Sermon preached on Saturday, September 14, 2019 at Church of the Savior in Wheaton, IL. Scripture: 1 Timothy 5:1-16.
Father, now may the words of my mouth and of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
So a few years ago when I was in seminary, as luck would have it, I had to write a research paper on 1 Timothy 5. And at first, I’ll confess to you, I was kind of bummed because I didn’t think that I would ever use the research in a sermon. I mean, as far as I can tell and as best as I can remember, our passage this evening never shows up in the Sunday lectionary. Not in the Episcopal Church, not in the Anglican Church.
But as I started to study the passage for the paper, I could tell why they left it out of the Sunday lectionary. Because it’s a pretty weird passage, right? I mean, what’s going on with these widows in 1 Timothy 5? So instead of being bummed, I was thankful that I’d never have to preach this passage in a church.
But then, of course, a couple years later, Kevin Miller called with a preaching assignment, and here we are. Thanks, Kevin, if you’re watching, by the way.
You know, at first, when Kevin assigned this sermon to me, it was supposed to be called Compassionate Care, What a Healthy Church Needs. However, I don’t know about you, but this passage doesn’t strike me as being particularly compassionate. I told this to Kevin. Why does Paul seem to be more concerned with excluding certain widows rather than including them?
I mean, the Bible repeatedly commands the people of God to take care of widows, and orphans, and immigrants, and the poor. In Exodus 22, God says, and I can’t really put it any stronger than this.
Exodus 22 reads, Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do, and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword. Your wives will become widows, and your children fatherless.
As Psalm 68.5 reminds us, God is a father to the fatherless, and a defender of widows. And like it says in Deuteronomy 24, God’s people were supposed to sacrificially leave some of their harvest for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.
Why then, does Paul seem to add, Yeah, yeah, yeah, provided that the widow is over 60 years old, has raised children, and has done all kinds of good works. I mean, why so stingy, Paul? Come on.
I mean, does this passage give us license to snub the 59-year-old widow who never had children? Or what about the 58-year-old widow who was never quite hospitable enough? Can we just ignore her? I don’t think so.
You see, I don’t think anything in this passage contradicts the Bible’s consistent drumbeat of concern and provision for the fatherless, the foreigner, and the widow. Instead, what I think this passage does is zero in on family obligations within the household of God.
And here’s what we learn. Here’s the big idea. The church is your new family, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about your old family. In other words, in order for the church to meet its family obligations to those in need, we each need to meet our own by taking care of our relatives.
So first, let’s take a look at what it means for the church to be our new family. I think this is the focus of 1 Timothy 5, verses 1 and 2. That’s on page 9 of your bulletin if you want to turn there. So I want us to notice how Paul frames the church as the household, the family of God. I really think this is a theme that runs throughout 1 Timothy.
Paul writes in 1 Timothy 5, verse 1, Never speak harshly to an older man, but appeal to him respectfully as you would to your own father. Talk to younger men as you would to your own brothers. Treat older women as you would your mother. And treat younger women with all purity as you would your own sisters.
So Timothy was supposed to respect his elders. Instead of harshly rebuking older men, Timothy is to show them the respect due to one’s father whenever they need to be exhorted or instructed. And likewise, he’s supposed to speak to and treat older women with the same honor as one’s mother.
But notice that Timothy was also supposed to respect people his own age and younger. Younger men and women are to be granted mutual respect as brothers and sisters in the faith. And furthermore, given Timothy’s gender and age, he is to be especially wise in his interactions with young women so as to avoid any accusations of impropriety.
Now, in all of this, Paul is not really going against the grain of his culture. In fact, I think he’s taking cultural expectations and intensifying them. Even people Timothy’s age and under are supposed to be treated with mutual respect.
However, this respect was not meant to keep Timothy silent. You know, as a church leader, he was to be respectful in his exhortation and his instruction.
So I think these first two verses teach us that family relationships within the church were supposed to be characterized by respect, honesty, and purity. Christians are supposed to treat one another in ways that are loving, truthful, and pure. The church is, after all, our new family.
But that doesn’t mean you should forget about your old family. Because in verses 3 through 16 of our passage, Paul then applies the family framework in verses 1 and 2 to a present problem that was facing the church at Ephesus, the welfare of widows.
In verse 3, Paul says, to honor widows who are truly widows. Or as the NLT puts it, take care of any widow who has no one else to care for her. We should note that this echoes the fifth commandment, to honor your father and your mother. In both cases, in both the fifth commandment and here in 1 Timothy 5, to honor means both to respect, but also to provide for. So, Christians are supposed to care for true widows as their spiritual mothers.
Paul claims that these true widows are worthy of care. Why? Well, because left alone in this world, they have prayerfully cast their hopes on the defender of the widow. That is, they’ve turned to God for their spiritual and physical livelihood. Paul says that God’s people should come through for them and meet their needs.
Now, in verses 9 and 10 of our passage, Paul gives two qualifications to Timothy to help him determine who these true widows are. Age and godly character.
Now, as I alluded to in my introduction, the point is not that the church should just ignore the 59-year-old widow who had never married or had children. Instead, I think that what Paul is doing here is he’s trying to guide the Christians in Ephesus to prioritize their limited resources. So, in terms of who they gave ongoing and formalized support to, Paul says that they should focus on the most elderly and the most vulnerable widows. Widows without families.
Because, Paul says, if the widows have children or relatives, then these children or relatives should provide for the widows’ needs. So, in order to balance the needs of the widows on one hand and the limited resources of the church on the other hand, Paul says that these widows should receive support from their relatives before they receive support from the church, if possible.
So, in verse 4, Paul writes that if a widow has children or grandchildren, their first responsibility is to show godliness at home and repay their parents by taking care of them. This is something that pleases God.
Now, that combination of showing godliness in a way that’s pleasing to God reminds me of what James 1, verse 27 reads. That verse says, religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
And this also all reminds me of what Jesus has to say to the Pharisees and the scribes in Matthew chapter 15. So, apparently there, the religious leaders were giving people an escape clause in order to not provide for their parents. They could just dedicate the money to God instead. But Jesus isn’t having any of that. He calls them out for breaking the fifth commandment.
And given some of Jesus’ harsh words towards family ties, like, you know, you need to hate your father and your mother, I think his response to the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 15 is really significant. Because he asks them, why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, honor your father and your mother. And whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die. That’s what God says.
But you say that whoever tells father or mother, you know, whatever support you might have had for me is given to God. Then that person need not honor his father. So, for the sake of your tradition, Jesus says, you make void the word of God, you hypocrites.
Anyways, back to 1 Timothy 5. When Christians provide for their relatives’ needs, when Christians pay back their elderly parents by taking care of them, they can practice true religion and keep the fifth commandment all at once. Kind of like killing two birds with one stone.
Now, let me just say that I’ve only just begun to realize what a debt I owe my parents now that I have a kid. Anyone else been there? So, as a relatively new dad, what struck me, and Eva’s great, by the way. I’m not, you know, trying to denigrate Eva at all. But, in the course of meeting her needs over the first year of her life, it struck me that someone had to meet my needs, hundreds, if not thousands of times, before I was even capable of thanking them.
And I think that that’s meant to teach us something about the way that God provides for us. But I also think that it’s meant to prompt us to take care of our parents in their old age.
But I think there’s even more going on here. When individual Christians keep the fifth commandment by providing for the needs of their elderly parents, they enable the church to take care of the widows who have no one else to care for them. However, if Christians forsake their obligations to their relatives, then it opens the church up to accusation. It damages the church’s reputation. I think that’s what Paul’s worried about here.
Because he doesn’t mince words in verse 8 when he writes, But those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers. Believers who fail to care for their own families, especially the helpless widows, fail to demonstrate even as much faithfulness as non-Christians, is what Paul’s saying.
The church should be known for taking care of the vulnerable, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow. And Christians should be known for taking care of their own families.
And now, as a younger minister about to be ordained to the priesthood, I’ll admit that this weighs on me. Because I think, you know, how many pastors have failed when it comes to providing for their families? I don’t just mean financially, but relationally, emotionally. I can think of plenty who have failed.
So yes, the church is our new family, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about our old family.
Okay, I’m tempted to just tie it all up there, but you may have noticed that there’s some other weird things in this passage. So what do we do with the rest of it? Because according to Paul, the church should not give formal, ongoing support to younger and or ungodly widows.
So in verse 6, Paul contrasts the worthy recipients of the church’s support with the unworthy, those who conceal their spiritual death with self-indulgent lives. And then in verses 11 through 15, Paul expands on this unworthy category of widows. He says, the younger widows should not be put on the list. Why? Well, to me, it sure sounds like these younger widows had at least something to do with the false teaching that Paul is opposing throughout the letter.
So Paul writes that if they are on the list, they will learn to be lazy and will spend their time gossiping from house to house, meddling in other people’s business and talking about things they shouldn’t. That sounds like how he describes the false teaching elsewhere in the letter. And he’s also worried that some of them have already gone astray and now follow Satan.
And when Paul says that their physical desires will overpower their devotion to Christ and they will want to remarry, that’s really confusing because just a couple verses later, he says they should remarry. He also says that they would then be guilty of breaking their previous pledge. And what I think that means there is that he’s worried that they’re going to marry unbelievers and abandon their Christian faith. That’s debated, but that’s how I make sense of that apparent contradiction in the passage. He’s worried that these younger widows are going to marry non-Christians and then give up their Christian faith.
So what’s Paul’s advice to them? He says, I advise these younger widows to marry again, have children, and take care of their own homes. Then the enemy will not be able to say anything against them or against the church.
Now, if you’re familiar with Paul’s writings, at first glance, this sounds like it might contradict what he says about celibacy and singleness in 1 Corinthians 7. But I think we need to remember that like we’ve discussed previously in this sermon series, the false teachers in Ephesus were forbidding marriage or at least strongly discouraging it. So see 1 Timothy 4, verse 3. That’s where he mentions that. So I think that Paul has a high view of both singleness and marriage, but he’s contextual in how he applies it. He doesn’t mandate one or the other across the board.
So based on what was going on in Ephesus, based on the fact that one of the things that the false teachers were teaching was that you shouldn’t get married, Paul thinks that it’s better for these younger widows to remarry within the church because he has a high view of marriage. That way, they’ll have a family to take care of them as they grow old.
So to take a step back, when it comes down to this, I think the key question in this passage is this. How should Timothy determine which widows the church in Ephesus should support? Obviously, things were going wrong. The church’s time and resources were being used up by younger widows, wealthier widows, widows with families, and ungodly widows who were spreading false teachings. So how should Timothy respond?
Well, in answering the question, Paul does not suggest that the church should abdicate its responsibility to care for the vulnerable. Let me say that clearly, okay? This passage does not contradict everything else in the Bible that says that Christians need to care for the needy, even if they’re younger than 60 and haven’t had children, right? But instead, I think Paul’s saying that the church is to be a wise steward of its limited resources.
So sure, the church could and should give occasional, temporary support to many kinds of vulnerable people. But here Paul says that formalized, ongoing support, so think like a line item in the church’s budget, a monthly check until they die, that kind of support should be reserved for the elderly, godly widows. And as for other widows, widows with families, Paul insists that Christians are supposed to take care of their parents, their grandparents, and their relatives.
So, with all that, how should we here at Savior respond? I think we should ask ourselves three main questions.
First, how are our family relationships doing here within this church? Are we treating one another with respect, with honesty? Are we telling each other the truth and with purity? Are we treating one another like a family, like a real family, and not like a voluntary association of people who just happen to like the same liturgy, just happen to like the same songs, just happen to like women priests, and we’ve all just ended up here? We’re not just a club. We’re a family.
And as far as I can tell, we’re doing all right. We’re doing okay in this category, right? But surely there’s always room for growth, right? I mean, we’ve got some lonely people here in our church, and we need to be there for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. So first, how are our family relationships doing here?
Second, are we using our resources wisely to meet the most pressing needs within our community? This question has to be asked. Are there any individuals, organizations, or causes that we should stop supporting in order to make better use of our time and our resources? And on the other side, are there any individuals, organizations, causes that we need to start supporting? Who are our true widows here at Church of the Savior? Which particular needs in our church and in our community do we need to prioritize?
And again, as far as I know, I think we’re doing okay. I certainly can’t think of anything as egregious and messed up as what was going on at Ephesus, so that’s good. But we need to continually ask ourselves these kinds of questions as a church. And so if anything comes to mind with those questions that I just asked, please let one of our leaders know.
However, and here’s where I think this passage really needs to land today. Every individual Christian has a role to play when it comes to the church meeting the needs of the vulnerable. This is not just a job for the clergy or the vestry or the staff. It’s a job for all of us as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. Because in order for the church to meet its family obligations to the fatherless, the foreigner, and the widow, we each need to meet our own.
So we need to ask ourselves, each one of us, thirdly, are there any obligations, any needs that I as a follower of Jesus should be meeting, particularly within my immediate and extended family. Because yes, Jesus does stretch and he reconfigures family ties, but he does not abolish them. Yes, the church is your new family, but no, that doesn’t mean that you can forget about your old family. your obligations to your relatives still matter to God.
Christians should be known for welcoming the least of these into the family of God. Christians should be known for taking care of the orphan, the immigrant, and the widow. But Christians should also be known for taking care of their families, for being faithful to their spouses, for raising up their children, for respecting and providing for their parents and their grandparents, and for praying for and supporting their relatives, whether they’re Christians or not.
So, what is it that you sense the Lord calling you to do for your family this week? I don’t know. That’s why I’m not giving specific instructions, you’ll notice. I’m just asking a lot of questions. So let me ask these to you.
Do you need to have a difficult conversation? Do you need to ask someone for forgiveness? Do you need to forgive somebody? Do you need to write a check?
The church is your new family, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about your old family. Because as Paul writes, those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. And let the church not be burdened so that it may care for those who are truly widows. Amen.