though,
they end up praying and saying, we don't
actually know who to pick, but this is what we're going to do. We're just going to
cast lots, and Lord, you know who you want to pick here.
You pick the right guy. So again, they're still
not even saying that they're doing it. They're just basically the instruments of allowing
the Lord to pick. Now, you would say, cast lots, what does that mean?
It's literally just, you know, like flipping a coin.
That's basically what they're doing. They're basically either flipping, and it's not like
a literal coin that they're flipping. I'm just saying it's the same principle. Essentially, casting
lots is just, he's got this side, you got this side.
Lord, guide, you know, this lot, and then they flip or whatever,
however they cast the lot, and it comes out. Maybe they literally
put their name on it. I don't know what they did, okay? Maybe it's like a bouquet
where they throw it over their head and the first one to catch it, you know? I don't know
how they did it. But either way, it's basically like a coin flip. Now, you would say,
well, that seems kind of weird. How could you say that the Lord is in that? Well, you know,
I'm not an atheist, first of all, okay? And I know that some people just
don't understand these principles of, like, God actually being in control.
You know what? God's literally in control of everything, okay? And everything that's
going to happen is God's ordaining and orchestrating, whether it be
good, bad, casting lots even. The Bible literally teaches this. Look at
Proverbs chapter 16, verse 33.
So, what is the Proverb saying? The law is cast into the
top, meaning that, you know what? Time and chance are going to happen.
Randomly, people are going to get picked. Randomly, things are going to happen.
But the seemingly random things to us
are not random. God's actually in control
and giving the determination. The word
dispose, okay, in your Bible and in the
dictionary. I'll give you the dictionary definition. It says to determine the course of events.
To determine the course of events. And I think there's a perfect description of this
and a lot of times, you know, I didn't pull them up for the sake of time,
but you can see the Apostle Paul is saying, like, disposing to go into Asia
or disposing to go into some place or whatever, meaning he's determined to go
into that particular area. So, the word dispose here is just meaning simply
determine, right? God is determining the course of events
even though it's seemingly random to us. And you know what? Seemingly
random stuff is going to happen and we're not going to always know what to do
but we just have to believe that God is literally guiding those affairs.
And when it comes to picking people to do things, sometimes it literally
is just like eeny meeny miny moe, let's just pick this guy.
And we don't know why. Maybe it's a carnal reason to us
but at the same time, we're praying and asking the Lord to guide our affairs
we can believe that the Lord's literally hand picking the right kind of people.
You know, and I have to pick a lot of people to do all kinds of stuff, you know, whether that be
preach a sermon for me when I'm gone or go send someone to go preach a sermon
or just all kinds of different things that I'm constantly just picking people to do stuff
I'm constantly praying and asking the Lord to help me pick the right person for the right job.
And it's crazy because whether the events
turn out good or bad, it always seems in hindsight like God was behind it.
You know, and it's like, wow, I can see how God used that person
whether that person is good or bad person doesn't really matter, to basically bring
to light things or to draw things out or to be used or this is the perfect
timing. And, you know, I believe that God directs
all the affairs of our lives. You know, the steps of a good man are ordered
by the Lord is what the Bible says. And so these men are just trusting the Lord
and saying, you know what, we can't know if Matthias or, you know
Barsabbas here is the right guy. So we're just going to let the Lord pick.
We're just going to cast the lot and basically say, Lord, what's
the right guy? And they're basically trusting it on it being Matthias.
So again, showing that the Lord is kind of the one picking, not even them.
Go to Acts, chapter number 14. Go to Acts, chapter number 14. Because when it comes to being an
apostle, this is kind of an appointment by God. This is kind of an appointment
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Specifically, I do not believe that men
can ordain anybody as an apostle. And the closest you would have
here is Acts, chapter number 1. But we see in this story
that it's not really them doing it. It's kind of, they're just letting the Lord
do it and they're just the vehicle or the messengers by which it's being done.
And so, you know, again, number 1
ordination, you're chosen. Number 2, you need to have some
qualifications for those who you're choosing. Go to Acts, chapter 14.
And let's look at verse number 21.
Acts, chapter 14, and look at verse 21. Now,
as we get later in in the Bible, these apostles start ordaining people.
Now, when an apostle ordains, if you could
ordain an apostle, why not ordain an apostle, right?
Because don't the apostles have even, like, really special privileges? The fact that
by them laying hands on people, they receive the gift of the Holy Ghost,
you know, they're basically these powerful
witnesses, they have the miracles, you know, Peter's just walking by and his shadow is just
healing people or whatever. So it's like, if I just get to just pick, like, whatever
job you get to do or what, you know, to me it's, this is not the right
wording, so forgive my wording if you don't like it, but it's kind of like superpowers, you know, or whatever.
You know, it's like, if I'm going to pick, you know, what kind of attributes to give you,
imagine you're playing a video game and you get to build your players or whatever, you're just, like, going to max
out strength and running and jumping and you're going to just max it out, right?
Wouldn't you just pick everyone to be an apostle? Of course you would, right?
But you know, we never see them ever-ordaining apostles. Why?
Because that's just not a job that I get to hand-pick someone to do.
So what do we actually see them ordaining people to do then? Being elders
and being pastors and being deacons and being evangelists, that's what we actually see
people being ordained as in the New Testament. Look at Acts chapter 14, verse 21.
And when they had preached the gospel to that city
and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra and to Iconium
and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples and exhorting them
to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation
enter into the kingdom of God. And when they had ordained them elders
in every church and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord
on whom they believed. So when you get the context
of where we're at, Paul's going out and he's just setting ablaze the gospel.
I mean, he's just walking into areas and just getting multitudes saved,
leaving, going to the next town, getting multitudes saved, going to the next town.
Now, in these journeys, they vary greatly on the amount of time.
Sometimes he's there for a short space, sometimes he stays in places
for like a couple years, okay? So imagine, you know,
and these guys are doing things at an escalated
speed, okay? The speed at which their success
is not going to be normal for us, okay?
And why would you say that, Pastor Shelley? Well, number one, they don't have cars and planes
and afforded some of the technology that we have, so obviously
God is kind of supercharging them. But what do we
not have? Well, we don't have the ability to speak every foreign language automatically.
You know, that would be kind of a nice gift, wouldn't it? We also don't have the ability
to just walk into a town and literally heal every single person. And you know what
I know? If anybody in this room could just heal any person
on command, we would have a line out the door tomorrow.
Like, everyone would come. Everyone would want to hear.
So obviously, the church is going to kind of get this like
super big start, you know, like a pretty quick start. I mean, six months of being in an area
where you can heal everybody and you can preach any language, whatever you want,
on command. And not only that, they're preaching the
power of God through being filled with the Holy Spirit. I'm sure their sermons
were off the chain, man. I mean, these sermons were epic.
I mean, you would want to sit there and listen to Paul preach forever.
It just got so late you just fell out the window. You know, this is a consequence.
But I mean, this is going to be an epic Christianity, okay?
So, but even then, even when they're going to these
areas, they still didn't ordain anybody at first. They end up
returning back to the area and then they end up
ordaining people. Why? Because you got to give time for people to
grow and actually stop being a novice and actually start meeting some
qualifications and actually, you know, deciding who's legit
and who's not legit and everything like that. So that's why they're going first and just
ablaze through the world, just basically starting
churches and getting people saved and gathering people. And then
eventually after the church has been, you know, kind of successful and running for a while
and then they return, now they're ordaining people, okay?
It's also probably really important that they go ahead and just do it every
single time before they move on because Paul's not going to be able to come to these places
two, three, four, five, you know, tons and tons of time. He's kind of got a limited
amount of time to go through and start ordaining people.
I would even say this. It's possible that some of the ordinations were
even hasty. Maybe they weren't even done exactly how they should have
been done, but really just in kind of
out of necessity they started ordaining people and then later the Apostle Paul's like
hey, when you start ordaining, use these qualifications. And then maybe
he started figuring out like some of these guys weren't really good guys to end up ordaining.
And we kind of see that in the Bible. They're kind of learning and growing through the book of Acts, right?
In certain places the Apostle Paul has to answer a stupid question like
whether or not you have to be circumcised to be saved. Isn't that kind of a dumb question
they have to answer? Isn't that kind of a dumb controversy or heresy for them to have to go through?
You know, we see at the very beginning Acts chapter number six
whenever they're ordaining people that they have like a multitude of widows
that are being, they have all these needs that they're having to take care of.
There's all these widows they have to take care of. But then later when we get through the epistles and we find out which widows
the church has to actually take care of, we would end up realizing like nobody meets these
qualifications. I mean, think about it. They were not even, they were saying
that the non-Hebrew
you know, widows were being neglected or whatever.
It's like, which of them have been a faithful Christian their whole life? None of them.
Because they just got saved, you know. Like so a majority of these widows probably
wouldn't even had all this need. They're just trying to figure things out at the very
beginning, okay? And it's kind of funny because when you read the Bible
you never see the apostle Paul or you never see any of these men
saying, you know what, we need to go back to that Acts chapter number two church.
Now they're always making things better, aren't they? They're always improving upon the process
and dialing it in and getting more instruction and making church better, not saying
let's go back to the Acts two. Yet you have people alive today, they're like, well we're
going to have a real biblical church, we're going back to Acts two.
And it's like, why not Acts three, you know?
Why not Acts four? Why not all the way to Timothy? Why not all the way to Revelation, okay?
And here's an idea, even in Revelation
isn't there seven churches that are talked about and most of them have serious problems?
And did Jesus ever say, guys, why don't you go back to the Acts two model?
He doesn't bring that up. He's like saying, here's the specific
error, here's the specific problem you have. And most of the problems
that the apostle Paul is addressing, it's hard to address
in Acts chapter two because it hasn't happened yet.
Think about it. Like, first Corinthians chapter number five is
dealing with a specific case of a guy having his father's wife, okay?
It's weird to bring that up before it happened.
Because you probably would have never thought about it. You probably would have been like, hey guys,
there's a rule that I want to just make sure everybody's clear on, don't have your father's
wife, okay, and bring her to church. Everybody's like, who's, are we starting
church in Kentucky now? Or like, what's happening? You know, like, where
is this, New Jersey? No, no, no. Obviously
God allowed all these weird and crazy things to happen and these
heresies to come in, so then we could have men like Paul and
John and Peter write about them and tell us about them so that we could have general
application for church for all the New Testament. And isn't it amazing
that pretty much every scenario you could ever imagine, we could always find
some place in scripture where it addresses it, addresses that principle, addresses that
situation, addresses that, you know, and it gives us the guiding principles to
have the New Testament church, okay? So
when it comes to the qualifications, when it comes to the elders,
where do you think we should get that? How about where Paul just literally spells out
the qualifications? Let's go to Titus chapter number one. Go to Titus chapter number one.
Now, you kind of have
what's called the Pastoral Epistles, and it's
1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. And I totally subscribe to
that idea because, look, when you study the Bible, it's very clear that
Timothy and Titus are pastors. They are elders,
that's their job, that's their role, and it makes sense
that the person that's going to end up ordaining new elders,
new pastors, new bishops, is going to be a bishop himself.
And think about it this way, a lot of people attack these concepts
and these ideas because they're like, oh, you just, you know,
you want to hold people back, or, you know, you guys think you're special, or
you don't believe in congregational ordination. Well, first of all, I don't.
Okay? Show me that in the Bible. That's always the challenge.
Just show me that in the Bible. And look, if God believed in
congregational ordination, riddle me this, okay? Why is all the
qualifications for a bishop then written to an individual?
I mean, doesn't he have Romans and Corinthians
and Galatians and Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians?
Why did he never tell you how to ordain elders in any of
those epistles? Why is it to Timothy? Why is it
to Titus? Because it's the guy, it's the man of God,
it's the pastor that's going to end up ordaining other pastors. And in
what other profession does it make sense to just let a mob of Yahoos
select people? You know, I mean, it sometimes
feels like that when you talk about lawyers and stuff. It's like, who picked you to be
a lawyer, you know? Like, what qualifications did you go through, right?
But it doesn't make sense to have a congregational ordination because then you could just have
five random people just pick a homeless guy off the street and say, you're a pastor now.
And the handful of times you even see an example like
that in the Bible, it always turns out really bad. Like the tribe of Dan coming and
just picking, and I know his name is Jonathan, okay, but that is a bad Jonathan, alright?
They end up picking Jonathan the Levite to be their priest. And then they just go
off and serve Baal and basically become a nothing-burger. Why? Because the congregational ordination
doesn't work. You know, because you just pick whoever you want,
do whatever you want. No, it should be going from the man of God to the man
of God. Now, in Titus chapter one, look at verse five.
Now, here's the thing.
If a congregation can ordain its own leadership,
why does Titus need to do this? It actually
completely makes no sense. Like, why would he just say like, well,
all these cities need an elder. Tell them to start ordaining people.
The reason I left you is so that you, thou, that thou
could ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee. So notice who's doing the ordination
is Titus. And notice what he says here. He says
as I had appointed thee. Now, you can interpret
this one of two ways, alright? I'll just give you the devil's advocate position.
Appointing could just be like he selected Titus to ordain people, okay?
But I don't believe that. I believe what he's saying. He's saying, I want you to
ordain a pastor like I ordained you as a pastor. And the
word appointed is actually synonymous with ordain. Now, let me prove this to you, okay?
Keep your fingers going right back. We'll go to, just
flip backwards to 2 Timothy chapter number one and look at verse 11.
We're looking at a lot of the pastoral epistles here. Notice Paul
saying this. Whereunto I am appointed a preacher
and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. The apostle Paul says
he was appointed an apostle. Now, just go back, just another
page, 1 Timothy chapter number two and look at verse number seven now.
Whereunto I am ordained, notice this,
a preacher and an apostle. I speak the truth in Christ and I not a teacher of the Gentiles
in faith and the very. So, how does the apostle Paul feel about the word appointed and ordained?
The exact same word, isn't it? Okay? So, then why would I believe it's any
different in Titus chapter number one when he's saying ordain elders in every city
as I had appointed thee? Meaning what? He ordained
Titus as well, okay? And when we read in 1 Timothy,
we see similar language about Timothy as well. So, we even have
contained in the Bible itself the fact that Paul
picked these guys. That Paul hand selected these guys
and it would make no sense for Titus to end up
picking guys to meet all these qualifications that he himself doesn't meet.
That he doesn't have any idea about. You know, because it's really hard to understand things when you've never gone through them.
That's why God wants the pastor to have some life experience.
You know, and again, people that give bad advice
are people that have never done it. Like, someone that's single,
don't get advice from him on how to get married.
Let me help you out. He's single. There's a
reason why he's single. You know, it's funny to me, they'll be young guys,
they'll be kind of like, they're young, but
they're not like super young anymore. They're like 25, 26, 27.
They'll be this guy, he's like 26, 27, he wants to get married.
And he's like, you know what? This other guy who's 30 and not married still,
he gave me really good advice about how to find a wife. And I'm thinking like,
he's older than you and still not married and he's giving you
the, he's figured it out, right? I mean, this is the same logic as getting
saved from someone who's not saved. You know, like, Judas
is the best soul winner. It's like, no.
If you want to get married, if you want to understand how to get married, you should find the guy
that's successfully married and be like,
hey, how do I get married? And he'll tell you and you're like, I don't like that advice.
It's because you don't want to get married. That's, that's that simple.
Okay, it's that easy. And the same, you know, people that don't have children,
bad people to give advice on how to raise children.
They always think that they know what they would do. Well, if I had kids, this is what I would do.
You would have no idea what you would do. We all think that.
You know, just like teenagers. Teenagers think they know more than their parents and then they
start realizing I know nothing. You know, you start thinking you know how to get married
and then you don't. You think you know how to have kids and then you don't. And look,
I'm in that boat. I haven't had life experience in every single area.
You know, I'm not going to sit up here and pontificate about how to raise teenagers because I've never done it.
Now look, I believe that every person should be able to preach the Bible on every subject,
but you don't want to get up and just start giving all your personal advice and personal opinions
about something when you've never even done it yourself. Okay?
Now people telling me the best barbecue ever and they've never had Texas barbecue,
I'm like, I don't want to hear your opinion. Okay? All right.
People that think like, oh, beans should go in chili. And I'm like, have you ever tried it without?
Try it first and then we'll talk. Okay. And it's like, you know,
here's how you do it. Just get a bite of the chili with beans without the beans in it
and just compare it to the next bite with the beans in it. And then just tell me which one is actually better.
Okay. We all know. All right. We all know the real doctrine here. Okay. This is the most important doctrine
that you can learn. Go back to Titus chapter number one. All right. Titus chapter number one.
But you don't want to, you know, just always offer an opinion on something that you've never done,
that you've never seen, you know, the, the, you don't really have any clue about.
It's better to just keep your mouth shut in those situations.
And really it would make no sense that if we're going to pick one of the most important jobs,
arguably the most important, my opinion, a pastor, the guy that's picking them has no idea what it's like to be a pastor.
Right? I mean, that doesn't really make any sense.
It makes more sense that the guy that's actually a pastor and been doing it and successful is going to be the guy
that ends up picking more guys to end up emulating that and following his example, literally.
Now, it's going to give us some qualifications. Look at verse number six.
Have any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruly,
for a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God, not self will.
That's an important phrase. How in the world can you appoint yourself and not be self will at the same time?
You know, and again, it doesn't even bother me that much when someone is a little bit hesitant to be a pastor or be a deacon or be like, want to do the work of the Lord.
You know, in fact, sometimes it's a good balance.
You know, the person that's like really eager, a lot of times it's kind of, it's kind of scary because you're kind of saying like, why is that so important?
You know, why is that such a big deal that you just have to have this position or you just have to have that role?
You know, you should just serve God faithfully and just let things work out if they work out.
Now, there's nothing wrong with having desire because it starts out in verse Timothy chapter number three saying,
if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desire the good work.
So there's nothing wrong with desiring a bishop role or desiring to serve the Lord or desiring to these things.
But at the same time, you kind of need to have the attitude that says, well, if it happens, it happens.
If it doesn't, I'm still going to be happy serving the Lord.
You know, and I've heard this idea like, I think it's Charles Spurgeon who's famous for saying this.
And he said, if he could be happy doing anything other than pastoring, he would have.
And I'm like, that's kind of a stupid philosophy.
You know, it's kind of a weird thing.
And really what that attitude ends up doing is it causes a lot of pastors and preachers to keep preaching and pastoring when they're disqualified.
And saying, well, it's just so important that I'm a pastor or I'm a preacher or whatever.
And it's like, look, I would be way happier doing a lot of, like, pretty much every other thing.
Sometimes.
Now, I say that from a carnal perspective because that's the context.
It's like a carnally speaking, okay?
Spiritually speaking, yeah, being a pastor is one of the greatest things ever and I love it.
You know, in my flesh, it's not like I look at a pastoring role and I'm just thinking like, oh, that's a lot of fun.
Think about it.
You know, did Jesus, do you think Jesus carnally speaking just really wants to wash his disciples' feet and just really wants to be nailed to the cross and just really wants to go through all the shame and the ridicule and just really wants to go to hell?
No, he didn't want to do any of those things.
He despised it is what the Bible says, okay?
It was not fun.
It wasn't enjoyable.
And here's the thing.
Being a pastor is work.
It's not like, oh, it's just so much fun.
It's just this great rollercoaster ride.
Now, it might be a rollercoaster.
You know, it's kind of the scary one.
You know, it's like, it's kind of like the Texas giant where it's made of wood and it's kind of shaky and you don't know if you're going to actually make it all the way to the end.
But I'm just saying like, you know, being a pastor, you should look at it as like it's a big job.
It's a role and, you know, it's not going to be easy.
It's not something I would just want to do necessarily.
But, you know, it needs to be done.
And frankly speaking, the only reason I'm a pastor is just because I felt like if no one's going to do it, then I'll do it, I guess.
And look, you say, well, that sounds like a bad attitude.
Well, you know what?
I don't think it's a bad attitude because Moses is kind of like that.
You know, there's lots of men in the Bible that are just kind of like, eh, you know, they don't necessarily have that in mind or they don't necessarily want to do that.
In fact, when I was going to Faithful Word, there was a point where I kind of was like starting to think like, I don't know if I want to do it anymore or if it's really important that I'm a pastor.
Because there was just so many people that were like wanting to be pastors and a lot of people were like coming to our side, it seemed like.
A lot of old, happy pastors were turning over.
And I'm thinking like, what's the point of me, you know, going out, you know, if there's all these other people and it's being, the role is being taken, you know, I can be happy just serving and doing something else.
Like, it doesn't seem as important.
But then when I started seeing all these people just turn out to be fakes and frauds and phonies and just losers and heretics and whatever, it started, I said, you know what, I may not be the best preacher.
I may not be the best in any of these categories, but I said, at least I'm not a fake.
I said, at least I know that I'm not a heretic.
At least I know that I'm actually saved.
You know, at least I know that I care.
At least I know that I'm not going to just give it a half-assed effort.
You know, at least I know that I'm going to actually put in effort and I'm going to try and I'm not a fake.
And you know what, I screw up.
I have problems.
I'm not perfect.
I'm not up here trying to say that I'm better than anybody else because I'm not, frankly speaking.
I just was like, no one else seems to want to be doing it.
And no one else seems to be caring.
That's why I'm willing to step up to the plate.
And you know, when it comes to a position of being ordained, sometimes you have to just say, you know what, whether I really want this or not, it's just important I do it because there's not very many people willing to do it.
And maybe willing, you know, God willing, we'd have some people raised up that actually put their life on the line.
They sacrifice their life a little bit to actually serve God.
They actually say, you know what, maybe it's a sacrifice, maybe it's not ideal, you know, but it's really important that the job gets done and nobody else is going to do it, I'll do it.
It'd be nice if we have some young men that could still be qualified pastors in the future that actually strive for that role, actually strive for that job.
There could be so many churches in our country right now.
There's so many people that want a good church.
And we need men to get ordained.
And look, you know what's holding me back from ordaining just tons and tons of people?
Qualified people that really want to do it.
You know, it's not like I'm sitting up here just like, oh, I just want to hold all these people back.
It's the fact that there's just like a dearth in the land of men that want to be qualified, that want to serve the Lord.
And so, you know what, if you're one of those guys that say I'm real and I can do it, please go for it.
Many are called but few are chosen.
And why is it there are few chosen?
Because very few are going to actually end up meeting the qualifications.
Very few are going to actually end up fitting the bill.
And just because you meet 99% of these qualifications, you know what, there's always the 1% that the guy, some man of God has to just pick you.
Because they may look at it and it's like, well, on paper it looks right but I just don't think you're the guy.
There's something about the role or the job that I just don't think is a perfect fit.
And you know what, you'd probably be better off serving God in a different capacity, in a different role, in a different way.
Now, as we're reading this, let's go to 1 Timothy 3 for a second because I want to compare this.
When it comes to any role, you also, it's important to kind of test these people, right?
You're kind of looking at the qualifications, you're judging them.
Well, and in fact, if you're going to be a deacon, the Bible literally commands that you're supposed to test them.
You're supposed to prove them. Look what it says in 1 Timothy 3 verse 10.
And let these also first be proved, then let them use the opposite of deacon being found blameless.
The Bible basically gives the idea that if you want to actually ordain a deacon, you pretty much need to put them in the role of a deacon without a title, without any of the glory,
and just see how they do for a while before you actually give them the title and all the privilege and whatever that comes with being a deacon.
And, you know, that seems like a biblical model in all roles, you know, whether it be a pastor or a deacon or evangelist.
You kind of want to just put people in that position for a while, just kind of see how they pan out, see how they're doing for a while,
and then you kind of give them the accolades, then you kind of give them the recognition that they finally deserve.
Look at verse number 1.
This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
Again, what are we proving?
That they're good for the job, right?
That they're good at the work.
You know, if you're willing to do the work but you're not good at it, you're not the right fit either.
Because there's plenty of people that have a sincere desire, you know, they like preaching, they like church, they like the Bible,
but let's just be honest, they're just not aptitude.
You know, they just don't necessarily have that aptitude, they don't maybe have that gifting,
maybe it's just not really in the cards for them to be in that particular role or that particular position,
so you want to put someone in a different position.
You know, and when it comes to being a deacon or being a pastor, I envision these as being really different personalities sometimes.
You know, a deacon is kind of just the most humble person, he's just always doing things behind the scenes,
he's just kind of like a servant, he's just really, you know, he doesn't really need the recognition,
he doesn't even necessarily want to preach, you know, I'm not saying he wouldn't, I'm not saying he's not capable,
maybe he does, but really a deacon is just someone that's just a great servant, you know.
Whereas the pastor or the preacher, you know, that guy is going to be, has to be a leader.
You know, he can't just always take the back seat, he can't always just, you know, follow the order.
Sometimes, he needs to follow orders, but I'm just saying like he can't always just say like whatever you want,
sometimes he needs to come up with an idea, sometimes he needs to lead the pack,
sometimes he needs to get people to start following him, okay.
And so it's important to kind of identify the different roles, the different job duties, and see how they do in the work.
Look at verse 13, let's get back down.
Notice again, it's a work, it's an office, and the Bible qualifies it as saying some people do it well,
meaning that some people may not do it well, okay.
And I believe also that when you're picked to do a very specific job, when you fail at that job, okay,
that you lose that ordination when you're no longer in that role anymore, okay.
So it's like when you become a pastor or whatever, if you totally fail as a pastor,
I don't believe you're just pastor for the rest of your life, okay.
Some people have this weird idea, like they'll be a pastor, he'll go, and he'll start a church or something,
and then he'll just fail and quit and just go back.
Well, he can't just then start another church randomly.
I believe that he would have to be re-ordained.
And probably, you know, I doubt any men of God are going to want to re-ordain you after you just quit
and after you just failed or whatever, after you just abandoned your post or something like that.
You've already shown that you didn't do it the first time,
why would we want to believe you're going to do it the second time, okay.
You'd have to probably show yourself to be faithful for a really long time after that
to even have the possibility of doing that again, okay.
But at the end of the day, you know, if someone gets hand-picked to be a deacon,
and then they're stealing money from the church, you know, you fire them and they're no longer deacon.
They're not like deacon for life appointments, okay.
If the pastor's disqualified, he stops being pastor, right.
If the evangelist is going, if you're sending out the evangelist to like, I don't know, Jacksonville, Florida,
and he never goes soul winning, he's not an evangelist, okay.
And whenever the new pastor comes in and says you're fired, you're no longer an evangelist.
You don't get to just decide to just hang on to whatever happened.
No, no, no, you have to keep, you have to keep doing the work.
You have to be doing it well.
You have to stay in that position, in that role.
You know, when King Saul was appointed king, at some point, God's like, you're no longer king, buddy.
And what did he do? He tried to hang on to it and he ended up destroying him and his whole household.
He should have just willingly let go.
He should have just said, you know what, I screwed up, let's bring David in.
You know, and I'll help David and I'll assist David and I'll do whatever David needs me to do or whatever.
But rather, he goes and tries to kill David.
He goes around and tries to attack David.
You know, that's a very foolish idea.
Now go to the first of the five, we're probably right there on the page.
Here's my third point, okay.
Point one, ordination means you're chosen.
Point number two, there's some qualifications, okay, that you're qualified.
You're qualified for the role and that's going to be dependent upon the role and the person doing the picking, right?
And some of it's discretionary because frankly speaking, how do you determine that someone's blameless?
Or how do you determine someone's vigilant?
Or how do you determine that someone is not self-willed?
Or how do you determine that someone's not a novice?
You know, some of these descriptors are really kind of up to that individual to make his own personal determinations on what those are.
And I've already set out, you know, what I believe.
There's other sermons I've preached on what the qualifications of the bishop are.
I haven't changed any of those.
And only if we ended up having failures or it wasn't working, would I decide, you know, maybe we should change that.
Or maybe we should update that or tweak that a little bit.
And I even think that's biblical because, you know, if it's not working, fix it.
There's nothing, you know, we're not the Catholic church where once you preach a sermon, you know, you're locked in for the rest of your life.
You know, I've preached sermons where later I realized that was wrong and I've decided, I was like, okay,
let's take that sermon down and re-preach that subject correctly.
Let's re-preach that idea or doctrine correctly.
We should always be willing to correct ourselves and improve and to get better, even when it comes to the qualification.
But here's the last aspect of being ordained or ordination is the laying on of hands.
Look at 1 Timothy 5 verse 22.
Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins, keep thyself secure.
So one of the admonitions to Timothy is that he wouldn't ordain people in a really hasty manner.
Meaning, you know, it's not talking about how quickly he moves his hands to their body, okay?
What does it mean to lay hands suddenly on someone?
It would mean that you don't really know the guy very well, you haven't proved him, you haven't tested him, he's kind of shaky, he's kind of iffy.
And he's just saying, you don't want to just go ahead and just start ordaining people randomly.
No, you want to get to know the guy, you want to be with him.
I mean, how can you lay hands suddenly on someone when the admonitions here are that you're supposed to first prove them, right?
Let them first be proved and then be found faithful and you have to observe a lot of different qualifications.
I mean, think about all the qualifications.
There's a lot of things that you kind of have to go through and think about and observe and get some time to.
So it's important that you don't have a lot of just quick ordinations.
And you know what?
Anytime someone does these quick ordinations, you can tell there's going to be an issue.
I'll give you an example.
I know I'm hitting some old dead horses, but I like to kick them anyways.
There was this loser named Tyler Doka and he like started some church up in New York or something like that.
He tried to claim like he's a new IFP preacher or something.
I think he was ordained in a very short space from some old IFP church.
Maybe he wasn't actually officially ordained.
I don't know.
Either way, it was pretty quick.
He literally ordained an evangelist for his church like week one of his church being open.
And I remember looking at their website and he wrote a little description of the guy that he ordained.
He's like, this guy has been faithful to church since the very beginning.
And I'm just like, wow.
So he showed up to the first service.
I mean, met the qualifications.
I mean, bam.
You know, why don't you just ordain this guy?
And then, of course, the ordains this guy and then this guy starts preaching.
And all of a sudden, this guy just starts preaching the weirdest junk ever.
And this Tyler Doka guy gets up and he makes a video and he says, oh, my evangelist, Justin LeBlanc, or whatever, he convinced me that the earth is flat in five minutes.
Wow.
You're that stupid?
Like, I wouldn't admit that to anybody.
As if that was a good thing.
And when it comes to doctrinal change, I don't care how good a doctrine.
You know, five minutes is really quick.
I don't even believe five minutes is typically sufficient to get someone saved.
And it's not about the importance of the doctrine.
I mean, salvation is one of the most important doctrines.
It is the most important doctrine.
But five minutes is so quick.
I mean, you can't really even get someone to change their mind in five minutes.
It takes at least nine, ten minutes.
You change on the flat earth in five minutes?
What kind of shaky earth were you standing on, buddy?
What kind of idiot are you, okay?
Not only that, then the guy starts teaching that saved Christians are going to go to the lake of fire for their sins.
You know, for like a thousand years potentially and burn off their sins or whatever.
Well, you guys might be going to the lake of fire, but I'm not going.
You know, I'm not going to see death.
I'm not going to taste death, okay?
And it's not a coincidence that the guy that does these hasty, quick ordinations ends up turning out to be a bozo, okay?
And look, I've seen it from other men too.
I've seen it where, you know, there was recently some kind of a quick ordination where this guy was basically not saved.
Just basically converts his church after getting saved.
He was like a pastor of like a Pentecostal church.
Gets saved, still stays pastor, which I'm like, how does that work?
How are you not a novice?
You've been saved for five minutes and you're going to start teaching the Bible now through a congregation?
You know, the humble thing would do to just step down.
But then this guy I just heard through the grapevine, I don't know if it's true or not, but I partly believe it,
that he's basically shopping people to come ordain him real quick or whatever.
And I'm like, no, you know, step down, you know, do the respectable thing.
You know, it kind of reminds me of Simon the sorcerer.
You know, Simon the sorcerer is in charge and he's the leader and everybody's looking to him
and they think he's like this great guy or whatever.
Turns out the guy's not even saved.
And then when he gets saved, he goes and he tries to buy his ordination from Peter and he says,
Thou has no part or lot in this matter, thinking that the gift of God can be purchased with money.
Well, then we have here, look at verse two of chapter number four.
Look at verse fourteen, you say the gift of God.
How is it a gift?
Well, look at verse fourteen.
Neglect not the gift that is in thee which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
You know, someone laying hands on you that's a man of God is a gift.
It's a gift.
Okay?
And it's a great power and a blessing that comes upon your life when a man of God lays hands on you and ordains you and picks you and chooses you to do the work of God.
Okay?
We shouldn't be hasty to just grab a random person off the street and lay hands on him, you know, as pastors.
But I found out recently, he found some, he got his ticket punched.
Some guy comes and just ordains him after a short space.
You know, it's not going to shock me when he turns out to be a bozo.
Okay?
And I'm not saying he is for sure.
I'm just saying the reason why you don't lay hands on people suddenly is because they could turn out to be bozos and often they usually do.
Now, it makes no sense to just start ordaining people randomly.
That's why when Adam Fan is just so hasty and so insistent on wanting to get ordained just like this, I kept trying to explain to him like, no.
You know, I need time to like get to know you and approve you and test you and figure out what's really going on here.
I don't care if you meet every check mark.
I'm not ordaining you in six months.
Sorry, buddy.
And he had very specific failures when it came to qualifications for me because he didn't even have, I think maybe he just barely had two kids or maybe only had, I can't remember.
He had issues with like the age or the number of his kids or something like that at the time.
And I made it clear to him, he's like, you don't have faithful children.
You know, especially when I'm being told that the only kid you have that's not like an infant is on a leash at church, okay?
Now, look, I understand why.
I mean, sometimes I wish you guys had your kids on a leash, okay?
But you know what?
I'm not going to tell you that your kid on a leash is faithful, okay?
I don't know if that's a shock to you or something like that.
You know, a faithful child is one that can sit without a leash, okay?
Now, again, if you put your kid on a leash, don't tell me about it.
But I'm just like you're not about to be handpicked to be the example for the church.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just not really showing that you have a lot of confidence that you can actually instruct your child to listen when you have to put them on a leash, right?
Why do you put a dog on a leash?
Because he won't listen.
If you had a dog that didn't need a leash, it would be because every time you gave him a verbal command, he did exactly what you told him, right?
So why do you put a kid on a leash?
Because he doesn't do what you actually say.
Because he can't follow rules.
How then could you say he's faithful?
And think about this.
If you can't get your own child to follow your rules, your verbal commands, why would you expect a bunch of grown men and adults to follow your rules then?
And to follow your leading and follow your prompting.
And you know what?
It's hard to pastor and to preach and to give commands unto people because they just won't do it.
You'll literally get up and just like scream it at people and then they'll just totally rebel right in front of you.
It's frustrating.
And sometimes people come up to me like, did you see so and so do this?
And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to police people.
Personalize.
So, you know, but at the end of the day, it's frustrating when you say like, don't do this.
Don't go here.
Don't let your kids do this.
Don't let this happen.
And then it's just like, woo, free for all.
You know, it's like, come on.
You know, I'm not getting up here just vainly telling you to do stuff, okay?
You should actually listen.
But at the end of the day, if I can't even get my own kids to listen, why would I expect a grown man to listen to my instruction or any pastor for that matter, okay?
Now, go to Acts chapter number 6.
Acts chapter number 6.
And I'm almost finished this evening.
But we've learned some important points.
And I think this is important to kind of talk about even if you never want to be ordained.
Just because you need to go to church and if you're going to go to church, you need to go where the ordination is handled properly.
And the guy that you're actually under the authority of is legitimately ordained, okay?
Now, I was ordained by Pastor Steven Anderson to start Pure Words Baptist Church, okay?
So, here's the thing though.
I don't necessarily have any authority over Steadfast Baptist Church by that singular appointment.
Because if you think about it, you know, I can't just say, well, now that I'm a pastor, I'm the pastor of any church that I want.
No, no, no. I was sent specifically to Houston to start a church there.
Now, of course, after that, I could end up deciding to plant churches or to send other people out on my own or whatever.
And basically, I have my own hub.
I could even decide if I want to move our church, you know?
I don't want to be in Houston. I want to move at some other area or go to Conroe or go to Spring or, you know, kind of reposition the church.
That's going to be to my discretion.
But it wouldn't necessarily be my discretion to just take over another random church.
So, when it came to Steadfast specifically, you know, their pastor was stepping down, okay?
Donnie Romero was stepping down from this church.
So then, how did the ordination process work?
Well, you kind of had a two-fold process because, number one, even though a guy is stepping down, I still think that he has the, you know, opinion to pick the next guy to some degree.
You know, depending on what's happening in the circumstances.
If a guy is retiring, you know, I think he should have picked the next guy.
And I've been part of an independent Baptist church where the pastor was retiring and he basically recommended the next guy to come in.
And they did a congregational vote and I don't think there was anything wrong with that per se.
But at the end of the day, it wasn't, you know, if you're going to go by the Bible, it really needs to be kind of the man of God that's doing the ultimate picking.
But it makes sense to let the congregation basically say, like, yea or nay to some degree, you know?
And I told Pastor Anderson, whenever y'all were in y'all's situation, I called, I asked what was going on.
And he basically said that, you know, he came down, he's working with Romero, Romero has to step down, Romero asked him to be there.
So, where is Pastor Anderson getting his authority? From Don Romero being there and asking him to help him, okay?
Then when he was before the congregation, he's basically, you know, saying like, I'm here at y'all's discretion too.
And basically, the whole congregation gave the affirmative as well.
So, you have both the sending, the former pastor and you have the congregation both kind of confirming the idea of him being there.
And I even taught my congregation before this even happened. I taught a whole sermon on ordination.
And I said, look, if I die tomorrow, I said you probably just need to like pick an interim leader to contact a pastor,
possibly my sending pastor, Steven Anderson, and ask him to help you get the next pastor.
Whether that be him, his self, or the next guy that he thinks is fit, right?
And so, what could Pastor Anderson do biblically at that point? Anything he wanted.
You know, I think that he could have, he could have just taken on the church as a church plant
and just basically been y'all's pastor from afar and sending people.
Or, you know, eventually he could pick the next guy or do whatever.
I simply just offered and said, hey, I'll do whatever you want. He said, how about being the next pastor?
And I'm like, uh, he's like, yeah.
In the back of my mind, here's the thing. In the back of my mind, I knew that when I said I'll do anything,
I was literally willing to do anything. But I wasn't, you know, he said, why don't you do that?
I said, okay. But, you know, when we talked about it, I said, do we need to do a vote?
And he's like, I don't think we should do a vote. And I agreed. I'm like, technically, no.
But I said this, I said, I don't want to come and pastor a church where nobody wants me to be the pastor.
You know, at the end of the day, like we want to have a mutual beneficial relationship.
Okay. And so that's why it was presented to the church.
The church got to talk about it. And once I ended up realizing that there was a big enough controversy
that it could change people's opinion about me becoming their leader.
I made a public video saying, look, I still want to be your pastor.
But if you take me, I am firing your evangelist because this guy is wicked.
This guy's evil. He's a railer. And, you know, all the issues that I was dealing with.
And again, the congregation still has the opportunity at that point to say, okay, well, we still want this guy
knowing what he's doing. And I don't think it'd have been right for me to just take on the role
and then just make that decision without having told anybody beforehand that I was going to do it.
And I know it caused a lot of controversy and a lot of drama and people freaked out or whatever.
But to me, that was the best way to handle it, just to be upfront and to tell people.
But again, then right when the church showed up Sunday night, Pastor Anderson, again,
laid hands on me again and ordained me to be the pastor of this church just like in Titus.
You know, Titus didn't necessarily found the churches that he was ordaining people. Think about it.
He's like, well, how does Pastor Anderson get to ordain people? He wasn't even here from the first.
Well, look, Titus wasn't there from the first either. Titus was just sent there
because he's a qualified man that knows what it takes to do the job and saying,
I'm going to pick the guy that can actually do the job. Right.
And some people like, well, it was so quick how you did it. But here's the thing.
That's a stupid understanding of that verse because Pastor Anderson had already ordained me.
Okay. And then he'd only known me even more in the future.
So it wasn't like he was laying hands on somebody he didn't even know or had never met before.
That would have been actually kind of weird. You know, if he just showed up and just like,
who's the good guy here? Oh, Bo Ballard? Yeah, let's lay hands on this guy.
You know, that would have worked out pretty well, huh? You know, no, no, no, no.
It makes more sense to say like, let's slow down here, figure out who's who and what's going on.
And then we'll actually start, you know, making these kind of changes.
And to me, it does make sense to let the congregation play a role in the ordination process.
Okay. And I'm going to show you that in the Bible.
Acts chapter number six, look at verse number one.
And in those days, when the number of the multitude, or I'm sorry, when the number of the disciples was multiplied,
there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.
Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said,
It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.
Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report,
full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business.
Again, appointing or gaining similar words, right?
And notice who's doing the appointing.
The main guys, the main men of God.
It's not that the congregation is going to appoint them.
They are going to appoint them over the business.
They're simply asking for a recommendation from the congregation for them to look at what?
The qualifications for them to pick, help pick the guys.
And then they are going to lay hands on these men.
It says, But we will give ourselves continually to prayer in the ministry of the word,
and the saying, Please the whole multitude.
And they chose Stephen, man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,
and Philip, and Procurius, and Achina, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas,
a proselyte of Antioch, whom they set before the apostles.
And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.
Now, here's a typical rule.
Maybe there's exceptions to this, but when you have a pronoun,
it's always expected that the closest noun is going to be the noun in which it's referring to, okay?
So if we look at verse number six, when it says, When they had prayed, okay?
Let's go backwards.
They, there's the word when, okay? Not a noun, all right?
Let's go back another word.
And, not a noun, all right? Let's go back another word.
Apostles.
Okay, so what's the closest noun to the word they?
Apostles, okay?
So let's understand this sentence whenever we put in apostles.
And when apostles had prayed, apostles laid the apostles' hands on them.
Now, again, it also has to make sense in the context.
They're not laying on themselves.
We end up realizing that the then there then changes back to the men that they had set before them.
So the they there is very clearly the apostles laying the hands, the apostles ordaining, the apostles appointing.
And they felt it good to get a recommendation from the congregation.
That's why when I do ordaining, I too want to present the ordination well in advance to the congregation
and the congregation, and you know, talk to different men in the church, ask them how they feel about individuals
before I end up ordaining anybody because I don't want to ordain someone and everybody's like,
this guy's a bozo.
This guy's soul winning is weird.
This guy ripped me off for 50 bucks and I just, I kind of let it go.
But since you're considering ordaining him, I just thought you should at least know the guy's kind of a scumbag.
You know, the guy's kind of a liar.
This guy, you know, I saw this guy getting drunk at the bar.
I didn't want to say anything.
I was just praying for him privately.
But, you know, I don't think he's, you know, whatever it is, you know, whatever weird junk or whatever,
this guy came into my house and was teaching me the earth is flat.
Okay, well, you know, tell me, okay, because I don't want to just like not know what's going on.
Let's find men that are actually faithful.
You know what I mean?
And so I think that's a really good principle.
Go to Proverbs 20, the last verse we'll turn to, okay?
Proverbs chapter 20.
And I just want to look at this one verse.
Let's review real quick.
And I know it's been a little bit longer sermon, but I think it'll just help us for the future.
When it comes to ordination, we want to realize that it's someone being chosen, okay?
And what are they being chosen for?
You know, whatever the job is.
And the job should be made clear at the ordination.
You know, say like this is why you're being picked and this is what you're being picked to do.
Jesus did that to his disciples.
You're being picked specifically to follow me and have power over, you know, the devils and basically to heal the sick and to preach the gospel with me.
When it came to the men that were chosen in Acts chapter 6, it was clear what they were doing.
They were going to serve the tables.
They were going to serve the widows so that the other apostles could end up actually studying the Bible more and making sure that they're devoted on the things of God.
You know, why is the deacon being chosen to serve, you know?
Why is the pastor being chosen?
To lead, right?
If you want to think about the job, what about an evangelist?
I believe an evangelist's role is to basically evangelize, okay?
And when you think about evangelists, they're like starting churches.
So to me, an evangelist is going to an area that doesn't have a good church.
They're getting people saved.
They're preaching.
They're leading.
And they're basically trying to build up that area to basically await for that next pastor.
Now, the evangelist may never be a pastor himself.
That's okay.
He may become the pastor.
That's okay, too.
You know, it doesn't really matter to me.
The job of an evangelist, though, is to basically evangelize, getting people saved, preaching the word of God, getting people, you know, zealously affected in the things of God.
And when it comes to people being picked, instead of telling everybody how great you are, why don't you just prove it to us?
You know, Proverbs chapter 20, look at verse number 6.
Most men will proclaim everyone his own goodness but a faithful man who can find it.
And, you know, it's funny to me because I'll have people walk up to me and they're like, hey, I just, you know, I want to be a pastor.
I want to do, you know, or I want to be, you know, your follower or, you know, I want to be, you know, under your wing or whatever.
What do I do?
What do I sign up?
You know, it's like, just, this is what I tell them.
I'm like, well, you know, here's the bulletin, here's the service times, here's the soul-winning times, you know.
Just show up.
Show up to men's preaching class.
Just show up and start doing the stuff that we already have going successfully.
You know, this person's not even going three times a week and I'm thinking like, here's step one, start coming three times a week.
You know, are you reading the Bible?
No.
Okay, start reading the Bible, you know.
Do you have any Bible memorized?
No.
Are you doing any of the qualifications in the Bible?
No.
Well, it sounds like you already know what to do.
Why don't you just do it?
You know, it's not about like filling out an application.
It's about just doing the work of the Lord.
And I promise you this.
If you do the work of the Lord and you're a faithful guy, God will elevate you in due time.
Even if I miss it.
You're like, well, I would be elevated if it wasn't for Pastor Shelley, you know.
He's just really overlooking me.
Well, you know what?
God will figure out a way for you to get elevated.
Hey, buddy.
Because that's what the Bible says.
You just shouldn't trust God.
And if you're not getting elevated, maybe he's got you in the position he wants you to be in.
And just keep serving faithfully and just keep doing that which is right and eventually God will put you exactly where he wants.
Because the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord, right?
Let's go to some prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for the word of God.
Thank you that we can just trust the fact that you're in charge of everything.
That your will is going to be fulfilled.
I pray that this church, as we go into a season where we start ordaining men and as we start picking men,
that you would help us and guide us in the affairs of choosing men.
That you would help us pick the right guys for the right jobs for the right reasons.
You know the hearts of men.
We're just doing the best that we can.
I pray that we would have a high regard for the Scripture.
That when men are chosen, that they meet the biblical qualifications, that we're not going outside the Bible,
I pray that they would have a good report among the congregation.
And I pray that when hands are laid on any man, that you give them a special gift and a special anointing to help them
in the work and the service of the Lord.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Amen.
With that, let's go ahead and sing one more song before we go home.
You'll take out your hymnal to 139.
I know whom I have believed.
Song 139.
I know whom I have believed.
I know not my God's wondrous grace
to me he hath made known
nor my unworthy Christ and love
redeem me for his own.
But I know whom I have believed
and if persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day.
I know not how this saving faith
to me he hid it for
nor how believing in his word
bought peace within my heart.
But I know whom I have believed
and if persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day.
I know not how the Spirit moves
on that same end of sin
revealing Jesus through the Word
creating faith in him.
But I know whom I have believed
and if persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day.
I know not what a good old man
may be reserved for me
a weary ways of our golden days
before his face I see.
But I know whom I have believed
and if persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day.
I know not when my Lord may come
at night or room day fair
nor if I want the veil with
him or need him in the air.
But I know my Emily
I know my Emily
and if persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day.
Amen. Thank you for being here tonight. God bless. You are dismissed.
Thank you.