The Household of God

In this week’s message from 1 Timothy 5, we see that the church is God’s family, and spirit is thicker than blood. Paul tells Timothy to treat older men as fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, in all purity. Love moves us to care for and gently correct one another as a precious family.

Open your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 5. We’re actually going to look at a couple of verses in 1 Timothy chapter 5 today. I think the end of this book is closer than we all realize, even though I’m only going to look at two verses today.

That when you look at chapter 5, it opens with relationships between people in the church, and then it talks about widows in the church, widows who are in need and who are gifted in such a way that they can minister within the church. And so we’ll be exploring that pretty soon. This morning I intend to read from verses 1 to verse 8, but we’re just going to look at verses 1 and 2 this morning.

And then after the discussion of widows, there’s a discussion of elders. Then in the next chapter there’s a discussion of those who are slaves, who are Christians, who work for Christians, and others. And then we go back to looking at some of the heretics and the traits that they had in the Ephesian church. So it’s a great deal of things here for us to think about as we explore this this morning.

And before I even begin this, we’re going to be talking about life in the family of God, life in the house of God, how we treat each other. Particularly this is addressed to pastors, how pastors are to treat other people in the church. That’s the idea. That’s what Paul’s exhortation to Timothy is about.

But before we even get there, I want to back up just a little bit and give you a little background that I haven’t done so far, that information that would have been readily known in the Ephesian church that we haven’t called attention to. And that’s the letter to the Ephesians.

Now, this letter is to Timothy, who’s serving at the Ephesian church. But somewhere between two and five years before the letter to Timothy was written, Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesian church. And it was intended to be a circular letter, not just the Ephesian church was to read it, but that all the churches in that region were to read and understand that letter. And that letter is also about the church.

We’ve been talking about how to live and operate in God’s house, in his church, in the local church. It’s really the focus. In the book of Ephesians, the focus is on the universal church, on all of the church of God. And these obviously go together. We have to think about these things together.

God Created the Church

And the reason I’m calling attention to it is because when you look at the book of Ephesians, one of the things that you discover, which might be a surprise to us, is that God created the church. He planned the church, it says in chapter 1, in eternity past. He brings it about by the power of his Holy Spirit through regeneration, taking people who were dead in trespasses and sins and giving them life.

He unites people together who were totally different from each other. Church at Ephesus and pretty much all these New Testament churches were made up of slaves and wealthy people and mixed races. It was just a mixture of people, totally unlike people, and yet they were brought together in unity, in family, because they had been born into God’s household.

The Church Brings Glory to God

And so you have all of this, but I just wanted to make sure that as we’re thinking about this, we recognize that all of this isn’t just for us. In fact, it’s not particularly, it’s not primarily for us, that’s the word I’m looking for. But it is for us.

I mean, the primary reason that God created the church, the universal church, is because it brings glory, ultimately, to God. It brings glory to God. The church, tells us in Ephesians 3:10 and 11, is that

the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realm.

What that’s saying is that angels and demons see the grace of God displayed, the power of God displayed. They see something true about God that they would otherwise never be able to learn. And God is glorified through that. God is glorified through it. God is glorified when the church acts the way that it’s supposed to act, when we behave rightly.

So just the credit that we have, taking rebellious dead sinners from every background and uniting them together in a harmonious body, that’s an incredible thing. And God receives the glory from that. He should receive the glory from it.

Christ Is Exalted

In the book, Christ is exalted. The church exalts Christ. The whole passage about marriage gives us instruction in Ephesians 5, gives us instruction about what marital life is to look like. But the plan was there because it reveals truth about Jesus Christ and his church.

In other words, the truth about Jesus Christ and his church is the primary thing, and marriage isn’t an illustration of that. It’s the other way. I mean, marriage is an illustration of that. The design of marriage was so that it could be a perfect illustration of the relationship between Christ and his church. And so Christ is exalted.

The goal of the church’s existence is to bring glory to God the Father, to exalt Jesus Christ, who was appointed head over all things for the church, which is his body. And yet, that’s the primary truth. It’s easy for us to get caught up in thinking that it’s all about us. And so that’s why I took this time to do this.

It’s not all about us. It’s all about God. It’s all about the Lord. It’s all about the Lord Jesus Christ.

And yet, because of this great salvation, we enjoy wonderful blessing, incredible blessing. The felicity of believers and the blessing of believers is just absolutely amazing and incredible. And we receive it, we get it, we enjoy it all of eternity. And it’s just an incredible, wonderful thing to be part of the family of God.

And because I’m focusing on the local church and the family of God here, because that’s what we’re looking at right now today, I want us to remember that all of this ultimately is to bring glory to God, to bring glory to Christ.

Born Into God’s Family

So this morning we’re looking at living together in the household of God. We are born into God’s family. Every Christian has the same Heavenly Father, and he’s been born into the same family through God’s Holy Spirit. We have an identity in God.

And you might remember, I expect many of you do remember the words from John 1:12 and 13. Just after the Apostle John tells us that Jesus came unto his own and his own received him not, he says this, he says,

But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

That’s spiritual birth through Jesus Christ. A person becomes a child of God strictly because he’s put his trust and faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and not through merit or good works or church affiliation or any type of religious rites that you can do. It comes when people receive Christ, through trust.

So God, though, becomes their spiritual father. He’s our Abba Father. And the Christian is brought into the family, into relationship with all the other Christians. That’s the foundation, that’s the background for this exhortation that Paul is giving Timothy here.

Jesus in Matthew 23:8 said,

One is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.

So the primary relationship between Christians isn’t the structure that we’ve talked about. It’s not that you divide the church up into pastors or elders or deacons, and then you have the laity of the church. There’s no laity of the church. Every one of us are ministers in God’s church. And the purpose of the church is to equip each of us so that we can be faithful in our ministry to the Lord.

So that’s the relationship we have. We’re part of a great family. We’re part of a family. The local church is the family of God. And we need to be careful how we live in that family.

Doctrine and Practice

We’ve spent a great deal of time talking about the importance of doctrine and how we need to make sure that our doctrine is pure, because if it’s not, then we become spiritually unhealthy. We need to have pure, true doctrine. But we also need to make sure that our practice is correct, that it’s right.

It’s not just doctrine alone. The church has to practice the orthodoxy of community, how we live together as the family of God. We’re to be faithful in the way we live together. The family of God is called to exhibit a visible, observable love and brotherhood to the world that’s watching us. We are to be faithful as the family of God to each other.

Spirit Is Thicker Than Blood

And it’s really, I think it might be very easy for us to misunderstand how important it is. You remember when Jesus’ mother and brother shows up, and someone tells them Jesus is teaching, and they’re way out on the outside in the crowd and they can’t get in. Someone says,

Your mother and your brothers are here.

He says,

Who’s my mother and my brothers but these who do the will?

Spiritual relationship is far more important than we might ever imagine. There’s an old saying that says that blood is thicker than water. And I don’t doubt that that’s true. But spirit is thicker than blood.

When you come together as a saved person, as a believer, you’re brought into a new relationship and into a new family. And the preciousness of that family, we can minimize, we can neglect. We need to make sure that we realize how precious the family of God is. We need to value it.

So when we’re thinking about these relationships, it’s crucial that we think about how important it is to be part of a godly, rightly functioning family. I don’t think any of us want to be part of a dysfunctional spiritual family. We want to be part of a family that operates the way God intends for us to operate, to love the way that God intends for us to love.

So back in chapter 3 and verse 15 is when he told us that he’s writing, the very reason he wrote these things is so that

we know how to conduct ourselves in the household of God, which is the church of the living God.

So it’s in this household that Paul gives Timothy these words.

So I’m going to read verses 1 through 8, but we’ll look closely at verses 1 and 2.

Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father, to the younger men as brothers, the older women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, in all purity. Honor widows who are widows indeed; but if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and to make some return to their parents; for this is acceptable in the sight of God. She who is a widow indeed and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God and continues in entreaties and prayers night and day. But she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives. Prescribe these things as well, so that they may be above reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household, he’s denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So we’re going to look at verses 1 and 2, but let me ask God to bless his holy word through our hearts this morning.

Father, we thank you for the truth of this word and the power of it. And we ask, Father, that as we explore this passage this morning that you would encourage us and bless us, Father, that we would see the principle of family that is here, and that we would recognize how important it is that we treat people as part of the family of God, as members of our spiritual family, and to value it, to value it, Father, because it is eternally valuable.

Our relationships in this life, our physical relationships are so important to us, and they should be. But some of these relationships will break and won’t continue into eternity. What we have as the family of God is so precious and eternal. Help us, Lord, to value it today. Help us to grow in our understanding.

And help us, Father, to be obedient to these words that you gave Timothy. Pray, Father, that we can apply them, apply them first to me, and, Father, to each of us as we consider how we treat each other in the household of God. We ask this in Jesus’ name.

So how should a pastor relate to men? And he divides it up, of course, into older men and younger men, and then older women and younger women. It’s a very simple verse for us to understand. I don’t have to take a great deal of time talking about grammar.

There’s lots of interesting things, little things like hapax legomena and all sorts of technical things here. But there’s nothing technical about the translation, and it translates pretty clearly to the original. So we should have no trouble with that.

Do Not Sharply Rebuke an Older Man

He says,

The Text1 Timothy 5:1–2

Do not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a father.

Or to appeal to a father. Now, the situation that he’s talking about is when an older person in the church is out of line. That’s the idea. Timothy needs to correct this older person.

Appeal to Him as a Father

And yet, there’s a place of unique respect that he should show him. He should treat him as if he is his own father. Treat this man like he’s your father.

Now, your father sometimes might get out of line too, right? And so if that happens, how do you correct your father? Well, you’re going to take more thought, most likely, than you would somebody who’s a casual acquaintance who has offended you or done something outrageous. Not that your father did anything outrageous.

But if you do something wrong and you need correction, you are to correct him. But you’re to do it and treat him as if he’s your father. Older men than the pastor is to be treated as if they were the pastor’s father. That’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?

Younger Men as Brothers

And younger men, men his age, Timothy’s age, and men who are younger than Timothy, you’re to treat them as if these were very brothers. And the same with older women as mothers and younger women as sisters. So the family relationship is what God is calling such great attention to in these verses.

We need to be careful, of course, when we rebuke people, when we correct people. Maybe rebuke is the wrong word. When we correct someone and we encourage them, we should probably, no matter whether we’re young or old, we should take great care in what we do.

In a Spirit of Gentleness

Galatians 6:1, you might remember, says that

if anyone’s caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.

So we’re to be careful in how we correct people, whether it’s your father or your sister or your brother. We need to make sure that we do things in a godly and right way. And we need to look to ourselves as well, because we’re quite capable of sinning.

It’s easy to be harsh, especially if we’re upset by whatever it was the person has done. We can come across way too harsh. The correction is important. It needs to take place. But the way we go about it needs to be in the love of Christ. Love is the motivation for what we do.

So you have a person who needs to be corrected, an older person or a brother, a sister, or someone who’s an older woman who you treat as if she’s your mother. We need to be careful in how we go about that.

Wash One Another’s Feet

Back in John’s gospel, in John 13, when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, you remember what that portrays. When Jesus is washing Peter’s feet, and Peter says,

Don’t you wash my feet. I’m not worthy of you to wash my feet.

And Jesus says,

If I don’t wash your feet, you won’t have anything to do with me.

He says,

Then wash my head, and wash me all over.

He says,

You’re clean all over. You just need your feet washed.

The picture there is sin, this dusty sin that comes into our life, and the fact that we need those corrected. And Jesus says at the end of that,

As I have washed your feet, wash one another’s feet.

What he’s saying is that every one of us get out of line. I get out of line. I use words that aren’t so careful. And I can be fairly rude at times. I’ve worked on it, but it still can happen.

One of the blessings of the church was Joy. Some years ago, we would be in a Bible discussion, and in the middle of that Bible discussion, she would be in the middle of saying something, and I would anticipate what it was that she was going to say, and I would complete her sentence. I do that. I have done that all my life. Ask Vicki. She’s suffered with that for years.

So I complete the sentence because I’ve anticipated what she’s going to say, and I’m right 96% of the time. And those 4% of the time when I’m wrong, I mean, it’s annoying anyway, but those 4% is particularly annoying when I interrupt someone like that.

She pointed that out repeatedly to me whenever I did that. She wasn’t impolite about it. She just simply pointed it out. And I started out kind of defensive and realized I didn’t have a defense in the world. It just was rude behavior.

So that was great. The Lord used her in doing that. We need to do that. We need to correct people, but we need to be careful how we do it.

Not Too Cold but Not Too Hot

If you’re going to wash someone’s feet, Harry Ironside, when he was back in that commentary on the Gospel of John, Harry Ironside said that the problem with some people washing other people’s feet is that they make the water way too hot. And you don’t want to have somebody stick their feet in some scalding water.

We need to be careful when we correct someone. We need to not be harsh. We want to make sure that the water is the right temperature, not too cold but not too hot. And Ray Stedman added to that. He said,

Caution, correcting people without grace and meekness is kind of like doing without water at all. It’s kind of a dry cleaning process. They scrape the feet from dirt, and unfortunately, they take a lot of the skin with it.

We need to be careful about correcting people, but we are to do it. We are to love people enough that we talk to them about the things that need correcting.

So older men are to be loved as you love your father. Younger men is to be your brothers in Christ, and you’re to treat them the way you would treat a brother, with that type of love.

Older Women as Mothers

In verse 2, he talks about older women. And older women, of course, is treated exactly the same way, as they’re treated as mothers. You treat them as if you would your own mother. And so you take all of that care with her. You show grace for her. You want to be protective of her.

You want to have the same kinds of encouragements that you would have to your own mother. And when there’s a time for correction, you take the kind of care that you would take with your own mother.

Everybody is different, and some people are more resistant than others. You do what you can do. You pray, and you deal with people according to their needs. But this is the approach. It’s the family of God.

We are to be a family who love each other, who interact with each other, who care for each other, who take interest in each other, who maybe call each other up pretty often just to find out if they’re okay, that kind of thing. We love each other. We’re showing the love that we have for one another, because it’s important. The church of Jesus Christ is important. Our love for us is greatly important.

Younger Women as Sisters

He’s got some special advice for the younger women who are to be treated as sisters. One of the things that was going on, if you look back at chapter 3 and verses 6 to 7, and in this chapter in verses 11 and 12, some of the heretics were exploiting some of the women in the church, how they were vulnerable, and they were being exploited by these men.

And so, it’s not just for that reason, but that makes the contrast. Timothy’s behavior and every minister’s behavior, in fact every brother in a church, is to be very careful how we treat other brothers and sisters in the church. We’re to treat them with purity. We’re to treat them carefully.

In All Purity

In a counseling situation, a man who is counseling shouldn’t counsel a woman by himself. Not his wife. He shouldn’t counsel a woman by himself. There needs to be someone else there so that you can maintain scriptural integrity, so that you can maintain purity. So you have to guard your speech. You want to make sure that you guard your heart against any improper entanglements.

One of the things that I learned fairly early in my Christian life is that a man and a woman can develop a relationship that is not actually physically sexual, but they are meeting needs that should be met by a spouse. It’s possible for that to happen.

If a man and a woman, you have a married man and a married woman, and they start sharing things together that is pretty intimate, they’re in a situation that is already moving into an adulterous type of a situation. I’ve seen that happen too many times. It leads to sin. And it probably is sin much earlier than people suspect.

A Covenant With My Eyes

So you need to be very careful that you guard your heart against any improper entanglements or any type of lust. And you guard your heart in the wisdom of Job, in Job chapter 31, when he says,

I’ve made a covenant with my eyes. Why should I look on a maid or a virgin?

I made a covenant with my eyes. I’m not going to do that. So flee youthful lusts, and it tells us repeatedly in Proverbs. We need to be thankful.

And a minister, but not just a minister, every person, every member of a church, every true believer and brother in a church is to be very careful to treat every female believer as a holy sister in Christ, whose moral purity you’re called to defend.

So the attitude in new relationships is crucial. We need to make sure we maintain that and keep it. I came across a quote from John White, and he put this whole thing in these terms. He said,

You were cleansed by the same blood, regenerated by the same Spirit. You were citizens of the same city, a slave of the same master, a reader of the same Scriptures, a worshiper of the same God. The same presence dwells silently in you as in them. Therefore, you are committed to them, and they to you. They’re your brothers, sisters, your fathers, mothers, and children in God. Whether you like or dislike them, you belong to them. You have a responsibility toward them that must be discharged in love. As long as you live on this earth, you’re in their debt. Whether they’ve done much or little for you, Christ has done all. He demands that your indebtedness to him be transferred to your family.

I think that’s great wisdom. God has done so much for us, so much for us graciously in bringing us into his family. He saved us. He’s regenerated us. He’s given us life, eternal life. And we owe him a debt that is unspeakable.

If you remember in Matthew 25 and many other passages, Jesus identifies with his church so much so that when you do something for the least of these, do something for someone within his church, his people, his church, his loved ones, you’re doing it for him. He treats it as if you’re doing it for him.

Church is precious and gloriously wonderful. And among the great blessings that we have that comes to us through salvation is the fact that we live and we love. What a precious thing, and how great it is.

I mean, this whole sermon is not a sermon that we overly need. We’re such a loving church. You guys are so loving. But it’s something that we need to be reminded of. And I think it is easy for all of us to not quite like our spiritual family quite the way we should.

It’s precious. Our family, our eternal family, it’s precious. We need to make sure that we treat everyone with familial respect, with family respect, caring for people, loving people the way that God has intended us to do so. We do it not because they deserve it, but because Jesus Christ deserves it.

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for loving us. Thank you for the preciousness of your church. I pray, Father, as you work in us and increase our love for each other, and especially for you, Father, that you would receive glory from this church. I pray, Father, that as the watching world witnesses the family of God here, that they would see what they so long for.

And Father, there are so many people in this world who are isolated, children raised in ungodly families, people who are so estranged to you, who have no family, who have no community at all. Lord, here’s a home for them. You save them and bring them here, Lord. You bring them here and plant your seed in their hearts.

Father, this is our home. I pray that you give us the comfort that we need with each other. And Father, that as we enjoy each other’s company, that you would help us to reach out to those who are so needy. Thank you for your love and kindness. Thank you, Father, for the richness of your grace in Christ. We praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen.