This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Lewis
Harold, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland
County in Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Lewis as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
We could never write a check that would be sufficient for
everything our parents did for us throughout our whole lives.
We would never be able to write a check that would be
sufficient. But there's an opportunity that
we get at some point where we can give back to them when
they're older and we can now support them, take off some of
the financial burden that they have, help them physically be a
support for them the way they were for us.
And sometimes that can be difficult because a lot of
parents don't want to give up that control.
But we do it out of love. What debt could you ever pay to
the One who gave His life for you?
In today's message, Pastor Lewis shows that no gift, no
sacrifice, no amount of effort could ever be enough to repay
what Jesus did. Yet He gives you a lifetime to
respond with love. When you serve Him, you're
simply returning love to the One who first loved you.
It's not about earning anything. It's about honoring the Lord who
paid a debt you could never settle.
How do you live each day as a thank you to Jesus for
everything He's given you? Now here's Pastor Lewis in the
Book of First Timothy, chapter 5, with today's edition of
Living Waters of Grace. The Word of God is precious,
Amen. And he gives us this word from
Genesis to Revelations, that we have the word of God.
And it's such a privilege to be able to hear the word of God.
And he gives us this word. We get this word because he, you
know, we are to heed the word of God.
And when we do heed the word of God, then we are protected.
We're protected. The word of God is for the
purpose of protecting us. The Bible says that your word is
a strong tower that the righteous run into and are safe.
When we are hidden under the wings of the Lord under His Word
and we heed His word, man does it help us to avoid so many
snares and pitfalls that the world has and the things that
the enemy, the traps that the enemies have set forth to be
able to to try to trip us up. It's the Word of God that is our
light as it's been spoken. The Word of God is a lamp unto
our feet and a light unto our pathway.
It lights those things. It causes us to be aware of
where it is that we're walking and what we should avoid, what
we should go around, what we should stay away from.
It's all in the Word of God. And when we read this as it is
from the Word of God, not the person standing here speaking
it, but as we read it as it is the Word of God, and we heed
that word, our lives benefit. And not only our lives, but the
lives of others who we're around benefit when we heed the Word of
God. So as we go into this 5th
chapter of Timothy, we understand that this is Paul the
evangelist. I call him the Gospel
Globetrotter. But Paul the evangelist who has
gone around, admitted his mission to go around everywhere
and to plant churches and to share the gospel into and to
allow people to know about this saving faith that has changed
his life so drastically and dramatically.
And he has, he has adopted a son in the spirit, Timothy, who is
his spiritual son. And, and this is like, I like to
picture things when I'm reading. I like to picture how what's the
setting? And and even though Paul wrote
this letter, it's almost like he's sitting in front of Timothy
in a chair and just giving him direction and instruction.
Son, heed this son, listen to this son do this that way.
And this is the way he reads this.
This is what this letter reads like a, it's an instruction.
And even though it's written, I mean, the title of this is, you
know, orders for widows and elders.
And even though that's the title, that doesn't mean that if
you're not a widow or if you're not an elder that you can just
check out. It doesn't mean that you can
just get up and leave or it's not for me.
I'm not a widow and nor am I an elder.
So it's not for me. It's for everybody.
And the Lord made it possible
that we could all have it. Even though it was written
directly to Timothy, he made it possible that we could all have
it because he had Timothy put this in a letter.
And now we all have the benefit of reading this and feeding from
the table of all this wisdom. So this is the word of God.
Every word in the word of God is inspired by God.
Everything that's written in this word is inspired by God.
So let's start reading. We're going to start with the
first 3 verses here. Actually, we're going to start
the 1st 2:00 and then we're going to make comment.
It says do not rebuke an an older man.
Some versions may say elder, but exhort him as a father, younger
men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as
sisters with all purity. Let's just stop there for a
second. So we know that in first Timothy
315, the Bible clearly says that you ought to know how to act in
the House of God, which is the House of the living God.
Well, Paul talks about this like the House of God is a family
because it's a family that lives in a house.
So Paul wants to give the impression, he wants to give the
picture to Timothy and to us that a church family is just
that, a family. We're all family, Paul said.
Let's refer to each other as brothers and sisters.
I mean, when I was younger, every church, it was brother
this, sister that mother. You tell me.
That's all you would hear, Brother this Brother Harold,
brother that sister. How you know?
I mean, that's just the way it used to be.
And then we had mothers that were in the church and their
name was Mother Johnson or Mother Susie or whatever it
would be, because it was a family.
It was a family. But in this particular verse,
he's saying something even more striking.
He says do not rebuke. And that word rebuke here means
do not strike at, do not strike at.
So if I have to correct, if you have to correct an older person,
Timothy, if it's an older man that you have to correct, do it
with respect. Do it with reverence.
Don't just strike at them. Don't talk to them with a level
of respect. They're not your employees.
They're your brothers and your sisters and they are your
family. So speak to this older man with
respect and he says, but exhort him as a father.
Talk to him like you would talk to your father, Timothy.
And it's hard if you're a younger guy and you're trying to
correct. I don't know if any of you ever
had that experience. I'm sure you have had that
experience where you've had to correct someone that was older.
Maybe you've even had to have conversations with your parents
sometimes or with someone. I remember the first time I had
to have a hard conversation with my father to correct them or
with my mother. I mean, it was like, oh God, how
in the world do I how do you do that?
You know, I mean, it's, but Paul is saying do it with grace, do
it with respect, do it with care to correct them.
Because the correction is just like when the Lord corrects us.
It's out of love. It shouldn't be from any place
else. It's out of love.
Same way we correct our kids. But if our kids have to come.
And sister. Daddy, you were wrong about this
one. Really.
Yeah, Dad, you were wrong about this.
This is the way it happened. And that's what happened.
Oh, but it's with a level of respect.
But my kids going to say, damn, you're wrong.
What's wrong with you? Now that's a whole nother
conversation. OK, so we correct with respect.
We correct with respect. So anyway, he goes on and he
says, let's exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers.
So let's treat everybody like their brothers and sisters here,
older women as mothers. And then there's a change here.
There's a caveat here because now he's talking about younger
women as sisters and this is a message that and he, he's
talking to Timothy. So he's talking to a young male
and he says when you talk to the women in the church, Timothy,
the young women, talk to them or deal with them, encourage them
as sisters. And that is so important.
Brothers, young men, the young women that are in our church,
they are your sisters. So we should not speak to them
in with words of flirtatiousness or words that are enticing or
provocatively. We don't speak to them that way.
They are our sisters. We respect them, we cover them.
They're our sisters. Now if the relationship
progresses and it becomes your wife, then that's a different
story. You still respect them.
It's still a pure relationship, but now it's your wife.
So in the church you have sisters and you have wives.
You don't disrespect the women in the church by the way you
treat them to speak to them. They are your spiritual sisters.
We don't try to entice them because we don't commit
spiritual incest, right? We don't ever want to commit
spiritual incest, so we don't try to entice them.
They're our sisters. And Paul makes sure he puts that
caveat in there where he says with all purity.
That means without any impropriety.
It means that our motives when we talk to our sisters is pure.
We're not hiding any agendas or things that we're trying to do.
It's pure and it should be that way the other way around.
Sisters, young men in the church are your brothers are your
brothers. So then anyway, he goes on in
verse 3, and this is when we start getting into the real meat
of what it is that Paul wants to talk about from three on.
And he says here, honor widows who are really widows, honor the
widows who are really widows. But if any widow has children or
grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and
to repay their parents, for this is good and acceptable to God.
So Paul's saying here, as he, you know, is basically reaching
back into the Old Testament where it talks about protecting
widows. God protects widows.
God always does protect widows. He covers widows.
He takes care of widows. He wants widows to be taken care
of. Now, back in the Old Testament,
they didn't have social service systems that take that took care
of widows. They didn't have pension plans
or anything like that. SSI or whatever it is that the
older people would be able to get to take care of them, but
they had community and God would encourage the community to take
care of their widows, orphans and the fatherless.
Those are the ones that God wanted the people to take care
of. So here he says honor widows who
are really widows, which means that Paul is making a
distinction between a person who is a widow and a person who
would qualify for support of the church.
And we're going to get into that to find out exactly what that
is. It doesn't mean to see you have
young women who may we want to get into this, but it has young
women who husband may die unexpectedly.
You're young, but you're young enough to and they have
resources that they maybe they can take care of themselves.
But then there's older women who can't take care of themselves
who are widows and they may have been widows for a long time and
they need support to take care of themselves.
But we want to explain that. So let's talk about first when
it says, but if any widow has children or grandchildren, some
versions may say nephews, but it's really grandchildren.
Let them first show piety or reverence or respect at home and
repay their parents for this is good and acceptable.
Before God, we know that we could never write a check that
would be sufficient for everything our parents did for
us throughout our whole lives. We would never be able to write
a check that would be sufficient.
But there's an opportunity that we get at some point where we
can give back to them when they're older and we can now
support them, take off some of the financial burden that they
have, help them physically be a support for them the way they
were for us. And sometimes that can be
difficult because a lot of parents don't want to give up
that control. But we do it out of love.
So we help our older parents. And it's a privilege to be able
to do that, to be able to give to your parents after all
they've given to you. You know what it's like to be
able to take your parents out for dinner and you pay for it
because there's so many times, right, that they had to pay for
it, right? But then you're in a position
that you can take them out to dinner and you can pay for it.
That's a blessing. That's a blessing.
So he's saying here that if they have children or grandchildren
in the church, the grandchildren or the children are to be the
first to take care of these widows.
They shouldn't be the responsibility of the church for
that kind of support. That falls on the children and
grandchildren first and that's acceptable before God.
And then in verse 5, he says now she who was really a widow.
So in it, Paul, what do you mean really a widow?
How do you describe Paul who's really a widow?
He tells us, look at what he says.
She's left alone. That means there is no one
living or she doesn't have any children or either all her
children are gone. Like in a situation with Naomi,
all of her children are gone. There was no one else to take
care of her. So he says, well, you know, in
that situation where the she's left alone and she trusts in God
and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.
So this is a true widow who has decided that OK, my husband has
died, so for the rest of my life I'm going to give it to the
Lord. I'm dedicating the rest of my
life to the Lord. I'm committing everything,
Everything I have my prayers, my supplications, my service.
It's all going to the Lord. I'm not looking to remarry.
I'm not looking to get back into another marriage and have to be
responsible to someone else again.
I just want to be with the Lord for the rest of my days.
Paul is saying this is a true or the real widow.
This is the person that the church will support.
And then in verse 6, he says, but she who lives in pleasure is
dead while she lives. She who lives in pleasure is
dead while she lives. What is he saying here?
So if there's a widow, she dies and she has resources and
instead of her spending those resources taking care of her
bills, taking care of her home, you know, taking care of the
things that need to be taken care of, she spends those things
on herself, papering herself. She spends them maybe drinking
or she spends them maybe buying bunch of things that she really
doesn't need. She's spending them on the
pleasure, fulfilling the desires of her flesh, living in
pleasure. Paul said these women are dead
while they live. Why?
Because they are living outside of the will of God, because a
lot of things that they're doing, living in pleasure is
also seeking physical pleasure as well.
So then he goes on in verse 7 and he says, and these things
command that they may be blameless.
We have a biblical example of a true widow, and it's back in
Luke chapter 2, verses 36, and it's Anna who was a prophetess,
who was a widow. She's been a widow for over 84
years. And this is a woman who decided
to, after her husband died, she was going to go into the temple
and give all of her resources, her prayers, her supplications,
all those things are going to be given to the Lord, going to be
given to the Lord. Anna's a true example of that.
So then we go to verse 7, it says, and these things command
that they may be blameless. But in verse 8 it says, but if
anyone does not provide for his own and especially for those of
his household, he has denied the faith and is worse, is worse
than an unbeliever. Paul is saying, Timothy, listen,
if you have people in your church that are Christians,
they're believers and they have widows in their home and they're
not taking care of them, what kind of a testimony is that to
people outside of the home? He said it's worse than being an
unbeliever because even some unbelievers would take care of
their own families. That's in the house with them.
Plus the Scripture says in the book of Exodus, it says honor
thy father and thy mother that your days will be long upon.
It's the first commandment of promise.
Honor your father and your mother that your days will be
long upon the earth. It does not say honor the good
ones. It doesn't say honor the good
parents. It doesn't say honor the parents
who were good to you. Honor the parents who raised you
correctly, who was always there. Doesn't say that.
It says honor your father and your mother's, that your days
will be long. Sometimes you have to find it in
the spirit of God to go back to a parent who may have been
abusive, a parent who may have been lived the wildlife and
maybe did not take care of you the way that they should have,
didn't give you the attention that you should have received.
Paul say, you got to look beyond, you got to forgive and
you got to go back and you have to honor your father and your
mother. And that's something that God
will honor. When we can do that, God will
honor that. He loves it when we reconcile
and we seek reconciliation. We seek peace.
And I know for some people that's hard because there's some
real stories. I'm not ignoring that.
There's some real stories. There's some situations where
people have gone through some really tragic things with
parents. I realize that, but God is
calling us to honor them anyway, to honor them.
And maybe through what they see in you, their lives may change.
They see God in you, they see Christ in you, their lives may
change. So he goes on and he says here
in verse 9, do not let a widow under 60 years old be taken into
the number and not unless she has been the wife of one man.
So what Paul's saying here is that, OK, these are the
qualifications. He started to talk about the
qualifications again of a true widow and he said first of all
she needs to be over 60 years old because the widows who were
younger. Well, they don't need to be
taken into the number and that number you talk about the
enlisted number that a church puts together, a number of
enrollment where the church puts together a list of the widows
that they will support or the ones that they will help
financially. OK, He puts together a list.
They put together a list and he's saying that those who are
under 60 should not be on that list.
And it says not unless she has been the wife of one man.
So that's the other stipulation, that a widow must be over 60 and
be the wife of one man. So this is a widow who does not
get remarried and then get remarried again and remarried
again. Well reported for good works.
This is a widow. This is a woman who has given
her life to good work, serving in the community, serving in her
neighborhood, maybe serving in the church, helping out wherever
she can. She's given her life to good
work. She has a reputation for good
works, not a reputation for running in and out of bars and
hanging out and looking for pleasure.
We're talking about women who are serving the Lord and serving
him in the House of God or in the community or wherever.
But she has a reputation, a well reported.
That means a reputation for good works.
If she has brought up children. If this is a woman who has
raised children, even though they may be gone now, but maybe
she's raised them. Maybe she's taken in orphans
before. Maybe she's taken in a friend's
kids who end up passing and didn't have anybody to take care
of them. This woman, this widow took the
children and raised them. I've seen those kind of things
happen before. And it says if she has large
strangers, hospitality, you know, the true widow is a woman
who has a heart of hospitality. So she'll take in strangers
because, see, back in these days, you know, they used to
travel quite a bit. Men used to travel or other
people used to travel, and it was dangerous in the streets to
be out there late at night. They need to find somewhere to
lodge and somewhere it was. And sometimes it was hard to
find safe places to lodge. Well, this widow would take them
in, this widow would take them in, take in strangers.
And even now, like when I think we talked about it before, that
churches may travel around and, and they come to visit.
People come to visit. We get missionaries sometime to
come to visit. And everybody don't know who
these missionaries are. But the widow was the one that
would say, well, if they don't have anywhere to stay, I'll take
them to my house. I got room, I got space.
They'll take them in their house or other, you know some of the
other people that may travel with them.
I'll give them somewhere to stay.
Hospitality, they have a spirit of hospitality goes on.
If she has washed the Saints feet.
Now washing the feet is something that we don't
typically do. That doesn't happen that much in
the church. There are some churches now I
want to say there are some churches that still do that.
They will wash feet. They'll have what they call a
foot washing ceremony. Not sure what that looks like,
but they do that and they'll wash feet.
But what Paul's talking about here is being a humble servant,
being able to do or be willing to do menial things, things that
maybe other people wouldn't want to do or see themselves above
doing it. Paul said, you know, this widow,
a widow, a humble servant will do those kind of things.
And then he goes on and he says, I love this one.
If she has relieved the afflicted, this is a woman who
is truly, truly filled with the spirit of mercy.
If there's an affliction, she goes to help.
If someone is afflicted, she goes to help.
Here on Living Waters of Grace, we're in the books of First and
Second Timothy. Pastor Lewis Harrell is walking
us through these letters written from Paul to Timothy.
Toward the end of these letters, Paul is anticipating that his
time here on earth is coming to a close.
He's giving some final words of advice to his mentee.
Paul writes in Second Timothy 4, verse seven.
I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith. Wherever you are in your journey
of faith with God, our hope is that you have the willingness to
fight for what's true. Not compromising, but holding
fast to the Word of God. Paul was reminding Timothy of
this, and it's a good reminder for you and for me today, too.
For helpful input throughout this series, why not listen to
all of these teachings from first and Second Timothy on our
website? Go to calvarychapelonline.com to
access teachings, download our app, and more.
If you'd like to visit us this weekend, we'd be delighted.
Living Waters of Grace is a ministry of Calvary Chapel
Westmoreland in Greensburg, PA Come to our service held at
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teachings. We thank you for tuning in today
and ask that you come back for more solid and biblical teaching
from Pastor Lewis right here on Living Waters of Grace.