First Timothy Lesson 25 Finish

Okay, you guys, I sent out 26, everybody get it? You'll notice if you're alert that 25, the last couple of questions are kind of repeated in 26, because we ended up last time right at question nine out of 25. And I ask the same question, kind of the same way. So the first thing, let's do this. Somebody read 1 Timothy chapter five and verses five through eight.

Now she who is actually a widow and has been left alone has set her hope on God, and she continues in requests and prayers night and day. But she who indulges herself in luxury is dead, even while she lives. Give these instructions as well, so that they may be above reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."

Pretty strong words. In verse five, I sort of modified the question. Let's do question one in lesson 26. The word now in verse five is a contrast between verse four and five. Show and explain the contrast. So I asked it in the last one, what does the word now tell us in the context? So, It points a contrast between the widow in verse four, who has relatives to take care of her, and the widow in verse five, who does not have someone to take care of her.

So, did the thought ever grab you that, well, what about a guy who doesn't have anybody to take care of him? What should we do about him? I'm going downtown. That's the only answer today, right Mark? There's an assumption that a man can pretty much take care of himself going forward. You know, you can do something. Where a woman, once she's sort of, I would use the word abandoned, or just left alone, She just doesn't have anything, unless someone comes along to support her. So God expects us guys to keep moving right to the end.

But I think there's a principle there, right? Like we have with Tom, you know, there's circumstances around him where he's been abandoned and he's incapacitated, not to his own doing, just circumstances of life. Yeah, do you guys all agree with what we're doing with Tom? Are we doing the right thing? What do you think? I think we are. I think we are. Yeah.

What's interesting is that what follows here now, moral attributes of such a widow, then as then as commending her to the charity of the church. One of the things we didn't, well, we didn't mention this. If you're a widow in 60 AD with no, I mean, the qualifications to have the church help you are stringent. You can't mooch off the church. But at the same time as pointing out that, one who accordingly shows her hopes and spends her time is best deserving of church help. So how should she spend her time according to Timothy?

Notice that it says, In question 10, I ask, explain fixed her hopes, fixed her hopes. It's a perfect tense to hope. This speaks of the past completed process having present results, sometimes permanent ones. So you would recognize within your body of believers a woman who was, we would call her a godly woman. And we would know from reputation that she, you know, isn't a freeloader. She has been active in the body of Christ that she's involved with and really will do to her capability anything she's asked to do. And she just is a godly woman.

Make sense? Yeah, I think so. So, especially with the grammar being the perfect tense. I wrote down, it speaks here of a widow who has a habit of life set her hope on God with the result that the hope has become permanently fixed as a settled and immovable trust. One could translate, has directed her hope at God and her hope settled permanently on God. I would say, It may take a lifetime for anybody to be that hopeful.

You understand what I'm saying? I mean, we're constantly in circumstances where we don't even go to the Lord about certain things, because our mind tells us, we got this, we got it, no problem. But there is a real value, not only by, widows, but by all believers, to really have a hope in the Lord. And the hope isn't necessarily, well, I'm finally going to get out of here and I'm going to get away from all the sufferings. The hope is based on what is coming. The most exciting thing and a hope that I can see is that there's coming a day where every one of us individually will be face to face with the Lord Jesus. Wow. That's really something. And there isn't anything that can deter that or keep that from happening.

You can be a Christian with a rotten reputation. You're just going to be there. I said to a guy one time who attempted suicide, I said, so if you were to die in a suicide attempt, he was a Christian, and you found yourself face to face with the Lord, what would he say to you? And I said, nice going, kind of messed that up. He's gonna say, welcome home, my good and faithful servant. I've prepared a place for you. your actions can't change the Lord's attitude about you.

And that's what fosters and builds a hope that everything the Lord has said in his word is absolutely true and you can't mess it up. Now, you might mess it up for your own comfort or your own mental stability, but from a biblical standpoint, you can't change it. a contemporary song today that I like. It says, on my best day, I'm a child of God. On my worst day, I'm a child of God. And you can't screw it up. You're still in his eyes. He sees you through Christ, so it doesn't matter. Whatever you do, you can't change that position. You can't. Boy, you talk about having hope.

That's really, that's where it is. And so here are these widows. And they're functioning and living that way. And so it's easy decision for a body of believers that they belong to, to assist them however they can. Because you already know what they're about. They don't have to clean up their act if they need something.

Well, the other thing I was thinking about, I think I ended last class with the crass statement of, what if you made two out of the three of these things, you know? Sure. Being hope in God and then in two of these prayers and that. If you made two out of three, are you still a widow indeed? Yeah.

And I think my crass statement of that is, I think the more important thing is what we're saying, have a hope in God. That she's demonstrated that she's a godly woman. that it's really, I think, the criteria is trying to avoid the scammers, so to speak. And if she's known to have a hope in God and been a godly woman, whether she prays without ceasing or the other criteria, I think that's a widowing deed. And that's, I guess, the bigger picture is, is she a godly woman? And I think it's true of every believer. Because the great thing about these verses, typical of Paul, he's going to show you the other side of the nickel.

Verse 6 he says, but she who gives herself to wanton pleasure in parentheses, lives luxuriously, is dead even while she lives. What a statement. So the word, so they explain the phrase, gives herself to wanton pleasures. And so it means to live in pleasure, to live luxuriously, to lead a voluptuous life according to Thayer.

So number one, she doesn't need any help, probably. Or maybe she wants help to continue to live this life that she's living. One of the expositors said, the best word to describe this is that she's pretty fast. She's really fast. From the greeky geeky part, it's present active. She's continually doing it. And she's doing it. She's directly doing it and responsible for it. You don't like to have to admit it, but we know believers that are like this, you know? Fast and loose. I have my fire insurance paid up, so here we go. Notice how it contrasts. She gives herself to pleasure. She does it.

All them... What's that? Like all them elderly people that go up to Black Hawk. Well, yeah, there you go. I see that a lot. There you go. Yeah. I mean, you think about it. Those casinos live off of those people. Right. I have a close friend that he and his wife go up there at least once a month. Only he brags about it, he always wins. So I said to him, I said, so that's the Bible calls that wanton pleasure. He says, what else am I going to do? I'm tired of playing golf. Give yourself over.

The American dream, that's the plum, is that if you work hard, really hard, and save your money, By the time you get to be whatever retirement age is, you'll have plenty of money to do whatever you want, right? Isn't that the American dream? The question is, well, what do you want to do? What do you want to do when you get there?

And if you're like the widow described here, your value system over years changes to servitude. You want to serve. there's nothing more pleasurable than to serve the Lord, rather than serve yourself. So, well, the dead giveaway in society is every ad that says, you deserve this. Don't you love that? The ad comes on. You deserve this, whatever it is. I mean, if I deserved everything that was advertised on TV, I would be dead broke. Well, I remember old billboards with, they're selling Calvert, and they show this luxurious house, and this lady with her glass, And that's supposed to be the dream.

Or you see the ad for the adult retirement community, like in Arizona, where everybody just loves each other. Everybody's happy. We're always having people over. We're going to the club and playing pickleball, and you know, it's like really... You're describing all my neighbors. You know, or the other side is that... You know, I get to go fishing, or whatever your deal is. My son, I get to go razoring. I'd rather fight than sweep. That was the old cherry tree. So let's contrast that false dream.

What are the consequences of a widow living this way? In other words, in wanton pleasure, what's the verse say? Even though she's living, she's dead. I mean, could you say it any worse than that? No. How else could you say that? She hasn't found the pleasures in Christ.

Yeah. You know, I think somewhat, and this is, I think of, I think with pro athletes and stuff, they have everything. A lot of times they've been coddled since they started high school or even before. They've been coddled through college, through pros, and usually it's one of two things. They either find the Lord, because they've gotten to the peak, and then there's nothing more.

They're not satisfied. And they either, you know, or they go into, you know, wanton pleasure and either drugs or crazy life or just it's empty. And it's kind of like the widow who is wanting pleasure is in that condition. There's no satisfaction? There's no. And they try to satisfy it with something else. Kind of like Mick Jagger. I can't give no satisfaction.

If you were to translate the Greek here, you would say, living, comma, having died, comma, with the present results that she's dead. So dead means separation. What is she separated from? Obviously she's separated from the enjoyment of what her faith would bring her and her body of believers would bring her fulfillment.

So, Here I am as an elderly person. I'm going to gauge on a scale how much one pleasure can I enjoy without really affecting my death to the Lord. It's kind of like going down a road like this. Is it an all-in or all-out circumstance? There's no middle ground. You can't walk the fence. You're right. And that's, I think, the point. Because Paul contrasts this so graphically, there is no yellow line.

I think that's shown in John 3.18 or 19.

Yeah, it's really interesting how Christians think that way. If you grew up a Catholic like me, in about the 8th grade, 7th grade, they start talking to you about moral things and what's a sin and what isn't. And the Catholic boys' mindset, we're all in the same class, all thought the same thing at the same time. How far can I go before it's a sin? That's how the mind thinks. How much wanton pleasure can I have in my life before it's sinful? You know, can I, you know, it's like my buddy who played golf, you know, the young life guy. He said to me one day, golf is my thing. And I said, I thought the Lord Jesus was your thing.

It's such a stark contrast here that Paul makes that you're either in or out. So just curious, is this talking about a Christian who is seeking wanton pleasure, or is this just a non-believer is dead? Or what do you think he's talking about here? Is it a believing widow? Well, it's interesting. The English says, but she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives. So the context would say she's a believer. That's what I think. I think the contrast of dead and alive, that she's basically dead or separated from the Lord. Yeah, that's the thing. That she's separated to the fellowship, and even though she's alive, her fellowship with the Lord is dead or separated. Yeah, it sounds like Or Corinth or any of those places. Left their first lab.

Did you guys read that article about the guy that was killed in the MRI machine? Now think about this. I don't know who this guy was but he had a lot of glam going. And he walks into a room where the MRI machine was on and the magnet grabbed a hold of that thing and sucked him into the machine and killed him. Where was this? Yeah. Is it a Florida man? But I'm thinking, you know, I got all the glam in the world and I happen to run into an MRI machine. What caused that? What was going on? He had metal. Metal? And an MRI, the first word is magnet. It just sucked him right into the machine and strangled him. That's a rough way to die. You talk about being dead.

So anyway, I think it is a believer. I think so. The structure of the sentence sounds like it's a believer, even though she's alive, she's dead. She's a Christian, alive, this is what you said, no matter what you do, you're still positionally, but she's dead.

She doesn't have the fellowship with the Lord through her desire for want and pleasure. Let's say, I'll give you a hypothetical, let's say that as a believer, use this woman, you really You know, maybe your husband was wealthy, and when you went home to be with the Lord, you've got all of this stuff, and you're really enjoying it. But you know, I shouldn't be enjoying it as much as I am. I need to change, but I can't.

Is that person stuck in the wanton pleasure and can't get out of it? I think it may go back to what we've talked about before, what masters you. There you go. If she's not, I mean, if you can't lose it and still be the same, you're being mastered by whatever that is that you have. So I wake up in the morning and I realize, you know what? I'm mastered by all of this.

I don't want to be mastered anymore, or how do I get free? So is that everything in moderation? No. That's where the world would come to. That's right, moderation is okay. It's nothing against wealth, it's just if you lost it tomorrow, are you still okay? Well, what I'm pointing to is this, that if I know that this kind of living really does control me, begin to realize, boy, I'm really missing it, the things that the Lord has. I need to put this off out of my life. And I really try, and I'm not able to do it. Am I stuck there?

Can I get free? And the answer is, yeah, you can. But you can't free yourself. Right. There's a lot of understanding that has to go there. But that's the point. You just go to the Lord, I think, and you say, look, this thing controls me. I don't know how to get rid of it. But I have to trust you to free me. And he will. Romans 7. Yeah. There you go. He will. And it isn't that, oh, I recognize that it controls me and now I've got to double my effort to get free. No, that's That's not grace, okay? Hey, Mike? Yeah.

Yeah, quick thought, just from some of the stuff we've been talking about with suffering recently. You know, even when you have those luxurious things in the scenario that you're talking about, it is a mentality of suffering when you have to give something up. And if you're thinking about you giving it up, Well, that's an old man's perspective of trying to do something in order to please God, so to speak. So, suffering has a purpose, even when it means giving up the things that may be very good from a worldly perspective, or even from just a living scenario, situation. But we add that, and Miles talked about the fact that to suffer in the flesh, is better than to yield to the flesh.

And that means that anytime you are going through suffering, you are going through the identification truth of death at a minimum. You're being set apart to the new nature, which wants something different. It wants to embrace and love the Lord Jesus. It doesn't want to pleasure itself. And so, death is the first place a person goes, the co-crucifixion of Christ, because suffering can be meaning, you know, things that I have, I have to give up. It doesn't always mean that they're taken away from me. It means that I have to walk away, but I can't do the walking away. Does that make sense? No, that's really good.

I was gonna use the metaphor of the tree in our backyard. We have, yeah, what tree? We had the 45 foot locust tree, right? And we had a microburst in my yard and the tree went bang. Half of it went this way and the other half went that way. So it's gone, right? I mean, there it is laying on the ground. And I had two thoughts, well, Lord, okay, whatever's next, you know? And then, you know, I just happened to have $3,500 to have nine Mexican guys saw it up and take it away. Just, you know, yeah, no problem, here you go. And so, by the time that day was over, I'm thinking, That was weird.

I didn't lust after the tree. I do miss the shade. It didn't hurt any of the neighbors. It didn't hurt our house. It didn't break hardly anything except one of the side of Donna's tomato planter. Now that's a real tragedy. So that baby just boom. And every tree around. survived.

My neighbor has two silver maples that are another 20 feet higher than that and they withstood it. Mine had a V trunk and this part went down and about 20 seconds later this part went down. I had a guy that sort of takes care of my trees come by and look at it. He said, When you have a V tree like that, he said, water gets in there and it drips down and it makes the wood right under there weak, and that's why it's split like that. I love my tree. I go outside and I think, boy, it's naked out here. My long branch that I had loved my shade under this, and after repeated In conversations with all of my family, I had to give up the long branch because it had a crack in it too. Oh, dangerous. Who was that that sat under... Jonah? Yeah, Jonah. The biblical one. I had a swing on one of the branches, you know, and I think every kid that ever came to our house was swing on that thing.

Well, that's no more. Anyway, so there's a thousand and one things in your life that are worldly that it isn't that you can't have them. or be the custodian of them. But nothing belongs to you, it all belongs to the Lord. Everything, including reaching your pocket, you got any of that paper, soft folding money, that belongs to Him too. And whatever He wants to do with it, okay.

So prescribe seven, prescribe these things That's nonsense. Prescribe these things as well, so that they may be above reproach. Verse seven, is it proper for the church to demand integrity from its members? How does yours read? I read verse seven. Yeah, how does it read again?

Mine says prescribe these things as well, so that they may be above reproach. What does yours say? Do you have a different one? Mine says, and these things give in charge that they may be blameless. Mine says, these things also command that they may be without repose. So it's a command? Prescribe these things. Prescribe, yeah. Let's see if I've got it here. The New King James says, and these things command that they may be blameless. What I read was the New American Standard. The thing that hit me about this verse is, can a church, or should a church, demand integrity from its members?

Well, this is specific to widows, not all members, right? So are you asking the broader question of... Yeah, a broader question. In other words, can Holly Hill's Bible Church demand integrity from every one of its members? No. Really? Well, you can command it all you want, but the person has to learn order and submissiveness. I'm asking the question from the church's viewpoint. Can they prescribe, can they have principles in place that for its members to function blamelessly. I think they can. And the reason I say that is because if you look at everything that God has put into place, starting with Genesis, order is his thing. And chain of command is his thing. Everything is with the Lord is orderly. So why would the church be any different?

Well, it's also, I think, in keeping with what we've just gone through, before, what are the qualifications for an elder? There you go. What are the qualifications for a deacon? I mean, these are our set things, to give order and structure and strength to the body. So yeah, as you said, God is a God of order. Yeah. the Holy Spirit's involved there too.

How do you mean that? Well, there's got to be... the person has to learn... Well, we're not talking about the person. We're talking about should the church be able to do that? I think absolutely they should. It's a church discipline process as well, right? You bring it up with your brethren, and you bring it up with your brethren.

Sure. As a matter of fact, in my sermon here in a little bit, the first thing I'm going to talk about is the word admonish again. I really like that word and kind of what it means. And it isn't criticism. It's not talking down to anybody. It's really a great word.

And I think it's something that every body of believers ought to have the freedom to admonish one another, because it keeps us all moving in the right direction. And it isn't an aggressive word, but I'm gonna show you a bunch of verses where Paul uses that word. And a lot of it is based on the fact of what God's word says in terms of reminding us all the time about, well, here's what God's word says. And his word and his spirit controls, but the church has standards, you know? And I'm not talking about you have to be baptized or anything like that. I'm talking about conduct. It's very subtle, though, because there can be judgmentalism. Absolutely. Sure is.

Can I just read Galatians 6? It just says, Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently, but watch yourself or you also might be tempted. There you go. And then down below, each one should test his own actions and he can take pride in himself without comparing himself to somebody else.

That's really good. And the thing is too, I mean, elders or shepherds should know each, you know, know the flock well enough to know what's going on with everybody. So I think just... That's right. The ultimate goal is holiness. Yeah. Well, conformity to Christ. That's really the goal, isn't it? Holiness.

I think, you know, when I think of admonishment, I think it's kind of the definition to me is corrective exhortation. Yeah, or in your face. Well, no, it's not... No, no, I don't mean it that way. I think it's corrective exhortation. It is. It is. That's what it is. It's exhortation, but it's corrective.

I think it's you're admonishing them to do this or whatever. So it's, like I said, I'm just saying corrective in that you should be doing this. and you will be, fellowship will be restored, whatever, you're admonishing them, you're exhorting them, but with a point to correct or to change or to point out something. I think...

Yeah, I think if everybody in this room had freedom to admonish one another, what we're really doing is helping each other down the road. That's really what we're doing. And we're not looking around waiting for somebody to make a mistake so we can jump them. We love each other and we want all of us to grow in Christ so you can enjoy what the grace he has provided for us.

Well, that's the attitude, too. It's done in love, like you said. It's not done out of ticky-tacky. It's in love. Like I said, the exhortation, you're exhorting them. You're encouraging them. Yeah. And a lot of it has to do with, like Peter talks a lot about, let me remind you, let me remind you. I mean, to the point where, okay, I've had enough of reminding. Got it. Let's close.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the freedom for discussion, and we thank you for how incredibly under grace organized your body of believers are, and that it's a life given us in Christ that is overflowing with grace, and love. We thank you. We pray in your son's name. Amen.