1 Timothy 5:1-5 Proper Treatment for All Ages

Well, good morning. I believe we've got more room today. Spread out more. Or is it this way every Sunday? At my age, I can't remember. Well, you know, as we get older, we don't need a reason to fall. It just sort of seems to be the thing to do. I remember a guy that jumped through a plate glass window. Someone asked him, why did you do that? He said, well, at the time, it just seemed like the thing to do. When you fall, we know better. But we're going to fall. We don't have to learn. We know automatically how to do that. So be careful. Well, Brother Jack, 55 years. We met Jack and Barbara almost 70 years ago. We'd been married about a year. And we've been married 68, going on 69 years. So it's been a while. And he came to be minister of music and youth and education. Anything else on that assignment? Oh, yeah. Whatever Brother Johnny wanted you to do was always on the thing. So we go back a long way. And I want to tell you that we really do have a legend who teaches us. You all need to understand. You realize 55 years, there's never been anybody teach that long at Southwest Seminary before. And we're very blessed to have him. And the reason I'm having so much fun teaching is because I get to hear him about twice a month. And I tell him I learn something every time he teaches. I thought, well, I've been through Baylor and seminary and all kinds of stuff. My dad was a preacher and my granddad was a preacher. I learn something every Sunday from Jack. It's amazing. So thank you, Jack. Appreciate you. And Friday night was a good time. I saw a lot of you there. And so thank you for being there. Now then, we're coming to the fifth chapter of 1 Timothy. And Paul is still giving Timothy counsel about how to deal with the issues that he's facing at Ephesus. Paul is not happy with the Ephesian church. There's a lot of grumbling and groaning going on. A lot of things happening there. False teachers are subverting the gospel. And there are doubtless quarrels between the old folks and the young folks. We hadn't gotten very much better in our time than they did back then. We still have the generation gaps. And here was a young man dealing with a church that had a lot of challenges and a lot of old people. In fact, in this chapter, he's going to deal with the widows. And the widows, there were specific examples of how the widows ought to be treated, how the children and the church ought to respond, and the requirements for the widows. And so we'll look at that. The thing that struck me as I looked at this chapter was, in the very first verse, the Apostle Paul introduces very thoroughly a picture of the family. That first verse, he says, In other words, we need to treat each other like family. No, not just any family. Four times in John 17, he prayed that we would be one as he and the Father are one. So God is a picture of a prototype of what a family ought to be. Now, do we measure up? No. We ought to spend our lives doing everything we can to be obedient within the family. We're living in a country that is dysfunctional, but we're a people with a great deal of dysfunction. And so Paul is giving us some counsel here that is very, very important. And basically what he's saying is that Christianity is a personal matter. However, while we are saved individually, we do have an obligation to each other. That's a missing ingredient in a lot of churches. I've told you many times, I don't know how many churches I've preached in over the years, but probably more than a thousand. It's rare to find a church that's not having some chaos. God never intended for believers to be living in chaos. That's not spiritual gift. He intends for the family to be modeled after his word. And so being a believer is a great privilege and a glorious reality, but it carries a significant responsibility for all of us. And so Paul, in this chapter, is fleshing out what it means to be part of the family of God. Now, he also uses the term household. That's a little broader than the family, because that would include any servants or any people who live with the family, who are related to the family. But here specifically, he's talking about father, mother, brother, sister, which is a good thing for us to learn. We are to relate to each other as family members. And the church is described in terms of a family. And being family means that we're responsible to other believers as well as to God. To fully understand what Paul is saying, we need to realize that in Judaism, the family was a cornerstone of Judaism. The dynamics and example of family is what it means to be a Jewish person. That's where their Judaism is expressed. The Jewish family is what gives them a new sense of meaning to the past and hope for the future. It's all wrapped up in the family. The family relationship is the central focus of Judaism, and God is described and known in terms of the family. And so the strength of our nation has always been the strength of the family. The heart of America is not the White House. It's the farmhouse, the family apartment or condo, the small house, the large house. It's the values and consistent witness of the family that injects into our country the characteristics like faith and decency that give us values that provide the best possible society. Now, we call the family, I guess the modern terminology is the nuclear family. Now, what that basically means is we have a father and a mother and children. It's a nuclear family. That was God's design. But the truth is it's slowly disappearing in America. We have lost our sense of family. You just have to look at our Congress. There was a time when they would debate issues on the floor of the Senate and the House, and then they'd all go out and have dinner together. Platforms of their parties were essentially the same. That's long gone. And to be very honest, I am really disappointed in both the Democrats and Republicans. They both have strengths, but they both have glaring weaknesses. And the thing that I don't like about the two parties is that they've made each other the enemy. And family was never intended to have enemies. And America was at its strongest when the families were respected and honesty and integrity and discipline and respect were very common. I grew up, as many of you, I could never call my aunts and uncles by their first name. It was always aunt so-and-so, uncle so-and-so. I just couldn't do it. And now then, children call their parents their first name. And so things are changing and have changed. But the strength of our nation has always been the strength of the family. And I don't remember where it was, Tocqueville or who that came from Europe and visited America, and when he returned, he made the comment that the strength of America was in the home that he discovered in America. So Paul has given us some very clear advice of how we ought to be family in our faith and how we ought to have a healthy and strong family. And the rise of the disintegration of the families and the sweeping demand to correct God's mistake in transgenderism because he birthed us one way and we should have been another. Oh, by the way, kindergarten children know better than their parents what gender they ought to be. That's also what we're being taught today. So a lot of change is taking place. But I would like to remind you that we are not in the business of repairing any mistakes God made. He made us the way we are, and that is made in His image, and we ought to rejoice and be glad in that. And I'll tell you what I mentioned to you last year when we... This is still 24. Earlier this year, I keep thinking it's January or something. It's going to be here before we know it. The transgender issue, according to their own leaders, is to produce communism as a global option for governance in the world again. That's in their writings, the people who push transgenderism. It's not about sex. It is not about the gender. It's about a social reconstruction that transgender becomes the instrument in making that happen. And I'm not making that up. I can bring you the books and read you the portions of the books written by leaders in the transgender movement. We don't need to correct God. God doesn't make any mistakes. We don't need to chase that record too much. We just need to remind you that Judaism is wrapped up in the family, and the Christian faith is the champion of the family, and the gospel brings us into the eternal family of God through salvation. Now, the family was very important in ancient days. Greek and Roman nations had a lot of instruction and beliefs and traditions about the place of older people and how children ought to take care of their parents, and grandchildren ought to take care of their grandparents if they don't have anybody else. That's why he spends a great deal of time here in this chapter talking about how widows, who are widows indeed, are really, really widows. And he's talking about someone who has nobody to take care of them. And his point is, if they have kids and they're able, kids ought to take care of them. I'll tell you, the happiest years of our marriage was when my mother lived with us for 32 years. One day, I don't know what she and Carol Ann were talking about, but Carol Ann asked her, she said, Did you ever pray that your mother-in-law would come live with you when you were married? And she kind of laughed. She had a little giggle she had. She said, Well, no. Carol Ann said, Well, I didn't either. But it was a blessing because our children got to have grandmother in the home for all their lives. And it was a blessing to her, a blessing to us. And that was not uncommon in ancient times. Judaism, because of their focus on the family and the nations like Egypt and Greece and Rome, all had legal documents that, in fact, in Egypt, if a son did not take care of his widowed mother, he lost his citizenship. So the world itself echoes what Paul is saying, that we ought to care for the widows. That's why he devoted all of his attention to the widows. We'll look at that as we go. Athens, for instance, had a statute from the period that stated that one must care for his parents or be deprived of his citizenship. Not Egypt, but Greece. In Egypt, some parents handed over their possessions to their children in exchange for the promise that they take care of them in their old age. In Rome, there was no law that compelled that to happen, but cases appear to have been detesting the issue and the responsibility of children when the parents were clearly in need and the children had the means to take care of them. We know from experience that when my mother was born, when she was 10 months old, she had polio. By the time she was 15 years old, she had had a dozen surgeries in St. Louis. They lived in Arkansas. A number of times in her early teen years, she rode the train to St. Louis by herself to have surgery. She was crippled all of her life. One leg was six inches longer than the other. The other shoes were different sizes for each foot. So when my dad died suddenly, he was 52 years old, and he just collapsed and he was gone. What was mother going to do? I'm the oldest. The only thing for her to do is come live with us. And so that was our plan. There was never any question about it. We never debated it. We just did it. I believe the first commandment to honor your father and your mother is the only commandment with a promise. It says, honor your father and your mother so that you may have long life. Now, long life doesn't always mean years. It may mean quality, but I can tell you that I really believe that my dad died when he was 52, my granddad when he was 76, my brother just younger than I when he was 47, and my youngest brother when he was 70. Here I am, 89 years old. Now, I'm not saying anything except that I really believe that the blessings that God has allowed us to have as a family has been because we took good care of mother. That's what he told us to do. We have ten grandkids, nine great-grandkids. We have several grandkids that are staff members in churches. We have another who's teaching at OBU at Dallas Baptist. By the way, James is about to enter his Ph.D. work at Southwestern Seminary. He passed all that, so he'll start that. You can pray for him. Language is hard for him because he has dyslexia. Anything he can hear, he remembers. He's got a mind like a trap, but he can't get it sometimes from here to here, but he's done very well. He's teaching adjunctively at Dallas Baptist and recently applied for the Ph.D. program at Southwestern and was accepted pending a year of Greek and a year of Hebrew and a general understanding of German. He hates languages, but he is loving Greek. He is an apologist. He loves talking about apologetics and the doctrines of the Bible. He's so excited about Greek because it helps him in his apologetics. Now, Hebrews may not help him a lot. It didn't help me much, but Greek he loves. Between now and next fall, he will have had a year of Greek and a year of Hebrew, and then he'll start in his Ph.D. program. The point is our family, we don't fuss, we don't fight. We enjoy getting together. Carol Ann, one of the members of our church, used to cut her hair and said they had a family reunion every year and she called it their annual civil war. We just never have had that. Now, I'm not saying it's because of us, but I do believe that if we be obedient to what God said, He's going to bring blessings in our lives. God is not the great killjoy that's just trying to wait for us to mess up so He can zap us. He wants us to do things that will help us. Carol Ann and I both grew up in families that never heard mother and daddy fuss, never heard them yelling at each other or having any kind of conversation, and never had any squabbling going on between the kids. That's just the way we were raised, and we were grateful. And I thought everybody was like that. I was 12 years old before one of my friends' mother and dad divorced, and I was shocked. Of course, I was just 12, but I had never thought about anybody divorcing. It just wasn't part of our culture. Well, unfortunately, America has become a very difficult place for marriages to succeed because as a country, we have largely rejected God, and we still get goose pimples when the Star Spangled Banner is played, when the planes come flying over. But as far as being a nation that embraces God, our nation does not do that. And educational institutions, the colleges and universities across the country, it's rare to find one that really respects and honors God. That's the world we are living in, and that makes it harder on marriages as a whole. But Paul is talking to us here, just reminding us that we are a family, and we ought to act like it. We ought to act like it. We ought to be one like he and the Holy Spirit and Jesus were one. And so he starts talking. Here's Timothy, a young man. He's in charge of the church now. He's pastor of the church at Ephesus, and they're having all kinds of trouble with false teachers. And so it's interesting. He says, do not rebuke an older man. Now, why would he say that if it wasn't happening? You know, you typically are preaching to the choir. You talk about respecting people, this kind of thing, because as believers, we all know that. Certainly, Paul wanted to. Paul wanted Timothy, as a young man, to know how he ought to treat the whole church. So really, this fifth chapter is how does a leader treat all the ages in the church? It's kind of interesting. I get a lot of calls from pulpit committees, and one of the questions they always ask is, well, does he work well with young people and older adults? Well, unfortunately, he has to, and so he must. And so Paul just wants to make sure Timothy is not intimidated so that they don't. He talks to him, you know, don't let them ridicule you because you're a youngster. He wants to give him confidence, but he also wants Timothy to act with respect. America is not high on the respect list for older people, except politicians. And the reason politicians are respected is because they can set their own salaries and run their own campaigns and make a career out of what our founding fathers intended to be a part-time job. But, you know, we don't typically respect older people. Now, the Orientals, the Oriental countries, have great respect for the older. And he's really saying, look, we cannot, rebuke is a very strong word. It speaks of a severe accusation, a rude, rough, crass accusation against an older. Don't rebuke them, but exhort them. Now, exhort is a kinder word. Exhort is a word which means to encourage, to support, to bring the best out. Now, rebuke is the strong, it's like an attack dog. Go after them, get them. Exhort is a kind, gentle, helping someone heal, helping someone move forward. And so he says, you know, don't rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters with all purity. Now, that's the context of the family for the church, and how much we need that today. We're in the midst of incredible failure of the church in the sexual abuse things today. And, you know, you keep asking, is the LSU going to fall? You know, we have so many abuses in the church. He's warning against it. He said, treat the younger women as sisters with all purity. That would remove any possibility of being involved in sexual abuse at all. And so it's kind of, in that one verse, he is kind of, has wrapped up these first two verses, how we ought to act toward each other in church. There ought to be love and respect and honor and cooperation and support and everything, encouragement. That ought to all be a part of it. The Christian faith is the champion of the family, and the gospel is what brings us into the family of God. And we need to remember that, and if we're going to know God, we're going to know him as my father, as a father. To embrace the gospel is to view other believers as brothers and sisters. To understand the incarnation is to know Mary as the mother of Jesus. Scripture really unveils throughout the scripture the family in beautiful terms, in loving terms, a strong family. We see it throughout the Bible. There's the love of Jacob for Rachel, the forgiveness of Joseph for his brothers, the deathbed scene of Jacob as he blesses his sons and grandsons, the strong bond between Ruth and Naomi, the passionate grief of David for his rebellious son Absalom, the loving way in which Jesus asked John to take care of Mary when he was hanging on the cross. The Mosaic Code was strong in urging purity for the mother and sanctity for the home and blessedness for the family. And in that way, you preserve the wholeness and the success of society, and you help build a compassionate society. We meet all of these things in the context of the family, and that's where we are in Timothy. That's where we meet in our text today. We hear Paul's message to Timothy, the young man who is faced suddenly with the challenge of dealing with all the ages of the church. And Paul wanted to make sure that Timothy's youthfulness didn't cause him to deal with anybody with disrespect and have real confidence in dealing with every group and not have any intimidation from the older folks and certainly no immorality involved in the church at all. So he placed his counsel to Timothy in a family metaphor. Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, all proprietary of purity. Younger women as sisters with all propriety and unity. Then he instructs Timothy how to deal with widows. That's kind of where we come now. I know in this room we have many who are widows. Then he's also going to speak of parents. Again, the family and the care of parents. Paul actually advocated for younger widows to marry. He didn't say it was not a command, but he encouraged it because he knew that younger widows would find marriage perhaps an attractive thing. So he says, look, you marry, bring up children and manage your households and don't give Satan an opportunity to condemn believers. And speaking of the witness of the church, we ought not to live in any way that Satan can use as an excuse to attack us. All the widows were to demonstrate hospitality, maintain servant compassion for all. Talks about washing the feet of the saints. We don't do that regularly, but it describes someone who is compassionate and thoughtful and gracious and kind and serving spirit. That's what he expects widows to have. He names the members of the family and stipulates that the church is one family with Jesus Christ as the head. Now, the church is described in many ways in the New Testament. In these verses, the church is called the family of God. We're also called soldiers in the Lord's army. We're competitors in a race to obtain an incorruptible crown. We're members of the body of Christ. We're servants of God's household. We're branches connected to the vine. We're singers in the heavenly choir. We're living stones in God's temple. Born-again ones, a spiritual house, children of a father, heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We're intimately connected to each other as believers. And that's why to speak of a church that's dysfunctional is an oxymoron. It should not be that way. But it is in many churches. I've told you before, I preached over in Mahea two years ago since we retired and was greeted by a lady there who was getting the meal ready. And when the pastor came up and saw her walk away, he said, she virtually cussed me out in a business meeting last Wednesday night. Attacked me verbally. That is totally inexcusable. Totally inexcusable. You know, any group has certain rules. That's why we have Robert's Rules of Order. That's why conventions and church business meetings, ours happens to use, as does the Baptist Convention, Robert's Rules of Order, so that you can do business without getting in a fight. That's always inappropriate. And one of the rules of Robert's Rules of Order is that you cannot personally attack any individual. It's out of order if you do that. Now, it's a shame that it has to be something the Baptist Church is supposed to do, but unfortunately, it's needed. Because rather than being a godly family filled with love and compassion and encouraging integrity and honesty and wholeness for society and praying for our leaders and national leaders as well as church leaders and loving God and serving God, we'll not ever be divided. That's why, and I'm only going to say this once, so if you don't ask me to repeat it, I was not in favor of two services where you had a contemporary church and a traditional church. Because you don't need to give people a reason to be divided. Now, when I was here, we had three services on Sunday morning for over seven years, Sunday night, Wednesday night. The three services on Sunday morning were identical, but they were blended in music. You know, some great contemporary songs. I mean, who doesn't like singing Majesty? What a great, great song. I remember Big John Hall coming and singing about the Lord living, blessed be the name of the Lord. You know, that had to be Scripture, but those were contemporary songs. And we had a music director here years ago who would not sing hymns. I mean, he refused to sing hymns. And it got to be such an issue that, well, I won't go into that. But I told him one day, I said, you are too good a musician not to sing hymns. I said, I'm not a singer, but I could tell you how to do a blended service. He wouldn't do it. You know, you don't need to give people a reason to choose sides. And I've told you many times, if you don't like some music, and by the way, our music's great, and I don't know what the 11 o'clock music's like, but I'm sure it's good in its own way. Yes, I grew up walking to my home a block away from high school, junior high and high school, and at 12, 15, every day the Stamps Quartet came on KRLD. And so I spent my lunches eating my sandwiches at home and listening to the Stamps Quartet. So my favorite music is southern gospel music. Victory in Jesus was written in the town I was born in. And I didn't even know it was a song until I was a pastor in Kansas City. And this lady came along one day and said, we heard this song, we thought we ought to sing it here. And she showed me a copy of it, it's Victory in Jesus. And it's at Hartford, Arkansas, Hartford Music Company. So this was big way back in the first half of the century. They sold over 100,000 copies of music every year. And so that song originated there. Well, there's some good old hymns, but this music director wouldn't sing hymns. Well, I love what Bill Gaither said. He said, old hymns are good not because they're old, but because they're good. You know, we learned our theology through our songs. And in many contemporary songs, you don't learn much theology. Many of the contemporary songs are wonderful songs, but you could sing them at a Muslim mosque and it would fit. Because they never mention Jesus. You know, it's very general. But the songs, you know, older songs are not bad. And newer songs are not good because they're new. They've got to be good if they're going to be good. But, you know, chaos. Paul's really dealing with how do you keep harmony and unity. Remember, I've told you several times as we've gone through these epistles that he has great emphasis upon unity in the church. Now, why would he do that? Well, the very simple answer is that no church is going to do very much if it spends all the time arguing with each other. If the church is not passionate about its purpose, then it's not going to be an effective witness of the Lord. And if it is, if the church is strong, it's going to do things they might not want to do, but they'll do it and not complain about it. When I was pastor in Oklahoma, it was the heyday of the youth musicals. Natural High was one. I can see them now. Celebrate Life was another. We had a marvelous group of adults in Del City. There were probably 100, 150 senior adults that came every Sunday. The average age of the church, when I went there, according to the chairman of the personnel committee, who was the department chairman of the Aerospace Science and Mathematics Department at the University of Oklahoma, took all of the ages of our church members and fed them into the computer, and the average age of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Oklahoma in 1973 was 23. Now, imagine being a senior adult in a church whose average age is 23. And the music was wonderful, but edgy. Drums and trombones and trumpets. Carol Ann and I went to a banquet. We had a group, a music singing group up here called The Revolution, and they were good. Our music minister had been very active in the center of music before he got saved, and he demanded perfection and always did wonderful stuff. But we went with The Revolution to a youth banquet over across town at a church, and walked into that banquet, and our revolution was singing, made my hair stand up on the back of my neck. I'd never heard music like that in church. I mean, it was strong. But you know, in the four years we were at Del City, I never had one senior adult complain about the music. Not one. Oh, and that's the tail end of the hippies. I'd preach many sermons on Sunday. Our church welcomed the history. Many churches were talking about long hair and short skirts, and I'd tell the pastors, look, you're asking them to dress like Christians before they get saved. You need to get the gospel to them. I preached a lot of sermons at Del City with them sitting on the floor on the altar, barefooted, cut off blue jeans, hippies. And we took one couple home. Did she have a baby before we took her? She came pregnant. We took her home, and while we had her in our house, she had her baby. But that was just the way the church was. The point is, we are connected to each other, and we ought to look for ways to strengthen that connection and not tear it down. Are we going to agree on everything? No. Absolutely not. You couldn't be married if you had to agree on everything to be married. I mean, you just couldn't do it. But God intends for the church to be different. And the thing I love about this, I've made the statement several times over this period we're talking about our 120 years, I think the church is healthier today than I've ever seen it. It's never been bad, not in my experience. But it's a healthy church. We don't have factions meeting trying to get rid of the youth minister or the music minister, the pastor. We're a happy church, and we ought to be because we're believers and we're committed to the Lord and we're part of His family and we ought to act like it. And so unity doesn't mean agreement on everything. It's the spirit of compassion and encouragement that allows us to work with others. Do you know, I've told you this before probably, the number one name of the liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention was a man I've known since I was 13 years old. We disagreed on just about everything. I mean, literally. I can't think of anything we agreed on theologically. He believed there were two gods. One God of the Old Testament and one of the New Testament. Two plans of salvation. One in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament. And so, in fact, he was pastor of Broadway Baptist Church. I don't think I've told you this, but it's kind of funny. When I was here and president of the convention, Jim Jones was the religion editor of Star Telegram. Jim and I got to be really good friends. And he called. We discussed things a lot. Well, he called me one day and we were talking something about the pastor of Broadway. And some came up about evangelism and I said, they don't ever win anybody. I said, they don't even have a barracuda in the baptistry. And I said, now Jim, you can't use that. He said, too late. So when Cecil read it, his comment to me was, well, he's all right. Anyway. But we swapped handwritten letters until he died. Did we agree on anything? No. Were we friends? Yes. And we ought to be those that create unity and harmony. And by the way, if you ever run into one of these pastors who's been forced to resign because of whatever. There's several around the Metroplex. Be nice to them. Pray for them. Nobody's more disappointed in what happened than they are. How do you restore? That's why Galatians doesn't just say, if one of you stumbles, restore him. It's like we recognize when people stumble but we don't do much restoring. We're a family that ought to restore. We shoot our own wounded. Church ought never to be like that. I know I'm chasing a rabbit here. The focus of this chapter is that we are a family. Paul's instructing Timothy how to lead with integrity and with confidence and how to treat people of all ages. And we need to move on and get to the witness. The older women ought to be treated with love and respect as we would treat our mothers. Young women as sisters should be loved, respected, guarded, protected from lust. Paul's training Timothy to be a wise leader in a church that has all kinds of people in it. And by the way, every church does. Every church is going to have Democrats and Republicans. Every church is going to have people that like the organ instead of the piano or the keyboard. Every church has people that like some music more than it likes others. We're all different. We're not clones. He's not saying everybody ought to be the same. He just said you ought to act like family. You are intricately, intimately related to each other's family, so treat each other that way. And the church of the living God is definitely a family. Paul referred to Timothy in the first chapter as my true son in the faith. Every family was intended by God to be a genuine expression of love and patience and kindness and graciousness and harmony and respect and vibrant truth. And though every church may not express that ideal, it should be a place where love abounds, where grace flows freely and kindness is practiced and strife is never allowed. Paul identified several qualities here in his fifth chapter for widows that are truly widows indeed. He says support widows, verse 3 there, who are genuinely in need. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them learn to practice godliness toward their own family, verse 2, and to repair their parents for this pleases God. The widow who is truly in need and left alone has put her hope in God and continues night and day in her petitions and prayers. And that's a description of how a godly widow ought to live like that, that kind of spiritual person. But she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. So he said don't behave like those false teachers' wives behave. You behave like someone who belongs to me and don't drift into self-indulgence and demanding things that are sensual and not things that are godly. So she ought to maintain her faith. She ought to demonstrate her faith. And he goes on to talk about that she has to be 60 years of age according to verse 9 and have been the wife of one husband and well-known for good works. She's brought up children and shown hospitality, washed the saints' feet, helped the afflicted and devoted herself to every good work. That's a description of the widows that the church ought to take care of. She's left alone. Her husband is gone. She has no support from family. She needs the help and maintains a godly example and witness and she's a compassionate, truly warmly spiritual person. And the church ought to take care of her. But the church doesn't have to take care of every widow if she has family. So again, the intricate relationship. The family has a relationship and the family of the widow has a responsibility. And if that fails, then the church ought to step in and help. One of the best things that our deacons do is minister to the widows. And if you're a widow and don't have a deacon that's assigned in his life to help you, you talk to my son Randy. He's going to be chairman of the deacons here in January. He's going to work real hard for that. And the church ought to help. I can't imagine what my life would be like without Carol Ann. But I can't really imagine what her life would be if I wasn't around to take care of her, provide for her. So when that is gone, when a widow is truly left alone, family doesn't step in. The church has a real responsibility to take care of the widow. But the widow has a responsibility to maintain a godly deportment and conduct, be an encourager and a compassionate person. And if a widow becomes self-indulgent, this word that Paul uses, then you don't have a responsibility. You don't have any rule that says you ought to take care of her. But as long as she stays by the faith, when her husband is gone, the love and trust that she placed in her husband ought to be placed now in the Lord. He's promised to be the husband to the widower. And he will be that. But these things that are laid down here very clearly stated that the church has a real responsibility provided the widow is truly in need and left alone. They've lost everything. They have no livelihood. No family to care for them. And they practice the Christian disciplines and they still are someone who needs great, great help. In verse 4, Paul reminds children and grandchildren their responsibility to take care of aging parents and grandparents. And I've already made a note to just say a good word about having a mother in the family, but I've already done that. We just need to remember that the first of the Ten Commandments had a promise to it. Honor your father and your mother. And we're promised lifelong blessings if we do that. Our parents brought us into the world. God tells us to honor them. When Randy and his wife had their first child, Kyle, every day for at least a month, Randy would call Carol Ann every day. Mom, thank you. I had no idea I was so helpless when I was born. Just want you to know that I'm grateful that you took care of me when I couldn't take care of myself. You know, only a woman can know the experience of the dangers and the joys of childbirth. And consequently, you'll never see a football player or basketball player say, Hi, Dad. When he's on the screen, he always says, Hi, Mom. Well, there's a tie there that is very, very difficult to change. So, now, I've wandered around all over the lot and haven't gotten very far. We're just going to have to quit here. But you can read very carefully these verses. It's not long. I was trying to make it. Let me just look here and see where to... We'll pick up with verse 6 next Sunday. And hopefully we can go to the end of the chapter maybe at that time. But again, the overlying truth is that we are intimately connected to each other. Never an excuse to treat each other with anger or discourtesy, slander, this kind of thing. We ought to have a unity of heart and a unity of spirit. And that's His design for the church. In this chapter, Paul zeroes in on the church as His family. We're described as, as I said a while ago, in many ways, in other ways, but we are definitely a family. So, we'll start with verse 6. It won't take us long because we're not going to go in detail in all of these things that the witness is supposed to do and the church is supposed to do. He's pretty well already given the principles involved. But we'll start there next Sunday and we've got seven minutes for you to get to church if you haven't been to church yet. But, if you would come to the early service, Carol Ann always taught in the second Sunday school because she didn't want to have to stop at 12 o'clock. So, she wanted to not have a time limit on her Sunday school lessons. So, we thank you for allowing Brother Jack and me to have the privilege of serving with you Brother Jack, it's my honor and privilege to serve with you here. It's been great. I'm grateful to you. Let's pray. Father, thank You for the day You've given us. It's beautiful. We love You. We love the day You've provided and we rejoice in this day. Thank You for this time. Thank You for Brother Jack and Barbara. Pray You'll bless her with continued healing. And bless our class as we continue to realize the depth of the ties that bind our hearts together in Jesus Christ. In His name. Amen.