Our sermon this morning is going to be taken from 1 Timothy and chapter 5 as we do continue on in Paul's letter to his servant and his spiritual son in the faith, Timothy. As I've been noting, Paul himself was busy with work in the churches in Macedonia, and there was only one Paul, and he could only be in one place at one time. He was not omnipresent like God, and so he needed helpers. And God, in His grace, raised up helpers like Timothy and Titus, who could help to do the work not only of planting churches, but of strengthening the churches that were planted. One of the problems that has church planting is a man comes in, and the man himself is Orthodox, and he plants an Orthodox church, but then he goes on, he moves, and in his wake, people who are not Orthodox, people who are not teaching the truth, people who are teaching falsehoods, come in behind him and begin to confuse those new converts and to twist the teachings of the church A church planter I spoke with who worked with MTW in Russia said one of the biggest problems that they had to deal with on a regular basis, they would begin the work of planting churches in various communities and then the Jehovah's Witnesses would come in and immediately trying to pick up these believers and twist their faith and get them to believe heresies. Well, the same thing happened in the Apostolic Age. False teachers came in, people who were teaching Greek philosophy, people who were teaching Jewish myths, and so on, would come in and they would confuse the brethren. And so Paul had sent Timothy out to do a very difficult work to correct all of this falsehood, to get the church back on the right footing, to take worship that had become disordered, all sorts of wrong things were happening, and to get it back on that track, flowing in that Christward direction. that all worship should flow in. And so, this is an extended letter on not only how to organize a church, but how to reorganize a church that's gone off the rails. And so, we should be listening because everything in this book is still so very relevant to us, and will be until the day Christ returns. But anyway, let's ask the Lord to prepare our hearts before we come into the presence of God and hear His Word. Sovereign Lord, Whenever your word is preached, spiritual warfare has commenced. The devil is at our elbow. He's constantly filling our minds with distractions, pointing us in other directions, telling us that other things are more important, causing us to sit in judgment of your word instead of to let it do its work in us. But I pray you would thwart him today. Lord, drive him away. Help me, O Lord, a sinful man with feet of clay, a man who could never hope to open up and exposit Your Word except through Your grace. Lord, help me to explain this Word to Your people. Help me to do so gently and winsomely. Let the offense, if there is offense, be in the Gospel itself and not in anything I say. But may it be, Lord, that as we hear this Word, we rejoice. We rejoice at the goodness of it, and the reasonableness of it, and the rightness of it. May we see Your Word as that great corrective to all problems that have arisen because we haven't been listening to You. And may we, O Lord, change our lives as we see them out of conformity with Your Word. Now, Lord, be with us. Help us to understand this morning and do, O Lord, thwart the devil as he seeks to grab up and get rid of the Word of God as it's falling. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verses 1 and 2. I remind you, this is the Word of the Lord. Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger as sisters, with all purity. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever." Sometimes we forget about this, but there are cultures in the world where honor and respect are still very important. I remember a while back getting an invitation to go to lunch with two Korean pastors. One was an older senior pastor, the other was a younger assistant pastor. They asked me if I liked Korean food, and I said, oh yeah, absolutely. And so they said, okay, we'll take you to our favorite restaurant. It's owned by members of our congregation. And when we arrived there, the lady at the door was incredibly deferential. She immediately bowed to both of the pastors, and then as the meal progressed, the waitstaff expressed the same kind of honor and respect. As we were leaving, after we'd had a wonderful lunch, the kitchen staff actually came out, and they lined up, and they also bowed to the pastors and thanked them for coming. And when they found out that I was a pastor, I got a share of that deference as well that I wouldn't have had otherwise. But the primary person being honored of all of us was the oldest pastor in the group. And I said, as we were walking out, I said, clearly I was born into the wrong culture. You know, this is clearly the culture to be a pastor in. Because in Korean culture to this day, the idea of showing honor to your elders and treating them with respect, and especially to respect the clergy, is still very important. But as I was driving away, it occurred to me, I was either born into the wrong culture or I was born into the right culture, but the wrong time. Because there was a time, obviously, in Britain and in America where there was a similar respect that was shown to clergy and was shown to older people. They were treated with a much greater degree of respect. For instance, it would have shocked And I mean that sincerely. It would have shocked somebody in the 19th century to hear a child address an adult by their first name. That would have been craziness to them. Or to not stand up when an adult came into the room. For a child to do that would have been considered an act of amazing disrespect. Now, where did that come from, that, you know, standing up when an adult enters into the room, calling them not by their first name, but by their last name, or addressing them as sir? Is that just fuddy-duddy tradition that grew up in this culture by itself? Well, the answer to that is no. In the case of Western culture, a lot of that respect that was given to elders is actually biblically based. For instance, Leviticus 19.32 tells us, you shall rise before the gray-headed and honor the presence of an old man and fear your God. I am the Lord. The Bible tells us, stand when you come into the presence of someone or somebody who is older comes into your presence. Make sure that you're standing. Why should you stand when an elder comes into the room? Well, it's not just out of respect for them, but out of respect, most importantly, for God and His commandments, because it is His will that we do so. We show our respect for God's authority by respecting the elderly. And that obviously comes out in these verses from Paul to Timothy as well. You see, Paul was very aware that he had sent a younger man, someone only in his 30s, to do the work of reforming congregations in Ephesus that in many cases would have been headed by men in their 40s and their 50s and their 60s and possibly even their 70s. And that doing so would necessarily involve confronting teachers who were teaching superstition and false doctrine, and women who were playing inappropriate roles in the church and its work, and people who were living lives out of keeping with the Word of God, who were older than Timothy. If Timothy had simply gone to Ephesus and he had waded into that situation like a cage-staged Calvinist on the internet today and started correcting everyone in the church using arrogant and intemperate language, calling them buffoons and so on, It wouldn't matter if he was right, ultimately, in what he was saying. They would be offended, and they would naturally rebel against his admonitions. I don't know if that's ever happened to you. You've been in an argument, and at some point you've realized that the person is right, but they are just so offensive that you would rather remain wrong than agree with them at that point in time. And that could certainly happen in this situation. It's bound to happen whenever you're correcting somebody that there's going to be an offense slipping in. Calvin put it this way, correction is a medicine which always has some bitterness and consequently is disagreeable. And so to add a little Mary Poppins to our Calvinism, a spoonful of sugar does wonders in helping that medicine of correction to go down. So Paul says to Timothy, you must always treat members told of God in Ephesus as though they were members of your own family. So when you're correcting older men, don't rebuke them, Timothy, in harshness. And the Greek word that he uses there for rebuke is actually epipleiso, meaning to strike them sharply or verbally. Don't verbally beat them up, Timothy. Had he done that, what would have happened? They would have despised him. But Paul had said earlier on in this letter, he'd said, let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in the world, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. How was he going to be that example? Well, he's going to be an example in the way that he treated them, the way that he spoke to them, the way that he conducted himself as though he were in the midst of his own family, honoring them that way. So instead, Paul essentially tells Timothy, when you correct them, correct those older men like you would your own father. Do so with great deference. Parakaleo them. This is a word that would be used for an entreaty. When you went in to speak to a king and to beg him for something, you would not come into the presence of the king saying, hey, king, here's what I want, OK? Rather, you would come into the presence of the king saying, Oh, dear king, I do beseech thee, please have mercy upon your humble servant and grant my petition at this point in time, for I am without power and of myself and you are great and mighty and able to relieve me from my...that kind of thing. He's saying, when you offer up your entreaty, do so humbly, do so reverently, entreat them, beseech them. And don't think that just because somebody is younger than you as well, Timothy, that you can beat them up verbally. Yes, you're older. But you know how you should treat them? Treat them like brothers. Show them Philadelphia. I don't mean take them to the city. When I say show them Philadelphia, it's the origin of that Greek word. It means, what does Philadelphia mean? Brotherly love. That's why Philadelphia is supposed to be the city of brotherly love. but show them Philadelphia. Be loving to them as you would love your own brother, Timothy. That's how you should speak to the younger men. Similarly, he says to him, Timothy, don't have the poor opinion of women that so many of the pagans did. Instead, Treat the older women as you would your own mother. And then the younger women, how should you treat them? Treat them as sisters. Younger women in pagan society, well, they were nobody. In many different cultures at this time, they weren't educated. speak to men in many cases. You remember when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman, she said he's talking to her. She's amazed on two levels. First, he's a Jew speaking to a Samaritan, somebody who was unclean. And second, he's a man talking to a woman. A Jewish man talking to a Samaritan woman would have been unheard of. But then he takes it to another level as a third amazement, and that's the fact that here we have a rabbi speaking to a woman, which also would not have happened. But within the Christian community, of course it did. There was instruction, there was teaching, there was that desire to treat women with respect and honor and dignity, and He's told to do so. But when He speaks to these younger women, He talks about how important it is to speak to them with all purity. Don't buddy-buddy with them like you would your brothers, in the case of your sisters. He's not to treat them so familiarly that he doesn't maintain a level of purity in the way that he speaks to them. Because if he was to be too familiar with them, if he was to not exercise restraint, it might easily lead to compromising situations within the ministry. Because Paul understood that Timothy Ultimately, yes, he's a pastor. Yes, he's a fellow helper. Yes, he's a regenerate member of the body of God. He's been born again. He's been given a ministry. He's been given gifts. But yet, at the same time, the remnants of the fall are still within him. And Timothy is not immune to the lust of the eyes. And Timothy, above all, must not take advantage of his ministerial position in order to exploit the young women in the flock. The false teachers did exactly that. Paul in his next letter will speak of them this way, for this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women, loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts. That's 2 Timothy 3.6. What were the false teachers after? They were after an honor they didn't deserve, money that wasn't theirs. That's what marks the wolves in the church to this day as well. They're still after those things. Paul understood that Timothy could fall prey to that, any pastor can. So he tells him, when it comes to dealing with the women in your congregation, make purity your aim. And that is still good advice for anyone in the ministry. Today, I tell men who are entering into the ministry for the first time to avoid even the occasion for sin in that respect. and avoid all appearance of evil when it comes to dealing with the women of your congregation. Therefore, do not counsel or visit women alone. I mean, it seems insane in light of, you know, the whole Me Too movement and the revelations that have been going on about what's been happening in the business world and Hollywood and politics when men and women meet alone, that anybody would have trouble with that instruction in this day and age, but people still do. Remember one time I actually got a call from a husband in Afghanistan and he was hopping mad. He was angry at me. And the reason he was angry is that I had refused an offer of a ride onto post from his wife by herself. Somebody had been taken to Womack, a member of our congregation. I'm a civilian, and even worse than that, I'm a resident alien civilian. I'm from the planet Britain, and I still have my green card, and so getting on post is very difficult for me. It's very easy for somebody with DOD ID to get through the gate, and all I have to do is ride along with them. And so I'd send out, can somebody give me a ride to post? And immediately, this woman had fired back, yay! I'll take you along with me." And I said to her, I'm so sorry, I can't. Eventually I got a ride with one of the men in the congregation, but this man was very upset that I hadn't accepted his wife's offer. So he calls me from Afghanistan and he says, so what are you saying, pastor? Are you saying that my wife is going to jump you if you're alone? Is that what you think? Or maybe it's that you can't control yourself, pastor. Is that the case? Now, I don't remember exactly what I said to him, but I said, you know, I've been in three presbyteries, brother, and every one I've been in, not a year has gone by without a pastor being deposed from ministry because of adultery or fornication. And in most of those cases, that guy didn't go into the ministry saying, my aim in ministry is adultery and fornication. That's what I'm gonna do. No, they came in saying, I'm gonna build up the kingdom of God, and I'm gonna do so by counseling women. Okay, maybe by themselves. They never, quote, saw it coming. The devil laid out for them, though. And so I said, I want to make sure that there isn't even an opportunity for that kind of thing to arise. And I also want to make sure that there isn't an opportunity for people to accuse me of something illicit. I want to avoid even the appearance of sin. And you know, brothers and sisters, I have to tell you this, the only men I know who have continued on in the ministry for a long time without getting into trouble are the men who have applied that rule. Don't spend time alone with women who aren't your wife, your mother, your sister, your daughter, somebody that you're connected to like that. It's rather like the advice we should be giving to teenagers regarding dating. Make staying away from temptation your model, rather than seeing how close to it you can get without sinning. That's foolishness. We have kids in dating who spend their entire life with their faces essentially pressed up against the chain link fence, beyond which a few millimeters is sin. Of course eventually they're going to climb the fence or cut the hedge or whatever analogy we want to make. So, let me make some applications, although I've already made some applications of this. First, brothers and sisters. Now, why do I call you that, brothers and sisters? Because we're related? Well, in one sense that's true. We are related. We're all descendants of Adam and Noah, but that's not it. I don't call you brothers and sisters because of a blood relationship that way, but because we're all part of the family of God. Let's read together what Phil Reichen writes about that in the Sabbath Meditations in your folder at the bottom there. Reichen writes, consider some of the ways in which the Church is a family. Every Christian has the same Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we say our family prayers, we begin with the words, Our Father. Christians all became members of this family the same way, for God has adopted us all by His Holy Spirit, and love He predestined us for adoption through Christ according to the purpose of His will. or to look at the same relationship from another view, we were all born again into God's family, born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Now, Brothers and sisters, if we really believed that, if we really believed that we were the members of the same family, that we really all were brothers and sisters, how much more love and charity and forgiveness and forbearance and perseverance there would be in the church. Because the model for the church in the New Testament is of a family, and a family that goes on for all eternity. Now all of us at one time were spiritual orphans. We were cut off. But we have been redeemed. We have been adopted by Christ. And now you and I, brothers and sisters, we are all sons and daughters, beloved sons and daughters of our Father in heaven. All of us have an equal right to the great inheritance that Jesus, our older brother, has won for us. He, the first fruits, and then we who follow after him. And we will spend eternity as a family in heaven. So if we're gonna spend eternity as a family in heaven, worshiping God together, then oughtn't we ought to practice that family here on earth? Ought we not to be making it real while we live here, bearing one another's burdens, doing whatever we can to lighten each other's load? And that's why I would suggest to you we have got to reject the awful consumer business model that the modern church has adopted. It's awful. All it's concerned with is entertainment. And because it's entertainment, they encourage anonymity. And where you go from church to church like you would restaurant to restaurant, can you imagine if members of your family suddenly didn't show up in the morning? You'd panic, wouldn't you? Welcome to the life of a pastor when his members disappear. We had a family once join the church. Two months later, we hadn't seen them for weekend after weekend. I was getting really concerned that something awful had happened. So I called them up, and they said, yeah, well, it's the music. We really needed better music. So we went someplace else. Now, we've been praying for this family and the medical concerns of their wider family. I mean, we were still praying for them that very week, and yet they hadn't even bothered to tell us we're leaving, we're going to another church, or to come to us and say we're having problems. They'd just gone, and they were amazed, absolutely amazed that I was concerned. Well, you know, why would you be concerned about that? Because we're members of the same family? Because you joined the church? Because I took a vow to take care of you, to shepherd your soul? Because I care? Does that, is that amazing to you? I care. I actually, I love you guys. You know, and they're like, oh, that's like the manager at the restaurant saying, you know, hey. No, it's not because that's the wrong model, brothers and sisters. It's a family. We're supposed to be members of the family of faith. And if we are to be members of the family of faith and not a dysfunctional family, that's not the way we should be going. Let me give some instruction as to how we should live out our lives as the family of faith in reference to one another. Now, one of the wonderful things about the Bible is it doesn't leave the church in the dark about how we're supposed to treat one another. It tells us And so we need to listen to that instruction, and then more than just listening to the instruction, we need to apply it, because we're not just supposed to be hearers of the Word, are we? What are we supposed to be? Doers of the Word. Okay, so let me start with the kids. Let me give you some basic instruction on how you're supposed to treat, for instance, elders in your family, the family of faith. What should you do when an older person enters into the room and you're sitting down? Stand up, right? You're supposed to stand up. What should you do if you come to the door and there's an older person coming in as you wanna go out? What are you supposed to do? Open the door for that person and then allow them to enter. If you wanna bow after that, that's okay, all right? How are you supposed to address them? Are you supposed to say, hey you, You're supposed to say, yes, sir, or yes, ma'am, okay. Do we address them by their first name? No, we never address them by their first name. And we do not speak to them as though they are our peers, as though they're at the same level. We always give them honor when we speak. Now, these things were all things we once knew, things that we once acted on. Now, I want to speak to more than just the kids, because we, adults, also need to be reminded of the need for respect and honor within our society. We've forgotten how to treat one another, not just in the church, but we've forgotten how to treat one another with respect. One of the reasons why there's such a vileness in our discourse within this country is because we don't respect and honor. We've trampled Christian civility underfoot. I want to read to you, I wish I had the larger catechism in the back of the Trinity Hymnal, but we don't. So I'm going to go to Thomas Vincent. He wrote his own little question and answer on the Shorter Catechism based on the Bible. And when he's talking about the Fifth Commandment, what is the Fifth Commandment? honoring your father and your mother. The first thing he did was he pointed out that this doesn't just speak of literal fathers and literal mothers. It speaks of the honor that we owe to superiors and the way that our superiors should be treating the inferiors. So in question 15, he asked this question. What are the duties of the younger and inferior in gifts and graces to the aged and superior? And the answer he gave was this. The duties of the younger and inferior in gifts and places to the elder and superior are to rise up before them and give place to them with reverence and respect. Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man and fear the Lord. Humble submission to them so as to follow their wise commands. Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the older. Imitation of them in their graces and holy conversation. Be ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ. But it's not just the duties, the inferiors, the younger to the older that we should be thinking of or be mindful of. We should also be mindful of the duties of the older to the younger. So what are the duties of the aged and superior and gifts and graces unto the younger and inferior? That's the next question he asks, and he comes up with this. The duties of the aged and superior in gifts and graces unto the younger and inferior are to adorn their old age and show forth the power of their grace in a holy and exemplary conversation, that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith and charity and patience, the aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, teachers of good things. So it's not just that the younger should be respecting the older. but that the older should be endeavoring to be honorable and respectable and to set a good example before the younger. And then finally, of course, there's one other area. What is the duty of equals, of peers to one another? We have duties as well. Answer, the duties of equals, one to another, are one to live in peace with and sincere love to one another, preferring each other in honor. Be at peace among yourselves. Do you do that? Do you prefer others before yourself? Kids, do you do that with your peers? Do you put them ahead of you? Secondly, to be full of pity, courteous, and affable, and ready to promote one another to good, and to rejoice therein. Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous, let no man seek his own, but every man another's will. Rejoice with them that do rejoice." We're full of that kind of, that love. So that when somebody tells us, for instance, that they got a promotion that we didn't get, Do we say, that's wonderful, and mean it in our heart? I am so glad that the Lord gave you that gift, knowing that they would do the same for us if the situation was reversed. Are we loving them, respecting them, pitying them, honoring them, and doing all of those things? Finally, and to become part of a natural family is easy in one sense. Let me ask you this. What do you have to do to become part of a natural family? Not to create other members of the natural family, but to become part. Yes? You just have to be born! So easy, almost anybody can do it, all right? All you have to do is be born. But is that how you become a member of the family of God? No. To become a member of the family of God, you have to be born again. Jesus tried to explain this to Nicodemus. You remember in John chapter three? Turn with me, if you will, to John chapter three. There, Nicodemus comes to him. And of course, at this point in time, rabbinic Judaism had gotten to the point where to be a Jew was simply to have been born a descendant of Abraham and to have been circumcised on the eighth day, to attend temple at the regular festivals. It was something of outward observance. Jesus says now to be a member of the kingdom of God, to be a member of the family of God, requires something far deeper, far more important. So in John 3, 3 we read this, Jesus, and said to him, Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2.1 that by nature we are dead in our trespasses and sins. If we are to be delivered from that estate, the Holy Spirit has to do a work that only He can do, reviving us, bringing us to life. And if that has happened in your heart, if you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you know Him by faith, that has occurred because the Holy Spirit has done that work in you, usually through the agency of the preaching or the reading of the Word. And if you've come to that living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you've not only been united to Him by faith, you have been brought into the family of faith. I have to tell you, one of the things that I felt beyond all other things when I was an unbeliever was lonely, alone all the time. Even when I was with people, I felt a terrible aloneness in the universe. I understood exactly what one Polish writer said when he said, we live, that's Joseph Conrad, we live as we dream, alone. I understood that existential angst that he was expressing. But do you know what? When I became part of the family of God, that went away. I realized that there was never a time when I was alone, really. I knew that there was one who would never leave me, never forsake me, that Jesus would never let go of me. Even were I to be marooned on a desert island, it would not just be a volleyball with a handprint that was my only friend in the world. Christ would be with me. Sorry, that was a reference to cast away for those of you who are too young to remember. But in any event, When we become Christians, we not only have a friend in Jesus, and what a friend we have in Jesus, to borrow the hymnus words, but we have friends in the community of God. We're part of a family. I have been loved by the family of God so well over the years. I have grandmothers and grandfathers in the family of God. I have brothers and sisters in the family of God. I have fathers in the family of God. I don't have to affect anything when I stand up in presbytery and I say, fathers and brothers, and address them. Because so many men have mentored me and have been as fathers in the faith. That's the way it should be. We should love one another. All this anonymity that's in the modern church today, the devil loves that. He wants us separated. He wants us in little cliques and divided. He doesn't want that full-fledged, full-orbed community. He doesn't want the family of faith. He doesn't want those ties that go on for eternity. But that's what we have when we become believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So don't be afraid of them. So many people, they stand kind of a loop. So the family, enter in. Enter into the family. love one another, and live as brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. Live as members of that family that goes on forever in Christ. Let's go into His presence now. God, our gracious Father, I do thank you, Lord, for just the simplicity and the wonder of what you do. Although it is an amazing work when you make us members of your family, you unite us in bonds that will go on forever. The bonds of family, well, they end at death, but the bonds, oh, the bonds of love in Jesus Christ between members of His eternal body, they go on forever. We have brothers and sisters from every age, every time, every place. Even now we have brothers in places like China, and Europe, and Africa, and South America, and all over the world. Brothers who we may not know by name, but we will know them when we worship you face to face. And may that day come quickly. Help us then to live as a family here on earth. Help us as a congregation to bear one another's burdens. Help us to do all that we can to pray for one another. So when somebody shares a prayer request, let us pray as we would for a brother or sister. Oh Lord, do this work in our midst. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.