Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

As I read Barbara Shields book Winners-Women And The Nobel Prize, I was so impressed by the life and leadership of Agnes Gunxha, better known as Mother Teresa.

As I read of her life and ministry I kept seeing her fulfilling the requirements that Paul lays down for one to be an elder, or leader, in the church.

We see such words as blameless, not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given to much wine, not violent, and not pursuing dishonest gain.

That is a lot of nots that are not to be, but Paul does not stop with the negative, but goes on to add these positives: Be hospitable, love what is good, be self-controlled, be upright, be holy, be disciplined, hold firm to the truth, and encourage others.

The ideal Christian life is one of balance with much that is popular in the world to be excluded, and much that is unpopular to be included.

Negatives and positives in balance is what the Christian life is all about.

I was impressed at how a nun could achieve this balance.

She had been in a convent for 20 years, but at age 38 she launched a new ministry to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India.

The filth and ugliness, and the daily death of babies and others starving was beyond description.

For months she worked alone.

She would gather children between a hut and teach them the alphabet by writing with a stick on the ground.

She had no money, for she had taken a vow of poverty.

Some people became aware of what she was doing and gave her a little money and some bars of soap.

These children had never seen a bar of soap.

She taught them how to clean themselves, and she told them of the love of God.

She had to beg for medicine to give to these people.

Other women joined her.

They would rise at 4:30 A. M. to worship and have a balanced breakfast.

Mother Teresa was strong on having a good diet for health and strength to do the demanding work they were doing.

Their labor was all in vain she taught if it was not done in joy.

Cheerfulness and love did more for people than food and medicine she taught, and so all her helpers had to join in the evening fun time where they would laugh and shout, and play games and sing.

It was hard work, and it was often depressing, and so they needed this for balance.

They lived in poverty like the people to whom they ministered.

They would rescue abandoned and dying babies left in trash bins.

Mother Teresa had a vast collection of photos of her children that had been adopted from her home to families around the world.

She built the Town of Peace with the help of the Indian government.

This is a town where lepers are treated, and where they learn a trade, and live a normal life.

We can't begin to describe all of her work among the world's poorest, and most rejected population.

She touched so many lives and received an avalanche of awards from all over the world.

Vast amounts of money were involved, and all of it went to building more ministry to the poor.

She lived in a small room with no symbols of affluence.

She could pack to move in about 10 minutes.

Young men began to join her Missionaries of Charity, as they were called, and whole new ministries were started for men and boys in the slums.

So many around the world began to contribute to her cause that she expanded and opened homes in most of the large cities in the world from New York to Tokyo.

What she learned is that the greatest hunger in the world is not for bread but for love.

It is poverty of the spirit that is the heaviest burden to bear, and even rich people suffer this kind of poverty.

In December of 1979 she flew from Calcutta to Oslo, Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was the tradition to have a great banquet in the honor of the recipient of this great prize.

She begged the committee to forget the banquet and give her the money.

This added 7 thousand dollars to the 190 thousand dollar prize.

She used it all to build homes for the poor and the lepers.

That year she opened 14 centers outside of India.

She has over 100 centers in operation with 7 thousand people a day being fed in Calcutta alone.

The stories of her love and care for those rejected by the world are endless.

I share this description of her life and ministry because it exhibits what Paul is getting at as he lists the requirements for being a Christian leader.

Excellence is the bottom line, and that means a life that displays the spirit of Christ in attitude and action.

Here is a person who has over a lifetime demonstrated self-control.

She could have changed radically from her commitment to the poor.

She could have let the money she won lead her to greed.

She could have been overcome by the chance to live the life of the rich and famous.

But she was so disciplined and self-controlled that she did what many other Christian leaders could not do.

She remained the same person with wealth in her hands as she was when she had nothing.

That is excellence of spirit.

Paul says this is what Christian leaders are to be.

They are not to be people who get captured by the culture, or by circumstances.

They are to be people who are stable and consistent in their commitments regardless of changes in life.

Christ-centered people are not violent, overbearing, and self-centered, which disqualifies one for Christian leadership.

There are many books today with studies that reveal that the Bible holds women equally accountable for living up to these standards of excellence.

So as we look at the specifics we need to keep in mind that these apply to both sexes and not just to men, just because they were the vast majority of leaders in the early church.

We are starting where we left off in a previous message.

The next requirement to be a church leader is to be one who is-

NOT OVERBEARING.

The Greek word here is used only twice in the New Testament.

It is powerful negative word that describes a person who is so arrogant and self-willed that they denounce any voice that it disagrees with them, and that includes the voice of God.

This person who is so presumptuous as to think his view is always the only right one is not qualified to be a leader in the church.

Why?

Because he will be an offensive person who has no consideration for other people's perspective.

Being closed like this will make him unsympathetic and judgmental, and this is a poor example of Christ likeness.

Keep in mind, you can be a Christian and still be all the bad things Paul says a leader is not to be.

In other words, Christians can be people who are not pleasant to be around.

They are saved by their trust in Christ, but they are far from sanctified, and far from being qualified to be leaders.

If all Christians were mature and qualified, and living up to the standards and excellence that Paul lists here, there would be no need to distinguish between Christians who are qualified and those who are not.

Anyone could serve as a leader, and listing these qualifications would be unnecessary if one was qualified simply by being a Christian.

But it is not so.

There are Christians who are self-willed and arrogant enough to consider everyone who disagrees with them as inferior.

They are not good leadership material.

Let me share some of the ways the two cases of this word are translated.

Peter uses it once in II Pet.

2:10: "Presumptuous are they and self-willed."

Goodspeed has it, "Rash, headstrong men."

The 20th Century New Testament has it.

"Audacious and self-willed."

Here in Titus other translations stress words like stubborn, arrogant, presumptuous, and overbearing.

The reason such a person is not qualified to be a leader in the church is that they are not teachable, and so they are not open to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

They already know all that is worth knowing in their mind, and such arrogance makes them unfit tools to help others to grow.

If you are not open to grow, you are not a good example for others.

The philosopher Hume said something Paul and Peter would certainly say amen to.

He wrote, "When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving passion to views without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities."

The vast majority of heresy and religious nonsense that deceives masses of people comes from arrogant people who exalt their pet ideas to the level of God's revelation.

As Paul goes on to say, the leader has to be able to encourage others by sound doctrine.

The arrogant person will be more concerned with promoting his own ideas.

A Christian leader is one whose primary concern is the truth God has clearly revealed, and not his own self-centered perspective.

The next negative quality the Christian leader should lack is to be not-

QUICK-TEMPERED.

If you are arrogant and are convinced your subjective feelings and perspectives should be shared by all, you will likely have a short fuse when people disagree with you, and call your perspective foolishness.

Arrogance leads to the hot temper, for the self-willed person feels that any attack on them is equivalent to an attack on God.

To disagree with them is the essence of evil, and such evil needs to be smashed, and so the arrogant person is one who is convinced that anger and violence are justified when dealing with people who have the audacity to defy them.

Anger is a legitimate emotion for the Christian to have, but it must be like the anger of God and of Jesus to be a virtue.

They were and are slow to anger, and always have it under control.