The Love of a Good Woman: Caring for Women in Need

As you probably are aware, we've been working through the book of First Timothy for the last couple of months. Last week, we looked at Timothy being called by Paul to a great summary of watching his life and his conduct in such a way that he may save himself in that ministry, through that ministry, or as we saw, proving his salvation through watching his doctrine and his life, but also in that process, drawing many others to salvation as well. But now, as we will see soon, we head into a different section entirely where Paul moves his attention towards the church and gives specific instructions on how the church is to live together. We know that the Ephesian church has been wracked by false teachers. These false doctrines are causing all sorts of issues within the church, and now poor Timothy has to try and bring this all together and unite everything back to, not simply doctrine, pure teaching of the gospel, but the implications of that, which will lead to a godly lifestyle within the church.

And so the next few weeks, we'll be looking at very specific instructions from chapter five through to the first part of chapter six as well, and we will look this morning now at chapter five verses one through to verse 16. This is what Paul the apostle writes to his protege, Timothy. Do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father. Encourage younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity. Honor widows who are truly widows.

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. But she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for those members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband and having a reputation for good works, if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work, but refuse to enroll younger widows. For when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith. Besides that, they learn to be idlers going about from house to house and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan.

If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened so that it may care for those who are truly widows. So far, our reading. So you can see we come to some very practical instructions now to the church, to Timothy. And as we will see, this is concerning the family of God.

So that is where we begin with the general treatment of believers in the church, our first point this morning. And we see that from the first opening instruction, verses one and two. Now it's something that is often said in a clichéd way, but the church should see each other, should see the members of a church as family. At times, scripture says this explicitly. Even in First Timothy in chapter three verse 15, we already dealt with that chapter, we are called the household of God.

In First Corinthians, we are called the family of God. And here at the start of our passage, as Paul is transitioning to start giving some specific instructions, Paul goes to the metaphor again to press home a very practical and important lesson. If we are family, we treat each other like family. Timothy has been struggling with the weighty call of having to instruct unchristian conduct in his church and to call it out for what it is. He needed to correct false teaching, he had to excommunicate unrepentant church members, and you can understand that these were dreadfully daunting tasks.

And in light of this, Paul gives Timothy some classic advice. Verse one, don't rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, encourage younger women as sisters in all purity. When we are faced as Christians with a task of encouraging or correcting other members in the church. Here's a powerful teaching to remember. We treat them as family.

Why does scripture give us this instruction? Well, because it protects us from two errors. Firstly, it stops us from being unkind. What sort of parent would treat a son or a daughter struggling with something difficult with contempt. What is our natural inclination when we face that situation?

We treat them with kindness. What parent would treat their child with contempt if they saw them wrestling with drugs? Who would treat their daughter with scorn if they came running to you after a big mistake? You will treat them with kindness because they're your child, because they are family. Likewise, when Timothy is to encourage and correct fellow believers, he must do so understanding that these Christians around him are as close to him as family.

So he'll treat them with significant kindness even as he corrects them. But the second error that this protects us from is to protect us from seeing fellow church members with meaningful commitment. I treat my brothers, Dirk and Gerard, with meaningful commitment because they are my brothers. I love them so much that I will not allow them to keep making stupid mistakes. I choose to stay in their orbit so that I can speak into their lives when I need to.

The natural Australian tendency is to stay out of people's business. And we sort of cover that with the saying we respect people's private lives. But that is not a Christian position. It's closer to an ungodly position, which the Gospel of John says is because people love to hide in darkness, because of fear of what might be exposed by the light. Family love is both kind and committed.

So Timothy shouldn't be afraid to correct older men, but he should do so as if they were his dad, with respect and honour. Encourage older women like his mum, correct younger men as brothers and younger women as he would gently encourage in all purity towards them, his sisters. I remember listening to a sermon by the famous Mark Driscoll or maybe some people will say the infamous Mark Driscoll, where he had a sermon passionately scolding young men who in his church were sleeping with their girlfriends. At one point, he told them that they were to see and treat their girlfriends like they were their sisters. Treat them like they would like other men to treat their own sisters.

This was a very effective way of partially correcting these men because firstly, it made them understand that these ladies are worth far more than their short-term pleasure was trying to be sort of lured into. But probably even more effective was making them have the image of their sisters the next time they try to hook up with their girlfriends. The principle is a powerful one. How do we treat fellow believers in the church? Well, if you start treating them like they are your real family members, you'll be heading down the right path of godly treatment of Christians in the church.

So that's verses one and two, a general instruction. Now Paul moves on to a group that he will spend the most or the remaining verses in this passage on, which is widows in the church. And it leads us to our next point. The church's treatment of women in need, and that is that we have a duty to them. Today's church is often vilified as being patriarchal, misogynistic, which means being haters of women.

And that is because the church believes that women shouldn't do all things that men do. Of course, the opposite is just as true, but far less controversial, that men shouldn't do all the things that women do. I wonder whether our toying with normalising hardcore transgenderism has come about because we've eroded those distinctions between men and women for decades now. But in any case, the idea that men and women have been created differently, but created differently in order to complement each other is a hated doctrine in the church in today's world. So it might surprise many to hear that Christianity has always had a long tradition of protecting the dignity and value of women.

Nowhere is that more obvious than in our passage this morning. The ethic of caring for widows is one that was deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition that Paul had when he gave these words. The foundational ethic of caring for widows comes out of the Ten Commandments itself. Commandment number five, you shall honour your father and your mother. Honour was understood to include providing for parents, supporting them.

Now if this was included in God's top ten for society, it's no wonder that God will then go on in Deuteronomy to call Himself the father of the fatherless and the defender of widows. In fact, soon after the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, He says in Exodus 22, do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do, and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. In many places throughout the Old Testament, there was this clear demand to honour and respect women who had lost their husbands, who were in serious need by providing for them. God's heart was expressed in the flesh when Jesus came on the scene and we see instances where He is moved deeply by the plight of widows.

Famously in Luke 7, the widow of Nain, where He resurrects her son to give him back to her. Another time, He praises a widow's exceptional sacrifice of offering two small copper pieces to the temple in Luke 21. But perhaps His love is most clearly seen when He scolded the Pharisees for dodging their responsibilities to widows by manipulating God's law in their favour through invoking the rule of Korban. This money is set aside for religious purposes and therefore, I will not be giving it to the widows. And to this rich tradition, Paul addresses Timothy who finds himself in a very tricky situation when it comes to certain widows in his church.

Firstly, it seems that the church was overly zealous in looking after the widows in their church, so much so that there were widows who had become unhealthily dependent on this welfare. When in fact, they could have helped themselves and looked after themselves and freed up money for others who were genuinely in need. Secondly, it seems some widows had families who should have been helping their own mums, but were neglecting them instead. And then there were other widows who seemed to be working the system in such a way as to draw on the care of the church only so far as they could find a non-Christian husband, marry them, and leave the church. That's what it's seemingly referring to in verse 11, when Paul writes, their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their faith.

So if you see, you know, Paul doesn't have a problem with them marrying, but it's this idea that they were probably marrying non-Christian husbands. Paul needs to give careful and wise instructions to Timothy, and through Timothy, to us in how we are to treat specifically women in need in our church, but more generally, people in need in our church. So in this passage, Paul groups widows into two categories. Firstly, widows who should be supported by the church, who were women that were firstly alone, therefore genuinely needy. But as He says in verse five, who have set their hope on God, which is evidenced by a consistent prayer life, an active Christian faith.

The second category of widows concerns those who should not be supported by the church. It included those who had other means of support from a family. Rather than having set their hope on God, having dedicated their lives to Him, they had grown conceited against Christ and for selfish reasons chose to leave the Christian faith by pursuing non-Christian men. And in those days, especially, if you married a man, you took on their faith. So they are leaving the church.

Rather than busying themselves with godly activity, they were consumed with being professional idlers, Paul calls them in verse 13, saying that they dart from house to house in order to spread gossip, to busy themselves in dishonourable occupations. Now it's entirely possible, some commentators suggest that the problem of the Ephesian heresy that was going on, the false teaching that was going on, was being spread by these gossips. Why? Well, because no gossip loves anything more than good church scandal. Despite the destructive character of this second group of widows, Paul strives to tell Timothy not to throw the baby out with the bathwater saying, right.

Okay. No more financial support for any widow. Paul says, no. There is a commitment here for the church. We have a duty to care for women in need in our churches.

We understand that from the beginning, God's people have been people who have looked after the most vulnerable of people. And remember, a widowed woman was one of the most vulnerable people in the ancient world. It remains the duty for Open House, therefore, to look after women in need. Perhaps it's fitting for us to reflect on this biblical teaching today as we currently pray about choosing a new deacon in our church. This falls squarely in the responsibility of the deacon.

As a church, we have the biblical mandate to make sure that no widow in our church is overlooked for support and care. In this category, I think we could rightly put single mums who have been abandoned by husbands. They're in the same situation where through their situation, they have to look after kids and somehow survive. They have a full-time job in two different areas. We have a duty to care for the women in need in our congregation.

And by so doing, we stand in a long line of tradition that has gone before us. Now, the third and final point that we glean from this morning's passage is a broader insight into the principle of Christian welfare, that it needs to be genuine and that it needs to be prioritised towards those who are part of the genuine faith. The situation of the Ephesian church indicates that there was a problem with stewarding resources wisely. There just isn't enough money to go around. When you give to this person, this person misses out.

And the church is being very diligent and very organised in how it administered the care of widows. In verses 9 and 11, we see the word enrol being used. It means that there is some sort of system, some sort of ledger where these women's names are being put on so that the church could intentionally care for them. We're not talking about a couple of solitary aunties in the church who everyone knows needs help. There is probably a sizable group of ladies needing attention.

With this situation comes the ever-present issue of making money stretch, of being good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. And Paul boils down to principles which is very helpful for us to know as deacons, as elders, and as church members. The church has a biblical mandate for welfare, first and foremost, to those people who are genuinely in need and who have a genuine faith. Now I suspect that those two principles might be a controversial thing to have in the welfare age that we live in today. Welfare at a political level is tied with a moral weight and therefore in the eyes of many, the more generous you are in spending money on welfare, whether as a person or as a country, the person who has that attitude is automatically a better person.

But as the notion of welfare states have risen since the sixties, more and more serious studies are throwing that idea into question. Sometimes, helping people can be hurting them. And this can be the case in providing welfare for people who don't represent a genuine need, but receive help out of convenience or another secondary reason. The Bible tells us that we have a responsibility to weigh up genuine need. In Timothy's situation, Paul tells Timothy to consider women who are older than 60.

Why? Because by then they are considered by society then to be elderly. It means that they are probably physically now incapable of working, of earning something to provide for themselves, and potentially also past the age of being willing or able to remarry. Today, being 60 means you still have seven years left of work. So I think you could easily say that that age restriction is more recommended than mandated.

Again, another wise criteria is to look at the sources of their support. If they have been left with no real family who would or could take care of them, then they have a serious risk of becoming destitute, which raises another important point. That in the call of Christian welfare, the greatest responsibility for looking after each other resides with the family unit. Let there be no person in our church who doesn't look after the family members that God has given them. Let there be no person in Open House church who doesn't look after the family members God has given them.

Paul's words in verse 8 can't be any clearer. If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. That is strong language. And the comparison to an unbeliever here is the Roman Empire was actually pretty good. They actually valued the family unit.

They looked after each other, but they're pagans. And Paul is saying, as Christians who invoke a worship and a love for the God of all love, if you're not loving your family, you're worse than these pagans. Now, once these social and physical factors are weighed up, determining genuine need, then comes Paul's criteria that they must exhibit genuine faith. These widows show their faith by showing that they were faithful to their husbands before those husbands passed away. Verse 9, they are the wife of one husband, literally a one-man woman.

They were faithful in marriage. If they had children, they raised those children with love and kindness. They also showed love and concern for the wider Christian community through the evidence of hospitality or caring for the needs of others. In fact, they should have been generous to other widows before they eventually became widows themselves. And if you think about these sort of examples that Paul lists here, and remember, these are not exhaustive criteria.

Paul is trying to create the image of what these women should be or should look like. If you think about those type of examples though, these are examples that go over a long term. These women show who they are over some time. They are consistently like this. This is not a woman who at one time treated her kids nicely by taking them to Dream World, or who once turned up to help people at a garage sale.

These criteria are the ones that are observed over time. Why is this? Because it proves genuine faith. A Christian can be identified to be a genuine Christian by a consistent Christian life. So Paul says, help those ladies who are both genuine Christians and have genuine need.

But now, why does he say this? Well, firstly, because we have a command by Jesus to love each other. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples by your love for one another. The apostle James presses this idea further. How can you say you love your brother or your sister in the faith when you see them with no clothing, when you see them with no food and simply say to them, God bless you.

Keep well. See you next time. And do nothing to help them with their lack of food or clothing. We love our brothers and our sisters in the family of God through action, says James. Paul himself writes in the Galatian church in Galatians 6:9-10, let us not grow weary of doing good.

For in due season, we will reap something from that if we do not give up. So then he says, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, but especially to those who are of the household of faith. There is a prioritising happening here. Do good to everyone, but especially to your family in the faith. Does this mean the church doesn't help people outside the church who aren't Christians?

Does giving towards genuine need mean that we are miserly and ungenerous with our mercy ministry funds? No. It means we need to be generous and principled. Generous and principled. We have a responsibility of acting both graciously and wisely.

And so in our ministries of mercy, there will be some sort of ranking in priorities and that is going to be okay. In fact, that is better than okay, that is biblical. As we consider this practical teaching to the church, it reminds us that the Christian faith is a lived-out faith. When we are tempted to over-spiritualise it, to over-conceptualise it, passages like this helps us to see the heart of the God we worship through simple action. We're called to do no less than our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself did.

The One who looked with sympathy and concern on the widows of His day. A wonderful story of Luke 7 of how Jesus and His disciples were walking past a town called Nain. And as they were walking past, there was a funeral procession of a mum who had lost her young son. And this is what it says, when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said, do not weep. Then He came and He touched the bier, the platform that the body was being carried on, and the bearers stood still.

And Jesus said, young man, I say to you, arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him to his mother. I think it's significant that Luke would include that final phrase. Jesus gave him back to his mother. Jesus sees the woman.

He has compassion for her and He gives her her life, the joy of her life, and also her livelihood back. As Jesus resurrected our hearts also in a spiritual sense, back from being dead in our sin, may He give us back to those in our midst who are the mothers in faith. May we love those women who are now family in the Lord. Because we see ourselves as sons and daughters raised from spiritual death to care for those whom the God whom God has given us. Let's pray.

Lord, as we reflect on our marching orders this morning, we reflect on good and godly and principled wisdom. We pray, Lord, that we may organise our church firstly in such a way that there will always be funds, there will always be intentional aid set aside for people in need. Specifically, Lord, we pray that we will look after some of the most needy in society, single mums, widowed women, orphans, those who need a lot of care. We are thankful, Lord, that we live in a country where we have many resources and governments that are willing to help. This is something that is surely much better than in certain ages past.

Lord, help us to understand that there is a holy calling for the church. Help us to understand our responsibility to fellow believers who are in these situations. And Lord, help us to show our love and our genuine faith to those who also have genuine faith, but are in need. Father, we pray that we thank you that Lord Jesus has given us to each other. That we are to each other, sons and daughters in the faith, mothers and fathers in the faith.

Bind our hearts to get together, Lord, with cords that cannot be broken. And help others to see that it is a good and glorious thing to be part of Your church. A church, a body that loves each other so much that others will know that we serve the God of all love by our love for one another. We entrust these truths to our hearts, seal it, Holy Spirit, to those hearts of ours, and give us the memory to continue to remember these truths. In Jesus' name. Amen.