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Now the overseer is not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ~ 1 Timothy 3:3
We are all involved in an unseen battle, a battle between good and evil, a war between God and Satan. Our task is impossible apart from an intimate and personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. When we were "born again" the Holy Spirit not only made us alive to God as He moved into our being, He also made it possible for us to do the tasks He has called us to in this unseen war.
Now, God has given many gifts to His church, and, of course, we all have different gifts. But, today we come back to 1 Timothy where God through the Apostle Paul gives instructions to those He has ordained to be the leaders of the church. Our text today provides five more instructions to those who desire to be effective leaders. Emphasis here is placed on who we are to be long before he instructs us on what we should be doing.
Thus, the Apostle writes, "Now the overseer is not given to drunkenness." This is the eighth characteristic of the leader: he must not be given to drunkenness.
In v.2, the Apostle informed us that the leader must be temperate or wineless. Here in v.3 the leader is not to be given to drunkenness. The idea here is there comes a point when you surrender to the effects of the alcohol.
In those days, the people diluted their wine with water to make sure it was not too strong. It was a well-known fact that water was not pure in those days, so that weak wine taken in moderation would have been healthier to drink. However, there is a vast difference between the cultural use of wine in Bible days and giving oneself to drunkenness.
In Isaiah 28:7 we read, "And these also stagger from wine and reel from beer: Priests and prophets stagger from beer and are befuddled with wine; they reel from beer, they stagger when seeing visions, they stumble when rendering decisions."
The leaders of Israel had turned away from God and His way, only to lead the people down the wrong road. The waywardness of the people began with the unwise decision of the leaders to give themselves to beer and wine.
The fact that Paul advised Timothy to use wine for medicinal purposes in 1 Timothy 5:23 indicates that total abstinence was not demanded of leaders. Sad to say, some of them gave themselves to drunkenness.
Of course, the alternative is to give yourself to the Lord which is not a one time event. Since God gave His Son to purchase us, we gladly agree
with that by renouncing all claims upon our lives. Choosing
to surrender completely to Him only a daily basis is the choice of love. When we lose sight of His great love for us, we are in danger of giving ourselves to something or someone else rather than to Him.
In today's text, the Apostle writes, "The overseer is not to be violent." This is the ninth characteristic of the true leader. This word literally means not a giver of fist blows. A true leader doesn’t punch people when he gets upset. Most people who drink are violent. A real leader is a man who can deal with things with a cool mind, with gentleness, who doesn’t fight.
The tenth characteristic of a leader is he is gentle. The word the Apostle uses here means to be considerate, forbearing, and gracious. This is a man who easily pardons human failure in not only himself but in others.
The eleventh characteristic of the leader is he is not quarrelsome. This phrase describes a person who is not argumentative. He is not looking to get into an argument for the argument sake. A real leader is one who is a peacemaker; he looks for ways to calm the situation so that cooler heads prevail.
And then, finally, the twelfth characteristic of the leader is found in in v.3. The leader is "not a lover of money." A real leader is not covetous. The scriptures remind us that the love of money is the root of all evil. The love of money is a greedy lust for power, prestige and status. We can covet many things besides money: popularity, a large ministry that makes us famous, ministry advancement of some other kind.
Those who live focused on money do not know the Lord as their provider. I've discovered financial need is a major way God reveals Himself to us, and the more desperate we are for our needs to be met the greater the light will shine on the Lord for those who are the recipients of His provision. The power in a many ministries is forfeited due to the lack of patience and trust in the Lord.
