The Qualifications for Elders, Part 3

Jim Butler1 Timothy 3:4–7

What qualifies a man to oversee the household of God? Expositing 1 Timothy 3:4–7, this sermon works through three remaining qualifications for elders: domestic faithfulness (vv. 4–5), maturity in the faith (v. 6), and a good testimony among unbelievers (v. 7). The lesser-to-greater argument of verse 5 — that a man who cannot govern his own home has no business governing the church of God — anchors the domestic section, while the warning against novice elders grounds the call to spiritual maturity in the sobering parallel of the devil's own fall through pride. The sermon closes by insisting that imperfect ministers are not a failure of God's plan but its instrument, so that all excellence of power is seen to be of God and not of men.