1 Timothy 5–6

0:00 Well, good morning, everybody. I counted a great honor to be here today as your guest preacher for the morning. No, I'm kidding. For those of you who are new, I'm actually the senior pastor here. It's just that I haven't preached in like a month and a half or something like that. And I actually wasn't supposed to be preaching this morning. The elders had kind of set up a time for me to be able to do some traveling for the first few weeks of this thing. And then in the second part, I said something, I think, at the members meeting about how great it was to be able to just spend a few Sundays sitting there with my family, listening to other men preach.

0:37 And, well, things come up, and here we are. So I am bringing the Word of God to you this morning. A few years ago, I read a book that claimed at least to have come up with and sort of identified through studies and through research and all the rest of it, four keys to having a successful church. Four keys to having a successful church. And chapter one was all about how, you know, we're not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about the Bible, because everybody knows that stuff. But once you get past the Bible, there are four things that if you will make them happen in the life of your church, you will have a successful church. Here they are. Key number one, plentiful, excellent coffee. Preferably with a coffee bar where you have your choice of Americanos, lattes, cappuccinos, and other seasonal drinks. Key number two, plentiful parking with no necessary walking to get to the building.

1:42 Key number three, loud, concert-level, contemporary music. Number four, short, non-theological sermons. Now, I don't know what you think about some of those keys. Like, I don't know what your opinion is on the excellence of our coffee or the plentifulness of it or anything like that. Nor the concert-level, you know, worthiness of our music. I do know what you think, though, about whether we have short non-theological sermons.

2:17 So at least on one out of these four keys, we're an utter failure. And yet this book said that if you'll just do all four of these things, you will get people to attend the show. You'll get people to show up because it's fun, because it's welcoming, because it feels like a concert. It feels like an event. And people will come, and you'll have a successful church. That's what the book told me. But, of course, my question is kind of the same that I trust most of yours is. Well, I'm not sure, actually, that just getting people to come to the show is the point of the church.

2:51 I'm not sure that's what the church is all about. I'm not sure that that's, if you really want to get down to it, that's not really how you get to the heart and soul of what it means to be a church. It's not just showing up. You know, there are lots of churches out there that kind of think that, right? It's just, you know, I've heard one man describe it as just a kind of, you know, preaching spigot, right? We just put the preaching out there, the water flows through it, you know, it's kind of stationary in where it is and everybody just kind of comes and takes a little drink of it when they want to and they go away and come back. But there's not a whole lot more to it.

3:23 And yet I think when you read the Bible, you see that that's not the definition of a church at all. The church is something entirely more than that. And that's what we're going to be looking at today as we look at 1 Timothy 5 and just a little bit of chapter 6. We're continuing a study in the book of 1 Timothy. I'm actually just diving in right where the other pastors have been leading you through this book. They've made it all the way up through chapter 4 last week. And so I'm diving in here with chapter 5 and a little bit of 6. Let me give you some background on the book in case you're new to this.

3:56 This book or this letter in the New Testament was written very near the end of Paul's life. We think probably that at the end of Acts when Paul was under house arrest in Rome, we think that probably that's not when his life ended. From all the evidence that we can see, it looks like he got released from prison at some point after the end of Acts. Did some more ministry. Maybe even made it all the way to Spain like his goal was. But in the meantime, he wrote these three letters that we have called the Pastoral Epistles or Pastoral Letters. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus.

4:27 So he writes this letter sometime near the end of his life to his protege, this young guy named Timothy, whom he had left in a very thorny situation in the city of Ephesus. The church in Ephesus had been a key supporter of Paul throughout his ministry. But it seems that by the time Paul writes this letter, that church in Ephesus had gotten itself into some significant trouble. It was a church that was on the brink of collapse because apparently some false teachers had risen up in the church. And we can't know exactly.

5:00 You have to read between the lines in all of this to kind of put the picture together. But it may even have been some elders of the church who were the false teachers that rose up. And they were teaching, again, it's a little hard to tell, but they were teaching something like that the kingdom of God had already come in its fullness. Like there's nothing else to wait for. We Christians are at the end of history. We are, you know, as good as it's going to get. So the kingdom of God, they seem to have been saying, had come in its fullness. And therefore, because you're now a heavenly citizen and you're living fully in the new age, all of your normal human obligations and responsibilities to one another are off.

5:40 Like if you once had an allegiance, for instance, to a king, you no longer have that allegiance to the king. If you once had an allegiance to a boss, you no longer have that allegiance to a boss. And it even went so far as to say, if you ever had an allegiance to a spouse or to children or to parents, all of that is off now because your responsibility is just to be in relationship, singular relationship, with Jesus himself. Well, of course, that's false. That's not how the Bible works. That's not how salvation works. And so Paul leaves Timothy in Ephesus to sort of set things straight.

6:15 Now, that was a hard job for Paul to leave Timothy to do. It was a hard job because Timothy was a young man. He was not an older man. He was a young man. He was Paul's protege. He may have even been sort of in his early 20s to mid-20s. He was a young man. And the people that he was going to have to confront in order to set things right in Ephesus were older men. They were elders, right, potentially, that were doing this false teaching. And at least they were older, distinguished gentlemen.

6:45 And so Timothy, this young dude, was going to have to do a lot of rebuking of older men. And to make things worse, Timothy was not even the kind of guy that you would naturally send into that sort of situation. I mean, I've met some 22-year-olds that you could, you know, send into a situation like that. They would have no problem rebuking who needs to be rebuked. Timothy was not one of those 22 to 25-year-olds. He was a, from everything we can read about him in these books, he was a fairly timid guy. I mean, you look at what Paul writes to him and what he says about him.

7:18 He's constantly having to buck Timothy up with reminders of his calling. Like, Timothy, I know you're timid, but remember your calling. Remember the laying on of hands and the gift that was given to you. He also has to exhort him over and over to remember to be strong. Don't be fearful, Timothy. Don't let people look down on you and despise you because of your age. he seems to have been a guy who just wasn't all that comfortable with rebuke, especially of older men. So Timothy's being, when Paul leaves him in Ephesus to set stuff right, he's being sent into a battlefield. And it's not even clear that Timothy is all that tooled up to fight that battle. So he's got a hard job in front of him. Well, so far in this letter for the first four chapters, Paul has basically just been putting into Timothy's hands, you know, you can think of him as the weapons he's going to need to fight this battle. You can think of it as, okay, Timothy, here are all the medicines that you're going to need in order to address the sickness that this church has. But at any rate, he's been tooling him up to be able to treat the sickness that's going on in the church in Ephesus.

8:19 And chapter 5 continues that. So you think back to last week, Paul countered the false teacher's idea of what godliness and piety actually meant to them. It was a matter of asceticism. You need to deny yourself certain things in order to win God's favor and some of what you need to deny or even your obligations to other people. So Paul says, no, no, that's not it. The mystery of godliness, the way to be right in the sight of God is Jesus. That's it. That's the mystery of godliness. Now, that doesn't mean that following Jesus is easier, that it's just a one-time kind of, you know, snap your fingers and it's done. It's a lifelong thing and it's hard. There's a lot of striving in the Christian life. And Paul recognizes that in chapter 4. But you don't do that, this is what he wants to get across. This is always a thing in Christian theology. What is the point of the good works? What is the point of the striving? What is the point of the fighting in this life? It is not, and Paul wants to be very clear about this, it is not in order to win God's

9:23 love. You do not work as a Christian. You do not strive as a Christian. You do not do the hard things as a Christian in order to win God's love. You do those things because you already have God's love. And that spurs you on to love and to good deeds. Well, that's what he was talking about in chapter 4. The focus changes a bit in chapter 5. And Paul begins to tell Timothy here how to go about repairing all the sort of relational damage that's been done in the church. See, I mean, This won't come as a surprise to you, but all this controversy that had been going on in Ephesus had just been clawing for months, maybe even years, at the relational fabric of the church and essentially just left the whole thing in tatters.

10:12 And there were broken relationships everywhere. And so in chapter 5, Paul starts to tell Timothy how to stitch all those relationships together. And what you wind up with in 1 Timothy 5 is this intensely practical chapter about how to live in the church. And I think when you sort of, you know, zoom out on it, you start to get a picture of what the church is supposed to be in the first place. So that's where we're headed with 1 Timothy chapter 5. Let's read it, and then we'll talk about it. Paul writes there, 1 Timothy chapter 5, verse 1.

10:44 Do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father. Treat younger men like brothers, older women like mothers, younger women like sisters in all purity. Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. But she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.

11:18 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone doesn't provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, He's denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband and having a reputation for good works. If she's brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, has devoted herself to every good work, but refuse to enroll younger widows. For when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith.

11:53 Besides that, they learned to be idlers, going about from house to house. And not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan. If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are really widows. Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

12:28 For Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain, and the laborer deserves his wages. Do not admit a charge against an elder, except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.

13:03 The sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgment. The sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, even those that are not cannot remain hidden. Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers. Rather, they must serve all the better, since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. So why does Paul write all of this at this point in this book?

13:36 He's been addressing the false teachers. He's been telling Timothy, here are the medicines that you need to address the false teaching in the church. Why does he turn in chapter 5 to this sort of, it's almost a taxonomy of various relationships in the church that seem at some level to have been wounded somehow. Why does he do that? Well, it's because controversy in a church is never just about theology or principle or practice. It's never just about what we believe about this or what we're going to do about this. When conflict erupts, no matter what that controversy is about, it always, always takes an emotional and relational toll on the church's life.

14:12 Friendships are strained, they're broken, people feel hard done by, there are hard feelings, usually in a hundred different directions. Often people feel disrespected, they feel unloved. They feel like people haven't lived up to their responsibilities or that they failed to care well in some way. And that's exactly what was going on in this church in Ephesus. The relationships between the people were strained and broken because of the controversy. And so the landscape, by the time Timothy gets there, is just littered with broken relationships, feelings of disrespect, and basically everybody in the church in some way or another was feeling taken advantage of.

14:47 So the question is, all right, how do we get all that cleaned up? Even if we can sort of cure the problem of the false teaching itself, how do we deal with the broken relationships? How do you even start to try to fix that? And that's what Paul starts to do here. He tells Timothy to start teaching this church, and here's the main idea, That unity in a church depends on love. Unity in a church ultimately depends on love. And love works itself out in mutual respect, care, and responsibility.

15:24 Unity in a church depends on love. And then that love works itself out very practically in mutual respect, care, and responsibility for each other. So that's all the tension and balance that you feel throughout this chapter. So with each group that Paul addresses here, there's an acknowledgement of a responsibility for both parties, all parties involved, in fact, to respect and care for each other and also to take up and fulfill their responsibilities to one another. You're not off the hook, Paul is saying. I think if you look at the chapter and the little bit of six, you can see three main sections.

15:59 Each one of them is focused on a specific relationship that was under particular pressure. So first, in 1 through 16, you have the relationship between the church and older people, especially widows. Then in 17 to 25, the relationship between the church and its elders. And then third, just very briefly, in 6, 1, and 2, you've got the relationship between slaves and masters. So three points to the sermon. Number one, we're just going to go through those three sort of sections of the text. Number one, respect, care, and responsibility.

16:30 Respect, care, and responsibility. That's how all three of them are going to start. Respect, care, and responsibility in your relationship with the aged. Respect, care, and responsibility in your relationship with the aged. Number two, respect, care, and responsibility in your relationship with church leaders. And third, respect, care, and responsibility in relationship with employers. With employers. Now, you'll notice I sort of changed the word there. You may have been expecting masters or something about slaves and masters, that kind of thing. The reason we do that is because there's a lot to say when the biblical writers start talking about first century Roman slavery.

17:08 And I'm going to say some of those things to you. There are certain dynamics going on with Roman slavery that are different from America's historical slavery. There are things that the Bible does looking forward and other things that it doesn't do. But at any rate, the point of it is that every single one of us in some relationship or another, we serve others. And the place where we're kind of most cognizant of that is in our relationship with employers. That's kind of the closest parallel we have to first century Roman slavery. It's not exact, but that's why I make the word employers.

17:39 We'll talk more about that later. But before we get there, number one, respect, care, and responsibility in our relationship with the aged. Respect, care, and responsibility in our relationship with the aged. So that's the point of the first 16 verses of this chapter. And you can see starting in verse 3 that the focus there is particularly on care for widows, for those who have lost their husbands. Kind of like Ruth and Naomi in our scripture reading earlier in the service.

18:11 Before he gets to those widows, though, Paul starts by giving Timothy basically some across-the-board general advice for relationships in the church in general. He does that in verses 1 and 2. And it's good advice. Look what he says there. Chapter 5, verse 1 and 2. This is just like general every relationship. Do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father. Treat younger men like brothers, older women like mothers, younger women like sisters in all purity. Now, I think that advice would have been particularly good and helpful for Timothy.

18:48 I mean, this guy had been sent into a hard situation as a young man. And some people in the church, maybe even some elders in the church, were going to need to be rebuked. So it would have been very easy for Timothy to think when Paul says, go into that church and clean up the mess, and you're going to have to rebuke some elders. It would have been so easy for Timothy to get this chip on his shoulder and think his job was basically to muster up as much righteous indignation as he possibly could and then hoist up the Holy Ghost bazooka and just blow these dudes away. He could have thought that, but the result of that would have been total disaster.

19:23 He might have blown them apart, but he'd have blown the church apart. They wouldn't have listened to him, and Timothy would have just looked like a petulant little punk if he tried to do that. So Paul says, don't get your Holy Ghost bazooka out. Let's do it a different way. Here's how you should act instead. With older men, with men that are older to you, like those elders, if you have to rebuke them, you should treat them as fathers, which means that even if you do have to correct them, right, you don't get in their face and just let them have it. You correct them with the kind of respect and even a little bit of maybe chest-tightening fear that you'd feel if you had to rebuke your own father. Now, I know, I'm aware that some of you don't have that kind of relationship with your father at all, that it would cause a kind of chest-tightening fear and sadness to have to have to rebuke your father. Some fathers haven't even earned that kind of respect. I get that.

20:19 But Paul's thinking here not about that kind of relationship. He's thinking about a healthy relationship between a father and a son, where the son respects the father. And so if rebuke ever has to happen, it comes with fear, with loathing, with a kind of reticence to do it. Paul is telling Timothy that's how you should feel if you have to rebuke one of those who, excuse me, who is older than you. Same with older women there. Paul says, treat them as mothers with love, respect, gentleness. And with men and women who are kind of your same age, who are peers or who are younger, then you should treat them not as people to be stepped on, not as people to be fought with, but treat them as brothers and sisters. There's nothing new about this, right? And this isn't new mind-blowing teaching. The New Testament often talks about the church as a family. It's why you'll hear you know us as members of third avenue often refer to one another as brothers and sisters right we do that because the bible calls us a family and it says that those of us who are peers with

21:20 one another should should relate to one another as brothers and sisters but even if it's not a new thought there is profound wisdom here there is profound wisdom here. And if you were to take that wisdom to heart, if all 653 of us as members of Third Avenue would take that to heart, it would tend to diffuse relational conflict in the church before it even gets started. You see why that is, right? You see why that would be the case? It's because instead of seeing your fellow members in the church as kind of obstacles to your plan or competition for you, for whatever it is you think the goal is, what if you saw those people instead as your mothers and your fathers, as your brothers and your sisters? What if you treated them with that kind of respect? What if you wanted for them the same kind of good that you want for your own family? So much, so much church conflict comes because people don't feel they've been treated

22:28 with respect and love. And it's not just about feeling either. It's just conflict comes because people are not treated with respect and love. You know, I've seen it again and again, you know, here at Third Avenue, in other churches. It's just a pattern over and over and over again. You see, a problem comes up, right? And you think at first. You look at it, and you're like, oh, that's a theological problem. We can just go at that with theology and Bible and teaching, and we can take that theological problem down. Or you have a practical problem, or you have one person who's acting in a certain way and doing something wrong.

22:59 You think that's going to be easy because it's isolated. And then you realize, oh no, before Satan sort of pulled the pin on that little theological grenade, he was busy for years laying groundwork underneath the walls of the church so that when this little thing blows up, 17,000 other things will blow up at the same time. He does that. I've seen it again and again and again and always, always, always. It's caused in one way or another by a lack of love.

23:32 So that's what Paul is saying here. Treat each other all the time with the respect and love that ought to mark family relationships. As you interact with people, whether it's just, you know, around a campfire or around a living room, or even if you're in a bit of a conflict with somebody, have in your mind as you interact, This person is my father, my mother, my sister, my brother, and act accordingly. Well, starting in verse 3, though, Paul turns to a particularly, looks like thorny situation where both care and responsibility had broken down in multiple ways, and that is in the care of widows.

24:11 I don't think we need to go into all the details of the situation. I don't even think we know all the details of the situation. Various New Testament scholars have tried to recreate, you know, exactly what the structure was and all the rest of it, and you know, there's some success that's been made in that, but I don't think understanding all the details is necessary to see the point. I do, though, think that both major parts of this breakdown seem to be captured in verse 3. Look at that verse, chapter 5, verse 3.

24:42 You see the two parts of it there? There are two sort of packages of meaning there. Honor widows. Apparently that's one of the problems. That's one of the ways that care and respect is broken down is that this church is not honoring widows as it should be. But also, who are truly widows, right? So another way that care and responsibility is broken down is that there are some who are claiming the rights of widows who are not truly widows. And so those two things, as Satan has put this thing together, are playing against one another, right?

25:17 This side is not honoring. But they would say, well, it's because you have all these people who aren't truly widows. And they're saying, well, I have to do it because you're not. And it's just a disaster. But you get both parts of it there. Honor widows who are truly widows. There was a long tradition in Jewish history of caring, particularly for women who had lost their husbands. And therefore had no way of providing for themselves. I mean, if you read the rest of the book of Ruth from our scripture reading this morning, you'll see kind of how that whole thing plays. out. But that deep desire to care for widows carried over in the Christian life too. So these Jews that became Christians carried that over into their new Christian lives. So you remember back in Acts chapter 6, deacons were originally designed and invented to care for widows in the church.

26:08 This was an important thing in the life of Christian churches. So Paul affirms the need to carry on doing that. Now, look at verse 3 again. That word honor means two things. In English, it basically just means respect, right? So the way you read verse 3 is respect widows, right? It does mean that in the original Greek that Paul wrote in, but it also, that same word in the Greek, unlike English, the same word also means financial care. So in Ephesus, at least, the care of widows seems to have taken on a fairly structured form. I mean, if you look at verses 9 and 10, you can see it. Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband. So there's a list somewhere of those who are enrolled as widows and therefore who have the right to receive financial support, not just respect, but financial support from the church.

27:06 And there were written down sort of qualifications. They had a widow's policy, right? And it said things that were as specific as you've got to be at least 60 years of age. So, you know, if you have some idea that the early church was just this sort of loosey-goosey, no rules sort of thing, you know, look at that. That's extremely specific. They had a policy book, an HR manual that said who could be enrolled on this list and who couldn't you also get a description of these these widows in five she who is truly a widow left all alone has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day so so you put all these things together right you have to read between the lines because the point the thing Paul is doing here is not telling us how to set up a widow's ministry that's not what he's doing he's managing a widow's ministry that already exists So you have to read between the lines on it.

28:02 But the picture that you get is of a group of women who have been widowed at an older age, who have no other family to take care of them, and who have shown through a lifetime of experience that they are faithful and godly and able to minister to and serve people well. And the idea was that the church would permanently commit itself, like a family that they didn't have, the church would permanently commit itself to caring for them. And they, in turn, would take on responsibility to serve and minister to the church in various ways. It was almost a relationship of the widows being in the employ of the church to do ministry.

28:39 Now, as you think about it, this is really a beautiful balance, isn't it, between care and responsibility. The church cares for these widows and takes responsibility for their well-being. And then these dear afflicted saints, in turn, take responsibility in the other direction to care for the church. To pray, to minister, to show hospitality. The trouble, as beautiful as that sounds, the trouble though was that some people had begun to take advantage of that system. Which is why in verse 3 Paul has to say, honor widows, care for widows who are truly widows.

29:17 So it doesn't take much to sort of put the picture together, right? I mean, probably a little bit encouraged by this false teaching that said, you know, you don't need to be married. You don't need to have kids. You know, all your obligations are off. Probably encouraged by some of that. There were some younger widows who were seeing the death of their husbands as an opportunity to join this list of widows and get the church to care for them and carry on pursuing the tenets of this false teaching. So, I mean, you can see what Paul says about them. We're not going to read the whole thing, but just let your eyes roll over 11 through 16 and you'll see what he says about them.

29:52 I mean, essentially, he says in 14 in particular, these younger widows should not enroll in this band of widows, but rather get married again. Have children, build a household, carry on with life, but don't make yourself a permanent dependent on the church. That is for when life has done things to you that make you truly dependent. I think that's an important thing to think about, right? I mean, we don't exactly have a widow's role or anything quite like that.

30:23 There are just different structures in society and all the rest of it. But there are situations, there are situations where you can see your way clear wrongly to making yourself a permanent dependent on the resources of the church. I don't even mean just the financial ones. A permanent dependent on the resources of the church. When the right thing to do, when the right thing to do is to find a way to put it all back together and carry on with the life God intends you to live.

30:57 Friend, be careful about that. Be careful. Look, I know that things happen. I know that sometimes, you know, the arch of life just kind of falls apart, right? And there's just rubble everywhere. I understand. And in those moments, you need the church's resources, all of them, to sort of make it through those hard times. I understand. And I also understand that that can take a very long time somehow. But, friend, also the goal, the goal of all that care from the church, all the support from that church, the goal has got to be to get it all back together and get on with life.

31:35 It's not to be a permanent dependent on the church. that's what Paul is saying to these widows you're taking advantage of the system when what you need to be doing is getting better and getting on with it so that's one way people were taking advantage of this another way though is that some people were apparently foisting the care of their aged parents and grandparents on the church and letting the church take care of them instead of doing it for themselves. Look at verse 4. If a widow has children or grandchildren, let them learn to show godliness to their own household and make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. You can see it also in verse 8. If anyone doesn't provide for his relatives, especially for members of his household, he's denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever, right? So he had different structures in Roman society that were supposed to take care of people like widows, right? An extended family was one of those. Failing that, the church could step in and

32:35 take on that responsibility. But the first responsibility was the kids, right? Back in the COVID era, there was a particular guy who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he noted how the COVID epidemic forced us as a society, in some really uncomfortable ways, I think, to confront and take a hard look at what this author called throwaway culture. Throwaway culture, meaning that there are certain people in society that we look at and we just kind of think, I don't know what to do with that, and so therefore I'm just going to ignore it. I'm just going to shove it over into a corner and we're going to let it go. And you see all kinds of bad effects from that, right? You see people that when they reach a certain age in life, when they're no longer able to be productive in society in the ways that they used to be, when they're not contributing to GDP enough.

33:27 They just get kind of shunted over to the side. They just get pushed over to the side. And in some countries, that's taking extreme forms. I mean, in Canada, the euthanasia movement is just rolling forward at breakneck speed. And when somebody stops contributing in the way that the powers that be want them to contribute, what we need to do is quite literally throw them away. Give them a respectable death so they get out of our hair. Look, aging is hard.

34:06 Aging is hard. It's hard physically. It's hard emotionally. And then when the people that have structured your life for 50, 60 years, sometimes when those people start to die and you're the one who continues to live, it just gets almost unbearable at times. Aging is hard, but it is not bad. Aging is hard, but it is not bad. You can read the book of Ecclesiastes and see this.

34:37 It is part of God's plan for us to age. It's part of God's intent for us as human beings to age. Yes, to get wiser in the mind for a time, but also to get frailer in the body. it's part of God's plan. It's part of God's plan as we get older to take away relationships that we've relied on for decades so that our trust becomes more and more solid in Him. It's all part of God's plan.

35:08 It's not something, therefore, because it is part of God's plan, it's not something, therefore, to be looked away from or ignored or worse, thrown away. It's something to be embraced and learned from and benefited from in its own sacred way. Friends, that's going to be true of you, no matter how old you are right now. That's going to be true for every single one of us as we ourselves age. But it's also true of us as we care for others, our parents and our grandparents as they age. Look, there's nothing wrong with getting help in the care of your parents or grandparents as they age.

35:43 I mean, thank God our society has people like doctors and nurses. Thank God we have things like assisted care, assisted living facilities and nursing homes and all the rest. I know a lot of you, in fact, are in that situation with your aging parents. That's good. But, friends, even as we do the hard work, even as you do that hard work with your own parents, remember that God does not think of it as an inconvenience. He doesn't think of it as something unfortunate, as something to just be born until it's over.

36:16 No, he thinks of the care for the aged as something respectable and dignified and deeply human. He thinks of it as something very much like what he does for us. So that's number one. Here's number two. Respect, care, and responsibility in your relationship with church leaders. Respect, care, and responsibility in relationship with church leaders. So relationship with the aged was one marked by mutual care and responsibility.

36:50 Family's responsibility to care for their parents and grandparents. That's one aspect of it. The church's responsibility to care for them when there was nobody else to do so, when there's no family. And then the widow's responsibility, in fact, to care for and minister to the church. And even the young widow's responsibility not to seek to try to take advantage of the church to become permanent dependents, but to move on with their lives, to get married again, have more kids, get on with what God intends you to do. That was the first point. In 17 to 25, Paul turns to another relationship in the church, that of the church with its elders.

37:23 And the thing is, that relationship too is marked by this balance of respect and care and responsibility. So look down at verses 17 to 21. We're not going to read it again, but you should look down at 17 to 21 because that's kind of where it happens. Now, the other pastors, as we've been going through the book of 1 Timothy, They've already talked to you about the role and responsibility of elders a couple of times already, right? Chapter 2, chapter 3, hit it a couple of times in studying this book.

37:54 Essentially, elders were the spiritual leaders of the church. They're called pastors sometimes. They're called shepherds. They're called overseers. They're basically the main teachers in the church, the ones who are to look out and care for, you know, whatever metaphor you want to use, either, you know, this little piece of the kingdom or this flock or this, you know, military unit of the kingdom. However you want to think about it, right? The job of the elders is to look out and care for that group of people and lead them in following after Christ. I mean, you can almost see that whole job description there in 17.

38:27 See the verbs there? Elders are to rule or govern and to preach and to teach. Rule or govern and preach and teach. And Paul says there, if they do that job well, then the church is to see them not just as a kind of hired hand or employee, but as men worthy of respect, and he says they're double honor. Now, what does that mean? Double honor. Well, I think it is tempting for pastors to say that it just means double money. So you need to immediately double my salary as soon as you get the chance. That's probably not what it means. Probably what the phrase double honor means is just sort of thinking about both sides of the meaning of that word. So you've got respect and financial support of the pastor, those who labor in preaching and teaching.

39:16 You see that? So the honor that's to be given is not just respect and not just financial. It's double, right? It's respect and financial care. Second half of 17, if you look at that, it's not distinguishing some who preach and teach and others who don't do those things, right? It gets read like that sometimes. Those who rule well should be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. And people will say, well, okay, now what we see there is that there are some elders who just rule, and there are others who do the preaching and teaching, right? That's not what it's saying. What it's saying, the emphasis in that phrase is on the word labor. That's what the emphasis is. They're to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those whose labor is the work of eldership. In other words, those whose job it is to do that work.

40:08 I mean, here at Third Avenue, we have 17 elders and we have, I think, five of us whose labor it is on a week-in, week-out basis to do the work of elderly. Right? And that's the distinguishing, that's the distinction that it's making. Look, I mean, it's a weird thing. I mean, I think one of the guys, Mike, or maybe it was Brandon talked to you about this. It's a weird thing to preach about your own job description in front of your church when they're the ones that you know, called you and pay you and all the rest of it. It's a very strange thing. And to be a pastor is, I don't think it's quite a unique sort of position to hold, but it is a fairly unusual role because it's not quite that a church says, look, we have a job description to fill and we are hiring you to do it. It's not quite that. It's a different relationship between a church and its pastor or pastors. And here's what it is. When you called me to be your senior pastor, and this is true for

41:09 four of us right now, Mike, Brandon, Justin, me, when you called us to be senior pastor and associate pastors, you didn't just say, hey guys, here's a job description that we need to fill. You seem to be qualified. Now we're going to hire you to do it, so get after it. That's not the relationship that was formed. No, it was more something like, look, we see as a congregation that God has just gifted you in certain ways, right? And so what we want to do is ask you now, because of those gifts, to give yourself to the labor of preaching and teaching and pastoring this church. And so that you can do that, so that you can give the hours that you'd normally give to a regular job to preaching and teaching and pastoring, so that you can do that, we promise the church to take on responsibility for caring financially for you and your family. See, it's not quite just a you're hired situation. It's a relationship that's being formed. And you don't want it as a church to be just a hired relationship.

42:09 You don't want it to just be employers and an employee. I mean, Jesus said that, right? A hired hand doesn't really care for the sheep. He does what he has to do because he's getting the money. Well, in the same way, Mike, Brandon, Justin, and I don't do these jobs for the money you give us. We do it because you as a church asked us first to do it, and then you said, and we'll take care of you so that you can do it.

42:41 That's a very different thing from going in and saying, I need to make this much money, and I'll do this much work, and if that ever gets out of balance, we'll rethink the contract. It's a very, very different thing. It's a relationship of mutual care and responsibility. Well, 19 and 20 continue to describe this relationship between church and elders, this time in terms of what to do when an elder is done wrong. So look at 19 and 20. You see the same ideas here. The respect that a church ought to show its elders is not to believe a charge against an elder just because it's made.

43:21 And that's the point, right? Do not believe a charge that's made against an elder just because it's made. And really, that's true of anybody, right? And one of the things that I've learned over the years is that Christians are really terrible at doing Proverbs, I think, in 1918 or something like that. The first thing you hear is going to sound right to you, but you better withhold judgment on it until you hear the other side of the story. Christians are really pretty bad at that. We tend to jump at the first story that we hear. And Paul's admonition here is, don't do that.

43:52 The whole idea comes from the Old Testament requirement that charges be established by more than one respectable witness. But Paul is saying that's especially true because of the dynamics involved. That's especially true when it comes to church leadership. There are so many churches that are split and destroyed by a charge being made against an elder. And then instead of the church kind of calmly, responsibly figuring out what happened, the rumor just spreads like wildfire. People just believe it because it's interesting.

44:27 Friends, be careful about that. Be careful about that. When you hear a charge of wrongdoing against an elder, be careful that you don't just immediately embrace it because it's kind of fun. It's not that elders can't do wrong, and that idea has been abused too, I know that, but no, it's just that the good and unity of the church are going to be better served by a responsible finding out of the truth, way more than it will be served by wildfire of rumor and speculation. But look at verse 20, for all that elders, Paul says here, also hold a high degree of responsibility. So as leaders in the church, their persistence in sin, if they insist on it, has heightened effects on the body as a whole. And therefore, Paul says they're to be rebuked publicly so that their sin might be, might not be taken by others as an example to be followed. That's what he says there. In 22, 25,

45:28 he just continues on this theme, gives more instruction on how to avoid a situation where you have to, have to do that with an elder. The point really is that you shouldn't make a man an elder too fast. That's the point of 24 and 25. Wait a while. Get to know the guy. See if there's any sin that's going to appear over time. See if there are any patterns that start to assert themselves in his life that would make you not want to put that up in front of the church. As an example, give the church a chance to see a man's good works. That little aside in there about Timothy taking a little wine for his stomach, we're not exactly sure what brought that to Paul's mind. He does that occasionally. He'll just, oh, and also this. And then he continues to write, right? I mean, we don't exactly know what that is. It may have been brought up to his mind by the mention of purity there. So maybe Timothy was abstaining from wine for some religious purpose or to make himself, you know, help him win a hearing with the ascetics and the congregation, something. But Paul doesn't want him to fall into that error. And so he just says, look, you know, take a little wine for your stomach. It may also have been another dig at Timothy's youth. It may have been, I know

46:31 you get nervous about all of this. And I know that all of this thought about rebuking elders publicly has probably turned your stomach into knots. So take a drink of wine. Chill, right? Not sure. But you see the picture being painted here? Just like with the aged, the relationship between a church and its leaders is marked by mutual care and responsibility. Elders shepherd and care for the church. The church honors and cares for its elders. Here's the last thing. So respect, care, and responsibility in relationship with employers.

47:05 Respect, care, and responsibility in relationship with employers. So in 6, 1, and 2, Paul turns to one more relationship, that between slaves and masters. To give you just a little bit of history on this, it's estimated that there were something like 50 to 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire during this time period. And in some cities like Ephesus, up to a third of the population of the whole city may have been slaves. Now, this kind of slavery in the Roman Empire was very, very different from slavery in the 17th, 18th, 19th century in America.

47:37 It wasn't based on race. It wasn't based on class. And in fact, Roman slaves could own property of their own. They could hold office. They could even own other slaves. It's just kind of the way the society was put together. And yet, it was still slavery, right? One human being owning another. And as you read the writings of the New Testament, you can see Paul and the other apostles treating that relationship between a master and a slave differently than they do other human relationships. So, for example, in other relationships between people, husbands and wives, children and parents, subjects and rulers, Paul will always, always appeal to higher theological categories or older theological categories in order to honor those relationships.

48:25 Husbands and wives rooted in creation, subjects and rulers, metaphor of, you know, God to his people, children and parents, same kind of thing. He appeals to higher theological categories in order to honor them. It's not like that ever with slavery. He never roots it in anything theological. He simply addresses it as a reality with which the church has to deal in the here and now because it exists. He manages it, but he does not honor it. And so that's what he does here.

48:56 He manages the relationship between slaves and masters. So look in verse 1 of chapter 6. He's talking to those there whose masters are not Christians. Which, you know, if you think about that as, you know, you kind of mutate it a little bit to 21st century America. Think about your relationship with your boss. This would describe a lot of you. Your employer is not a Christian. Your boss is not a Christian. Paul says you ought to serve them well. And you see the reason for it? It's evangelistic.

49:28 You should serve your non-Christian employer well so that the name of God will not be dishonored. And apparently in this church, there were some who were refusing to work well. And so the word Christian, the title Christian, was becoming tied to laziness and insubordination. Friends, God forbid that that happen in the city of Louisville. That the word Christian become tied to laziness and disrespect. those christians not one of them can work well not one of them has any respect for what's going on around here never hiring another christian again no friends what we what we want even among unbelievers is for the word christian to be one that goes oh i love those people like they are the hardest working people they're they're on time they're respectful when they make a mistake they own up to it quickly and they try to fix it we want the word christian to make the eyes of employers around here go wide because we're so good.

50:31 Work well for your non-Christian employer so that the name of God will be honored. Well, in verse 2, he talks to slaves whose masters are Christians. And basically he says, look, the fact that your boss, your master, is a Christian doesn't mean that you're off the hook. It doesn't mean that you both understand how good God is and how great he is, so therefore I don't have to be that great, right? It doesn't mean that.

51:02 No, the fact that they're brothers doesn't mean you don't have to honor them. It means you work even better for them. You work all the more hard for them precisely because they are, he says there, fellow believers and beloved. Look, I don't think anybody here among us is a slave. I don't think that's the, it's not the economic system that we live in. We're not slaves. But we do serve. Every single one of us in this room, in some capacity or another, we serve.

51:38 And therefore, these couple of verses here have relevance to us. If you let it be known that you're a Christian in the workplace, and you should, you should let it be known in your workplace that you are a Christian, Then you need to know that with everything you do, the reputation of Christ is going to be affected by you. It's not just your reputation. It's not just your resume. You're writing lines on Jesus' reputation in this city.

52:12 If you're lazy, if you're insubordinate, if you're disrespectful, then people are going to think badly of Christ. But friend, if you work hard, if you show up on time, if you're respectful to your superiors, then that's going to reflect well on the man you call Lord. You have responsibilities. Every single one of you, and I don't even just mean in the workplace now. You have responsibilities and obligations to other people.

52:43 To people in our church who are aged. To people in our church who are hurting. To people in our church who are just super busy. To the people sitting all around you, you have responsibilities. Carry them out well with love and honor and respect. And do it to the honor of Jesus. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you and honor you because you are worthy of all honor. You're worthy of all glory and blessing and respect and dignity and power and riches and blessing.

53:18 is all yours. So Father, we pray that as your people, as those who want to reflect your character to the world, we pray, oh God, that in every relationship that we have, whether it's a long standing one or one that's just the kind of relationship that just created between us and another human being when we order a hamburger, oh God, we pray that you would help us to engage all those relationships with love and honor and respect and dignity. And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.