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biblestudy: Character and Leadership

Christian Leaders Speak and Act Like Christ
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 19-Aug-23; Sermon #BS-081923; 77 minutes

Description: (show)

There was a man about two centuries ago whose name was Walter Savage Landor. You do not need to know that—just that he was an English author about the turn of the 19^th century. But he said something significant one time: "When little men cast long shadows, it is a sign that the sun is setting."

Mr. Landor was not speaking of short men or dwarves or anything like that, but of ignoble men, those that have unworthy ideals and ambitions, selfish men, those who are self-aggrandizing and who are interested only in their own promotion, their own power, what they can get out of leading people.

Considering our political landscape, such men seem to be the rule rather than the exception. The recent residents of the White House, for instance, despite their political acumen, despite even which party they are in, whether they are right or left, conservative or liberal, they have really, frankly, few good ideas. They certainly have no ideas that have lifted us out of political, economic, or public health crises. It just seems like they make things worse rather than make them better.

Too many of them have opposed the traditions and principles of the nation they are supposed to be leading. They are not even good Americans, but they end up sitting in the highest office of the land. Despite their popularity, getting millions and millions of votes (the last election was about 80 million on each side), all of them have a record of a lot of unkept promises. They have caused division in the country and made the divisions worse. The gap between the left and the right, the rich and the poor, and all those other categories, have just gotten wider; and we have soaring debt. They have done nothing to help our economy. I mean, we are right now in the midst of inflation and they are still predicting that we might have worse times ahead.

So, they are the little men, I think, that Mr. Landor had in mind. They certainly will cast long shadows as Americans will be paying for their failed policies for generations, if Christ does not come first.

Now, a better known quotation on leadership and character comes from a man we all know, America's 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. He said, "Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want to test a man's character, give him power." This quotation, from a man who was tested probably more than any other American president before him (and after), makes it clear that character in leadership matters, matters a whole lot. Because holding a position of leadership—and it does not necessarily have to be the presidency or some great political seat of power, it could be any kind of leadership position—but holding a position of power, of leadership, means holding power and only of people of good character handle power correctly. We could go so far as to say that character in leadership is where character matters the most because that is when you are affecting more than just yourself. You are affecting all those people that you are leading or supposed to be leading.

Today though, moral character in leadership is not actually considered a priority. I mean, just look at the two men who head the parties going into the next election. You could say Donald Trump is effective in certain ways, but you would not call him moral. And the same could be said for Joe Biden. He was the bulldog of the Senate for many years, he led the Democrats in all their opposition to the Republicans, but he has left a trail of crime just like the other side. And you look at the character of his family. You know, he is not much of a good character either.

Recent political campaigns reveal what actually the candidates and their public relations experts deem to be what is important. It is not character. You could say, maybe, their most important priority is beating the other side and gaining the office, of course. But when you look at what they seem to emphasize, it is things that really should not matter a whole lot, like looking sharp in a suit. That is what is important. Actually saying very little of substance, that is important too because you do not want to be pinned to the wall on something. You have got to appear tough on our enemies or on their own enemies, but really what they need to do, a very high priority is to attract contributions because staying in power requires a lot of money. And they also think that being willing to compromise is a pretty important thing because they will get what they want incrementally if they cannot get it in one blow.

One of the things that especially politicians on the left want to do is they want to appear woke so that they can get the diehards on the far left on their side. And on the other side, they want to make sure that they do not appear woke so that they can get the people on their side. But whether they look woke or they do not look woke is very important because that is tapping into the times and they want to make sure that they pledge their support to various interest groups that traditionally support them. So they want to make sure they touch all their bases and make sure all their connections and everything are just so-so that they could be catapulted into power for another four years or two years or whatever the office happens to be, either locally or nationally. And it seems like we all just play along, the whole nation just plays along with this farce that goes on every two or four years.

The public is now willing to give indiscretion and obfuscation or outright lying a pass as long as the leader, once he gets into office, once they have elected him or her there, once they get there they give them what they want. That is the bargain that they have made. "Ok, we will vote you into office. We don't care what you're like. We don't care what your character is like at all. We don't care anything about you except that you give us what we want." And so there is no character on either side. People who vote are not necessarily true to their own standards and principles and the people who they vote in are not loyal to their own standards either, if they have any.

So that is where we are. We are in a farcical political situation in this country and I do not see any way that we can turn it around because everybody has decided that this is what they want.

Of course, we are not to be in this world, we are not to be the ones that do this sort of thing in the world. But God is the ultimate Source for the true answer to whether character matters in leadership. So we need to ask a few questions so that we understand what is actually going on here in this balance of character and leadership.

Now, the answer should be obvious because we know what is said in His Word. We have been called out of this world, as I said, and we have been studying the way of the world to come. And so we should understand what the standard is. And as I said the other week, the standard is the standard. It does not change, it is always there and we always have to live up to it.

Pastor and leadership guru John C. Maxwell says this, "It is true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime." So we have leaders with charisma who can get us on their side for the moment. But as the way it has worked out in American history, especially over the past 50 years, we have been able to see that over the long haul, it was just charisma, there was not a whole lot of character there. Because just about every president along the line, even Ronald Reagan. A lot of us hold up Ronald Reagan as the pinnacle of American leadership over the past half century or so, but did he not have the Iran Contra affair in the last few years of his second term?

Nobody has gone through the political system in that area of leadership and come out clean. So their charisma took them part of the way because it is easy to fool people with charisma. But over the long haul character speaks. So we need to make sure that we have the character that will last the long haul and that will make our leadership effective.

I mentioned asking questions so that we can understand how character and leadership affect one another and what God thinks about character in leadership. That is the real question. What does God think about character in leadership?

The first question we need to ask is, what has He called us to become? The answer, of course, is that He has called us to become His sons and daughters, His children. He is reproducing Himself. But beyond that, He has called us as His sons and daughters to fulfill offices. He tells us that we will be a kingdom of priests or we will be kings and priests, depending on how you want to translate that phrase in Revelation 5:10. But He has called us to fill places in government, in leadership. So we can rightly say as an answer to this question is that His children have been called to be leaders, to hold positions of great authority in His Kingdom. And from this, from this idea that He has called us to be leaders, we can extrapolate that ultimately the salvation process, the sanctification process that we are all going through, is about leadership. It is leadership training.

The second question we need to ask, since we have already understood that we are going to be fulfilling leadership positions, the question is, how do we obtain these positions of leadership? Now, the Bible answers with phrases like this in like II Peter 3:18, we are told to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The sanctification process is growing in grace and in knowledge. That is partial. But it is kind of an expansive overall version of what are we here to do. In other places, Scripture says that we have to put on the New Man. That is Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10. We are also told in Romans 12:2 and II Corinthians 3:18 that we are to be transformed into the image of Christ.

Are all these sounding a lot the same? Growing in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, putting on the New Man (the New Man is Christ or the model of the New Man is Christ), and being transformed into the image of Christ. They are all saying basically the same thing. So, in other words, we are being prepared for these positions of leadership by taking on the very character of God Himself. And what do we know about God? He rules everything, He is the ultimate leader in the whole universe. And He is also the one who has perfect character. So we could make the connection here that He is training us to be like Him, sovereign over what He has and perfect in character like He is.

The third question then that we need to ask as we move forward in time, let us say, through our conversion and the resurrection, is that along the same route, will God allow anyone without His perfect character to rule in His Kingdom? And the answer is obviously, no. If He set the standard of His own Son as what a true leader and ruler should be, with perfect character, then He is not going to allow anybody who does not pass the bar, if you will, does not pass under the rod to rule in His Kingdom because He tells us we are going to be one, we are going to be united. And that just does not mean we are go going to sing kumbya by the campfire. It means that we are going to have the same ideas, the same character, the same process, the same methods, the same ends. We will be like Him and He will be like us because we are His sons and daughters. And is not that a trait of children and their parents, that they are the same? Kind produces kind.

So if He is wanting us to come up to the image of Jesus Christ, we are being made, as Mr. Armstrong often talked about, of the Godkind. We are being transformed into that, a very arduous process for us. But that is God's goal. He is bringing us into His Kingdom where we are one with Him.

The answer to this question, will God allow anyone without His perfect character to rule in His kingdom, being no, we see it in several places in Scripture. And it is often in a negative sense, like, "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?" Paul writes that in I Corinthians 6:9 and then the apostle lists several kinds of sinners that he means by the term unrighteous so we know that this, that, and the other thing as he speaks about it there in I Corinthians 6:9 will not be there.

He says in Galatians 5:19-21, where he writes about those who practice the works of the flesh. And he concludes there with a statement that, "those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." It seems pretty obvious that people who are not up to the standard, who do not have the character will not be there.

This even goes out all the way to the final chapter in the Book. Jesus is there, speaking of New Jerusalem, and He says, "But outside [meaning excluded] are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and whoever practices lies." That is in Revelation 22:15. So sinners, those who do not have the character of God just will not be there. They are not just outside the city, they are dead, they are gone. They have already faced the second death because they were not willing to change their character into the perfect character of God. They were not willing to go on that arduous journey of transformation.

So we can conclude after asking these questions and answering them that every ruler in His Kingdom will have His, meaning Christ's or the Father's, personal stamp of approval on his or her character specifically. That is Christ because He has been made the Judge of all and no one will be able to slip under His rod. When He evaluates His sheep, nobody is going to fool Him into thinking that we are okay when we are not, that we are righteous when we are actually still sinners. I mean, He sees right into the heart. He knows what we are made of and He knows if we have qualified or not, if we meet His standard.

No scoundrel like we have in many of our political offices will rule in the Kingdom of God. Not even someone who is just moderately good or even moderately bad will rule in His Kingdom. He will make sure, this is His process, this is His goal and purpose, making sure that every citizen of New Jerusalem has perfect character, not just those who are placed in authority, but everyone, every citizen who is allowed entrance into the New Jerusalem will have perfect character.

So does character matter? Of course, it does! Character means everything, both to God and to His called-out ones. And character actually means everything to leadership, whether it is human leadership or divine leadership. They are almost synonymous—that leadership without character is not leadership. It is the blind leading the blind or sinners leading others into sin, which is totally inimical to God and His way.

We have to ask then, because of certain things that have happened in our own history, does a person's personal life affect his public life? Can a person in leadership compartmentalize his leadership over the public away from the conduct of his personal life? Can he separate the two? You know Bill Clinton was famous for saying this, that he did not think all of his affairs and whatnot would affect his leadership. He told everybody he could compartmentalize these things, but we saw by the end of his second term, that was not the case. His personal life came into our own living rooms and it affected his public leadership.

You cannot do that, you cannot compartmentalize yourself because you are one thing, one being. And so what you do in one area of life is going to affect other areas of life. I mean, could we expect a person who makes poor decisions in private matters to make good decisions in public matters? Why would we think that if he is making a wreck of his personal life, why do you think that he is going to lead us into some sort of utopia publicly? I mean, it just does not mesh. A person's bad character will out in the worst of times, if not the best of times. It just happens that way because you cannot stop expressing who you are and that comes from the heart.

So if a leader has a record of doing wicked things in his private life, is it not logical to think that some of his immorality is going to bleed over into his public life? And the answer is, it must! It can be held back. I mean, they can put their finger in the dike for a little while, but it will not be long before the water is spurting around his finger and coming in and flooding everybody.

Let us go to Mark 7 where Jesus uses a different metaphor. This is where he talks about these defiling sins being in the heart.

Mark 7:20-23 He said, "What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. [And the list kind of just stops because we are supposed to understand that He means all sin.] All these evil things come from within and defile a man."

They are inside, they are not things that come on them from the outside. That is part of their character that the process of their lives are displaying or manifesting what their heart has, what their heart possesses, what their heart is like. So we cannot go through life hiding our sins because they are going to come out and defile the person, because they are in there cooking, they are stewing, and there is going to come a time when that person is not going to be able to hide it anymore and it is just going to come out like vomit. But it will happen. That is just the way it is.

We think we are really good at hiding things from other people when the truth is that actually it comes out and shows everybody what we are on a regular basis.

So a person carries what is inside of him wherever he goes and those internal traits will affect whatever he does. And that is a great thing actually, if the characteristics inside are good. We want them to flow out to affect other people in positive ways. But if they are evil, then they flow out and affect other people in negative destructive ways and ultimately they produce death. So if the heart of a person is black with hate and self-seeking, he will act meanly and selfishly toward everyone. He may cloak his evil nature from others for a time. But Jesus tells us in Luke 12:3 that his secret sins will be shouted from the rooftops if he continues in them. That is our Creator telling us that we are not going to be able to hide sins for very long. If we do not repent of them, then they will be made public in order to force us to acknowledge them and work on them.

Let us go back to Matthew 20, a few pages here, verses 25 to 28. This is a different subject. This is about leadership, getting back to the our main subject here, leadership and character. This is the time when John and James' mother came and said, "Hey Jesus, won't You put my sons on Your right hand and Your left hand here?" And the other disciples were upset. And Jesus said, "Lady, you don't know what you're asking." And He told the men there, John and James, "Are you willing to go through what I'm going to go through?" And they, of course said, "Oh yeah, love to do what you do." This was causing division with the group because of their grasping for leadership.

Matthew 20:24-28 And when the ten heard it [the other ten disciples], they were moved with indignation against the two brothers. [And so obviously, we are being told here, this was not a good move.] But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

The big sentence here for us to grasp, at least for the purposes of this Bible study, is "Yet it shall not be so among you." We are different. We have been called to be different. We are to have a different outlook, a different approach, a different method of leadership than the Gentiles. And in this case, we are not just talking about people from other places than Israel. We are talking about everybody who is not converted. It is kind of a code word for the world. So do not think of it in a narrow sense, think of it as macro—those who have not been called.

Now, the human style of leadership produces something like what Jesus describes here, being like the rulers of the Gentiles. They like authority. They love power and they use it to control others so that they will do what the leader wants them to do. They will lie, cheat, steal, and murder if that is what it takes to get what and where they want. They will use and abuse others, they will stab them in the back, and climb over their dead bodies to reach the top. Because the only way you get things done in societies like that is to be the guy in charge. You have got to be the one on top of the pile, king of the mountain. You have got to use all your aggression, all your wiles to get to the place where you can tell everybody what to do. And on the way up, you make everybody pay or owe you a favor or whatever it is that you can do to grab authority.

If leadership in the church were this way, I would hate to see it. It would be awful. It would look like a lot of the political factions and rivalries that we see under the surface in some of these worldly churches like the Catholic Church. If you peel back the veneer of the Catholic Church and look into all of the politics that is happening in it, I do not know; maybe you would be surprised, maybe you would not be. But these are the kind of people that started things like the crusades and fights among nations in order to gain power for the church. And if you have ever read about some of the things that people did in order to become a Pope, it is scary. And here they were wearing the mantle of religion to get what they wanted.

"But it shall not be so among you." It is not supposed to be that way in this church, in God's church. Among Christ's true disciples, leaders must be different. We have different goals. We have a higher goal, a more ideal goal, and we have to be ideal in the way that we pursue it, with as perfect character as possible. Real leaders, the ones that God respects, are after Christ's mold, after His model. And Christ's model is service. The model of leadership in the church is a servant. People who do their best to help others, to lift them up, to free them from the things that hold them back.

Christian leaders, as Jesus describes it here in Matthew 20, are ones who make sacrifices of their time and their energy to help others move forward toward the Kingdom of God. They are not concerned about position. They are not concerned about power or wealth. You know what they are concerned about? People. They want to do their best for people, not for their goals, not to impress. They want the people who are under them to move forward. In fact, the best among them want the people who are under them to replace them eventually, to be able to have the skills and the wherewithal to be able to do what they do to. They want to be able to pass on what they have learned to others so that they can fill the same kind of job. And ultimately, that is what we are all trying to do. But God has put some as gifts in the church. This is Ephesians 4. He gave the ministry as gifts to build up everybody, to equip people for the things that they will need to be able to do in time. We will get to that in a minute.

In a word, Christian leaders speak and act like Christ. He is the model, the servant leadership model, and Christian leaders do their best throughout their lives as long as they are in the church to grow in His character and to express it in how they work with others, how they lead.

So the rest of this Bible study is going to be about the characteristics or some of the characteristics of Christ that Christian leaders should—must—exhibit in their own work, their own offices, if you will. I have got five things that Christian leaders do to show that they are on the same page as Christ, that they are using Christ's character in their work.

The first thing that they do, this may be the number one thing that they need to do, and that is they speak the truth. I just mentioned Ephesians 4. So let us go there and we will read verses 11 through 16. We all know this passage quite well.

Ephesians 4:11-16 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers [He is speaking about leadership in the church. He has gifted the church with certain leaders and he names some of the categories here. Now, why?], for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry [or service], for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head—Christ—for whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Ephesians 4:25 Therefore [the first thing he says after this long doctrinal explanation], putting away lying, "Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor," for we are members of one another.

We are on the same team, we are supposed to be in this together.

Christ's purpose for putting leadership into the church in whatever level they happen to be on, is for the purpose of equipping the elect for service. He puts them there so that they can speak the truth to the people He has called out, and give them what they need in terms of knowledge and understanding so they can mature into the character of Christ. That is the goal, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And so the leader is put into the congregation or over all or however you want to look at it, to speak true, to give good lessons, to help the other people understand so that they could mature and eventually be a leader too, because we are trying to educate and give practice to everyone who has God's Spirit, even the people who seem least able to be leaders. But if they are going to inherit the Kingdom of God, they are going to be leaders and it is the ministry's job, the leader's job, to give that knowledge and to try to get people involved in the leadership process. That is how they are going to grow. That is how they are going to learn things that the rest of the church needs.

And notice verse 16, notice what this gets to, "for whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies." So if we are speaking the truth and the truth is understood, people grasp it, they start to learn it and live it, what happens? The result is unity. It begins to knit them together because they are thinking and speaking the same thing. "By what every joint supplies." Every joint is now kicking in to the whole here. "According to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love." And so the ministry's job or the leadership's job is to speak the truth, give people an understanding of what is going on, get them off their duff in doing things for everybody. This causes unity and this unity starts to build, everybody starts teaching each other, and the growth begins to be exponential because the whole body is working in unity for its own building up—edification.

And so the minister's job is to speak the truth, to teach as a catalyst for the rest of the body to understand and begin growing and serving, which only magnifies the work of the church. I am not talking about preaching the gospel to the world. This is the building up of the church in the church's other area and should be a major area of growth, which is feeding itself, feeding the flock, in other words. Because the church is the place where most of the sanctifying happens, sanctifying the brethren, and we bring our problems to one another, we help one another, we learn what we need to do. We do this growth inside the womb of the church, as it were, and someday we will be ready then to take on the bigger responsibility toward the world in the Kingdom of God. But we are here right now trying to help each other grow. And it begins with speaking the truth, that the leaders speak the truth.

Look at verse 29: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." What is supposed to come out of your mouth? "What is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers." Some sort of gift, some sort of favor, some sort of help. So what comes out of our mouth is terribly important. Maybe terribly is not the right word. But wonderfully important! If we can speak no corrupt communication, but what we do speak imparts some sort of blessing or a missing brick in a person's foundation and they can then, having known that from what you said to them, grow thereby, then you are doing your job. You are being a Christian leader in helping others reach their potential.

That was number one: Christian leaders speak the truth.

Number two: Christian leaders uphold standards. Now, if you remember my sermons on Titus from a couple of years ago, Titus is full of admonitions from Paul on how to maintain a sound church. Let us just go to Titus and see some of these. We will take a hop, skip, and jump quickly, not as slowly as I went through the time before, but we will see what he says here. And a lot of these have to do with upholding Christian standards.

Titus 1:10-13 For there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision [Now he is getting at Jews here who had been causing a lot of problems in Crete], whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. One of them, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.

He is upholding a standard here and he says, "If you have to, a Christian leader should rebuke such people sharply because they are leading people off the path. Now, there is ways that this can be done. Some are more or less authoritarian, but it is a standard that has to be kept.

Titus 2:6-10 Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded, in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you. Exhort servants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering, but showing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.

More standards that have to be upheld. Here he brings in personal example and how that should show what the standard is. And servants, probably the lowest rung on the social ladder, they need to be taught basic things. I mean, to be obedient to those who are in authority over them, to be well pleasing, to go above and beyond, to have initiative, and certainly not answering back, talking back to their employer or whatever, and not stealing. I mean, these are basic things but they are standards that have to be kept and the opposite of them are shown to be wrong. And we do this "that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things." That they could be good witnesses in their own lives.

One more. Let us go down to chapter 3.

Titus 3:1-2 Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men.

Titus 3:9-11 But avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless. Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.

What he is saying here is that sometimes a church leader has to be the one to be the lightning rod and the example, but to use that position to show, whether modeling it in one's own life or in speaking words that give knowledge and understanding about these things, so that the standards of God are maintained throughout the church. So sometimes this is active, sometimes this is passive, but a church leader has to be aware at all times that he or she is being watched and listened to. And whenever anybody sees the leader, he should be aware that that person is giving him good advice, if you will.

So a leader has to uphold the standards in himself so that they could be witnessed by others.

Sometimes making those corrections may seem harsh but still the standard has to be upheld as high as possible. And the reason for that is to encourage growth because, unless everybody is meeting the same standards and trying to become more like Christ, you are going backward, the church is going backward, they are not being edified in the way that they could if the truth and the standards are not being upheld by the whole.

Number three, Christian leaders listen to those who are under their authority. Let us go back to Luke the second chapter. This is about Christ when He was just a boy, but I want you to see what it says about it. He made this example for our benefit when He was only 12 years old.

Luke 2:41-47 His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy [Jesus] lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and his mother did not know it; but supposing Him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey, and sought Him among their relatives and acquaintances. So when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him. Now it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.

Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

He was young, 12 years old, but He was already displaying more character and leadership than most people do even when they are old. But notice: He listened. These people who He was talking to were not converted. They may have been priests, those sitting in the temple area there, teachers, rabbis, but they had not been converted. But He listened and asked questions and this allowed Him to grow in understanding and wisdom. And as it says, beyond that, in stature and favor. You know, people really like it when you listen to them and you ask them pertinent questions to try to understand what they are going through or maybe to get a good angle on what question they are asking you, what needs to be answered.

So He shows us here that as a boy, a child, a mere servant, if you will, He was willing to listen and learn and grow.

But He also must have spoken because they were astonished at His understanding. He must have given them answers that maybe they had never thought of, at 12 years old! That is how communication is supposed to work. Communication is a two way street; both listen, both respond, then come to a greater understanding.

So of course, his brother James, being the great simplifier of many things that Jesus said, putting things into common language or little pithy statements, he says,

James 1:19 Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

And so James, taking some of these examples from His half-brother, gives us this very succinct advice. In other words, be eager to understand and consider, and only speak once you have done that and can speak then truth or wisdom to the situation, to the question, or what have you there. So good leaders listen to those under them.

Number four, Christian leaders give gifts or helps to those under them. If only if it is a small thing. But it is kind of like (what the sermon talked about today), being willing to give, willing to share. So a Christian leader will take of his treasure, if you will, both old and new and he will give it then to those that God has placed under him in order to make their lives better, to give them encouragement or comfort or whatever is necessary.

Let us go back to Ephesians 4, this time will be in verses 7 and 8. We will use the example of Jesus Christ. Notice what has been done to us. It is expected that we do this to others. Paul writes,

Ephesians 4:7-8 But to each one of us grace [or gift or favor] was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore He says: "When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men."

You can read this as: as soon as He ascended to His Father's throne, the first thing He did was give gifts to those under Him. He used His position, He used His wisdom, He used His glory, He used whatever He had been given, and He turned around and gave it to other people. And that is what we are supposed to do. When we are put in a position where we have been given much, we have to give much. It is our duty to do so.

Let us go to John 14, verse 25. Here He was, think of this. Jesus Christ, His last group discussion with His disciples. He is about to be arrested in the next couple of hours. And what does He do?

John 14:25 "These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you."

So He is giving them the promise of the Holy Spirit, which is His own mind and power that He is going to give. But He says, I have got something for you right now. In the meantime, He says,

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

Even in the darkest time of His life, just when He was about to be arrested and go through that trial and scourged and ultimately crucified, He was giving gifts—and He gave them peace, just what they needed at that time. Now, they did not use the peace very well. They scattered, they were fearful, but it was there if they would only have used it, if they had had a little bit of faith. John evidently probably used it best of all. He stuck around. He was there at the foot of the cross when Jesus was dying. But evidently he ran away too and only came back sooner than the rest of them did. But he saw, it stuck with him that Jesus gave them gifts pretty much to His dying breath. And of course, what we saw there in Ephesians 4 was that as soon as He was alive again and powerful, He started giving gifts again.

Let us check out John 17, verses 6 through 8. It does not stop. In His High Priestly prayer, as we call it, His true prayer, He says,

John 17:6-8 "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have known that all things which You have given me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me."

John 17:14 "I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."

John 17:22 "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one."

You know what Jesus is? He is a conduit from the Father. The Father gives Him words, He gives those words to His disciples. The Father gives Him whatever it is. It does not matter what it is. All the gifts of Jesus seem to go straight through Him and to His disciples, whether it is glory or what. That is what Jesus does. He does as His Father does, which is to give, to show love, to pour out blessings, to do what He can to bring others up to Their level. So we have the example in Christ.

Now, Christ's gifts are a whole lot higher, of more import than what we can give. But we can still give things to those who are under us. It is part of the sacrifice that God demands of a Christian leader. But we can give things like time. Time is a great gift. People appreciate it when you spend time with them and listen to them. Attention, listening, is another one. A lot of people are lonely and it really helps them when somebody listens and speaks to them and comforts them in their loneliness. We can give wisdom. We may not think we have much wisdom. But if we have hung around the church and read the Bible and have an okay memory, we should be able to at least spit out what we have learned. Or say, I think I remember a proverb that might help you here, and maybe you do not have it right up in memory, but you can go to it and say this might help.

We can give like Jesus did. We can actually give people peace. We can help them feel a measure of peace and love and kindness. We can be patient with them. A lot of times in this world, people are not patient. But if we can be patient with each other, that will go a long way. We can be gentle. It is a harsh world out there. And if we are gentle with people while being helpful, that too goes a long way. Their estimation of you will rise like you would not believe if you do any of these things.

If you show love, if you are patient, if you are gentle, if they are a pain and you show longsuffering, I mean, if the person himself bothers you but you show longsuffering with them, that goes a long way because most people who are pains know that they are pains. But if you sacrifice some of your time and give them an ear, that is a good thing. You are showing the Spirit and the example of Jesus Christ.

If you can give somebody joy in an otherwise joyless life or a joyless experience, that is something they remember. If you show an example of faithfulness and they see, let us say, some sacrifice or you doing something that goes against what goes on in the world and you hold your ground, that is a great gift. "Someone like me" can do this and to show the faith of Jesus Christ in the midst of trial or some sort of problem.

You can give support, you can give comfort. There are so many things that we can give. They do not cost us a dime. They might cost us a little bit of sacrifice of time and effort, but they are readily and happily received and they do go a long way in helping people feel united with the church, with the minister, with others in the church, with the very concepts of Christianity. They feel like they are part of something, part of that Body. And it solves a lot of problems just by a leader in the church giving something that is totally within their power to give because they have earned it through growth in character.

So none of these things could should stay with us. They need to be, like Jesus Christ, sent right through to somebody else.

I failed to mention that if you have the physical means to help them with some sort of service or fulfill a need, then that is another way to give. But that is actually the bottom level of service. I am sure Jesus Christ would want you to do that. But He would really like you to give them spiritual things, spiritual helps alongside the physical help. So yes, bind the wound, but give hope and comfort as well, something that cannot be found in a bandage or ice to a wound or something like that.

Number five, Christian leaders remain humble. Let us go back to John 13. We have one of the greatest examples of humility, and we have to learn it and do it every year to keep it in mind for ourselves, that our Savior, the Glorious One, King over all things, got down on His knees and washed the feet of His disciples.

John 13:12-17 So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? [Are you aware? Do you comprehend the magnitude of this? Do you understand where I am taking this? That is basically what He is saying.] You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am." If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things [if you have grasped the monumental truth that is stuck in this action here], happy [or blessed] are you if you do them."

It is not good enough just to understand it. Happy are you if you do it, if you follow the example. He is, He was, even though He was in human form, Lord and Master, but He did not balk at doing the work of a menial slave. It is a problem with us humans. We have so much pride. "I'm not going to lower myself to do that! People would laugh at me. People wouldn't think well of me." But He did not care. His duty was to serve, not to be served.

So Jesus teaches that, in any situation, we need to assume lowliness, we need to assume humility. We need to be, as He says in the beatitude, poor in spirit. If you want to put it another way, let others show us honor rather than taking it to ourselves. Go back to the book of Luke in chapter 14, verses 7 through 11. It says here,

Luke 14:7-11 He told a parable to those who were invited, when He noted how they chose the best places, saying to them: "When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, 'Give place to this man'; and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, go up higher.' Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

Peter in I Peter 5:5-7 basically repeats the same thing, that we are to humble ourselves before the mighty hand of God and He will exalt us in due time.

Right now, we have to make sure we follow the example of Christ and stay humble. Do not get the big head, do not think you are already God and others must worship you. We have to have that attitude and approach of "everybody else is better than I am" and I have been put here in the form of a servant like Jesus was and do that work. And if they should honor you for it, then that is fine. But otherwise we have to come in with a humble attitude and serve. That is what a Christian leader does.

Let us end here in Romans the eighth chapter, verses 28 and 29, a very well known passage.

Romans 8:28-29 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

We have been foreknown. God has been waiting for us for a long time to appear on the scene. We have been called and we have been preordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. That is the reason He says, "I want you, and I want you because I can work with you and conform you to My Son's character. You will be by the time I'm finished with you of the very character of Jesus Christ. You will be holy, you will be righteous, and you will be an heir."

Now think about it. That is a tall order from our perspective because frankly, we know what we are. We know what we are made of. We know how many times we have slipped, we know what hypocrites we are. We know how far we are from the image of Jesus Christ. And we say often, "I'm sorry, I'm just too weak. I cannot overcome this. I need your help." We say to God in prayer, "Please forgive me. I've stumbled again. I just can't seem to overcome this."

We know these things about ourselves. We do not broadcast them, we do not put them on the news, we do not put them in the newspaper. We would be too embarrassed. But we know what we are. But we have all the tools and we have all the help and we have all the instructions. All of this is available to us because of what God has done. He has given us gifts that are abundant. He tells us that He gives us things shaken down but overflowing. That is there. He has given us His own presence by His Spirit that resides in us. He has given us, through His presence, the very character of God. It is there to tap into except we keep it at arm's length because we are so carnal and human. We have the abilities. They are there.

He gave gifts to men to be leaders in His church. And women. I do not want to just leave it at that, that He gave gifts just to men. He gave them to the women too. We could have gone through several sections, especially there in Titus 2 where he gives instructions how women, old women, young women, old men, young men, how they are all supposed to be leaders in the church. So all of that is there even though we know how low we are, how carnal we are, how little we have actually grown. But God has made sure all the tools, all the power, all the ability, all the understanding is there for us to use if we will just grasp it and run with it and grow with it.

Because that is what sanctification is all about. Sanctification is the process of Christian or godly leadership. And as we grow in character, we become the leaders that He is, if we will just do the work.

So that is what all of this is about. It is learning, it is growing, it is making mistakes, recovering from those mistakes, learning from those mistakes, not making those mistakes again, but pressing on and keeping on growing, so that one day we will be this leader with perfect character like our King and High Priest Jesus Christ.

RTR/aws/drm

The Bereans "received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so" (Acts 17:10-11). This daily newsletter provides a starting point for personal study, and gives valuable insight into the verses that make up the Word of God.