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- Hi, it's Pastor Tom.

I want to welcome you to our look together at First Timothy chapter three, day one
of our look at this chapter. We're going to take a look at verses one to three
today. And as we look through this chapter, First Timothy three, we're going to be
talking this week about the motivation for living the life of faith, like we've
talked about all the way through the book of First Timothy.

And we're going to focus in this chapter on integrity. How does my personal
integrity, how do the choices that I make in the person that I am, the character
that I have, the way that I treat others, how do those impact the motivation
that I have for living the daily life of faith? Paul has a lot to say about that
in these verses.

Let's begin by reading verses one to three. Here is a trustworthy saying. If
anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.

Now, the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife,
temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to
drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
Well, there's a list. There's a list of integrity that Paul gives.

And he gives it in light of somebody who desires to be, who has their heart set
on being an overseer in the church. Now, what does this mean, overseer? Some
versions translate this the bishop of the church.

Other versions translate it the pastor of the church. What's the difference in
the New Testament between an overseer or a bishop or a pastor or an elder?
There's another word that's used sometimes.

Well, if you take a close look, and we don't have time to go into this study
now, but if you do a study through the use of these words in the New Testament,
you find out very quickly that they're all the same. It's the same thing. It is
the leader of a local body of Christians.

So in the New Testament, you see the word overseer or bishop. You see the word
elder or you see the word pastor. We may today think of different offices and
different ecclesiastical organizations that those words refer to.

But in Paul's day, in the day that the New Testament was written, it was all the
pastor. He's talking to the leader of the church, the leader of the body of
Christ. And he talks about integrity.

He talks about how you see integrity in a person's life. One of the best
descriptions anywhere in the Bible of integrity and how it plays itself out in
your daily life is found here in 1 Timothy 3. Talks about how you can see
integrity in a person.

And although these words are to the leader of the church, obviously, there's
something that we should all aspire to. We all want to live lives of integrity. So
as we talk through these, you may be the leader of a church or of a ministry and
these particularly apply to you in a certain and personal way as we read through
this.

But if you feel like, well, I'm not that, I want you to know that these words
apply to you also because we all live this life of integrity. And there's this
list that Paul gives. And I just want to walk through the list, talk about
integrity.

And as we walk through it, don't just listen to it as something of interest. Ask
yourself, is this in my life? Am I living a life of integrity right now?

What's in this list? Well, the first thing is the most challenging thing. He
says, first of all, I want it to be somebody who is above reproach.

That's a life of integrity. Well, I read that and I think that lets everyone
out. Above reproach, who's perfect?

Well, you need to realize that this does not mean perfect. Otherwise, no one
could be an overseer because nobody is perfect. It means above reproach means
not reproachable.

It means you're living with integrity in your life. And because those places in
your life where you may have made a mistake or said a wrong thing or even
cheated someone in a way, but you've gone back and you've made it right. You're
above reproach.

Not you're perfect, but you've dealt with everything in your life. You're
dealing with it day by day by living with integrity. And you're also dealing
with it day by day by confessing wrongs, by making things right with other
people.

Above reproach. Above reproach has to do with making things right with people.
But this life of being above reproach, if I want to live with integrity, it also
has something else in it, something very powerful.

Living a life above reproach has to do with things you just choose not to get
involved in. Above reproach means I might go back and make something right if
I've cheated somebody in a business deal. But as you grow in your faith, there
comes a point where above reproach means I don't get involved in that business
deal at all.

You see a deal in front of you and it has this great promise of wealth, but
something in you knows there's just something a little shady about it. You're
not quite sure what it is. As you grow in faith, as you grow in integrity, there
comes a day when you say, I'm not even going to get involved.

I'm not sure what it is. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to go down that
road. Why would you?

Why would you? Just for the wealth? We're going to talk in a few moments about the
fact that money is something that we all can enjoy, but if it becomes too
important in our lives, it starts to rule our lives.

So a life above reproach means there are many things you choose just to say no
to in advance, because you know there's too much possibility of it going down
the wrong road and you wouldn't do anything that would bring reproach upon the
name of Christ. Above reproach, that's a life of integrity. And then he says a
life of integrity is being the husband of one wife.

That's one of the requirements for an overseer. And there's a lot of questions
about this and I think they're answered by the literal meaning of the Greek
phrase here. The literal meaning is this is a one woman man.

That's the integrity of heart that this person is living with. Now that doesn't
mean just one at a time and a whole bunch of women in your life. It means a
heart for only one.

And by the way, you can see that heart even in someone who is single. It doesn't
necessarily mean as I read this that the person has to be married. You can see
that kind of a heart even before a man is married or a woman is married.

You can see a one woman man. You can see a one man woman, not to confuse the
phrases too much. You can see the fact that somebody has a heart for one person,
that they have a deep sense of faithfulness in their commitments and their
relationships.

Now just walk through this with me for a moment. That means that there can be a
man out there who has technically been married to only one woman, but he flirts
with every other woman that he meets and he's been involved in this relationship
here and this relationship here. And even though it hasn't broken up his
marriage, he is not a one woman man.

He does not have an integrity of heart. Or you could see another man whose wife
has left him and it devastated his life. And maybe years and years later, 15, 20
years later, after trying to make this other relationship work again and again,
he goes and he remarries.

He finds someone else in his life by God's grace. Is that person a one woman
man? Yeah, the devastation that he had in the divorce, the waiting that he had
for something new to happen and the new attitude that he has towards his new
wife that shows that integrity of heart.

Now I know there are a thousand practical illustrations of this and I'm not
answering every specific detail here. I'm talking about the integrity of heart
that we live with. One woman man, above reproach, a faithfulness of life.

The third word that Paul uses is temperate and that means a person whose
judgments are sober and temperate. We think about it as not drinking sometimes,
but this has to do with judgments. What kind of judgment do you have about life
and about people?

Do you take time with your judgments or do you come to quick judgments, snap
judgments about people? Temperate, that's part of our integrity of life. And
then he uses the word self-controlled as the Greek word sophron is the ability,
self-controlled is the ability to say no to the temptations and the distractions
that come into our minds.

And we all hate those temptations and distractions. And because we're all
sinners, there are times when we say yes to those things. Then we ask for
Christ's forgiveness and we ask him to help us to grow so that we can live a
more self-controlled life.

Now you know, I hope you know that the only way to live a self-controlled life
is to be spirit-controlled in your daily life. I can't say no to temptations on
my own power. I need the spirit's power in my life.

What does it mean to have integrity? It's above reproach, it's the husband of
one wife, it's tempered, it's self-controlled. And then he talks about another
word, respectable.

Respectable. Now what he's giving the picture of there is you're living your
life like a child of the king. You're respectable, you're living your life
knowing that you're a follower of Jesus Christ.

And you take that sense into everything that you do, everywhere that you are.
That's a respectable life, the picture that he's giving here. The next word that
he uses, what's a life of integrity?

It has to do with our relationships and he uses the word hospitable. Now check
your own heart on this one. How are you doing on this one?

Hospitable, this word is sometimes defined as a friend of strangers. We think of
hospitable as I'm nice to my friends. But this word can also mean a friend of
strangers.

How do you treat the person you've never met before? The waiter in a restaurant,
the person who's checking your stuff out at a grocery store, the person who cut
you off on the freeway. How do you treat that person?

That's a part of being hospitable. One translation defines this, he must enjoy
having guests in his home. And there's something to that.

The idea that you're willing to open up your life, open up your home to other
people so that they feel welcomed in. That's part of having integrity. Some
people picture integrity only as I don't ever do anything wrong.

There's also the need to do things right in your relationships, that's part of
integrity. Now Paul goes on to list things like able to teach. That's part of
integrity.

Able to share with others the good news of what Christ is doing in your life and
why you've thought it through. He talks about not giving to drunkenness. We're
going to talk about that more later this week and what it means for our daily
lives, the way that we handle our comfort and our things.

Then he uses the word gentle. That's part of integrity. Gentleness is a required
quality of Christian leaders.

Gentleness is to mark everything all of us do as believers. It's not I better
deal with this situation gently, it's I better deal with every situation gently.
Jesus was gentle and humble in heart and he tells us to be the same way.

Blessed are the meek, blessed are the gentle for they will inherit the earth. It
is a quality of integrity in the life of a believer. He goes on to make this
more practical.

He says not quarrelsome. The love of argument is not a good quality for someone
who is modeling Christ's love. When you argue, you're just modeling I want to win
the argument.

That's what everybody else does, not quarrelsome. And then he ends the list by
saying not a lover of money. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Now as I walk through that list that Paul gave of integrity, there are places in
my life where I think I need to grow there, I need to change there, I need to
watch out for that. How about you? Where is God pinging your heart right now,
speaking to your heart right now about living this life of integrity?

Let's talk to him. Our Father, we thank you for who you are and we thank you
that the integrity with which we live grows out of the spirit, your spirit that
you put into our lives. Protect us from trying to live this kind of life on our
own power.

Thank you that by your power, we can live a new kind of life. As you've spoken
to my heart, to our hearts today about integrity, I pray you give us the courage
to bring up to you what's in our mind right now. Oh God, I've been caught up in
money.

Oh Lord, my judgments haven't been good lately. Lord, I've been allowing myself
to fall to that temptation again and again and again, telling myself it's okay.
Lord, I haven't been living like a child of the king with that person in that
relationship.

Lord, wherever it is, help us to know that you are forgiving, but also that you
are empowering, that you're willing to give us a power to live in a new kind of
way. And thank you Jesus for who you are. In your name, amen.

And join us tomorrow as we continue through this chapter, we're going to talk about
integrity in your closest relationships.