1 Timothy 5:17-23 (January 26, 2025)

And then when you can open up your Bibles to 1st Timothy chapter 5, 1st

Timothy chapter 5, we're going to be in verses 17 through 23 this morning, 1st

Timothy 5, verse 17 through 23. I want to remind you of the theme of this entire book of 1st

Timothy that Paul is writing to Timothy. Timothy is pastoring the church in Ephesus and he is giving him instructions for his ministry, instructions for the church, and the purpose of all of it is so that they would order the church for the godliness of the church.

They would order the church for the godliness of the people. Godliness is at the blazing center of this letter from Paul to Timothy.

Let me read verses 17 through 23 in 1st Timothy 5 and then we'll go through this passage a couple verses at a time.

God's word says this in verse 17. Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.

For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, and the laborer is worthy of his wages.

Do not receive an accusation against an elder except from one, excuse me, except from two or three witnesses.

Those who are sinning rebuke in the presence of all that the rest also may fear.

I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality.

Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people's sins.

Keep yourself pure. No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities.

I mean, this is God's word to us this morning. I want to give you a quick outline of how we're going to approach this passage.

In verses 17 and 18, we see Paul's instructions for honoring elders. Then in 19 through 21, we see his instructions for judging or disciplining or receiving an accusation against elders.

Verse 22 is about selecting elders. And then verse 23 is this little pastoral aside from Paul to Timothy about Timothy's health.

And so what I want us to do is work through this outline, work through this passage, these verses, a couple of verses at a time, beginning in verses 17 and 18, which is about honoring elders.

Let me read verse 17 one more time. Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in word and doctrine for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain and the laborer is worthy of his wages.

Now I want to get to the main point of those two verses in just a minute, but to get there, I really need to make a couple of side points in order to get to the main point.

It's kind of like the children's book. If you, if you give a mouse a cookie, you know, and that just, that book just keeps on going.

What happens if you give a mouse a cookie? Well, it's like if you give a preacher a Bible verse, he'll go through every little tangent that he possibly could.

I promise not to do that for every verse in this passage, but I will do it for the first one.

So let's go through verse 17. It said, let the elders, and the first thing I want to mention here is just a reminder of what we saw when we looked back at first Timothy chapter three.

And that is, there are three words in the new Testament that were, that are synonyms. They all refer to the same office of leadership in the church.

You have it. Uh, the new system uses the word elders like it does here. It uses the term pastors elsewhere, and it also uses the term, um, overseers or bishops.

Uh, and all three of those words, they are synonyms. They can be used interchangeably, they're synonyms for the same office.

Um, so Paul used elders here. We generally use the word pastors in our church, but it's all referring to the same thing.

That's the first thing. Second thing we see here is that there's an, there's an S at the end of it says, let the elders.

And again, this is a reminder of what we saw when we looked at first Timothy chapter three, that the new

Testament pattern, the pattern in the new Testament churches was to have a plurality of pastoral leadership.

Let the elders plural. And so, um, there are, uh, that again, the new

Testament pattern is to have a plurality of pastoral leadership. And then we see, well, what are these elders?

What are these pastors do, or at least part of what they do? Let the elders who rule well, there's two words there.

I'll take each in turn. First one is rule that, that implies that the, the office of elder or pastor or overseer it implies authority in the church.

There is spiritual authority invested in that office, especially as it relates to discipline.

That is the ministry of correction and, and bringing about, uh, uh, repentance from, uh, straying church members.

And so there's authority in the church, especially as it regards discipline, but also administration and, uh, specifically, or maybe even primarily includes the teaching, uh, of, uh, of the church.

And also just general leadership, but that word right after is important as well.

So those who rule well, that means, uh, that, that, that we, that we evaluate a ministry.

We, we, we make judgments about it. The context here is, as you keep on reading, that sentence is worthy of double honor.

And so there is a qualification, those who rule well, those who do, uh, that work and that ministry well.

And the point here is that it is the, is the work. It is the ministry that is important, that is worthy of the honor, not the office or not the title.

Nobody's entitled to honor, uh, just because they hold the, the title of elder or pastor, the office of elder or pastor, but you know, they're worthy of it based upon the ministry that is done.

That is the important thing. And so a church is called to judge the fruit of that ministry.

Those who rule well. Fifth thing I want us to see here is, I think this verse gives us the category of something we talked about briefly when we went through first Timothy chapter three and the qualifications of elders.

And that is the category of lay elder. Now this is related to the point made about the plurality of pastoral leadership.

I think we get a, uh, at least, um, a glimpse at the concept of a lay pastor or lay elder here because what you have, you have a category of people of elders who rule well, but are separated from other elders who rule well, who also labor in the, in the word and the doctrine that labor in the teaching.

Now all elders, first Timothy three says must be able to teach, but there are some, if we look here in first Timothy five, there are some who rule well, they share in the common council, they share it in the common authority, um, in the common office, uh, with say the lead teaching pastor.

Um, but they are, their, their, their primary duty isn't to labor in the word and the doctrine.

And so you see that there is this category of one who shares an office, but not, uh, the, the extent of the duties in word and doctrine.

And he is saying all who rule well are worthy of double honor, but especially those who labor in the word and the doctrine in the teaching ministry of the church.

And so I think we see this category of lay or a lay elder or lay pastor.

All of that is just side points bringing us to the main point of what

Paul is saying in verses 17 and 18, which is those who rule well, elders who rule well, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine are worthy of double honor.

Now what does that mean? Well, we said last week when we looked at the concept of honor in relation to taking care of those who are true widows in the church, that it has financial, uh, connotations, uh, one historic interpretation of this double honor is, uh, and the concept of honor is, it's twofold.

There's the respect and the remuneration, um, the, the honor in terms of respect and the honor in terms of financial support.

Some would say that it's relative to the widows here and, and so when he says double honor, it's in relation to that.

But I think the main point here is that it is okay and it is good, um, to, to pay your pastor.

And so, uh, as I just want to say, thank you. I think you do that really well. Um, I don't want to belabor the point there.

What I really want to do is see what's behind that. I want us to see what's behind that.

And the principle there is that the church needs teaching. God's people need teaching.

Why do they need teaching? They need teaching that leads to godliness. God has made us in such a way that we need to be taught, all of us.

God has made us in such a way that if we're going to live godly lives, we need to be taught according to the word and not just taught once, not just taught when we're, uh, in elementary school and Sunday school or vacation

Bible school, but we need teaching all throughout our lives so that we are constantly course corrected, so that we are constantly growing in our knowledge of the

Lord, so that we're constantly growing in godliness, constantly growing in our walks with the

Lord. God has made us in that way that we, we need someone to explain God's word to us. We need someone to be a guide to us in his word and someone who, someone who knows our troubles, who knows our challenges, not the challenges elsewhere, but, but those in this room who knows our afflictions, our weaknesses, our proclivities, our strengths, our needs, and to apply, to apply it specifically to those things, to apply the

Bible specifically to specific people, to preach to our consciences, to say this way, not that way, like this, not like that.

God has made us to need that. Our godliness is dependent upon it.

We need someone to, to separate true teaching from false teaching and guard our doctrine. How many times have we said that 1

Timothy talks about watching our life in doctrine? We need help there because we don't get there on our own.

God has not made us to get there on our own. He has made us to be interdependent and we need teachers and we need that for godliness.

We understand that in all sorts of vocations, all sorts of callings in life, law, medicine, education, business.

We know that we need guides, we need teaching. Why not the vocation of following Jesus?

So the point here that Paul is making, I believe, the thing that's behind the instruction to financially support the elders of the church is do not deprive the church of the teaching that is needed for godliness by disincentivizing men from pursuing that calling.

In other words, if you have somebody and they can't give the church the teaching that they need without going and pursuing other employment, they can't pay the mortgage or feed their kids, you're disincentivizing people from that and what that does is it leaves the church without the teaching that they need.

The point is the godliness of the church. Now in verse 18, Paul goes to give some scriptural support for this and he quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 25, verse 4, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out their grain, so he quotes

Moses and he also quotes Jesus. From Luke 10 .7 and Matthew 10 .10, the laborer is worthy of his wages and so Paul gives some scriptural support.

Now this is interesting if you see his, what he quotes is about farming and agriculture.

So I want to make a little side point here about how Paul gets there, but I want to tie it back to the main point of the godliness of the church.

So how does Paul get from oxen and grain in the field to pastors and money in supporting the teaching ministry of the church financially?

How does he take a command about giving to farmers and get to the church?

Well I gave two words that explain the concept. General equity.

General equity. General equity of the law. This is how you apply a law from one specific law in a specific context and how you apply that to other, many other situations is that you take the general equity of it and you apply it.

So this is how that process works. You take the law that is given. Do not muzzle an ox when it's treading out the grain.

You extract the principle that governs that law and then you use prudence and you use wisdom to apply that same principle in another context to another situation that's not addressed specifically.

So wisdom translates one law and applies it in a different situation.

This is the basis of case law. It's what the mosaic law is. It gives case law. And then you find you have judges who make decisions.

You have Moses appointing elders throughout Israel to make decisions for different situations based on the cases that God gave them.

So what we have in our American tradition of law, the English common law tradition is based on this approach.

It is the process of thinking biblically about everything, applying God's word to God's world.

So we see Paul, he does this with Deuteronomy 25, chapter 25 verse 4.

Do not muzzle an ox when it's treading out the grain. He does it here. He also does it in 1 Corinthians chapter 9.

I'm not going to go and read it, but he's making a much more detailed argument there and it's one of those arguments that argues from the lesser to the greater.

So if it's true, in accordance with the word of God and God's law, that you don't muzzle an ox when it's treading out the grain, if it's true for a beast, how much more true would it be for a man?

If it's true that you don't muzzle an ox when it's treading out the grain because you want the, you have to take care of the thing that's doing the work, you take care of the ox that's doing the work so that it treads out the grain so that you can eat, so ultimately this is about taking care of those who are doing the work, but it's also a matter of your stomach because it's the grain that you're going to eat, right?

If it's true for that and that whole process, how much more true is it for the care, not of your physical body, but of your soul that will live forever?

He's making a lesser to the greater argument there. What we see is that he is, he's applying the

Bible using wisdom, using reason, he's applying the Bible from one area to another and being able to apply the

Bible in this way, rightly and justly, is godliness manifest in real life and it requires, to do it well and to do it rightly, it requires teaching for the church and again that is the underlying point that Paul is making in all of these verses, is we need teaching for godliness, that the honor for elders is tied to the ordering of the church for the purpose of godliness and so that's

Paul's instruction on honoring elders. Move on verse 19 through 21, he gives instruction for disciplining elders, for judging elders, for dealing with, when there are accusations of sin by an elder, when somebody brings an accusation against one for sinning, how do you handle this?

It calls for three things, we'll use Kent Hughes' outline of these verses. It calls for caution, verse 19, courage, verse 20, and fairness, verse 21.

Calls for caution, courage, and fairness. So let's take the first one, caution, verse 19, do not receive an accusation against an elder, against a pastor, except for two or three witnesses.

So this is a warning about receiving an accusation of sin against an elder and it says you must have two to three witnesses, now when it says two to three witnesses there, this is biblical language for dealing with accusations and charges and it doesn't necessarily mean two to three eyewitnesses, that may not be always the case, but the general equity of that would be you need two to three lines of evidence, that you never convict somebody based upon one line of evidence, you need to corroborate that with at least two, preferably three lines of evidence.

And so if you're making a case in a criminal court, you need to show multiple lines of evidence, that's the biblical standard, that's a standard for everybody, why does

Paul then apply it specifically to pastors here? You've got to remember it's the context of ordering the church and ordering the church for godliness and so it's a standard that is available for all, we're all entitled to due process, that's just basic justice, but he mentions it here in relation to elders or pastors because the elders of the church, the pastors of the church are often targets, meaning that if you can take out the pastor, then you can undermine the whole ministry, you've seen it before when pastors fall, the whole ministry of the church is at the very least undermined and oftentimes it blows up, blows up the whole church and so if you can take out, it's like if you have an intruder in the house and you pull out a weapon to neutralize the threat of that intruder, but if you keep on, he keeps on, family's threatened, you can shoot to the toe or you can shoot to the head, one of those is going to neutralize the threat.

If you can take out the head, you can take out the whole threat and that is often what happens here, if you can take out the elders, then you can undermine the entire church and what happens is you undermine and discredit the teaching of the church and again, what is that teaching needed for?

Godliness. All of that can be an attack on godliness of the church.

Now this can be done by bad actors who bring false charges against the pastor and elder in order to attack the church, it can be done by those who are resentful of pastor's teaching or correction, we saw last week that Matthew Henry's quote that I read last week was that pastors are reprovers by office, correctors by office, and so people oftentimes don't like correction and can be attacked in that way because people are resentful, but regardless, the instruction to the church is to use caution so that you don't easily surrender the credibility of the church, don't easily surrender the credibility of the teaching of the church, but hold the biblical standards of justice in due process.

It may be that the accusation is true, and we'll get to that in verse 20 in just a moment, but it may be, particularly if you only have one line of evidence, that it's not, and so the instruction is, do not be swayed by the mobs and do not be swayed by the sobs.

Do not let anyone weaponize empathy against the church and the teaching ministry of the church.

Rather, be sober -minded, it's a call throughout the New Testament, be sober -minded and hold to biblical justice, not admitting a charge against an elder, except if you have the two or three witnesses' lines of evidence.

There's also a ninth commandment duty implied here, and so this is probably something,

I know I've mentioned it before, probably need to do a series on the Ten Commandments and just show how all sorts of other duties are bound up in the

Ten Commandments. So we have the Ten Commandments, but each one of those contains a multiplicity of duties and commandments in them, and so ninth commandment, shall not bear false witness, means that we should not believe false witnesses, meaning that we need to have those lines of evidence, and why you have multiple lines of evidence, to corroborate a testimony, but also bound up, if you look at the

Westminster Larger Catechism, it says in the ninth commandment duties include to preserve and promote the good name of our neighbor as well as our own.

Or the Orthodox Catechism, which is a Baptist Catechism, says that one of the duties of the ninth commandment is to defend and increase the good name and estimation of others.

And so again, we protect against that by not admitting an accusation, not receiving accusation, unless there's two to three lines of evidence, two to three witnesses.

So we use caution. That doesn't mean that we don't ever admit and publicly deal with real, actual sin by a pastor or an elder, and that requires courage, and we see that in verse 20.

Those who are sinning, talking about the elders who are sinning, those who are sinning rebuke in the presence of all that the rest also may fear.

So one commentator said it like this, that whenever any measure is taken for the protection of good men, and that's what verse 19 is for, for the protection of good men who aren't sinning but they're being falsely accused, and whenever that's set up, it says that bad men seize upon it to prevent their own condemnation, and so bad men will hide behind those protections.

But when there are two to three witnesses, lines of evidence that an elder is sinning, the instruction from Paul here is rebuke in the presence of all.

Do not let him get away with it. Do not sweep it under the rug. Too often we sweep things under the rug.

Now maybe we do that for legal reasons. Maybe we do that for reputation reasons, because we want to protect the name of the church and the community, and sometimes we might do it just because we're southerners and that's what we do.

But Paul's instruction is that it needs to be public so that the church fears

God and learns wisdom. And the lesson that the church should learn is the elders don't get away with it.

They don't get away with sin and neither will I. I should watch my life and doctrine closely.

Again, the point is godliness. Now Paul's talking about public scandal here.

He's not talking about necessarily private sin, but public scandal. Sin that becomes public and besmirches the name of Christ and the name of the church.

That's the sin he's talking about here. And so public scandal deserves public rebuke.

Private sin deserves private rebuke, personal rebuke. And so a good rule of thumb for us is that rebuke for sin and repentance for sin should be as public as the sin.

And so if Shannon and I get in an argument, not that that ever happens, but Shannon and I get in an argument and I pop off and say something in anger that's really disrespectful to her and it's just the two of us and that conversation, the kids have gone to bed, then

I should repent of that sin to Shannon, but I don't need to make a public spectacle of it. We'll restore fellowship and I'll apologize and we'll be good.

Now if it happened earlier in the evening and the kids are still around, now I should apologize to Shannon for that, but also should acknowledge it in front of the kids because they were a party to it.

They saw it. I should apologize to them and let them acknowledge my sin to them, public as the sin is.

But I don't necessarily need to come stand up here on a Sunday and make a public spectacle of it just there within the house.

But if it happened down in the fellowship hall and I just made a scene, now I need to acknowledge it to Shannon and to all the rest of you that were down there in the fellowship hall with us.

The rebuke for sin and the repentance for sin should be as public as the sin and that doesn't mean, there might be some sin that's done in private, but it has public ramifications.

It brings public shame and scandal. Then those will be considered public sins that need to be dealt with publicly.

And the point is so that others see and fear that leads them to godliness, that leads them to obedience.

That's the point of the public rebuke. The point is godliness.

And then all of this should be done with fairness. Verse 21, should be done with fairness.

I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality.

This whole deliberation process when an accusation is made should be dealt with, with fairness.

So in making these judgments, such as when an elder is accused, men are tempted to be swayed by various things.

They're tempted to be swayed by emotions. The church is tempted to be swayed by emotions. They're tempted to be swayed by personality.

If you've got a lively personality of somebody, a charismatic personality that can win people over, you're tempted to be swayed by friendship, past, prior relationship, and the result ends up being partiality.

Fairness means we must make judgments based on the facts alone. Emotion aside, personality aside, past relationship aside, what are the facts of the case?

Are there multiple lines of evidence? Says without prejudice.

That means no judgment beforehand. No showing favor based on any other factors.

Not on their family name or on your longstanding friendship. What happened?

And so again, this is a call for due process, biblical justice, witnesses, evidence, equal weights and measures.

All things the Bible talks about. No partiality. Not to show partiality to the elder because they're the ones, you know, the one that's up front and everybody knows.

Maybe they like. Nor show partiality to the accuser. Leviticus chapter 19 verse 15 talks about this.

It says, you shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor nor honor the person of the mighty.

In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. You're not allowed to show partiality to the mighty, the one powerful.

Just because he's powerful, you're not allowed to show partiality to the poor just because they're poor. You make judgments without prejudice.

Without partiality. And it's interesting the way he says it, he kind of puts this oath in there. I charge you before God and the

Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice. You're going to make your judgment, you're going to make your decision as if God the

Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels are right there with you in the courtroom. You should do it as if God is right there because the reality is he is.

God is watching. Christ is watching. And again, the stakes are high here because the credibility of the church is at stake.

The godliness of the church is at stake. The teaching ministry of the church is at stake and so we must get it right.

So we must make these judgments that we're called upon as spirit -filled believers in the church.

We're to do this without prejudice, without partiality because we must get it right because the stakes are high.

Then lastly, as it pertains specifically to the elders, verse 22, his own selecting elders.

Verse 22 says, Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people's sins.

Keep yourself pure. And so the lay on hands refers to ordination, talking about specifically with ordaining new elders, new pastors.

We could apply it to ordaining deacons as well, leaders in the church. And the instruction here is to do that slowly.

Select your leaders slowly. Observe their life and doctrine. That's the whole point of 1 Timothy chapter 3.

You go back just a couple of pages and you get this list of qualifications for deacons. You get this list of qualifications for pastors.

And the point is that you know them well enough to look down that list and observe their life and observe their doctrine and observe their doctrine lived out in their life.

You don't make those decisions quickly. You make them slowly. You test them.

You do your due diligence. You don't get caught up in emotion or swept up in personality. Because if you do, and the unqualified elder who shouldn't have been installed is installed and then sins grievously, and you and the church are implicated and share in that sin.

Do not share in other people's sins, it says, but you'll share in that sin because you shouldn't have been there and you should have ordained slowly.

And so we apply that to our church. We are nominating deacons and selecting deacons.

We should do that slowly. We should observe someone's life and take those qualifications seriously.

When we ordain pastors, talk about the category of lay pastors, lay elders earlier.

If we ever get to the point where we say, ha, yeah, we see that in the Bible, we should do that here.

If we ever get there, we should ordain, lay hands on slowly, be thorough, trained beforehand.

Why? Because the godliness of the church is at stake. The godliness of the church is at stake and so you do these things diligently, purposefully, slowly for the sake of the church.

In verse 23, Paul has this pastoral, personal aside to Timothy, these instructions for him to take care of himself.

It says, no longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities.

And so what this is, this is connected to his, you know, earlier, I think it was in chapter 4, beginning of chapter 4,

Paul sharply rebukes the ascetics, those who make their godliness bound up in what they abstain from.

Do not touch, do not taste. And so it's connected to that rebuke here, where he's saying, don't just abstain, but use a little wine for your stomach, because asceticism, as we saw in chapter 4, undermines godliness and here it was undermining

Timothy's health. And so he says, drink a little wine, and in that phrase, you see both moderation, but not teetotalism.

But the point of it, the point of it, the why behind it, is so that he takes care of himself so that he can serve

God and his neighbor, so that he can serve the church for the purpose of their godliness.

And so that's where I want to end today, is with this thought. If the point of avoiding the church and this instruction that Paul gives, if the point of it is for the godliness of the church,

I'm going to ask you, are you applying the teaching of the church? Are you living godly?

Are you obeying the scriptures fully? Are you keeping biblical standards for justice?

Are you protecting the reputations of others? Do you know the

Bible well enough to apply it broadly and rightly? Do you have wisdom and are you cultivating wisdom that leads to godliness?

Are you watching your life and doctrine? Are you watching your godliness?

Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we love you, we praise you, we thank you.

Father, I pray that we would watch our lives and doctrine, that we would heed to the teaching of the church, that we would protect the teaching of the church at all costs.

Forsaking our sin, upholding your word and your standards for justice,

Father, I pray that I will teach rightly and rightly devise your word for this church and I pray that it will lead to our obedience and lead to our holiness and lead to our godliness so that you are honored.

But Father, we know that apart from you, we can do no things. We can do no good works.

We need your grace for all of this and so we ask for it in the name of Christ, amen.