Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North side of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. Each week, I'll sit down with one of our preaching pastors to discuss their Sunday sermon. Cut for time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday.

Thanks for listening. Alright, Joey. This is going to be a fun episode. You're in the hot seat. Some of my favorite episodes that we record are when we have rapid fire questions.

And it's what we're gonna have to do today if we're gonna get through all of them. So give us your sermon rundown from Sunday. Alright. Yes. So we are looking at this great passage, though I think I say that every week.

This is a great passage. One is because it is. The whole thing's great. Yeah. Yeah.

We're we were in acts 20, and, I'm flipping through it here in my little scripture journal. This is Paul speaking to the Ephesian elders. So he doesn't land in Ephesus. He lands in my lead us down the coast and sends back up. Hey, guys.

Come on down. I've got some, you know, some last things I need to say. You're not gonna see me again. So let's get together and talk about how you lead knowing that I'm not gonna be around to help you continue to learn how to lead or to model it for you. And so then he goes through you know, this is a 3 minute version of what he probably took all day to say as he said stuff in more and more detail, but Luke's there.

He's recording the outline for us, and Paul really says, look. He tells a lot of his story as a way of saying, you saw what I did. So at least model off of that. But also at the core of it then, he was saying, look. When I leave, you gotta pay attention.

Be vigilant. Guard the flock. Jesus gave his life for these people, and God has entrusted them to you. This is a big deal. So pilot the ship.

Right? He uses a word overseer. That's kind of like the word for a captain of a ship. He's like, you you guys are the ones who are responsible to set a direction, to care for the crew and the people on board, to protect against pirates. You know?

Like, this is your job, or wolves that are that he mixes a lot of analogies and metaphors here in this passage. So stay awake. Be vigilant. Keep your hand on the till. Like, keep at it.

This is your calling. He's like, you're not gonna see me anymore. I'm I'm gone. I'm out. And after I'm gone, people are gonna come in and try to advantage of you from the outside, from the inside.

They're gonna do this for the wrong reasons, for what they can get out of it. They're gonna be super convinced about their that they've got some new thing figured out about Jesus that no one's ever thought of before, and they're gonna want take you people off in the wrong direction. Guard the flock. Protect, pastor, shepherd, take care of these people. And by the way, I'm out.

And they kneel. They pray. Everybody cries, and he gets back on the ship and takes off. Mhmm. Okay.

Yeah. So for us, it was this is this is one of those, like, where we don't have, a lot of recountings of, hey, Paul's leadership training program Yeah. For people. But we do have this one. And so Luke records it not just so that, we know what happened, but so that we can learn from it for ourselves as well.

So we're looking at it. You know, what does this mean for faith? Well, it means here's what our leaders are responsible to do, and here's what our members of the church are responsible to hold leaders accountable to do. To say, like, yeah. You gotta lead us, guide us, feed us, protect us.

That's your job. Don't slack off. And then there's, of course, there's the flip side responsibility of it too of, like, well, then if if it's if we're holding them accountable to lead, then it's our job to follow. And if they're feeding us, we gotta show up and eat and and those things. So, overall, it was, like, a message, not just for the the leaders in the church, but for all of us.

So, like, this is what we expect out of our leaders, and this is how we then relate to and respond to them as a church. Mhmm. Okay. Is there worth noting it's our last sermon in this subseries before we begin a new one? So what would you say to kind of bookend this subseries, and then what do we bring with us into the next one?

Yeah. Yeah. So this subseries was called disturbing the peace because it we kept seeing how the gospel is causing such a change in the in the way of life and the pattern of life of people, particularly in Ephesus that it's just having these ripple effects throughout society. It's disturbing the disturbing the peace or upsetting the equilibrium, or the homeostasis of this system is kind of falling apart. And so, now that we're ending it, we we've got we've got Paul from the beginning of this little subseries now to the end of it saying the gospel is going to change things generally for the better.

But when it changes things in these ways, now there are new opportunities for people to take advantage of these changes for their own gain, so you gotta watch out for that. Yeah. It's disruptive in a way. Okay. Yeah.

The next subseries is about, how opposition is now being orchestrated against Paul. There's some missteps by the church. There's some, intentional misunderstanding of what Paul's teaching and preaching, and there's also then some animosity that comes to the surface that ultimately gets him arrested and sent towards Rome. So we're gonna see all that happen in Jerusalem over the next couple of months. So I think we'll get, like, 2 weeks into this series before we take a break for Advent and the New Year, and then we'll come back to it in January.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Alright. So are you ready, Joey?

Let's do this. You said rapid fire questions. Rapid fire. Okay. I'm gonna give you a time limit, but let's just see how this goes.

Okay. Let's do it. So the first one, this is a soft pitch. Yeah. Because I think you kind of just touched on it already.

This says, this seems like quite a long recap for Luke at this point when he could have summed up Paul's word in just a verse or 2. Why devote so much precious scroll space to these pass this passage? Yep. And I think you just said, like, we don't have many accounts of his leadership training. And so to, like, just show what's going on, it's worth it.

Would you what else would you add to that? Yeah. Absolutely. I I would say this this passage is a great summary of Paul's style of relational leadership, how he related to people as a pastor, as a teacher, what exactly he did. And so, yeah, if you wanted a job description of a pastor, you could look at the things that he did from the stories and kinda draw your own conclusions from that and and probably come up with some really good stuff, or you could look at how Paul understood himself and how he led and what he intentionally did and the things he felt like he needed to highlight for leaders of churches, elders of churches in order to say, like, hey.

Here's the he's he's basically going on the same. Of all the things you saw me do, here's the ones that mattered most. That's what you need to emulate. That's why it's worth it to take the space. Okay.

Why the timing for the church gifts? Did it take 10 years of famine for things to truly get desperate? Yeah. No. That's a good question.

So things are desperate pretty quick, but, also, you know, Paul's building churches, planting churches. It's taking time for the churches to grow and develop. They're largely growing from lower class, lower status folks with less disposable income. People are already giving money to support him. Now he would never take money in the town he was working, but people from previous towns he'd been in would send gifts his direction that would help him in the next place that he was at.

And so it's just taken a long time to coordinate, the letters. I mean, it takes you know, if you think about I can send an email from, from Ephesus to Corinth in a couple of nanoseconds, and Paul would write a letter, and it would take 3 weeks to get there and then get back. And so trying to raise money from a distance even. Like, it's hard enough to ask somebody for financial help in person. Yeah.

And it's great because I think it's in is it in 2nd Corinthians where Paul I think it's in 2nd Corinthians where Paul was talking about, maybe it's in 1st Corinthians where he's talking about, hey. Remember, the grace of our lord Jesus Christ, how even though he was rich, he made himself poor so that you could be rich. And that's the whole setup to then steal, like, a chapter or 2 talking about needing to give money for the church in Jerusalem. And I think it's also in Rome I think it's in Romans where he says, hey. If we as Gentiles have benefited from Israel's Messiah, then we as Gentiles should give to the people of Israel, the church in Jerusalem.

But the funny thing about the stuff in Corinthians is that the Greek is just so awkward. He's just so awkward trying to raise money. He never uses the word money or gift or funds. He's like, so so you know the blessing that you've gotten, and so you should be part of a blessing of another you know? And it's like, okay.

Yeah. If I'm bad at raising money and it feels so awkward, Paul is too. So it's just taking time. Money is a weird thing to talk about. And, when it takes you 4 months to sail with some gold bars from Corinth to Jerusalem, stuff just takes time.

Okay. Alright. So you were referring to home groups in Ephesus, and you said each of these churches had an elder. And then you went on to expound a little bit about their job description. Yeah.

So question from that, is that precisely in this text of scripture, or is it conjecture beyond scripture, and if conjecture, on what basis? Sure. Sure. Yeah. You know, it's a good question.

So what we have right here is just all he says is he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church, singular. And so there is some discussion and debate about, like, was there one church, one gathering in Ephesus? And almost everyone who studies the history of the Jesus movement is like, no. There's no one building large enough. Either that or the church is tiny, you know, if it's one house.

But every town we go to, he talks about meeting with the church or the elders there. And from what we know from other historical sources and, even some stuff written pretty quickly afterwards, like the shepherd of Hermes or the Didache or some of these other, texts that Christians use to help understand how to run a church, there were these gatherings of small small groups in separate homes that were loosely connected and related to each other through their leadership structures that the elders, elder or elders in each one of these groups would, be connected with one another. And so, I I don't know about the word conjecture. I wouldn't say it's it's really up for debate so much. It's just that, you know, this is this is what we know from the, the historical study of it of how this whole thing developed.

Okay. Alright. And do we see anywhere in scripture where a singular elder has singular authority on his own and not among a plurality of elders? Yeah. It's a good that's a good question.

I'm gonna do a quick Greek word search while we're just sitting here for, Episcopas, for the the title overseer. So in Acts, overseers is plural. In, Philippi, Paul writes to to, the Philippians to all the saints in Jesus Christ who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. And then he refers to them again in Timothy, Titus, and first Peter. First Peter is referring to Jesus.

He calls him the overseers of our souls. But in Timothy and Titus, when Paul's writing, he's writing, hey. An overseer must be above reproach. An overseer must be above reproach is as in both places. So, what we're what we see from from the the scriptural, evidence is, when he writes to an the church in an area, whether that's a single church or a group of churches, he writes to overseers as a group that that he just assumes there's more than 1.

It's it is so it is not anywhere near enough data for us to make categorical claims that, oh, every church always had a plurality of elders, had multiple elders serving and or a shared leadership structure like that or or something like that. There's just nowhere in the New Testament are any of the authors concerned to to lay out a comprehensive systematic, here's how you organize your church. Some of those like, we have some stuff like that from early bishops in a in a couple of 100 years after Jesus. They're like, here's the best way to do it, we think. But, in scripture, it's just like, alright.

I'm writing to the people in charge. And you're like, Paul, could you could you tell us, like, what does that structure look like? Could someone tell us what that structure looks like? And he's like, no. I just you know, the letter just says to the people in charge.

We're like, but I wanna know what I'm supposed to do. He's like, well, put people in charge. Everything past that is kinda up to us to to figure out. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And this whole part. Right? The so there's some stuff that I didn't have time to include in the sermon. Mhmm.

And and it's it's really this question of, like, what is a may maybe you've heard these titles before. Right? Like, we call our spiritual leaders pastors when they're kind of employed by the church and ordained to that title. We call our elders the, you know, elder. Yep.

But we don't have anything called overseers in our church. So what's really interesting, there's there's this huge debate in New Testament, scholarship and especially the study of, like, how churches should be organized and run. It's like, what's an elder? Is that different from an overseer? What's a pastor?

Is that different? Where do terms like priest, bishop, cardinal, you know, presbytery, things like that. Where do all of these things come into into play with each other? And and this is one of the key passages that people look at because, what's really fascinating is in verse 17, Paul calls the elders of the church, and then in verse 28, he says to them, the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. That's the the Greek word episcopos, where we get the sort of Latin and then English bishop.

So to the elders, he says the Holy Spirit made you bishops. Therefore pastor the church. So it's like, oh, all 3 are included here. And so the the the big question is which ones are titles or offices and which ones are functions or things you do. Yeah.

So we use verbs. Yes. We use pastor as a title Yeah. When pastor is actually an action. It's a verb.

You're pastoring. That's why pastor Tom would always complain that when we called him the pastor of shepherding, he was like, I'm the shepherd of shepherding. I'm the pastor of pastoring. Right. Yes.

Yes. You are. Yeah. But that's because pastoring is is a shepherding word. It's it's the verb.

Overseeing is also a verb. It's you know, you're going to oversee the church, and yet the the word overseer has a title version. Like, you're an overseer, so oversee. Right? Yeah.

Or you could think of it in other ways. Like, hey. If you're doing the accounting, then you're the accountant. If you're doing the leading, then you're a leader. And so it overseer has kind of both of those, but the elder is the one that is, like, you're that's the title.

You're an elder. So no one says you're an elder, therefore, eld. Right? Go do your elding. Yes.

Yeah. You're just a an elder appears to be, like, the title. Overseer has shades of both the official position. Like, it's the word used for the captain of the ship. And if you're the captain, you need to do the captaining.

But then pastor is just straight up verb and role. It's just okay. If you're the if you're the pastor, you know, if you're past you're pastoring, and then we just sort of made that into a a title. Yeah. You know, you're also the pastor.

So I didn't have time to dig into, right, all of that, but elder in Greek is the word, presbyteryx where we get words like Presbyterian. So elder, Presbyterian, presbyteryx, overseer, episkopos, pastor, poimino. It it means shepherd or feed. So to the presby yeah. To the presbyterians, I say, you've been made a bishop, therefore, pastor.

Pastor. Therefore, shepherd your flock. Yeah. Mhmm. So which one's a function?

Which one's an action? Peep different, ways of organizing churches are gonna come down in different places. Some are gonna say, like, elder and pastor are the exact same thing. They're both roles or offices. Others are gonna say, no.

No. No. No. We're gonna keep them really clear. The only office we have is elder, and pastoring is a function.

You're gonna find that more in, like, Presbyterian churches. We're a free church, which means we let every church say call people whatever they want. Yeah. But, generally, as a free church, we say, like, hey. If you're if you're doing the pastoring thing, then you're a pastor, but we sort of combine the role and the function, you know, the office and the function a little bit when it might be helpful to kinda keep them a little more separate in our thinking so that we're really clear about lots of people can pastor.

I mean, I I remember telling, someone who was leading in prayer, like, man, so she led us in prayer before, a service or, you know, before the sermon. I was like, you shepherded this church so well in your prayer. You fed us. You pastored us. That was so pastoral.

But she doesn't have she's not in the office of pastor. Yeah. And so, you know, holding those separate might be a little more helpful. But, anyway, that was a little long winded. You can see why I cut it.

Okay. But I loved it. Thank you. Yeah. Alright.

I'm gonna read verse 22, Acts 20 verse 22 because that's what our next question comes from. And now I'm on my way to Jerusalem compelled by the spirit, not knowing what I will encounter there. So the Holy Spirit's leading except in that every town the Holy Spirit warns me that chains and afflictions are waiting for me. So question is, what is the purpose of the Holy Spirit's warning at the same time that he's compelling Paul? Mhmm.

Oh, man. It's such a good question. Okay. So compelled by the spirit, there's a couple of of, interpretive decisions we need to make. Number 1, does that should compelled by the spirit in verse 22, should that be understood to be the holy spirit, or is it compelled Paul's own spirit is compelling him.

He's just like, he's got this gut sense that, no. I gotta go. Is that even I didn't even think of that as an option, but okay. And, well, in most English translations, like, I'm looking at the ESV, it puts a capital s there, so we're supposed to understand it. Then the translators say, no.

We're pretty sure this is the holy spirit Okay. Which is the interpretation I would take as well. I think that fits the evidence best and especially the very next verse. Right? Okay.

But we only know for sure it's the holy spirit when the word holy is thrown in front of spirit. That helps. That really helps clarify. Yes. But then, the word translated compelled in the ESV is translated constrained.

So is it that I'm I'm limited by, or am I pushed by? Right? Am I, yeah, am I being pushed, or am I being held in? So I'm where is it? Constrained by or led.

Okay. Yeah. And so the the Greek word there conf is primarily used to mean to to confine a person or thing by various kind of restraints or to tie something up or how law, constrains or binds you in a direction. So, you know Yeah. It's probably more like, constrained probably fits the the word a little bit better than compelled, except compelled is kind of the way we would use it in English try to get across the same idea.

Like, I'm being forced to. Right? Mhmm. So Paul knows here that that his calling is in Jerusalem, and he's he's he can't not. Paul uses later down, he talks about how he wants to finish the course, and that's like a a a running race term.

And, you know, I so I just did a a a race last, Saturday and was thinking about this, getting ready to preach. I was thinking about it while I was running, and there are all these cones along the side of the course. It's like, if I want to run the course, I have to stay inside the cones. The cones are constraining. Yeah.

The only thing compelling me is that I wanna get across the finish line, but the constraints are, well, here's the corral that I'm in. Right? I can't I have to stay in it if I wanna actually run this race. And so in some ways, I think that's what Paul's getting across here as he's running this race. He says he wants to get to the end.

He wants to finish what the task that was given to him, the ministry service that was given to him. Well, there's some constraints around that, and the Holy Spirit is saying this it's going through Jerusalem. Yeah. But verse 23, the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. There's another interpretive decision we have to make there.

Or is Paul saying that in every city he's been in, the Holy Spirit has told him in words directly, hey. When you get to Jerusalem, it's gonna be bad, afflictions and imprisonment, or is he saying, and this is the way I took it in the sermon, that every place he's been, every city he's been in, he's faced afflictions and the threat of imprisonment. And so it's like, if the past is any sign of the future, then maybe God's trying to tell him something. Like, don't expect Jerusalem to be great or easy because everywhere you've been, you've faced affliction and imprisonment. Jerusalem's not gonna be any different, so don't expect it to be any different.

Yeah. Now whether or not that means he should avoid going to Jerusalem is a really good question that Jeff's gonna tackle this Sunday in the upcoming passages because everywhere Paul goes, people are telling him, you shouldn't go through with this. Don't you know what's gonna happen? And he's going, but this is my calling. I have to go through with it.

Why are you trying to break my will? Why are you trying to get me to stop following the calling of God on my life? Okay. So did I answer your question? I can't remember your question.

Oh, man. It was great. It was very thorough. What's the purpose of the Holy Spirit's warning at the same time he's being com he's compelling Paul? So I think we had to clarify what does compelling really mean.

Yep. And then, yeah, your interpretation of, the chains that await, whether it's a warning, an actual warning by the Holy Spirit in real time as he's entering a city or if it's just, like, the history that he'd experienced. Yeah. The pattern. And it's important, I think so to to get back to your question specifically, we shouldn't read it as the Holy Spirit saying go, compelling, and the Holy Spirit saying don't go, warning.

That's not it at all. It's the Holy Spirit is telling Paul, here's where you're going, and, also, don't expect it to be any better than it was or than it has been. Yep. Okay. Here we go.

Last question. Joey, this is a personal question for you, not necessarily text related. Have you ever felt or experienced a similar compelling or warning, or just this warning against savage wolves that he goes on to talk about later in this section? And if so, what lessons did you learn from those experiences? So maybe not your race.

You know, that's an easy, but, like, spiritually. Yeah. Anything to share there? You know, it's really interesting that Paul uses the word picture of savage wolves because especially in our you know, the cultural moment that we live in, we're kinda like, no. Everybody's decent, kind, trying to do their best.

Like, we wouldn't we wouldn't call we would feel weird calling false teachers savage wolves. Yeah. Like, it would seem impolite or we're not loving them well enough or, well, people have to make decisions for themselves, make up their own minds. So the fact that he's using savage wolves who are going to ravage the sheep, the flock, like, they're going to eat like, this is not a this is not a small thing, and so you really do have to stay on your guard. There's been a couple times in ministry here at Faith where individuals or teachers, at faith or connected to faith have begun pushing people or pushing outside the boundaries of orthodoxy.

So here's what I mean. You know? When we talk about orthodoxy, we're talking about what well, CS Lewis called it mere Christianity, but, like, what all Christians across time have universally agreed. This is what it means to believe as a Christian. So we don't talk about this from the pulpit or anything, but, there's, like, this generally agreed on 5 fold test of orthodoxy, which is, 1 Bible, 2 testaments, and 2 testaments is important because some early heretics tried to cut out parts of the Old Testament or say, no.

No. No. The Old Testament is not the word of God, only the New Testament, or try to rewrite parts of the New Testament. Like, yeah, James shouldn't be in there any at all, but Galatians should or things like that. So one Bible, 2 testaments, 3 creeds, That's Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Creed, constant, and the constant Constantinopleton or whatever.

So the 3 creeds, 4 the first four church councils and the first five centuries. This the the teaching and the councils and the creeds from these first five centuries were, kinda what all Christians together is. Yeah. This is this is what it means to be Christian. And so there have been some folks at faith, who or connected to faith who have tried to go in different directions or push outside of the realm of orthodoxy.

So, for example, we're helping a guy a couple of years ago who was starting to become convinced that, trinitarianism wasn't the right way to think about God, that, God the father, God the son, God the spirit, one God and 3 distinct persons, it's just not what scripture teaches. And, like, that's you can believe whatever you want. We can't control that, but that's not Christian. And so, no, you can't, teach that here. You can't disseminate that here by recommending people read these books, of the people who are teaching this.

And it's almost almost got to the point where it's like, you can't worship here because you're meaning something entirely different when you talk about God. Something similar happened when we began hosting a, assist another church that needed a space to to worship in and found out after about a month of them being here on Sunday nights that they were teaching again a a a oneness view of God, that God is 1, not 3, that Jesus is, the first created being, not God himself, which is an early heresy called Arianism that still keeps coming back. And we sat down with the the pastor of the church and said, this is not what Christians believe. This is not what scripture teaches. And he said, hey.

I agree with everything in your doctrinal statement except for this one part where it said God exists eternally in 3 divine persons. Other than that, I agree with everything. And we we had to say, you actually don't. Because when we say Jesus, we mean the 2nd person of the trinity. And when you say Jesus, you mean the 1st created being.

Those are different things, and, therefore, we we can't we can't allow that kind of teaching in our building. Right. And we we parted mutually. You know? We told them, like, hey.

You wouldn't let me come preach in your church. We're not gonna let you preach in ours, and so you gotta go. So bring it back to you started this quest or you started responding saying, like, currently, in our time, the thought of, like, calling someone, oh, savage wolves and ravaging the sheep sounds really, what's the right word, harsh? You know, I'm like, like, oh, that's not nice. We shouldn't say that.

But is that what you're saying? Like, like, the people at faith that you've experienced that are not teaching according to the 5 fold past of orthodoxy. Like, are you saying, like, yeah, that is savage wolves. So you're like, no. No.

No. Those are different. That's like a different group of people. You know? Yeah.

Because we feel super uncomfortable calling someone as savage wolves. I'm like Yeah. Because we're supposed to be nice. We're supposed to be kind. We're Midwesterners.

We're supposed to be polite. We're not supposed to get up in your face and tell people. So, yeah, I would say someone who is teaching people that there is a a path of following Jesus that is outside of orthodoxy. They are savage wolves. They are leading people away from where life and truth is found, either from truth about who God is, who Jesus is, or away from holy living, away from living obediently to the calling of Jesus, especially in places like the Sermon on the Mount.

So Mhmm. Mhmm. Is that hard to say or not so much? It's really easy to say in a podcast talking to you. It's harder to say to that person face to face.

Yeah. You know, even the the the pastor of the other church that we had to part ways with. Like, I didn't and then I probably should've. I didn't really have the guts in the meeting to say, you are leading your people away from salvation and into eternal damnation thinking that they are following the God of the Bible. Mhmm.

And I probably should've said that and said, you you have to figure this out, because you were leading people away. Yeah. And I didn't That's hard. Yeah. It's hard that's hard to say Yeah.

Because, like, well, who am I to well Yeah. That's why we have the guardrails of orthodoxy. So we can say, well, I'm inside these guardrails that we've all agreed on for 2000 years. So Mhmm. Yes.

Yep. Alright, Joey. Thanks for your time and all your amazing answers and just, being willing to share, especially on that last question there. It was really helpful. So thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Well well, I'm glad we get to do this next week. We're in the chapter 21. I think this will be good.

Jeff and I were talking about this morning. I'm really pumped Alright. For this weekend. Cool. Alright.

Thanks, Zoe. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Cut for Time. If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcast at faith, live it out dot org or text them into our faith church texting number. And we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode.

If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.