1 Timothy 5:1-16 (January 19, 2025)

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1 Timothy 5:1-16 (January 19, 2025)

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We can turn in your Bibles to First Timothy chapter five. First Timothy chapter five, we continue our series, is going through the book of First Timothy, verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter.

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And this morning we'll be in verses one through 16. First Timothy chapter five, one through 16.

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We'll read it in just a moment. All right. We live in a day and age that is in rebellion against many things, most of which are just shorthand or avatars for rebellion against God.

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And one of the things that we as a people have rebelled against is the idea of unchosen bonds.

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One of the rotten fruits of the enlightenment has been the elevation of personal autonomy that seeks to set man free from unchosen bonds.

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What do I, what do I mean there by that phrase, unchosen bonds? Let me give it, maybe the biggest example, explain it with an example.

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The biggest of which is family. You do not choose, you did not choose which family you were born into.

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You did not choose your parents, your siblings, your grandparents. And with the exception of adoption, you don't choose your kids.

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I mean, you might try to plan the timing of pregnancies the best you can, but you don't get to choose whether that baby's a boy or a girl and whether that baby is artistic or athletic or shy or outgoing or has brown hair or blonde hair.

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We don't choose our family and yet we are still bound to our family in some pretty significant ways.

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We have obligations to our family and not because we choose to have obligations, but because God has chosen to give us those obligations by putting us in that family.

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And today our message from first Timothy five is about honor and obligation among God's people.

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It's about our obligations to others, some of which are not chosen, yet their obligations all the same.

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Some of the instructions here that Paul gives to Timothy to get, which should inform his ministry as pastor of the church in Ephesus.

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Some of these instructions are here for the church gathered. That is the church as an institution and things that the church as the church, the institution are supposed to do.

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And then some of the instructions are for the church scattered. That is the individual Christians that make up the church.

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Some of the instructions are for them in their scattered Christian lives. And as we read this passage, we're reminded that the church is not a classroom or a series of classrooms.

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We do classes, but the church as an institution is not a classroom. The church, one of the images that the

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New Testament uses, church is the household of God. It's the household. And as such, we have obligations to our, like we have obligations to our natural families, we also have obligations to our spiritual families.

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I want to read the whole passage, all 16 verses, and then I want to go through and point out five obligations that Paul outlines for us.

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Let's read God's word. First Timothy five verses one through 16 in God's word says this.

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Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters with all purity.

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Honor widows who are really widows. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents for this is good and acceptable before God.

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Now she who is really a widow and left alone, trusting God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.

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And these things command that they may be blameless. But if anyone does not provide for his own and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

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Do not let a widow under 60 years old be taken into the number and not unless she has been the wife of one man.

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Well reported for good works. If she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the feet of the saints feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work.

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But refuse the younger widows for when they have begun to grow wanton against Christ, they desire to marry, having condemnation because they have cast off their first faith.

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And besides, they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house and not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies saying things which they ought not.

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Therefore, I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.

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For some have already turned aside after Satan. If any believing man or woman has widows, let them relieve them and do not let the church be burdened that it may relieve those who are really widows.

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Amen. And this is God's word to us this morning. The first obligation that we see is in verses one and two.

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And there we see that we have an obligation to correct others gently according to age and station.

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I want you to first notice that this instruction is given to Timothy, the pastor of the church there in Ephesus, and the nature of his job requires him to give correction.

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As Matthew Henry says, that ministers are reprovers by office, just part of the gig.

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It's one of the more uncomfortable parts of the job, but pastors cannot opt out of the ministry of correction.

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It's just part of shepherding because we as people need correction.

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Timothy has an obligation to correct others in the church, but Paul is instructing him in how to do that.

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He's instructing him to do it in such a way that honors the person who is being corrected. This is especially true when he is in the position of correcting someone older than him.

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Remember what we saw last week. He is a relatively, relative to the congregation, a younger man, probably in his thirties at this time.

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He's in a culture that reveres age. And so Paul is instructing him in how to correct someone, especially when they are older.

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He's not to rebuke an older man sharply, but he is to go to that person with the trepidation and respect with which he would approach his father about a similar matter.

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He's to approach older women with the respect that he would have and gentleness he would have for his mother.

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He's to correct equals with brotherly gentleness and is to look at younger women in the church as he looks at his sisters with all purity.

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The point here is that pastors regularly and all Christians at various times will find themselves in a spot where they must correct a fellow

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Christian because all of us are sheep who wander at times. And with this, there are two ditches that we can fall into.

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We're obligated to correct others, especially with those who we are covenanted together in a local church.

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And so we're not at liberty to just look the other way when someone's sinning and let them continue in their sin.

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That's one ditch we could fall into is we just, we just ignore it. It'd be uncomfortable to say anything about it.

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So we just ignore it and let it go. But we're not at liberty to do that because we're bound up together in life together in the church.

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But neither are we at liberty to just lambast everyone. That would be the other ditch is to lay into them.

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No we must moderate our corrections, tailor them according to the age and station of the one being corrected.

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In other words, we are obligated toward gentleness. That's the first obligation, to correct with gentleness.

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Second obligation, we see it in verse three. And really we see it in the whole rest of the passage. But in verse three, we see that we have an obligation to honor and support true widows.

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Let me read verse three again. It says, honor widows who are really widows. First thing

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I want us to see is that throughout scripture, we see God's concern for widows.

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We see God's concern that widows be cared for. So in Exodus 22, this is a few chapters after the giving of the

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Ten Commandments. This is part of the Mosaic Law, Exodus 22, verses 22 and 23, you shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.

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If you afflict them in any way and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry.

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Deuteronomy chapter 14, verses 28 and 29, we see that widows are included with the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless, among the recipients of the tithe of the produce.

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God is caring and meeting their material needs. Jesus in Luke 7, raised the son of the widow

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Nain from the dead. We see that in Luke 7. We see elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus lauded the widow who gave her two mites.

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In Acts 6, we see the apostles choose seven men full of the Holy Spirit to administer the food distribution to the widows so that none would be left out.

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James says that pure and undefiled religion is to care for orphans and widows.

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And so Paul is not giving a new instruction to the church at Ephesus, rather he is repeating a theme that has been true throughout all of history and all of scripture, and he's giving some more detailed instruction about the practicalities of it at the church of Ephesus.

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Now, it's an interesting phrase that he uses there in verse 3, when he says, honor widows who are really widows.

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What does that mean? Well, the idea here is one of destitution. There are those who are really widows, and they are the ones who are without children and without relatives to care for them.

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And so the definition that Paul is using here isn't just one who has lost their spouse, that would be kind of a general class of widows, but those who are truly, or some translations say, widows indeed, or truly widows, depending on your translation, the idea is destitution.

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They have no children, they have no relatives to care for them, they don't have the customary dowry, they have no resources of their own to provide for their care.

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They are on their own, and they cannot care for themselves. And the reason destitution is a part of the equation when it comes to honoring widows here in 1

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Timothy 5, the reason that's part of the definition here is because what is meant by the word honor.

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And so Paul isn't just using the word honor to mean respect, he's not using the word honor to mean highly esteem, that we sometimes use it as, because we should honor widows in that respect.

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We should highly esteem and respect widows, whether they have children or not, whether they have means or not, whether they have relatives or not, and in fact we should treat all people with honor.

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Romans 12 says to outdo one another in showing honor in that way. But the word honor, as Paul is using it here, it has the meaning, it has the connotations of financial support, honor.

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He was telling the church that they had an obligation to provide material support, money, food, lodging, basic necessities, to those widows who were destitute, to those widows who were on their own without any means to care for themselves.

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Paul gives some further qualifications as to who can receive this material support. We'll look at that in just a minute.

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But first I want us to see that there's an obligation to support those who are truly or really widows.

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Then in verses 4 and 8 and 16 we see a third obligation. We have an obligation to care for our parents and relatives.

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Let me read verses 4 through 8. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents, for this is good and acceptable before God.

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She who is really a widow and left alone trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. She who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives, and these things command that they may be blameless.

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But if anyone does not provide for his own and especially those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

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Skip down to verse 16. If any believing man or woman has widows, let them relieve them and do not let the church be burdened, that it may relieve those who are really widows.

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And so if the widow has children or other close relatives, they are the ones who bear the responsibility for caring for her.

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Paul says for the church not to be burdened in these cases so that the church would have the means to care for those who have no means to care for themselves, for those who are truly widows, ones who are destitute.

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Let's pause for a moment as we think about this, let's pause for a moment and remember how God has ordered the world.

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God has ordered the world according to his wisdom, according to his design for his glory, for our good, and he's ordered the world by setting up three different governments.

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Governments of the household or the family, a government of the church, a government of the state. And each of these three governments have different responsibilities, they have different roles, they have different realms or spheres of influence.

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So the state has the ministry of justice and bears the sword. And the church has the ministry of word and sacrament and bears the keys to the kingdom.

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And the household or family has the ministry of health, education, welfare, and human services and bears the rod.

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And in the ordinary run of things, the family bears responsibility, bears the responsibility for the material care of the family's members.

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However, in extraordinary situations, that is outside of the ordinary situations, like where there's a true widow who truly has no one or no resources, then given certain conditions, the church should step in and help as it is able.

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But when she has children and near relatives, that responsibility as God has ordered the world falls first to them.

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The children are to care for their parents. That children ought to care for their widowed mother is an application of the fifth commandment.

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Fifth commandment in Exodus chapter 12 says, honor your father and mother. There's a lot bound up in that commandment.

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And one of the things that's bound up into it is that we are to care for our aging parents.

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We're to care for the widowed mother. And this principle extends beyond just the widows but obligation to care for aging parents as we mentioned.

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Matthew Henry says it like this, it is the indispensable duty of children, if their parents be in necessity, that they, in ability to relieve them, to do it to the utmost of their power for, as 1

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Timothy 5 says, this is good and acceptable before God. Your parents cared for you when you were young.

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They fed you and they clothed you. Therefore, it is your duty to care for them when they are old. The level of care will change and vary from person to person and family to family, situation to situation.

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For example, in our context, in the post -World War II period in America, there was unprecedented wealth creation, making it such that there are many older folks who are not in dire financial need.

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They don't need that kind of material support from their children, but their children should still care for them relationally.

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They should still be there with them, care for them in illness, those type of things. There are types of care besides finances.

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But still others, they will find themselves in dire financial straits and they'll need the material support of their family, of their children.

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And maybe that means that a parent goes to live with one of their children instead of going to a nursing home.

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I was speaking with one of our shut -ins this past week, and she was telling me after she fell last year, that her son and his wife, her daughter -in -law, invited her to stay in their home because she was no longer able to live at home by herself.

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And in fact, they turned, they had a bonus room upstairs in their house and they remodeled that room into a bedroom, put in a bathroom so that they could move upstairs to the bonus room and give her their master bedroom on the ground floor.

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What a wonderful example of honoring your mother. This is a passage,

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I spent a lot of time back in 2016 studying 1 Timothy 5 when Shannon's father was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia.

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We were still living in Turkey at the time, and we had to make a decision about what we were going to do. And in the end, through a study of the

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Fifth Commandment, through a study of 1 Timothy 5 and some other passages, we concluded that the Fifth Commandment obligated us to move 6 ,000 miles back to South Carolina to help care for our parents.

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And we did. And it was the right thing to do, and God blessed it. You see, it's not okay to have an every -man -for -himself attitude or approach to relationships, especially relationships with one's parents.

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We have bonds. We have some unchosen bonds. And we have obligations to one another.

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We can't just be, well, every man for himself. No, we're bound up together. That's what it means to live in covenant, to live in relationship.

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Particularly with our parents, we have obligations to honor, support, and care for them into old age. And in this way, Paul says, we make a return to them.

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We repay them for their provision and care and support that they gave to us as children. I want you to notice the sharpness of verse 8.

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Verse 8 has a point to it, a sharp one. It says, but if anyone does not provide for his own, especially those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

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Worse than an unbeliever. Some hard words from Paul. What's he saying? Well, one, he's saying for Christians, the more light one has, the more responsibility he has.

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The more one knows the Bible, the more responsibility he has. Christians have the light of God's word and the Holy Spirit.

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So a Christian who shuts his eyes to that light is worse than the pagans because he is not shirking his duties out of ignorance, but on purpose.

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Or another way to think about it is that caring for parents is a matter of natural affections.

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It's a matter of natural duties. That is, even the pagans and the infidels do this. And it's true.

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You can go to any Muslim country in the world and you will find that most of them put the Americans to shame in how they care for their aging parents.

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This is a natural duty common to man. And to shirk this duty when even the pagans keep it is to make one worse than an unbeliever.

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This is a besetting sin in our nation. Now, all that said,

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I know that the specifics of how you honor your parents as an adult will vary based on your situation and your parents' situation.

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And so hear me, I don't think it's a one -size -fits -all situation kind of thing.

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And often, it's the aging parents who refuse or otherwise make it difficult for their children to obey the fifth commandment.

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If you're in the stage of life where your parents have gone to be with the Lord, but you have children and grandchildren,

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I want you to know that it is good and pleasing to the Lord for your children and grandchildren to care for you.

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Don't feel like you're a burden to anybody. And to the extent that you're a burden, it's a good burden.

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Burdens are good for us. They make us strong. It's like weightlifting. You lift heavy weights so you can lift heavier weights. Don't feel like you're a burden to anybody.

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It is good and pleasing. It says it right there in verse 4. This is good and acceptable before God.

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The Father is pleased. So don't make it difficult for your children and grandchildren to obey the fifth commandment.

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So anyway, it's not a one size fits all approach. But I would say, as far as it depends on you, recognize your obligation to care for your aging parents as part of the fifth commandment.

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It pleases your Father in heaven. Fourth obligation. See this in verses 9 through 15.

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We see that the church has an obligation to distinguish. The church has an obligation to evaluate.

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And the church has an obligation to make judgments. And here I'm referring to the fact that Paul gave qualifications for who should be taken into the number of true widows supported by the church.

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Now, why did he do that? Well, for one, there's limited resources. No church then, no church now, has unlimited financial resources.

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They can just give money to anybody and everybody. So there has to be some sort of plan for who to include and who not to include.

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And then there's a second possible reason. I don't want to be dogmatic here because I don't know for sure. But there's a school of thought that believes that the widows here were not just recipients of material aid, but they were enrolled into an official order of service within the church.

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That is, there was mutual obligation involved, that the church relieved their destitution and provided necessities for them, and the widows rendered service in the church through prayer and ministry to the poor and things like that.

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And as such, in a similar way that there were qualifications given for church office, pastor and deacon back in 1

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Timothy 3, and those qualifications are primarily character qualifications that attest to a man's godliness, most of the qualifications listed here measure a woman's godliness.

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And so if there were an official service aspect to the widows list, at least so long as she was physically able to do it, it makes sense then that there would be qualifications for that service like there are for other areas of church service.

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And again, I'm not certain that this is the case, that it was a kind of an order of service within the church.

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I don't rule it out, but I don't know. But for our purposes here, it really doesn't matter. What matters here is that Paul instructed the church to evaluate a woman's life and then make judgments based upon what they saw in her life, whether she was to be included or not.

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They were obligated to make distinctions, and they were obligated to make judgments. This was likely a solution to where abuses of widow support system were, you know, to be taken care of as a solution to those problems of abuses of the system, whereby some younger widows who could still marry, they were taking them for support.

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This was a problem because it either took resources away from supporting older women who were past the age where they were likely to get married again, or it led these young women to then leaving the faith when they left the church in order to get married again.

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Or another problem was families outsourcing the responsibility to care for widows to the church. They had the means, but they didn't want to part with those resources and spend it on their parents, so they just outsourced that duty to the church.

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Ah, they'll take care of the parents. Or a third problem is when widows receiving support then engaged in behavior and activity that harmed the community.

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Having too much time on their hands, they wandered from house to house, becoming gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not say.

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And this should probably be taken at least in part to refer to spreading false teaching. They were doing harmful activities, and so the qualifications were given in order to mitigate against these abuses.

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Paul's solution was to give qualifications to take a widow into the number. She had to be destitute with no family to care for her.

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She had to be of an age where she was not likely to get married again. So Paul set that age for that time at 60 years old.

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And the widow had to have proven her godliness by her manner of living. We'll talk about the specifics of godliness in just a bit.

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But for now, I just want to note that they set up a system in which those who would receive aid would be the ones with the biggest need and who are most deserving.

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Combine those two elements. Biggest need, most deserving by the manner of her life.

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And you'll notice that the qualifications to receive this ongoing support from the church, that the woman, she had to have been in the

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Christian community for a while. For them to know her life and her godliness.

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For them to have seen her service. And some of the qualifications are bound up in church life.

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And this illustrates a principle that we need to recover, I believe, in our churches, which is found in Galatians 6 .10,

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where it says, Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.

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So we want to do good to all that we can. That's what general charity and assistance is for.

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And when we talk about general charity and assistance, we don't make so many distinctions, we don't have so many qualifications, they don't need to be a member of our church, they don't even need to be a

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Christian in order to help somebody. We want to do good to all. But the more the church is invested, that is, the more extensive the support, like in this case, ongoing material financial aid, the church was to prioritize doing good to those who are of the household of faith.

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Christians, conservatives in general, and Christians in particular, love to serve those who are far off.

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And that is a good desire. But we often struggle with prioritizing those who are closest.

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But 1 Timothy 5, whether talking about taking care of family or taking care of widows for support, the witness of 1

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Timothy 5 is to prioritize those who are among us. There ought to be a tangible benefit to being a church member.

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And we must become comfortable prioritizing our people over outsiders.

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Now, when I say that, let me give the qualification, hear me clear, that doesn't mean mistreating outsiders, that doesn't mean not ever helping outsiders, and it doesn't mean anything negative.

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What it does mean is that we need to have a category for doing good to all, that's positive towards everybody, outsiders included, doing good to all, but especially to those who are of the household of faith.

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We need to care for the people in our membership. We need to have that category. And this can be emotionally hard for evangelical

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Christians in America who have been socially conditioned to prefer the out group at the expense of their in group.

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In fact, evangelical Christians in America are a historical anomaly at this point. Because no other group in the world functions like that.

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Everybody else knows that it's a natural thing to prioritize those who are among you.

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And again, this comes back to natural affections that we mentioned earlier, but this time applied to the church instead of applied to the family.

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I believe we need to recover that natural ordering of things.

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And then lastly, the fifth obligation that we see in this passage is our obligation to what

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I would call gendered piety. Now what in the world does that mean, gendered piety?

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Gendered piety refers to a man fulfilling his duties to God and neighbor as a man.

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And it refers to women fulfilling her duties to God and neighbor as a woman.

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Paul gets very practical in this passage about men's and women's duties. And so to the men, Paul says, take responsibility.

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Care for your parents and grandparents and close relatives. Be industrious enough to be able to support them financially.

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You, man, carry the burden for them. Don't place the burden on another. Don't outsource it to somebody else.

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You do this. To shirk this responsibility would make you worse than an unbeliever.

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That's what he says to the men. There's some practical applications there that are bound up in that call to provide.

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And from the qualified widows, from that list of qualifications, we also learn what godliness looks like for a woman.

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A godly woman is a faithful wife. That is a one -woman man. Excuse me, a one -man woman.

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Sorry. Got that one confused with 1 Timothy 3. A faithful wife is a one -man woman.

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Faithful to her husband as she has one. Well -reported for her good works. One who has brought up children.

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Shown hospitality to strangers. She's washed the feet of the saints, which is a way to express that she's been a servant in the church.

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She's ministered to the afflicted. She's managed her house well. She's given the adversary no opportunity to speak reproachfully.

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In other words, we see the normative vocation of a godly woman oriented toward the home, toward her husband, toward her children.

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Now, a few notes here on that. One, there's a fair amount of leeway on how that works out and looks in any given family situation.

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I would also say there's not unlimited leeway such that the Bible's vision for gender piety is just rendered meaningless.

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But there is a fair amount of leeway given the situation. How does that look? Also, I want to say,

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I use the word normative there on purpose because there are all sorts of exceptional situations.

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I'm happy to talk about those. You can bring that up on Wednesday night. We do sermon follow -up every Wednesday night or midweek family fellowship. We can talk about some of those exceptional situations.

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I say normative because in the normal run of events, this is how God's order things, life in a fallen world, there's all sorts of exceptional cases.

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The point is that men and women have differing duties that God wonderfully weaves together so that together men and women take dominion over the earth for His glory.

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When a man does his masculine duties to God faithfully, that is what godliness looks like for him.

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When a woman does her feminine duties to God faithfully, that is what godliness looks like for her.

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In other words, we know the spiritual condition by looking at the physical or the practical areas of a man or a woman's life.

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This means if your definition of godliness is applicable to both men and women, then you are at the very center of the definition of godliness.

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The duties that we all share, regardless of man or woman, regardless of age, regardless of station of life, the duties that we all share to God, for example, to love

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God, to love neighbor, to be humble, to be chaste, to live holy, we all share that.

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So if the definition of godliness is something that we all share, we're at the very center of it, but that means we haven't yet quite worked everything out in areas of application within earthly life where godliness or gender piety looks different for men and looks different for women.

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We haven't worked ourselves out where godliness is actually measured or godliness is actually seen.

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That's going to be different for men and women. And so God calls us to gendered piety, to live faithfully as men and to live faithfully as women.

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Obligation. That word is not one we love, but it is a concept that we desperately need.

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And it is one the word of God imposes upon us. You might say it obligates us.

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We have an obligation to correct gently. We have an obligation to care for and honor true widows. We have an obligation to honor and care for aging parents, to make distinctions and evaluations and judgments, and to live with gendered piety as a man or a woman.

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My prayer for you is that you will be faithful, faithful in everything that God obligates you to do and that the

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Holy Spirit will give you the grace and strength because without the grace of God, we can do nothing.

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Apart from him, John 15, apart from Christ, we can do nothing. So may the grace of Christ strengthen you to keep those obligations.

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Now, this marks the end of this sermon, but before I pray, if you'll allow me,

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I want to make a segue into next week's sermon. If you read the very next verse, and I want to make a segue to this, and then one more specific application about honor.

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Verse 17 says, Let the elders who rule be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in word and doctrine.

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The word elders there that we saw several weeks ago just means pastors. We'll get more into this verse and this passage next week, but today, we want to honor one of our pastors.

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Tuesday, if I'm right, if I understand right, marks Gary Green's 8th anniversary of serving our church,

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January 21st. And so today, Gary, we want to recognize and celebrate and give thanks to God for you.

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We want to express our gratitude to you and we want to express our gratitude to the Lord for how you serve our church.

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You put words of praise on our lips every Lord's Day morning, and you do it skillfully.

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I love hearing Gary sing, by the way. You make it easy to follow, too. I'm not a very good singer, but I can follow

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Gary. You love the people of our church. You pray for the people of our church. You've been nothing but kind and helpful to me personally, and you always have a good joke or one -liner ready to make everybody smile.

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And so, Pastor Gary, I want you to know you're a gift to our church, and we want to apply that principle of honor to you.

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We want to honor you today, and so I want to go ahead. At the end of the service, Gary always comes up and leads us in our final hymn, so I want to ask you if you'll go ahead and come up, and as he comes up to the platform,

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I want you to show your appreciation for Pastor Gary. Now, I said earlier that the word honor has financial connotations, and so our church has a small gift that we want to give to you in honor and appreciation from our church.

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Also, I need to confess that I told the truth, but not the whole truth, about this brunch coming up, and so I said it was a

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New Year's fellowship. It's true, it's the new year, and it's for fellowship, but really, this brunch is in honor of you, and so when we pray here in just a minute, we would love for you and your family to go get first in line, but we want to celebrate you, and we'll have some people sharing a few things when we're down there as well.

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We don't want to leave Miss Kathy out. Kathy, we are grateful for the ways in which you serve our church directly, but also in the ways that you love and care for Pastor Gary, which serves our church indirectly.

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I want you to know we love you, and we are grateful for you, and then lastly, I just want to end this sermon time in prayer like we always do, but I want to give thanks to God for your ministry here,

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Pastor Gary, and then after that, we'll ask you to lead us in our final hymn, but let's pray together.

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Our Father in heaven, I thank you for Pastor Gary and for Miss Kathy. I thank you for their love for you, love for this church, love for one another.

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I thank you for the faithfulness and skill with which Gary serves our church. You've given him a wonderful voice and aptitude for music and a love for your glory, love for his savior.

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So Lord, we ask that you would bless him in his labors, that you would give him continued good health, that you would use him here at First Baptist to glorify your name in all the earth.

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Today especially, Lord, I pray that he would feel the depths of your love and the great love this church has for him.

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And so Father, we have heard from your word about our various obligations, and so we ask now that you would give us the grace to be faithful to them, and that in our obedience that you would be honored.

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And especially we apply that in honoring Pastor Gary today. We pray all of this in the name of your son