1 Timothy 5:6-25 Proper Treatment for All Ages

Jimmy Draper talks about the importance of taking care of widows in the church. He mentions that there are certain criteria for widows to receive help from the church, such as being 60 years old and having a devotion to the Lord. He also emphasizes the need for families to take care of their own widows and how neglecting them is a denial of faith. Jimmy believes that taking care of his own mother as a widow has brought blessings to his life. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of unity and compassion within the church. I was not sure I was going to teach, because Brother Jack was sitting on the front row. I went over and said, You know you're not teaching, aren't you? And he said, Yes. So we're going to try to finish up the fifth chapter of 1 Timothy today. Brother Jack will do the sixth chapter in one lesson, good luck. And then also the next Sunday on the 8th, give the introduction to Titus. And I guess we'll, lest we decide to go another direction, we'll look at starting Titus with the next Sunday, but we might come up with something different for the Sunday before Christmas. We'll see how that works out, but thank you all for being here. We're starting again on verse 6 of the fifth chapter. The problem is there are 25 verses in this chapter, so we have a long way to go to get to where we need to be, but I hope we can do that. It's kind of interesting to me that in this fifth chapter, while he's talking about older men, older women, widows, elders, and so on, he's still pointing out the ingredients that are necessary to have a church that's united, not squabbling. This is how you're supposed to act in church, that's what he's saying. And we all need to be reminded how we're supposed to act. So in the case of the widows, for instance, we were talking about widows last week, and we came to that verse in chapter 5, verse 6, that the widower who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. That's a strange verse, but basically he's talking about widows who really deserve help and encouragement and support from the church. And he's identified certain widows who have become very self-indulgent, and in fact he talks later in this chapter about younger widows and names them as part of the problem in Ephesus. Remember, he's writing to tell young Timothy how to deal with all the different age groups and all the different facets of the church family in Ephesus. And so he describes for us what it is that receives the help from the church, or what it is that he tells them. They have to be 60 years old, they have to have been very proper in their devotion to the Lord, their action, their service, their compassion, following good training of their children. So he gives some specific recommendations to do that, and what he's actually doing is comparing what he calls the widows that are really in need to the widows of the false teachers who were not the appropriate recipient of care from the church. And I can only assume that when he says it here in verse 6, that the woman who lives in self-indulgence is dead while she lives, part of what he's saying, at least, is that church has no responsibility for that kind of widow. Now, we have a wonderful group of widows in this class, and you're remarkable, and we want to thank you. When my dad died, my mother was 53 years old, and had been crippled since she was ten months old, and never had been able to work, and there was only one thing to do when mother became a widow, and that was for her to come live with us. Many of you knew her, one of the most remarkable people I've ever known. My cousin asked her one day, said, Aunt Lois, if someday you have to go into a rehab or to a rest home, what are you going to do about that? And she said, well, I probably won't like it, but I'm going to be the happiest person there. And she was. And the hardest day of my life was when Carol Ann and I had to find a place to take her to a rest home. She was happy with that. You see, happiness is a decision you make before you need it. Nobody can make you happy. You just have to decide you're going to be happy, because in every life, there's enough rain that falls, and enough storms, and much reverses, that there are going to be times that you don't feel very happy, and you're just going to have to make a choice to be happy. So thank you for you precious widows that influence and bless us so much. I think about Marian Little, who is always trying to bring something to help us and encourage us. How many times has she brought things for us to take, something for the men, something for the women? And she's always bringing things for Carol Ann and me, and we're grateful for that. But it's typical of the widows, and we sure like to say thank you for that. But basically in verse 6, when it talks about the widows who live for self-indulgence, it means someone who lives for themselves. They live for pleasure. They don't show any spiritual concerns. And the widows who live for the pleasures of the world and abandons her trust in the Lord is dead while she lives. In other words, she's beyond the scope of the hand of the church in helping and serving her. But she sets her affections on things of the earth and lives for pleasure that the church has no obligation for her. Now having said that, it's highly likely in our church that some widows who may not deserve it are going to get a lot of love and a lot of help because our church is geared that way. Our deacons, when I became president of the convention back in 1982, the deacons made part of their ministry to serve the widows back at that time. And to this day, they're still doing that. In fact, we have so many widows now that are being ministered to that deacons are having some of them, two or three widows, they have to look after, but they're doing that. And Paul is really instructing us how we ought to take care of widows. First of all, he says a family has a responsibility. So if a widow has a family that is able, then that family ought to minister or take care of her, help her with the things that she needs. If she doesn't have that available, then the church is to step in and help with her needs and the things that they can provide for her. So basically, beginning with this verse 7, Paul is really urging that the widows not behave like the younger widows in Ephesus who had become very self-involved, very promoted their own pleasure. They had drifted away from the Lord. They were causing, according to verses 11 and 15 of this chapter, they were causing some of the problems in the unity of the Ephesian church. And he specifically mentions the younger widows as the reason for the problem. In verse 8, he says that no widow, verse 8, but if anyone does not provide for his own family, especially for his own household, he has denied the faith, it is worse than an unbeliever. So that is a very strong statement that if we don't care for widows who really have need, the Lord does not look favorably upon that. And it is a very important thing. But the widows also are to live in such a way as to be worthy of the support that they get. Verse 8 mentions the word provide, provide for the widows, suggests that they plan what the widow may need and provide for that. And believers have a responsibility to care for all of our needy relatives, but especially your own family. And that is where the verse that is probably taken out of context many times, verse 8, where it talks about that you are worse than an unbeliever. Some translations say that one does not take care of his own, it is worse than an infidel, which is about the worst word that you could choose to call somebody. And so it is a big deal, it is a big responsibility, and it is consistent with the incredible emphasis in the Paul's epistles upon the unity of the church and the compassion that ought to be demonstrated in the church for everyone in need. And especially in this chapter, he is talking about we are a family, we are a family. And that because we are a family, then we ought to treat each other with love and compassion. There never ought to be any excuse for mistreatment of anyone in the life of the church. And remember that the last words of Jesus in his final prayer, which is really the large prayer of John 17, four different times he talked about, Father, may they be one as we are one. Now, that is the highest possible standard, because God the Father, God the Son, and Jesus, three and yet one, and he says, I want you to be like that in church, that is a tall order. We are going to be like God in caring for each other. Humanly speaking, that is not possible, but it is possible that we have compassion and we care for those in need in the church, and God takes it very seriously if we don't take responsibility for that. In Ephesians 6, 1-3, Paul tells them to obey their parents, and the failure of believers to take care of their own loved ones is a denial of our faith. That is a strong language, and it is Paul's reprimanding the families who have neglected their own needy widows, and the word providing indicates careful planning to meet whatever the deeds are. God's word requires that children honor their parents as part of their duty, and Ephesians 6-2 says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may be well with you, and that you may have a long life in the land. I mentioned to you last week that this is the first commandment that has a promise to it. Now, I am going to just tell you what I feel about this. I may not be right, but I really believe the blessings that Carol Ann and I have enjoyed for 68 years have been greatly enriched and greatly blessed by God because of the way we took care of my mother. I can't say that that is true, but I do believe that there was no choice. One day that daddy at age 52 dropped dead. Remember she was crippled, living in southeastern Arkansas, never able to work. She could drive, at least she thought she could. When we were in Dell City, I remember I had a basketball goal out on the edge of the area there. I came on one day and it was leaning over like this, and I went in and I said, Mother, what happened to that basketball goal? She said, Well, I think maybe I bumped it. She did bump it. She had decided she would try it. She always used to say, Mother, you can't drive. Well, I could if I wanted to. I mean, you know, one of the things about getting older, we can do what we think we can do in our minds, but be careful trying to do them, because your body will usually reach up and tell you it's not so. We were so blessed to have her in our home, and I just believe that God gave the added blessing of blessing our family. Our kids grew up with Grandmother, and they all say to this day how much they were blessed to have her in the home. She had a great sense of humor. I was walking with her one day. She was holding my arm. We were crossing the street, and there were cars that just stopped, and she looked up at me and she said, I bet they think I'm crippled. And then we just kept on going, you know, but this passage is a great family picture. This is how the family ought to be. Parents being respectable and honoring their kids and raising them in the nurture of the Lord and children honoring their parents and taking care of them when they have needs beyond what they're able to do. And now we've reached that age, and I'm grateful Randy and Elizabeth bring us to church every Sunday. We don't have to try to find a parking place and drive the car. They come pick us up, and then we have lunch together every Sunday, and I don't want to deprive them of the joy we had taking care of Mother. Now they're taking care of us, and it's just a good reminder of how we ought to behave as a family, a good family, not a bad family, not a David family. David messed up in his family, and his whole family was dysfunctional all the rest of his life after his affair with Bathsheba. And so do you know when Absalom came back to Jerusalem, he wanted to see his dad, and David would not see him. Absalom's rebellion was not something he just woke up one day and said, I think I'll try to overtake my dad's throne. David had refused to speak to him. And he didn't treat his family the way he should have, and the consequences were fierce. And so Paul is really just trying to help us not get in situations that we would not appreciate at all. So we need to be careful how we treat our families. Now in verses 9 and 10, he describes the behavior of some of the younger widows and gives specific concerns for them, and he's already reminded them how they ought to live. And the stipulation I said earlier that he tells you, now a widow that really needs help is one that is 60 years old, who has been faithful to her husband, raised her children right, and he mentions, I think this is the passage where he mentions she needs to wash some saints' feet, which is an interesting thing, which really is just describing she needs to be a person who is serving at heart. Someone will do whatever it takes to get things done. And so she has to be that kind of widow. And so the older widows should be known to be humble in their spirits of demeanor, have a tender and compassionate heart as she took care of those who were suffering and those who were having very deep emotional problems. And in verses 11 to 13, he gives reasons for his instructions to the younger widows. Now he's not trying to tell them that they can't marry again. He's simply acknowledging the probability that younger widows would likely entertain the thought of remarriage, and he encouraged them to do that. He encouraged them that it was a good desire to remarry, and one of the reasons was if they remarried, they wouldn't act like those younger widows who had become self-indulgent and become busybodies and created chaos in the church in Ephesus. In fact, he pointed out some of these younger widows had been a disgrace to God. And the way they had behaved, they'd become idle. They began to engage in gossip and spread rumors that disrupted the unity of the church. And as we've already seen, Paul had no patience for anybody that created disunity in the church. If there's no other reason for having unity in the church, it's don't get God after you. I'm very displeased with people who create disharmony. I don't dare chase that rabbit because I have too many illustrations to make the point, but you might know some of them, and I'm not going to do that. He did indicate that in seeking a new husband, be careful that they did not lessen their devotion to the Lord, that they did not stop serving the Lord and not let anything interfere with their relationship with God. And a second marriage would be good, but it would only be appropriate if it resulted in a new marriage being one that faithfully served and honored God. In verse 13, you have some of the same admonition to these younger women, and they had embraced a lifestyle that was not pleasing to God. And he's not saying that it's a sin to remain single. He's not suggesting a widow ought not marry again, nor is he saying you have to. And so he's encouraged them, though, to always focus on the Lord, not let anything come between you and your relationship with the Lord. And so here he instructs the younger widows to marry and assume their place in their family responsibilities. And so he's trying to encourage them to fulfill the opportunity to have children and to have family and encourage them not to continue to be disruptive in the life of the church. Some verses 15 and 16 indicate that some of them have already turned away to follow Satan, he says. If any believing woman has widows in her family, let her help them, let the church not be burdened so they can help widows in genuine need. Some of them had already broken away from their service to the Lord. They had backslidden, whatever you want to call it, they had lessened in their commitment to the Lord. And so he's using this to describe the acceptable behavior of a married woman, not idle, not meddlesome activities that would occupy their time. They would give positive and credible witness to those outside the church. So he's warning them against the kind of activities and the kind of self-indulgence that these younger widows, Ephesus, had. If believers in the church have widows in their family, they ought to take care of them. That's essentially what he's saying here. If the family is not able to care for their own widows, then the church ought to step in. And what Paul is doing is focusing on the respect, compassion, and responsibility that ought to exist within the family. He's instructing Timothy to show respect for all ages, pointing out the need for kindness and gratitude and compassion as the leader. Just remember, any time a church leader says, essentially, it's my way or the highway, you know you've got the wrong leader. Leadership is servant leadership. When I was at LifeWay, it never one time occurred to me that being president of LifeWay was about me. It just never entered my mind. Now the problems my successor had, when he came, he thought it was all about him. And he stayed with it until he drove it right into the ground. When I left, we had all kinds of activities and gifts and a banquet of about a thousand people from all over the world. When he left, he left an email to the employees that he was gone. The company was in wrecks. I'll not get into that. But they're doing well now, thank the Lord. We have a great young pastor that is doing well and he values people. My successor did not value people. Leaders ought to be servant leaders. That means they care about people and realize everybody's somebody in the church. Nobody's nobody in the church. Everybody's significant. Everybody deserves encouragement and whatever we can do to help encourage each other. The reason I write notes, number one, my dad did that, but not to the extent that I did it during my years. But people appreciate the encouragement that a note brings. I can't tell you how many weeks are filled with contacts from people I've written notes to that said, you will never realize what that note meant when it arrived. I was going through this and such and your note came. It really, really encouraged me. We ought to be encouraging people. And one way, it's a habit, one way I can try to encourage people is to write notes to them. I do e-mails, but that doesn't really count very often. I think you just need to encourage people, writing notes, calling them, whatever. I wrote birthday notes to every church I served, every member in the church, until I got to a church of 5,000 or 6,000 members. And it was just a little heavy to try to write birthday notes to everybody in church. Like here, I write to deacons and their families, their staff and their families. We need to encourage, we are family. It's sad to me. You know, I was 12 years old before I ever knew anybody that had a divorce. I don't know how shocked I was at one of my classmates when I was 12 years old that his parents were divorced. You know, Carol Ann and I grew up in wonderful homes, and I guess we assumed everybody had a home like we grew up in. We found out later that that's not true. There's some, maybe some of you, who had a very bad relationship with your father, which makes it hard for you to trust God as your father. That's how important family relationships are. It ought to be one that honors God, that honors a relationship with God, and that ought to be true within the family. Father's not God in the family, but he is to be a father. Paul even tells them, now, fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath. Don't be so hard on your children that they get really upset about it. You can discipline and all without violating that. But Timothy now is focusing again on giving Timothy counsel, Paul forgiving Timothy counsel, that he was now responsible for the unity and the effectiveness of the Ephesian church. And he was trying to prepare Timothy to deal with the elders who had deviated from the truth. He had to deal with the false teachers. He had to deal with the older age, all ages. And it's hard to realize how it feels to be responsible for certain things, whether it be in the church, in your family. In verse 17, the word elder there is plural. And in chapter 4, verse 14, he refers to the council of elders. Now, it might help to understand that Jewish synagogues specified elders as a permanent part of the leadership of the synagogue. So it wouldn't be too surprising that the church, as it developed out of Judaism, would also have this office in their polity. Paul used elders to organize the churches he planted so the Jewish believers would be familiar with that office. Gentiles knew that Jewish governments were led by leaders similar to elders, so they would be familiar with that kind of structure in the church. So all of this was to help them realize how the church ought to be. These elders were to be honored for their hard work. Their hard work. Let's see here. Verse 17. The elders who are good leaders are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. Do you know that preaching and teaching is hard work? It took me between 30 and 40 hours every week just to show up in the pulpit. Whatever else I did, counseling, hospital visitations, deacons meetings, anything that was expected of me had to be after that. It's hard work. Southwestern Seminary, Jack may remember this, some years ago, probably 20 or 30 years ago, did an experiment by putting a monitor on chapel speakers to see how much energy they expended in preaching a sermon. And what they found out was that one 30-minute sermon was equal to a complete 40-hour work week in the energy that came from. It's just hard work. Just think about it. When the pastor stands or the teacher stands to teach, he's telling you what God wants you to hear. That is a scary responsibility. I'd get here every Sunday morning by about 5.30. I'd walk down to the auditorium, I'd walk around the auditorium, pray for the services and people sitting in the pews, and God would give them receptive hearts and so on. And then every Sunday I'd say, God, please, please don't let me mess this up. It's easy to mess up what God says. Because there is a human nature wanting to help him out a little bit. Surely there's something we can do. We can't do anything to get saved, except just accept it, but surely there's something we can do to help God out. That's why I love expository preaching. I lived much of my pastoral ministry not doing that. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't preach from the Bible, but I discovered out of necessity when I was at First Church of Dallas with Dr. Crystal about three months into it, I've been preaching my topical biblical sermons. And I told Caroline, I said, you know, if I'm going to be preaching every Sunday here, I need to learn how to do expository preaching. I've told you this before. So I prayed about it. And to my amazement, God started me preaching through Hebrews. Now, you ought to laugh right there, because Hebrews is the most difficult Bible book to understand, interpret, and apply. And I had to kind of laugh, but, you know, he said, I said, OK, we'll start through Hebrews. After a couple of Sundays, I asked her, I said, well, what do you think? Well, she said, it's not you yet. It takes time. It's hard work, rightly dividing the truth. And so Paul said, look, your teachers and your ministers work hard at preaching and teaching. And so, you know, they need to have special, special recognition. The preaching assignment militates against a lot of the things we have to do. So sometimes we have to choose between getting ready to preach and meeting responsibilities we feel like we're in prison. Do you know, I didn't know I didn't have to preach every service. It never occurred to me. I was the pastor. It was hard for me to give up Wednesday night. But I did when I was president of the convention, and Dr. Bell was here, and Dr. Bell did Wednesday nights. I never went back to doing Wednesday nights again. When I stopped being president, Dr. Bell and I would alternate. He'd do one week, and I'd do another. I made sure he got Song of Solomon. I did not want to have to get into all that. Paul is just saying, listen, you need to respect the people who are ministering to you, who are the ministers, elders. And by the way, in the epistles of Paul, it becomes obvious that elder and overseer are both considered the same thing and are basically fulfilled the position of pastor. So anyway, the reference, by the way, of double honor, some preachers kind of like to at least dream about that, does not necessarily refer to proper salary, though I think that is included. But it includes the need to honor those leaders, and double honor may well refer to the double portion that the oldest member of the family received in his inheritance. He got twice as much as any other family member. It likely refers to both honorarium and respect and financial remuneration. I've told you that. I never talked to church about salary, nor the Sunday School Board, frustrated trustees. They said, you have to talk about this. I said, I don't. Pay me whatever you want to pay me. But I said, the issue is not what you're going to pay me, it's what God wants me to be here tonight. So I never knew in any church I served how much I was going to make until I got my first paycheck. And by the way, a lot of times it wasn't much money, but it was kind of exciting to see how God filled in the need. And we knew God called us and God took care of us. We ought to honor those, and part of that is giving them decent living. You have no idea what it's like being in a pastor's home, unless you're a pastor's kid. You live in a glass house. Your kids get criticized more than their kids do. I used to tell my deacons, if my kids are any worse than yours, it's because they hang out with yours too long. It's hard. It's hard work, and it's just a hard thing to handle the Word of God and to help a church go deeper in their relationship with God and stay together. Like I've told you, the thing I love about our church is that we are together, and that doesn't happen very often. His reference here to muzzling the ox, I think you probably understand that. To grind the grain, you may have seen some pictures of the old time, they'd put an ox on there, and it'd be in sort of a circle, and then that ox would walk around that circle, and as you walked it, it crushed the grain. And so he says here, don't muzzle the ox. Now, what was he talking about? Well, he said every once in a while the ox needs to get a bite to eat, so don't muzzle the ox. And he coupled with that the workers worthy of his wages. Jesus made the same statement in Luke chapter 10, verse 7. It's interesting. Now, this is really an interesting thing. Paul called both the Old Testament and the sayings of Jesus scripture. That's interesting. He called the Old Testament and the sayings of Jesus scripture. So in this chapter, we're going to have to hurry on, but in this chapter, Paul deals with how do you discipline an elder who is accused of misconduct? Well, he's not urging special treatment for the elder, but to make sure that any accusation was accurate and not just an untrue accusation. The elder deserves the same treatment that a Jew would have under the law, Deuteronomy 17 and 19. Verse 20, though elders are not named here, the context is dealing with elders, and so the sinning elders are those who are accused here. Sin is a present tense in this 20th verse, which indicates it's not just a single sin, it's a habitual, ongoing sin that is taking place. Now, how do you deal with a leader like that? Well, he says very simply, there ought to be a public rebuke. Likely, that means that a congregation would be involved in it. I can tell you this. We had a seminary student when I was here that had an affair with a Chinese student. He came to me to tell me the story, and on a Sunday morning, he came forward. He did not give any details, but just talked that he had done something and that he needed to confess and ask the church to forgive him. He spoke briefly, and it was not R-rated, it was a good statement, and then the church, we prayed over him. While I was here, we had a staff member whose wife had a one-night stand. We immediately took him off of all responsibility here and told him that he needed to focus on his wife. And then, because she didn't get caught, God convicted her, and she came. We had youth at camp out at Mount Lebanon, and she showed up one night, and she wanted to confess to me of that. Because he was a staff member, I felt like we needed to deal with it. Church needed to know, but we had to do it in a spiritual way. So on a Sunday morning, I preached on Galatians 6, 1, and 2, and if you caught him in a sin, you who are spiritual, restore him. And consider yourself, lest you also be tempted. So on a Sunday morning, I preached Galatians 6, 1, and 2, and when I got through, I asked the congregation, now do you believe what I said? Amen. I've got lots of amens. I said, well, I'm going to give you a chance, no, I'll take it back, that's Sunday night. Sunday morning, I said, I'm going to preach Sunday night on Galatians 6, because we'd had several, Jim Baker, and there had been some public failures, and I said, what do you do when a leader sins? I said, we're going to deal with that tonight. We had a packed house that night. And when I got there, preached my sermon, I said, now how many of you believe what I said is true? And they got arousing, affirming, and everybody agreed, I said, I'm going to give you a chance. Steve, Donna Smith, came forward, and she gave a very simple confession to the church with Steve standing by her side. Then I had a meal in the altar, and the church emptied, and we prayed over them, and we worked with them. We paid for their counseling, did not put him back in a position until they'd been through a lot of counseling and everything. He went from this church to Prestonwood Baptist Church, where he has been for over 40 years, at one time special assistant to Jack Graham. He's now pastoring Hebron Baptist Church, which is just several miles from Prestonwood. Until he retired, he was leading the counseling program at Prestonwood. Now, I tell you all of that because if you were there, you all know that. And the point was that we dealt with it. It was dealt with appropriately, scripturally. We prayed with them, forgave them, and encouraged them, and they've had 40 years now of special marriage and service for the Lord because we properly handled how you deal with a leader, in this case his wife, who's made a mistake. So these are sensitive things. If you ask many people who were here that night what you remember about the 16 years we were here, most of them will say that night. That's what we remember about your 16 years when we got to pray over Steve and Donna. That's what Paul is trying to set up, to say families ought to be like that and churches ought to be like that. We ought to treat each other with compassion, with love, and this is not to make a special exception out of the pastor. It is to be sure that whatever the charges are are accurate and that the church deals with it according to Galatians 6 and restore. And we're seeing a lot of failures in Christian leadership in America today. The missing ingredient in many of those is the church's willingness to restore them. We want to tar and feather them and tear them out of town on a two-by-four or four-by-four. We're to forgive and when there's genuine repentance there ought to be genuine compassion that deals with it. And we're missing a lot of that today. And anyway, Paul is just calling for decency and compassion to exist in the church and in the life of the family that is the church. Now he goes on, and I'm not going to take any time, we're about through here, but the rest of this chapter, there's just three or four verses left. He warns the church against making hasty decisions about leadership, appointing unqualified leaders and keeping themselves pure from the sins developing at Ephesus. They were having a real problem in Ephesus and Paul said, you should not be like that. And there ought to be purity and means of separation from immorality and a single-minded focus upon God's purpose for the church. And it's interesting, in verse 21 where he says, drink a little wine for your stomach's sake, it's interesting that the way he starts that is interesting. He says, drink no longer only water. Now what does that mean? Timothy was a total abstainer. He drank only water. He didn't drink wine. But drink a little, or he doesn't say drink a little, use a little wine for your stomach's sake. In other words, as a medicinal thing. So I just find it interesting that he says, use, no longer use only water. That has to mean something. It means he didn't use wine, didn't drink wine. There were no pharmacies in Paul's day and the wine referred to something that would not be available to them like it is today. And Timothy was prone to internal illnesses and a small amount of wine taken at that time would not make him dependent upon the wine. But I just thought it was interesting that he said, drink no longer only water. And then use, not drink, use a little wine, a whole different ball game than drinking wine. Verse 22, he goes into a little more detail about every Christian leader needs to be someone without any accusation against them. He doesn't identify what the sin might be, but in verse 24, he doesn't identify the sin which takes a long time to appear. He says sometimes what you do bad comes out later and what you do good comes out later. And he doesn't mention what the sin would be that might wait a while to be described. But in chapter 6, in verse 3 and 6 of chapter 6, it could be those sins that are mentioned. If anyone teaches the doctrine does not agree with the sound teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ or the teaching that promotes godliness, he is conceited, understanding nothing, has a sick interest in disputes over arguments, over words, from these come envy, quarreling, slander, evil suspicions, constant disagreement among people whose minds are depraved and deprived of truth, who imagine godlessness as a way of material gain. He's talking about pride and strife and materialism. Those may be the sins he was talking about. Those don't come to light very often. But then verse 25, likewise, good works are obvious and those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden, is the way he puts it. Those are hard to understand. They seem to be obscure, but they teach a profound truth. All of us are headed toward judgment, taking with us our good works and our sins. Paul reminds us that it's very difficult for us to appropriately choose leaders in a church because it's sometimes hard to get at who they are and very difficult to make a wise decision. That's why hasty and superficial conclusions about anyone's are sometimes inaccurate. We've seen that this week in our country. When Trump appoints Gaetz as the Attorney General, only to find out that Gaetz had some things that were accusations against him, whether they were true or not. He claims that they are, but it came out he resigned. He refused to accept the appointment. Then Trump appointed a woman from Florida, the Attorney General, I think, in Florida. By the way, just as an aside, God has a great sense of humor. If they thought Gaetz would be really hard to live with, they haven't known what Bondi is going to do. She is one more piece of work. She is not going to let anything get by her. She will probably be the best Attorney General we've ever had. The point is that we need to be careful in church about putting people in a position if they are not spiritually ready. Listen to this, 95% of the problems in churches are staff problems. Staff problems. It's because it's very hard to truly vet staff members. It's a big deal now. I didn't even know what vet meant. I thought they were talking about the doctor for horses. You vet someone, you check them out. That's what Paul is saying. You need to carefully vet everybody that's a leader that you have a choice over. If you're making appointments, be sure you've checked everything out. Don't make the mistake of not doing a good work at describing what a person is like because of what may come out later. You just need to do your best to do that. He's counseling Timothy to focus on the character of those who are considered as candidates for church leaders. Good works can't forever be hidden and neither can bad works. I'm not near through, but I'm quitting. And I'm going to leave and let Jack do whatever he wants to do with the rest of this chapter. If he doesn't want to do anything, we're through with it. Because the good thing about this chapter is you don't wonder what Paul is saying. I mean, he is not obscure about anything. He is emphasizing that the type of character of exists in the hearts of those who lead in his church. Father, thank you for your Word, Lord. Thank you that it is unending and it's meaning in our lives and sometimes it's hard to get through because there's so many things we need to emphasize. But we just thank you that your Word speaks for itself. So thank you for the counsel that Paul is giving to young Timothy and pray that it would also characterize all of us and those who lead us here today. In Jesus' name, Amen.