In this week’s message from 1 Timothy 3, we see that an overseer must be hospitable, a lover of strangers who opens his home and table. Hospitality was vital to the early church and is commanded of every believer. When grace and truth come together around a table, God changes lives, and we serve Christ himself.
Transcript
The Qualifications of an Overseer
Well, if you would open your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 3. We have for several weeks now been looking, or actually just beginning to look at the qualifications of an overseer. And since the qualifications of overseers match many of the qualifications of deacons, we’re focusing on this in this first set. But as you notice, things like being above reproach are also qualities of anyone, especially the deacons who serve the Lord, but anyone who leads in worship.
One Office with Different Names
And since many of you weren’t here for the earlier studies, one of the things that we did early on was we looked at this name, overseer, or bishop you might have in your Bible, and compared that with the word elder and also the word for pastor. And we pointed out that in the New Testament, those words are used interchangeably. They’re different descriptions for the person who occupies the same church office.
It’s particularly evident in Acts chapter 20. So if you want to go back and study that again, I would suggest you do that if you’re not sure about that. But it’s the idea of a pastor or an overseer or elders, they’re just different names. There’s a pastor, shepherd, who feeds his flock. The overseer guards the flock. That’s the meaning of the word. He overlooks, he oversees, and the idea is someone who’s guarding the flock and the people of God.
And elder, which is based on the Greek word presbyteros, it translates that word. Have you ever had presbyopia like I have? Presbyopia is when, as you get older, you become farsighted. And so to read things close up, you buy these glasses. I don’t know where you buy yours, but I pay a dollar and fifty cents for mine. But anyway.
So that’s the idea that’s descriptive. The overseers of the church are people who are seasoned. That’s why you have that name, elder, or older person. Generally, they’re well seasoned. They have experienced the gospel for some time. And they have learned through the grace of God. And so they fit the qualifications. And so those are the descriptions of the office.
Healthy Doctrine and Leaders Above Reproach
Now, the church at Ephesus had been attacked by false doctrine. And so one of the things that comes and is clear as we look through this is the strong emphasis that the apostle makes on the right teaching of a church. For a church to be healthy, it needs to be given healthy doctrine. They’re to feed on the true Word of God and be changing their lives based on the Word of God. And when they choose leaders, they need to choose leaders who are going to protect the church and feed the church the truth of God’s Word.
Last week we looked at the meaning of the word that’s translated above reproach. And so all the qualities that are listed, all the descriptions that are listed are really some of the marks that demonstrate how an elder is above reproach. He can’t be taken down easily by the devil because his character holds up when tested.
So what we’re going to look at this morning, I’m going to read through this passage through verse 7 in just a moment, 1 to 7. But as usually when I preach, when I speak, we cover several verses. When we started this, I looked at the first verse. Last week I looked at the very first part of the second verse, and today we’re going to look at the second part of the second verse. And so we’ve slowed it down a lot.
But I think that’s right for this passage because this is crucial. The church is to pay good attention to its leaders, to the people that are called to the office to lead the church. They’re to pay good attention to who they are. And also, all these qualities are to be demonstrated by the overseer, the leader, the shepherd, the pastor, so that they can be replicated in the life of the people of the church. So this is precious and important. This has to do with the very health and well-being of any body of Christ, so we should pay attention to it.
All right, let me read through the passage. And then this morning we’re going to maybe look at two qualities. The overseer must be hospitable and able to teach. But let’s read through this.
It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it’s a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, and able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
Let’s ask God to bless His holy Word to our hearts.
Father, we thank You for this precious Word, the standard and guidelines of an elder. And Father, we recognize that these standards are what You, by the power of Your Spirit, work in our hearts, all of us, every child of God. So we pray, Father, for wisdom. We pray that You take the truth of this passage today and apply it for all of us, giving us the guidelines we need in choosing leadership in the church, but, Father, also by application working these truths in our own lives.
Guide us in this, Father. Keep me in Your truth. Bless me, I pray, as we preach through this passage, and help us, Lord Jesus, to understand, and not only understand, to put into practice in our lives the truth of Your Word. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.
What Hospitality Is
Well, in verse 2, it says that an overseer must be hospitable.
An overseer must be hospitable.
So what exactly is involved in hospitality and this idea, especially in the word that Paul uses in the first century? What does this mean for us? When we think about being hospitable, what are you thinking about?
What Hospitality Is Not
Today, in current thinking, when you think about showing hospitality to someone, you might think about something like a dinner party. You’re going to invite people over. You make sure that your house is pretty immaculate for it. When you have them over, you share a meal together.
That is something close to hospitality, but it’s not what we’re talking about in this passage exactly. Not at all. If you get locked into that kind of thinking, you’re not going to truly understand what hospitality is. So we’re going to have to expand our understanding of that a little this morning, if that’s your thought. So to understand the word rightly, we separate ourselves from that idea.
The Love of Strangers
And so let me tell you the Greek word here, just for fun. It’s philoxenon, and it’s related inversely to an English word you may have heard of, xenophobia. Have you ever heard of xenophobia? What does that mean? Well, xenophobia is the fear or intense dislike of people from other countries or other cultures, people who are different from you, fear of people who aren’t like you in some way. That’s called xenophobia, the hatred of people who are different than you.
And it comes from the same word. The first part of the word xenophobia, xeno, is found as the last part of the Greek word. And here it’s philoxenos. And what it means literally, if you take the word and you look at it, it’s a literal meaning. What it means is the love of strangers.
An elder is a person who must love strangers. That’s an interesting thing. Show hospitality, take in, show grace and mercy to people who are not like him. So an overseer must be a man who loves strangers.
When Paul says the overseer must be hospitable, he means that he must be willing to open up his home, his table, the resources, the graces that God has given him, to give to people that he may not know. Not know personally, I mean. And so that’s what hospitality means. Hospitality.
And if you look at the qualifications for an elder that’s given in the book of Titus, in Titus chapter 1 and verse 8, hospitality is also listed there. And it’s exactly the same word. Literally, one who shows love to strangers.
Hospitality and Prejudice
So if you’re caught up in some sort of thing like many have gotten caught up recently, in some type of racial hatred, it’s a sad thing. Something that has disturbed me recently in our highly tech world, how people are dividing up and people that we know across the United States have been pulled away into sort of hate thinking. And frankly, it’s frightening to me. It’s disturbing to me. People that I care about who seem to be good Christians are being pulled away into hateful thinking, into groups like that.
Well, this passage, this word says that if you are thinking that kind of a way, if you actually are caught up in racial or ethnic prejudice of any kind, you’re not qualified for the office of an elder. You’re not qualified to be an overseer of the church. Because if you have received the grace and the love of God, then it’s natural that you show grace and love to other people.
In the Gospel of Acts, there’s a pretty powerful illustration of this, because in the Gospel of Acts chapter 10, some Gentile messengers arrived at Peter’s gate, and they were sent to him by a man named Cornelius. And for Peter, that was a crisis. It might not sound like much of a crisis to us for some people to show up and knock on your door, but there was a crisis for Peter because they were Gentiles.
And Peter had been raised as a Jew. As an Orthodox Jew, he had been taught all his life that you don’t invite them in. You don’t sit at the same table. You don’t have that type of personal fellowship with people who are not Jews. And they came to his gate.
But Peter has received the grace of God. He knows the love of God, and he wants to be obedient to the Lord. So there’s the crisis. And so what does he do? The Bible says that
Peter invited them in and gave them lodging.
He put them up in his own home. You see how it has changed? It changed Peter, changed his heart. The Bible says
Peter invited them in and gave them lodging.
The function of hospitality is crucial. Being able to show the love of God is one of the ways that we demonstrate the grace of God, the grace and love of God that we’ve received. We can give that, show that to other people.
Why Hospitality Was Vital in the First Century
Let me just back up a little bit and tell you some of the reasons that this was crucial in the first century. This is absolutely vital in the first century. And for that, I’m going to read a little part. I’m not going to read it exactly, but I’m going to paraphrase and read a quote from William Barclay.
William Barclay is a commentator. He’s a little spotty in places. I don’t necessarily recommend him for everything. But one thing he excelled at was his historical understanding of things. And so he’s definitely worth reading. If you want to know the customs and the culture and the things behind things, he was an expert with that.
And so he tells us that in the ancient world, the inns in the ancient world were places to avoid by most people. They were dangerous places. He points out that even in Plato’s time, he spoke of innkeepers being pirates. And they held their guests ransom. And they were dirty and expensive and immoral. And that was characteristic of hotels, the public hotels that was of the day.
And that was true for centuries. It’s fairly recent that we have such clean hotels that we can go to today. But when people traveled, and people had to travel, they deliberately chose not to stay in those places. What they would do was that they would make friends with a family that was going to be in the city where they would go.
And it was kind of interesting. This may not relate directly to the message, but I think it’s still significant. I found it so interesting, I have to tell you. What did they do? Well, one of the things that had been taking place is that people who traveled frequently, a merchant, for example, their family would make basically a promise to another family. The families would become friends in a different city.
And so when they traveled, they had these groups of friends around through their path of the travel where they could stay. And that carried on for generations, which is really kind of interesting, because somebody could show up at your door who you’d never seen before in your life, and yet they were in the family that your family had made a covenant with.
Now, that was called guest friendships. And to demonstrate it, they had these little tokens, and the tokens had a particular shape. So when someone showed up at your door and you wanted to know whether they’re the real people, family, the generational family you have a covenant with, well, you had a token. And those tokens would fit together in a certain way. And you knew that you’re dealing with that person.
The Family of God
In the first century, Christians traveled a lot. Christian missionaries, Christian leaders traveled for the promotion of the gospel. But many, many, many Christian families, let me put it that way, had to travel, not out of any choice, but because of the persecutions that was taking place in the first century. And when they traveled, I’m quite certain that they avoided those inns. And I expect that many, many of them had no family covenant that they could rely on.
They had something that was a lot better than that. They had the family of God. And so when a missionary was traveling to another city, or when a person was forced out of his own home and come to a different town, they would go to the church. They would go to the people of God in that community.
And do you know who they talked to first, usually? One of the elders of that church, one of the leaders of that church. And it was important that the leader of that church be able to show them hospitality, and that others in the church would be able to show and meet the needs of these people. And it was a wonderful blessing. What a comfort that is that you’re able to share and stay.
I don’t have this story prepared, but last year there was a family in Brazil that just showed so much grace and love to my son Justin and Jesse and Peter, his son. And it’s just an incredible example. And even when we visited them last year, we got there at midnight. This man’s a doctor. He showed up at the airport at midnight to drive us back to Justin’s apartment.
And that was the care he gave us the entire time that we were there. He was a Christian man who exemplifies hospitality in such a remarkable way. And just because he met Justin in their church, he showed them so much care, showed us so much care. It’s a terrific example.
So Paul says an overseer must be hospitable. He must open his home, his table, and give his resources to those whom he may not know.
Hospitality Is for Every Believer
And it’s also important that he exemplify it for the body. He must be able to show this to the people, because it’s not just elders who are responsible to be hospitable. It’s not just elders who are asked of God to be gracious and generous to those that we may not know at all. 1 Peter 4:9 says,
Be hospitable to one another without complaint.
It’s one of the great one another verses. And the word for hospitality there is the same word. It’s the same idea, loving strangers. Again, the same word is used in Romans 12:13, when the apostle Paul is talking to believers, and he talks about them
contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.
People come through your community. People in the church of God, they come through and they need. A missionary comes through. And when the missionary comes through, they might need hosting. The church could probably afford to put them in a hotel. But how much better it is if they’re hosted by a family who gets to know them, who gets to love them, who benefits from the grace that they show, and who, because of that, prays for them, becomes part of that ministry.
That’s a great blessing. What a great blessing. When we’ve hosted missionaries as a family, one of the greatest blessings, I think, that came to our family, and one of the greatest blessings that came to our children, was that they were able to get to know some missionaries. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s a great privilege.
The Blessings of Hospitality
So, Hebrews 13:2 says,
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.
There’s a lot of rewards to people who show hospitality. There’s a lot of blessings to people who show hospitality to others. In this passage, in Hebrews 12:2, it says that
Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
You’ve heard that, haven’t you? You entertain someone you don’t really know. You might be surprised to find that it’s an angel there. I think that’s an allusion in particular.
Old Testament Examples
An example of that in the Old Testament is Abraham. Abraham opens his home to three men who he does not know. As soon as he sees them, he greets them warmly. He has a calf killed for their meal. He shows great hospitality to them. It turns out they were angelic, probably an example also of what we call a theophany, God manifesting Himself in a visible way in the Old Testament.
So what was the outcome for Abraham? Well, they brought him some pretty important news. It renewed the covenant that he had with the Lord. And they told 99-year-old Abraham that in the next year, his son Isaac would be born. That’s a blessing, isn’t it?
It’s kind of interesting. And I was thinking about this, and it’s rather surprising when you start thinking about it that way. Rahab, in the Old Testament, in the book of Joshua, Rahab took in two spies in her home. She shielded them and protected them. They were protected under her hospitality, and as a result, her and her family were spared when Jericho was completely destroyed. Blessing. Someone who showed hospitality.
1 Kings. Elijah came to this little town of Zarephath, and there was a widow who lived in Zarephath. And when he meets her, she’s out gathering sticks to build a fire. And what she’s going to do with that fire is cook the last thing. It had been a famine, a drought for three years, and they were out of food. There wasn’t anything left. And so she had just a little bit of meal, a little bit of oil. She’s going to build a fire, but she meets Elijah.
And Elijah says, would you be kind enough before you make that meal for you and your son to make me a little cake? You’re starving. Your son is starving. Are you going to show hospitality? She did. She made the little cake. And as a result, the meal never failed.
But even more than that, just a little while later, her son became violently sick and died. And Elisha prayed, and his life was restored. There’s blessing. You might entertain angels unaware. And that’s a couple of Old Testament examples. There are many. There are many examples.
When you have an opportunity to have someone over for a meal or something, and you think, well, if they come over right now, what will I feed them? Think of the widow of Zarephath.
Hospitality in the Gospels
Jesus told a parable that was kind of in the same vein. And He talked about a man who, in the middle of the night, he realizes he’s going to have some visitors the next day. How is he going to provide for them? He goes to his next-door neighbor. He bangs on the door, wakes him up in the middle of the night, and says,
Would you give me three loaves of bread?
And Jesus isn’t saying to us that we need to bang on our neighbor’s door in the middle of the night. What He is saying to us is that we have someone that we can go to who will answer that prayer. We are to take our prayers to the Lord and trust the Lord to provide the needs for the other person as well as provide our own needs. So we need to recognize that the Lord is sovereign over this, all these things.
Zacchaeus, the wee little man Zacchaeus, a tax collector and a sinner. And Jesus sees him and He says,
I’m coming to your house today.
And Zacchaeus hosts Jesus in a great meal. He has a great feast and invites everybody in the honor of Jesus. And after Zacchaeus, encountering Jesus, repents of his sin, Jesus says,
Salvation has come to this house today.
There’s blessing in this. And so it’s kind of interesting how many times you find this. And so I’m not saying that if you host someone or you show hospitality that you’re going to get a physical blessing right now. But I do believe that you will receive a blessing.
And Jesus had something very interesting to say in Matthew 10. And He said that
if you receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, you will receive a prophet’s honor.
If you’re a believer, you trust Jesus Christ, and you show hospitality to a minister of God, a kingdom worker, and you further the ministry by helping out in some way, through friendship, through generosity, then that work that they produce, you share in that eternal reward as well as a believer. So that’s something to keep in mind and think about. That’s very interesting to know what kind of blessings we might receive.
Hospitality Shown to Christ
But it’s not just angels that you might entertain. In Matthew chapter 25, at the judgment, when the Lord is dividing the sheep from the goats, He’s dividing those who will enter into eternal fellowship with Him from those who will forever be excluded from the grace and love and mercy and benefits of God. And He says,
Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you took Me in.
And all the people said,
When, Lord? I don’t remember that, Lord.
And He says,
In that you did it to the least of these, My brethren, you’ve done it to Me.
See, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to show grace to people, to show love, to demonstrate the grace that you’ve received, the love that you’ve received, and to give that out to someone else. It’s no greater privilege of a Christian than to do something like that. It’s so gracious of God to allow us to share the things that we have.
When Hospitality Is Missing
What Refusing Hospitality Reveals
For an elder, if he refuses to do that, it probably tells you that he doesn’t love people so much. It probably tells you that he might be a very stingy person, a person who loves money, which would also disqualify him. It tells you something about a person, the way they share and the way they think about things.
It’s a wonderful thing to fix up our house and honor the people who come into it and prepare for that. That’s not a bad thing, but it might be a bad thing if that’s keeping you from doing it. Not because of your care for them, but because of your own pride, you don’t want people to enter your house. It’s a different thing, isn’t it? It shows a character problem that you might have. So you have to be careful. We need to think through these things.
So what if the laundry is scattered across your couch where you’ve been sorting it all day? You invite them into your home and you share your life with them. You’re sharing your life with them. And there’s nothing greater than that.
Isolated by Our Technologies
We need this so much today. We’ve been talking about the first century. The great blessing of the first century is that Christians were hospitable. They were hospitable. The gospel was able to flow all over Europe and the Middle East because the people hosted people. They loved people. They supported each other. The gospel flowed.
You know what’s missing in the 21st century is Christians are not hospitable. We’re more and more isolated. We barely have community when you look at the church at large. We are so enamored with our technologies, and they are wonderful. I love the technologies. But the technologies have a tendency to isolate us.
Something I learned not too long ago is that in ancient Greek times, the Greek philosophers, many of them, thought it was a cultural decline when people became literate. Now that seems pretty shocking, doesn’t it? Why did they think that way? Because before, they were learning questions and answers, and it was verbal and personal. And they memorized vast things. And once they learned to read, they were somewhat separated, just a little bit.
Great blessings in being able to read. Wonderful gift to be able to read and benefit from the thoughts of someone who may have lived 2,000 years ago, as we’re doing this morning. But it also pushes you from someone just a little bit. That’s the way it is with technology.
This week I noticed that Google has updated their Translate feature so that it actually can do, when it works right, it can do live translation. And they’re supposed to make that available on the phones and everything else very soon. And I tried it out a little bit, sort of. I picked Portuguese, and I started just talking to it. And when it got into the flow, even before I finished what I was saying, it was translating what I was saying into Portuguese.
Now, I didn’t happen to have someone who spoke Portuguese to see how accurate that was, but I suspect from other things I’ve seen, it’s probably pretty accurate. So here’s a tool where we can talk to people all over the world. We can connect to them worldwide through the Internet. Surely that’s going to bring us together. We’re isolated in the same room by those same technologies. It doesn’t bring us together.
The more technology we’re dependent on in the United States, actually worldwide, the more divisive that is of us. We get caught up into so many things, and so much hate is being communicated. Not bringing us together. It’s separating us into our little tribal groups and cultivating all types of hatred. That’s not right. That’s terrible.
That’s not the purpose of Christians. We have to be showing grace and love and have community. And that means one-on-one. We come together and we have conversations. We share a meal. We get to know each other over a table. That’s crucial. That’s so vital.
Grace and Truth Together
So, finally, we come near the end of my first point. Not to worry. I think, given the circumstances, I think it’d be very appropriate for us to hold that point to next week. But I have that on here. I intended to preach these together because they go together. Grace and truth goes together. Grace and truth is powerful.
When you use grace and truth in your home, as a child of God, you do both. You teach someone something that you’ve experienced in the Lord. You teach them some truth from the Bible that you’ve learned. You do that in addition to having just shown them the grace, the hospitality. That’s so powerful. That’s powerful.
This morning in Sunday school, Matthew said at one point (I almost had to speak, but I was able just barely to control myself; it’s hard for me sometimes), but he said, you can be a tenured college professor. I think I’m paraphrasing him, but he said, you can be a tenured college professor and still might have some things to learn. Oh, that’s so true.
You want a great example of that? 38-year-old Rosaria Butterfield was a tenured college professor. She taught women’s studies. She was a lesbian. She had a partner she lived with. And through hospitality of a pastor, a pastor’s family, she came to know the Lord. And she was so incredibly, dramatically changed.
If you’ve never read her book or don’t know about her, please learn about her. It’s a terrific example of someone who was transformed through hospitality and truth coming together. Read about Rosaria Butterfield. She wrote a book called The Gospel Comes with a House Key. Hospitality and the gospel. It’s a powerful, powerful book. And she’s become so faithful to the Lord. I encourage you to get to know that story. Get to know something about her.
Practicing Hospitality Today
But you don’t have to look to her to find examples. I think if we look at her own life, or if we begin to live it, we’ll receive something far greater than just reading about it. We’ll experience it ourselves. Enjoy the grace and love that can be experienced when we give it out to other people. We enjoy great blessing from God. Get to know Christ better through letting His Holy Spirit work through us in these ways. I encourage you to do that.
And I’d say we might get a chance to try that out, because in about 10 minutes, we’re going to have a fellowship meal. And when we have that fellowship meal, I want to encourage you to enjoy the time that you spend over the table with the people you share it with. And maybe spend a little time getting to know the stranger, the person that you might not otherwise know so well. And if you can show some love for strangers today, you’ll probably share the benefits as well.
We ask, Father, that You show us grace today. Please take this passage, this word that we looked at, this one word, hospitality, that is so important that You repeat that as an instruction for believers and give examples in both Old and New Testament. Please help us to take this seriously.
Father, we suspect that the church is not growing as it should today because here’s a practice that we’ve almost forgotten. We do have fellowship dinners. We do all sorts of things. But the kind of love where we see someone who is having a tough day that we might not know well at work, and instead of buying one coffee at break, we buy two.
Father, there’s so many ways we can practically show hospitality and then give a word of encouragement and truth that comes from You in order to see a life changed. You can use any of us that way. Lord, please show us grace. Help open our eyes to the needs and help us, Lord, to love strangers. In so doing, we love Christ. We ask Your blessing in His name. Amen.
