Welcome to Truth for Life, where today we begin a study in First Timothy. The Apostle Paul wrote this letter to offer his young protege some guidance, and while his instructions address the responsibilities of pastoral care, Alistair Begg notes its advice all of us would be wise to heed.
Now, if you'll take your Bibles and turn with me to one Timothy chapter five, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family, and so repaying their parents and grandparents. For this is pleasing to God.
The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead, even while she lives. Give the people these instructions too.
So that no one may be open to blame, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the saints, helping those in trouble, and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds. As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus, they bring judgment on themselves because they have broken their first pledge.
Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.
So, I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes, and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.
Some have, in fact, already turned away to follow Satan. If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them, and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need. Amen.
Now, last time at the end of chapter four, we noted that Paul was giving instructions to Timothy, a series of imperatives concerning how he was to conduct his life and doctrine. Very, very important. Paul has made clear that the people of God would know how they should conduct themselves in the household of faith. That's the fifteenth verse of chapter three. Not only should the gathered group Have a grasp of the principles, but Timothy, as a young pastor, must himself have a clear understanding of his duty and his role and the variety of his responsibilities.
And we may well be helped by recognizing that in the original letter, there were no chapter breaks such as we find in the English text before us this morning.
So, in other words, there was no pause between the sixteenth verse of chapter four and the instruction which comes in the first verse of chapter five. In other words, Paul is continuing his personal instructions to Timothy in the role of pastoral ministry, and here in these opening two verses, he instructs Timothy on the way in which he should treat various age groups within the congregation. First of all, how he should treat an older man.
Well, when rebuke or admonition is called for, as inevitably it will be called for, for example, when he gets to chapter six, he is urging Timothy to rebuke those who have become rich in the present world and are tempted to place undue importance in what they have managed to accrue financially. Many of those individuals will be older men, as a result of having lived longer and worked harder. Perhaps they are now in a position of financial stability and security. And Timothy is to make sure, indeed, to command them in their riches that they don't put their hope in that. While when he does so, he is to do it in a way that is not harsh.
So, in other words, it is not that he is to step back from the role of admonition; it is not that he is to distance himself from the uncomfortableness that is involved in having to speak to someone in that way. But rather, when he does so, there needs to be restraint and there needs to be genuine affection. It is unbecoming for a young minister like Timothy to issue severe reprimands. To a gentleman older than himself, and as I think about my own relationship with my father, I can think of only one occasion when I have admonished him about any particular and specific instance, and I remember the sense of uncomfortableness that I felt. And the one thing I wanted to assure him of was my genuine affection.
And my desire to be submissive to him, even though I felt it necessary to speak as I did. Younger men are just to be treated like brothers. If you have brothers, you know what that means. It needs no application. How do your brothers treat you?
They say, "Yo," they say, "Hey," they say, "Come on," they say, "Let's go," they say, "Quit it," they say, "Get off," they say, all those things. That's how it's supposed to be. Older women, you should treat them in the way in which you treat your mom. How'd you treat your mother? You don't forget her birthday, and so on.
Now Paul is not exhorting Timothy to do something that he was unfamiliar with himself. We find this, for example, in the sixteenth chapter of Romans, in verse thirteen, wherein giving instructions to the congregation, he says, "Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me." So Paul himself had exercised the same approach in moving amongst the congregation. There were older women, and when he looked at these women, he viewed them through the eyes of motherhood. And that gave to him a measure of respect. It gave to him deference.
It gave to him a sense of the appropriate. And in seeking to operate with a similar sense of appropriateness in relationship to younger women, he says you should treat younger women as you treat your sisters with absolute purity. Philip paraphrases it and treat younger women as sisters, and as nothing more. And you get the point. It is absolutely clear.
You don't need to be a genius to work it out. The purity to which he is referred in verse twelve, he now gives expression to in the most practical terms at the end of the second verse of chapter five. George Knight, commenting on this, says Paul, with perceptive realism, gives this special word of caution. For the situation where a pastor is called on to deal personally and privately with younger women, it is absolutely crucial that such an individual guards against any development or even any suggestion of improper interest or improper intimacy, and that means all kinds of things in practical expression. But it does set a hedge around the idea of pastors counseling one-on-one with women, not in crisis situations, but in prolonged situations.
Wisdom would say, "I don't think so." And indeed, when Paul gives instruction as to how those younger women are supposed to find out about loving their loving their husbands, caring for their children, providing in various ways, to whom does he give the responsibility of the instruction? To the older women in the church. It may not mean that they are older chronologically, but it means those who are mature, those who are spiritually understanding the truth. They are the ones here to deal with this. And across the country, and across the world, many a disaster would have been averted by pastors paying straightforward and careful attention to the opening two verses of chapter five.
Now, he then goes to a prolonged treatment of a subject that may at first appear to be at least at arm's length to us—the issue of widows in the church. I don't want to ask how many of you are widows or have been widowed, but there are a number in the church. I won't embarrass you by asking you to identify yourself, but the very fact of acknowledging that means that in a congregation as ours, albeit a younger congregation in terms of average age, this is not something that we are removed from. And certainly, as we continue to grow together, it is something that we will continually deal with. In addressing the subject, we should notice, first of all, that the supporting of widows was a matter of priority from the very outset of the church.
In Acts chapter six, you will remember that the apostles say it's not right for us to leave the ministry of the word of God and prayer to the serving of tables and the dealing with the distribution of food. And what had given the occasion of that discussion and decision was the fact that certain widows were not getting their daily allotment of food in the way in the. The time frame that they felt was justifiable.
Now, the reason that the church made it such a priority is because the church understood that one of the classic ways in which religious expression was going to be seen was in the matter of caring for widows. For example, if you turn to James chapter one, James, the brother of Jesus, makes this perfectly clear in the twenty seventh verse. You want to know what pure and undefiled religion is. He says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." So he's already been exhorting them about practical godliness, and we're now seeing one of the ways in which this practical godliness is expressed: the immediacy of the subject. The existential element of it, if you like, is such that I do not believe that what we have here in First Timothy five is a manual for dealing with widows in a local church that you can simply pick up chapter five, walk it across the centuries and across the geography, lay it down on Parkside Church or any other church for that matter, and say, "Okay, this is it." There are principles that we're about to discover.
But in terms of the actuality of what he is dealing with, remember that he is dealing with a specific historic incident within the context of the city of Ephesus.
However, we're going to discover that there are principles concerning organization, the necessity of genuine pastoral care, and the need for wisdom in discriminating where real need lies.
Well, let's just go through the material if we can. I've written four headings in my notes, which I'll mention to you as I go along. First of all, widows in need. Widows in need are widows indeed.
Okay, not trying to be cute. That's what he's saying. In verse three, give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. He ends it in the 16th verse with the exact same expression. I am talking, he says, about those who are really in need.
Now we need be in no doubt as to what this means, because he delineates it in the text. These women who are really in need have, or don't have, any means of support. They have no prospect of marriage, and they have no other basis for hope than hope in God that He will provide for them. And indeed, they display their dependence upon God by the constancy of their prayers. You see that they're in verse five, and they continue night and day to pray and to ask God for help.
Because there's no social services, there's no place where you go and put your card through a window. There is nothing for them. They have nobody that brings home a paycheck. They have no one to whom they may look. They have no source of income at all, and all they can do is on a daily basis say, "Oh God, you declare that a sparrow falls to the ground, and you know it.
You've told me that the hairs of my head are numbered, that my name is graven on the palms of your hands. Oh God, show yourself to be a father to the fatherless and a career for the widow." Now, in contrast to that obvious dependency, we have the merry widow in verse six. The widow, the indulgent widow, and Paul introduces her so that there would be a classic contrast: the widow who lives for pleasure is dead, even while she's living. This woman's life is marked by indulgence rather than by dependence. She's living for pleasure.
The the details of her hedonistic lifestyle are not given to us. They're not mentioned. I have a picture of this woman. I I don't want to describe her, but I I meet her with frequency. And she jangles when she walks, and she looks like she's really living it up.
And when you get a few of these merry widows jingle jangling around a congregation, then it's going to be a peculiar challenge. For the kind of widow exemplified in Anna in the Christmas story in Luke chapter two, the lady who, following her marriage for seven years, was widowed for the interim period of time and was now eighty-four years of age, and she had committed herself to the temple worship, and night and day she engaged in prayers. And while Anna was, if you like, buried in the temple, to all intents and purposes, from an outside gaze, dead to the world, there were all the married Widows jingling and jangling their way around Jerusalem and apparently living it up.
Well, says Paul, I just want you to understand that the widow who lives for pleasure is actually dead. She just exists.
Now, I can't resist the temptation to point out that this is a principle which runs through the whole of the Bible, that there is a definite. Distinction between existence and life. Otherwise, why would Jesus say to walking, moving, living, breathing individuals, "I have come that you might have life." Now, what's the obvious answer?
Well, go to somebody else because I have life. No, no. And that you might have it in all of its fullness. He was talking about that encounter of God when a man or a woman is born again. Unless a man is born again, John three three, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
He cannot enter the kingdom of God. And a number of folks who are now involved in religious pursuits are the walking dead. And this is while your mind is gone. You have been confronted by the fact that you are merely existing. Your life is not all that you anticipated it should be.
You do not have an understanding of why you exist, where you're going, or what is about to happen to you should you die. And someone has suggested to you that if you would involve yourself in religious activities or in Christian pursuits, then existence plus religious activity will equal life. And you've been trying that, and you are as dead as you always were. In fact, you are even more miserable than you were before you tried this approach, because when you were thinking of trying it, it held out hope to you, but now that you have begun it, it is hopeless. And you have identified the fact that your mere physical existence, devoid of the reality of God's liberating power within your life, has left you pretty wretched.
And I can explain exactly why that is. It's because you're dead.
Well, what are you saying to yourself? You're saying, "Well, I'll do something about it." Like what? Do you ever see a dead person? Do something about it. Dead people don't do anything about it.
Dead people just lie there.
So, if the widow is dead, even though she's jangling around the mall, how is she going to be made alive? The same way that any of us are made alive. When God comes by His Spirit. Opens our eyes to the fact of our deadness, speaks in to the very emptiness of our human existence, and in the great mystery, as the Word of God is made clear to us, our eyes are opened and our ears are unstopped, and suddenly the lights go on, and we find ourselves crying out, "Lord, I believe. Help me with the bits I don't believe yet." We find ourselves crying out with the Philippian jailer, Lord, what am I supposed to do to be saved?
The answer comes: if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved.
Now, that's just a little bit in passing. There, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to note the distinction between the living dead. The dreadful twilight zone of religious observance, devoid of life.
Okay, the widows in need are the widows indeed, as opposed to those who have other means of support. This is reinforced by the second thing I wrote in my notes, and it's this: if our Christianity doesn't work at home, it doesn't work. If our Christianity doesn't work at home, it doesn't work. Because home is where it's at. Home is where we're known.
Amongst our family is where the deal is. That's where they see you in the morning, in the night, in the middle of the day. There is no you can't run and you can't hide in there.
So if your Christianity doesn't work in the house, it doesn't work. I don't care how good a preacher you are. I don't care what you do. If it doesn't work there, it doesn't work.
Now. Why do I say this?
Well, because that's the point that he's making. Look at verse four. If a widow has children or grandchildren, these, namely children or grandchildren, should learn first of all to put their religion into practice.
Now, remember, in chapter four, he exhorted the people in relationship to training themselves in godliness. Let me tell you, one of the ways in which your godliness will be manifested it will be manifested in the fact that you put your godliness into practice, and you do so by caring for your own family. If a widow has children or grandchildren, then it is primarily their duty to show the genuineness of their religion in their own homes by repaying their parents. For what has been done for them, isn't that what it says? Repaying their parents.
But this strikes me with real impetus this week. I'm not so sure that there isn't express instruction here about how it's supposed to be. Because when you get married, by and large, you have no money. Then you get a little bit of money. And it's a parabola.
That's mathematical, and and it goes down the other side, and then you have no money at all.
So you you try and get some money, you get it together, then you pay for everything. You pay for everything: shoes, jackets, education, everything, prams, cribs, trips, everything. Then you have no money. And while you're coming down on the far side of the curve, the Smith Barney guys are talking to you when you're watching the golf tournaments, giving you a really bad feeling because you don't have enough money now to give to these people, dependents, all the stuff that you already gave to them. I am not doing that.
I decided this week. I mean, I haven't told the girls yet. But there is going to come a day when I'm coming like this, and one of the two of them is buying me breakfast in Denny's. I don't care. They are buying because they are going to repay their dad.
I am buying everything at the moment. Did you realize how well off I would be? Goodness gracious! You are listening to Alister Beg on Truth for Life. We'll hear more about caring for widows tomorrow.
As we begin our study of the Apostle Paul's first letter to Timothy, we are recommending a resource today—a brand new release from Alister. It's a verse-by-verse study through Paul's second letter to Timothy. The title is "Guarding the Truth." When Paul wrote his letters, believers were facing growing pressure to compromise the gospel message, to divert from all that Jesus had taught.
So it's not all that different from what we see happening in the church today. And this means that these letters to Timothy remain particularly relevant and important for us as believers to study. Guarding the Truth is a Bible study booklet. It's written as a companion to the ESV text. You'll read section by section from your Bible, then read the corresponding commentary from Alister.
And the study guide is interactive. It includes space for you to reflect on questions and write down what you're learning. The booklets are also ideal for a study group. If you're looking for your group's next topic, request your copy of. The Second Timothy: Guarding the Truth, Verse by Verse Study Guide.
When you donate today, and encourage the members of your study group to do the same, so everyone has a copy. Visit truthforlife.org/donate, or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. We are glad you have studied the Bible with us today. In caring for widows or for those in need, how much of the responsibility falls to the church, or the family, or to the widow herself?
Are the expectations different now from when Paul wrote his letter? Tomorrow, we'll think through these questions together. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
