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Speaker 1Good morning, everybody. How are you? Doing alright? This is kind of a beautiful morning. How are you doing?
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Good. Very good. Alright. Well, it's good to see you here. I'm glad that you're here in the house of lord together with us.
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Would you stand up and we'll sing a song. Scott, I'm going invite you forward. Drag baby if you want to. Yeah. Redeemed how I love to proclaim it.
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We're going to sing hymn number three fifty six. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, alright? Sing out like you mean it. If you don't know Jesus, talk to us afterwards. Please, let us know but sing out, Redeem three fifty six.
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Speaker 2This is a good one. Redeem his child and forever I am I think of my blessed redeemer I think of him all the day long. I sing for I cannot be silent. His love is the theme of my song. Redeem.
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Redeem. His I know I shall see in his beauty the king in whose law I delight who lovingly guarded my footsteps and giveth me songs in the night Redeem. Redeem. Redeem by the blood of the lamb. Redeem.
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Redeem. His child and forever Amen.
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Speaker 1I took the base pad for there for a minute if I confused any of you.
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Speaker 2That was pretty.
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Speaker 1Thank you. First lesson, hymn number six seventy. Crystal said she taught this one to her grandkids. It's a good
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Speaker 2you're I pray make me a blessing to someone today
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Speaker 1Alright. Y'all can have a seat. That's this is funny to me anyway. Make me a blessing on that says, lord, make me into a blessing for someone, right? You got that.
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The grammar on that. I'm a grammar nerd. When I was little, what got me started down the grammar nerd path probably was when I'd say, mama, make me a peanut butter sandwich. She'd go ding, ding, you're a peanut butter sandwich. She was fastidious about the grammar.
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Anyway, I've got some announcements. Monday nights at First B is happening this week. It's down the hall. We're not having a wanna this week but down the hall in the fellowship hall, we're having meal music and a message. Carl is preaching on Luke 18.
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Chicken piccata made by Sam McVeigh. If you know who's Samantha McVeigh is, you will want to be here for the chicken piccata. She's a great great chef. Home sweet home at Monday nights, first week. Youth group is happening Tuesday night at 06:30 to eight and that is for both middle school and high school.
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So, if you fit that category and know someone who does, you can send them in here to be studying the Bible with Mike at youth group playing games and having fun. June the third and the tenth, our church photo days. So, Nick, Stern is right there. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you.
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So, thank you. Nick or Chris and they have a similar look and they will both have cameras. So, if you would see them afterwards, please. Church photo days. We also have this afternoon, you all are invited by virtue of the fact that you are here.
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You are invited to go to Camp Creek Camp Creek Inn down Hoback Canyon. So, you go down towards Alpine, turn left at the roundabout there, and go to Camp Creek Inn. It's three miles down that road. David and Sarah Gilmore are celebrating their marriage. They got married in California, but they want their church family to be able to celebrate with them.
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So from one to five this afternoon, lunch provided. If you'd like to go, feel free to head down the Hoback Canyon over towards Bondurant at Camp Creek on the left. Three miles after the turn. Amanda McMullen is an interning with us for the summer and she is doing a project on the history of First Baptist Church. Now, we are a 107 year old church and this service, the mean age of this service, let's go with the, yeah, arithmetic mean of the ages and this, you should be able to tell better and more history than the first service.
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Does that make sense? So, if you would, please reach out to Amanda McMullen and talk to her. Any little story that you remember that you feel like bears on the history of First Baptist Church of Jackson, please let us know. I know none of you were here one hundred and seven years ago but y'all have seen things change, right? So, if you can think of a neat story or you want to Email a quick story to Amanda McMullen, you can do that through the office at firstbjackson.org site.
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Patriotic Color Run. Young Life is sponsoring a five ks run that will be, it will start at and go around Jackson Hole High School Stadium on June 30. They say it is gonna begin at 10:07AM. So, if you want to either be supportive with your patriotic garb or want to run-in this event, you're welcome to and you can register right there at jacksonhole.youngyounglife.org. Ali Lane is the person who'll be checking in with you.
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Vacation Bible School is happening. Vacation Bible School happens this year, June 25 through the twenty seventh, 9AM to noon. It's the Rolling River Rampage. And this little river otter that looks so sweet just didn't look rampage enough. So I think Blake added a very muscular rat, a river rat in there.
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Actually I said just put a river rat to cover up something else and he did that. So that's what happened. But it shouldn't be scary, even if that looks scary. It shouldn't be scary for the kids. If you want to sign up as a child or sign up to volunteer, you can do that through the church website or you can do it right here.
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Diane, would you wave your hand? Anybody that would like to volunteer, see her. And if there's anything else, there is something else. The senior we did senior recognition this morning in the first service and I'm gonna flip through the slides for them. We have Daniel Kaufman who is going to college at UW.
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We have Elise Olson who is going to Pepperdine. We have Kate Ripley who is moving to Texas to study there. Ricardo Garcia Gaspar. I don't know where he's going. I missed it, but Chris.
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Undecided. Okay. Very good. Robert Gerlin. That's the ones where, Robert Gerlin is studying to be I mean, he is a mechanically inclined young man, very much so.
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And he is planning on designing power plants for General Motors. He's planning on studying automotive engineering and new technologies and doing that. Syed Jimenez, you know this one, Chris? CWC right here. Okay, fantastic.
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And this was the verse that we tried to send them off with. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding but in all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. So, we're handing them off a Bible and a book of God's promises for graduates and we prayed for them in the first service and just wanted you to know that that's what is happening. Is there anything I forgot or missed? Yes, ma'am.
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Debbie? Yes. Absolutely. Would y'all pray with me right now and then I'll let you get up and greet one another but Lord God almighty, for these teens that are so impressionable right now, they have been brought up lord with varying degrees of faith. The ones that have been here in this church have heard your word lord but we know that the seed has been planted.
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We pray that you would continue to grow it, that someone would water and grow it and for Trey Brown in particular. Lord, would you plant the seed of your word deep in his heart and would you have it flourish? I pray that he'd grow up. Lord, looking to you and calling out because we know, lord, that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. I pray that you would show yourself as faithful and true to your promises for each and all of these and that you would direct their paths as they go forward in life.
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Jesus name, we ask a specific and special blessing on Trey and these other graduates. Amen. Now, would y'all stand and we'll bring you back together with a song. You can greet one another.
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Speaker 2Amen. Ain't that true while you're flipping your pages? It is. The more you serve the Lord, the more you develop that relationship with him,
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Speaker 1and Yep.
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Speaker 2Pretty soon that love is so sweet, you didn't even know what happened.
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Speaker 1Amen? Yesterday, just yesterday, I actually sang that song in a hospital room over at the hospital. Hugh Soullis has been in the hospital. He gets to go home today. I want you to be praying for him.
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I got to sing that as kind of a prayer of benediction, he affirmed it from a hospital bed. The longer you serve him, the sweeter he grows. Let's invite God, omnipresent God who's already here. Let's invite him and tell him how welcome he is in our lives. Hymn number three eighty seven.
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Thank you. I'm going invite the frontline team to come forward but y'all can have a seat. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you for such a beautiful morning to get out. Yesterday was just absolutely glorious, lord.
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We think about this creation that cries out with a creator. Lord, we pray that everyone would give glory to you. When they look at creation, they would be looking at the creator that they would see you, your fingerprints all around us in these mountains and these valley, rivers, and streams, lord. I I pray that they would, the sun, moon, and stars in their courses above. Join with all nature and manifold witness to thy great faithfulness and mercy and love.
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God, we want to give words, carry your word forward, and give word to that for people who only have nature proclaiming your name. So, God, would you share your good gospel? Would you advance the scriptures? Would you advance the gospel? Would you advance the the Christian witness?
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The gospel witness, would you carry it forward using us? We come to a time now where we're giving back, lord. Specifically, we ask that you'd use these offerings to advance your good gospel in places where it is not right now. That could be a heart here in Jackson or a tribe on the other side of the world. Lord, we pray that you would be using this church to fulfill your will and your way.
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Lord, would you bless the gift, multiply it, and the giver and bless them to be a blessed others. In Jesus name, we ask that you would do. Amen. First Timothy five one, is the mic on? Okay.
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First Timothy five one to six two. That's what's on the back of your bulletin. I'm not going to go that far today. We did not have children's church this morning and I looked at that and thought, man, that's a mouthful. It would take a long time to get through it and then I thought and I'm going to have kindergarten through fifth grade up here for the first time in the summer.
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I don't want to bore them silly. So, I did shorten the text for a couple of reasons but I'll get to those in the midst of the sermon. So, first Timothy five one starts off this way and for those of you who are just joining us, you're visiting from out of town. We've been going through chronologically in the order that the books were written. Since doing the life of Jesus in the book of John, the life of the early church in the book of Acts.
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We've been going forward in all the epistles in the order we believe that they were written. So, we're up to first Timothy. First Timothy, Paul has left Timothy in charge at Ephesus, and it's a church that has some problems. Now Paul had been in Ephesus and lived there for three years. He visited them and had tearful meeting with the elders on the beach at Miletus on his way to be bound up and delivered to prison in Rome.
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He was on his way to Jerusalem then back. And he's leaving Timothy in charge. He already knows the difficulties and he knows that he's sending a guy who's in his 30s probably and I came in as a guy who was 40. When I started here, I'm 47 now but I started here when I was 40 and so for me to come in and start preaching and I'm preaching to folks who are younger than me and folks who are older than me, I read this and think, wow, Sage Wisdom from Paul to Timothy and I need to take this to heart but I think it's more than just me, alright? It's more than just for me and my job but it's for all of us.
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First Timothy five starts off like this. Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father. Now, when I was studying for this and when I read and Tanya reads to me sometimes while I'm driving and we had about four hour drive this week and we went and she said, you're to have to stop right there on this one. Not even halfway through the first verse. You know, she said, you gotta stop right there.
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Because it's been a while since people really knew that a father was due respect. We see around us that people don't treat people who are older than with a great deal of respect, it seems these days. In our society, in our time, in our in this place. Do not rebuke an older man but encourage it him as you would or father or with the respect do a father is a good translation too. Encourage them, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters in all purity and it points out in all purity right there.
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We are a family. We used to sing there. We've sang a couple of Gaither songs this morning already. We used to sing, I'm so glad. I'm a part of the family of God.
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Y'all know that song? So, we are a family. These this verse is something that I wanted to camp out here for just a minute. Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father. Imagine Timothy going in.
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He's got folks from a Jewish background, believers in Jesus but Jewish background folks who tend toward legalism. He's got folks from a pagan background who tend towards license. Now, since I've been here early in the first year at some point, we talked about the good old gospel way. It's right here, okay? Straight, narrow path of Jesus and he invites us into this gospel way, the good news of freedom in Christ.
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Now, there's a ditch over there that we can run off into that is the ditch of legalism. I use this all the time. You all heard it. License is over here where you feel like you can just do anything and it's fine. Libertine or licentious over there, legalist over here.
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And this good old gospel way is the balancing of those two things. It's not overly legalistic and it's not overly licentious but there is freedom in Christ. There's liberty in Jesus. He does set the captive free. Captive to this or captive of that.
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There's freedom right here in the good old gospel way. The message of the cross, right? That it's absolute foolishness to those who are perishing but it is the power of God to those who are being saved. So, since I have been here, I have dealt with situations where people were in this ditch or in this ditch. Praise God that people in this ditch have said to me, pastor Ray, can you help me understand how Jesus can pull me out of this ditch?
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Can you pray for me? Can you help lead me out of this ditch? Can you? And I praise God. And then I've had folks in this ditch that were saying, Pastor Ray, you need to get those people out of that ditch.
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Okay. These people to me are harder to deal with. Quite honestly, these are a lot harder to deal with. And rebuking an older man is very hard. But if you consider that this man is due my respect and I'm much more likely to have influence on him and on his heart if I treat him with the respect that a father is due.
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Does that make sense? Then, you're going to make more sense to him and come across as better rather than bashing him. The rebuke right there, the word is harshly accused or harshly scream at. Really, really, it's a fourth, it's a really strong rebuke. So do not strongly or harshly rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father.
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Younger men as brothers, there may be a scuffle that comes up, a sibling rivalry or a scuffle that comes up between you and your brothers but you would protect them, wouldn't you? You take care of them. You would stand against anyone who tried to take them on. Older women as mothers, younger women as sisters. I am from Georgia.
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Y'all can hear that in my accent. If in Georgia someone was born fifteen minutes before you, you say yes ma'am to them. You throw that in there, there's a respect that is due to someone who's older. There's a lady in the first service who's one day older than me. And she has convinced me, stop saying yes ma'am to me.
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But it's not something that's normal. It was not necessarily normal for the culture that they were in. So he was saying, make sure that you take care with your words and with the way that you speak to people. They're wrong. He's wrong and he's wrong but you can have a greater influence on them if you treat them with the respect that is due a father, mother, brother, or sister in all purity and he make sure to say in all purity because I mentioned this in the first service too.
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I had somebody this week that said, well, I'm just wondering what summer will bring us, you know, and he met more people. The the next wave of incoming people, it reminded me. He was, he meant it with all purity but it reminded me of junior year or or senior year in college when people are looking back going, wonder what the new crop is going to be. A freshman coming in and it was not with all purity that they were looking. In the church, we are a family and we need to treat each other like a family.
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Some of that, it will require remedial instruction to learn how you ought to treat a family. But we are supposed to treat others, especially in my position, definitely am supposed to treat people with the utmost of respect. So we're a family. That's a start. I'm gonna go to something I've used a lot of times in different sermons.
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I think that it's helpful. When we think of a timeline of how all of the ages go and particularly as it is a first person narrative. I did a funeral yesterday and there's a lot of first person songs in that funeral. This is the way that time for an individual Christian goes. God chose from the very beginning, the system for how this would play out.
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He did not have to create us but he did. He created us in his own image. Adam, sinned, we fell, but he had a solution that was established before the very foundation of the world which was Christ's work. Christ, the Bible calls him the second Adam in some places. Would come and he would live a perfect life.
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He would voluntarily and willingly give his perfect record in a sacrificial death. He would be buried and then God would raise him and he did. That was established. That is the system. It is the way that it is.
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God chose from the beginning that it would be this way and then, the message of the cross, Blake, you ready with that slide? I I use this one all the time. I think it's the most succinct statement of the gospel in the New Testament. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. What is the first century Jew have to do with me?
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It's foolishness but to those who are being saved, that's progressive verb. It's the very power of God. Now, Christ work and the gospel witness goes forward and the gospel witness is just attesting to the fact that God has given a way for you to be free from your sin, for you to get up out of either ditch that you're in and be in that good old gospel way. Trusting in Christ for his provision for your sins. The gospel witness goes forth.
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Every time that the gospel witness is spoken, every time it is it is mentioned or preached, proclaimed, people will either accept it and therefore have life eternal. Reject it and therefore, remain in their sins or they'll say, I'll hear you more later just like they did to Paul in Acts 17. The gospel witness goes forth and for a Christian, there is a moment where you believe and accept the gospel. Now, that is salvation right there and I grew up Southern Baptist and we prayed for that that somebody would walk the aisle. They would tell us that they believed and we would know that that person was saved and praise God.
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That is the moment when that person walks from death to life. God removes him from the kingdom of darkness and places him in his kingdom of marvelous light and that is binary. Either you are lost or you are found but at the moment of belief, you're saved but do you immediately walk in perfection? No. Are you immediately glorified, transformed into heaven?
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No. There is a there is a trajectory after that. As we submit our will to the will of God where he begins in this span that we call life after belief, sanctification. Not only is there salvation that he has saved us but there is sanctification where he is transforming us more and more day by day, conforming us more and more into the image of his son as we submit our will to him. Sanctification is the process between belief, salvation, and it's the work of the Holy Spirit.
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The still small voice of God whispering directions, instructions, movements, prayers in our ears until that day when we are ultimately saved. That great and mighty day of the Lord either the day that we die or the day when Jesus comes back. We will ultimately be saved and glorified. Perfected. No more sin.
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No more tears. No more death. So, that to me is a very helpful slide. I I know I've walked through with you before. I'm going to do it again.
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I think it's helpful to think of life in these terms. We live as believers between the already. We're already saved but we are not yet perfect. We live in the already Christ has done what he needs to do but it's not yet a complete fulfillment. Now, can we be a part of the kingdom from the moment you believe, you are a part of the kingdom and your desire changes for being about self as you submit your will to God to being about the kingdom of God and it's advanced.
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Are you with me? Do you agree? All of this is a work of God's sovereign grace. He did not have to but he did anyway. You did not deserve it but he did anyway.
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It's grace, unmerited favor of God and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. From the time he's drawing you to himself to the time when he is sanctifying you because you have believed and you have surrendered your life to him. You live between the already and the not yet. Christ has come. There are people who have not believed that yet.
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They're between the already. There has a sufficient sacrifice been made but they have not yet heard it. So, we've got a job to do. Okay. I have another little timeline that I'm going to start and this one is kind of difficult.
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I'm going to say it two weeks in a row. This week for sure, we're going to go through it and I think we're going to do it again next week. X is the original culture to whom the book is written. So in this case, X is Ephesus in the first century, about sixty something AD. Okay?
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Sixty four ish. That's the original culture. Now, in Ephesus, there were Jews and there were Christians who had formerly been Jews only, Jewish background believers. And there were pagans, and then there were pagan background believing Christians. Okay?
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So the original culture of a place, in this case Ephesus, is X. And then going forward for that culture, does culture change over time? Can we all attest to that? Yeah. You can look around and see how our society has shifted over the years.
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I can see the difference geographically between here and home, but I see the difference when I go back home that it's changed. Culture does change. We want for culture to change. We want it to go in a positive direction, not a negative direction. And so to the extent that a teacher, a good teacher can make for a change in the culture of a school and the change of a culture of the school can have a difference and change the community.
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Bad teacher can too. Anybody who speaks into it and in this case, we're talking about why being Paul's view. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he is giving a trajectory. This is called a trajectory hermeneutic if you're an amateur theologian. Original culture is there and Paul shares his view that's like a seed text for the ultimate ethical application.
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That's why I made it XYZ, not ABC, okay? The ultimate ethical application is Z. Like when Paul says, in Christ, there is no Jew nor Greek nor Gentile, slave or free, barbarian, and Scythian, male or female. He says that. That's the ultimate ethical application and we believe that there is complete and there should be equality in Christ.
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When we practice communion, we're practicing our total unity. None of us deserve the blood of Christ but we take it in as the representation of the sacrifice made for our sins. So, the ultimate application ethically is in view and that's the way it should be but Paul also lived at the same time as this original culture though he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. He still knew that the real world, there were people around that believed entirely different from him. He had been one of those people, right?
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Phariseical Jew. Or could be pagan. Both of them treated women horribly. So, when he says to the Galatians that there is no slave nor free barbarian Sithing male or female, that's radical. I'll give an example of this.
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Another example, that was one. Male and female is one of them that's touchy in first Timothy. It's been hard for me. Some of the sermons have been hard for me to present in our day and age. If he says that in Christ, there's no slave or free barbarian Scythian Greek Jew or male or female, then why is it not immediate?
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Why is it not just immediately right there? Why is there a wage gap still? It shouldn't be doing the same work. They should get the same pay, right? Why is it that that's the case?
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Well, the example is people are hard to this is a stiff neck people you've given me, God, right? That that's always been the case. People don't change quickly even when they're surrendered to God. It's not always a quick change. Would it scare you to death if God immediately dropped on you at the moment of your belief, every sin and immediately, you had to deal with him right then.
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He progressively transforms us. Do you agree with that? Yeah. Okay. So, my example, when Paul says, let the women learn.
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That's radical for his time because they were not doing that in the Jewish community and they were not doing that in most Greek communities either. There were some Roman women that had leisure time, leisure time finally because there was some profit and there was economic freedom that allowed them extra time, but they were still not in the norm educated. So when Paul says, let the women learn, that's radical. I'm saying that nowadays, original culture was in Ephesus. Paul's view, he says, let the women learn.
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What? That's a seed text for this. There's no slave nor freedom of junior Greek barbarian Scythian male or female. It's a C text saying that's the trajectory we're on is to go to that ultimate application. But what we do in our culture since we're between Paul and that ultimate time, we see Paul and go, what a chauvinist jerk.
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He says, let the women learn but let them be silent and we see the let them be silent instead of let them learn. It's radical. A lot of our modern society, the idea and the inception for a lot of the great goods that we have in our society are from the Judeo Christian background. Paul's ideas magnified and then under the constitution where they're supposed to be equal process under the law, everybody's supposed to be treated equally under the law, then they've extended it further in some cases than Paul did. And so we sit in judgment of Paul and the way that he says things in our culture going, wow, what a misogynist jerk.
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He's pointing to that time, but he's in the real world and he knows that progress comes slow. Am I with are you with me? So it's called a trajectory hermeneutic. Here we go. Now we're gonna talk about widows.
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And I had a much longer section planned, but I struggled this week, emotionally struggled with this passage for a couple of reasons. Honor widows who are truly widows. We know the definition of a widow is a woman whose husband has passed and she no longer has her husband where you're with her. And I know a lot of y'all who fit that description. And as I pray through what I'm gonna say, I know I'm gonna be looking at these faces.
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And I know that some of you are heartbroken and it's fresh and some of you it's been a long time, but it's still a heartbreak. And so when I was looking at this, I thought of a lot of you. Honor widows who are truly widows. Now, this is a principle. I'm backing away from line by line detailed, you know, picking the Greek verbs and everything out of this because this reads like an instruction manual to stop the VCR light from blinking.
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You know, know that's an old analogy, but it reads just like, oh my goodness, look at the detail of this. It's like this. But this is the principle though, honor widows who are truly widows. Okay. There's a principle here at stake and it is to honor.
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Now we have, and it's progressive action, be honoring widows who are truly widows. So continually we should be. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household. Amen. And to make some return to their parents for this is pleasing in the sight of God.
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So, this, I said, it is a rebuke. The very first two verses were honor someone, father, mother, brother, sister, in all purity and then we get to this about the family and it says, let the parent, the the children and the grandchildren take care of their widowed mother or grandmother. She who is truly a widow. Now, we've got this truly a widow now twice. You know, honor widows who are truly widows.
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We do not know the exact circumstances in Ephesus at this time, but there was something going on with people either pretending to be widows or not being qualifying widows for some reason. Now, the false teachers, certain persons, Paul calls him several times. False teachers had taught that we should not marry and we shouldn't eat certain things. So, we know that's a heresy that's going on. They already believe that the resurrection had happened which we also know is a heresy we still await the second coming, the great mighty day of the Lord.
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Honor widows who are truly widows. She who is truly a widow and then it starts to define that saying, left all alone. She doesn't have children or grandchildren or people to help take care of her and then it says, she is truly a widow in the context of the church is someone who has set her hope on God. She continues in supplication that's asking and prayers. That's communication with God.
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Night and day, it's an all the time experience for her to know that her husband is no longer there and her God is who she relies on day and night. Now, it jumps apart from there. This true widow to what we see as somebody who is playing a game or trying to gain from the church in some way but she who is self indulgent is dead even while she lives. Would you agree that drugs, alcohol, the seek for seeking for fame, power, glory, they're all their own punishment. You've seen the life that's going well that has been really invested in any of those things?
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No. She who is self indulgent, Paul says, is dead even while she lives. He's contrasting that with the widow who relies on God. Every time that widows are mentioned in the Bible too, true widows. Every time they're mentioned, it's like the widow's might.
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She gave the little that she had, right? It's always in a positive thing. Command these things well so that they, the widows may be without reproach. And then we have this statement, but if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, then he has denied the faith and he's worse than an unbeliever. That's some of the harshest words that we ever hear Paul say.
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He's saying that we should take care of one another. If we can alleviate the financial burden on someone in our household, we should. If we don't, he say we're denying the gospel and denying the faith anyway. He's also saying that we should treat everyone in the church as if we are family, father, mother, brothers, sisters. We are a family.
44:58
But this is a rebuke for our time, I think. Because we need to take care of our people. We need to take care of our family. And as I look out in the first service and the second service, I know the ones of you who have aging parents or have folks that you are taking care of. I'm 2,150 miles away from my mom and daddy and they're getting older and I I read this and go, how can I do?
45:24
What can I do? Lord, show me how I can help provide. Anyway, I think we need to take that. The honor principle is one of the first ones but then, read this, do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father. Younger man as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.
45:45
We're a family. If we're thinking about providing for our family, we we need to know. We need to know each other well. We need to know who we are, who's sitting here. If there is somebody here who feels like I'm not receiving anything, any kind of support, any kind of honor, any kind of help at all from the church.
46:06
Would you let us know? Let us know if we can help. We want to be able to honor and serve. Now, we're going on and this is where it gets to be like VCR instructions like I said. Let a widow be enrolled if she's not less than 60 years of age.
46:21
Okay. Doesn't that seem really specific? So this is where I'll say, I'm backing away from the exact portion of the original context. I'm trying to bring it into ours and just draw the principle out of it. The first one is honor.
46:39
So be honoring. The second one is distinguishing. To distinguish between people on an individual basis. There are some folks who are in need and there are some folks who are not in need. There's some folks who are in want seeking to take advantage and there are others who really do need and you need to be distinguishing.
47:00
I am a typically a mercy gifted guy. I love it when Jesus says, give to everybody who asks. That feels a whole lot better to me but Paul is teaching in this passage that we need to be distinguishing. I'm not going to get as far as it is on the back of your bulletin but there are times where it gets even more into distinguishing who should and who should not receive honor or help. Let a widow be enrolled if she's not less than 60 years of age.
47:24
So be distinguishing. Having been the wife of one husband, specifically that says wife of one husband in English translation, but it says a one man woman. So I know of several widows in this church and in this community and in my community back home who were married and their first husband died and they remarried. Well, Paul says later on in this passage, let the younger women remarry. It's certainly not decrying that if she should choose to do so, but she needs to have been a faithful wife.
47:56
And having a reputation for good works. If she has brought up children, check the box, check the box, check the box, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. He's kind of describing a true widow, but also one of a certain age. And so if she's 60 or older and she's done all these things, then, enroll her. The word enrolled up there could be one of two different things and people argue over what it is.
48:26
Enrolling them in a church based welfare type system or the dole like in Acts six where the lady said where the the Greek background or Hellenistic Jews came and said, our widows are being overlooked in the distribution. That's one possibility for enrolling them in a list. The other is, if she is 60 and she meets these qualifications like the qualifications of overseer, the qualifications of deacons we've studied earlier. If she is 60 and meets these qualifications, enroll her in the service of the church. I think that it's that.
49:05
I think that that principle that's being taught there is service. So, we've got honor to be honoring those who the world is at the time did not necessarily honor. They were pretty much just turned out. Nowadays, because of the Judeo Christian ethics and like I said, Paul's view going forward with that trajectory, we have taken it on that we really should take care of the people who are aging and take care of them. We do.
49:28
We have nursing homes. We have facilities that help with that. We still need to give them our love and our attention. Service. The principle of service.
49:40
This looks like several of the ladies in this room right now and several of em that were in the first service and I think of y'all favorably just like this and I also think, we need to be serving. This should be the way that we are working. It can be subtle. It does not have to be upfront. This lady died Tuesday.
50:03
Her name is Zany. Really, that's her name. That's her name, Zany Bennett. Zany Bennett was she lived in Shiloh, Georgia, which is where I'm from. And I remember her husband, Lawrence, LG Bennett, who was a locomotive engineer.
50:20
And I remember him from when I was really young, but I remember that he passed. I did not go to his funeral. Was too young to be going to funerals at the time. But I remember miss Zaney. I'm gonna read a little bit of her obituary.
50:32
She died Tuesday. Yesterday, while I was preaching the funeral at Pacific Creek, her funeral was going on in Manchester, Georgia just around the corner from Shiloh. Miss Bennett was born 07/17/1930 in Manchester, Georgia. Daughter of Sally Emma Chapman Parrott and Murray Parrott. She was a homemaker and a devoted member of the Shiloh First Baptist Church.
50:54
She was a Sunday school teacher. She was my Sunday school teacher. She was the first person that ever distinguished for me. What's your favorite verse? And I thought, it's the Bible.
51:05
All of them are good, aren't they? I'd never thought of that before. She goes, no. What's your favorite verse? How about John three sixteen?
51:14
And she made the invitation for me. To believe in Jesus and thus have life in his name, right? She was the first person that I remember saying that my mother was a believer. She shared it I'm sure all the time but it's different when it's somebody outside of your own home who's taking care of you. She was my Sunday school teacher.
51:34
She's a vacation Bible school worker. She was taught the classes that I was in there. I'm I remember em still. She's a member of the praying ladies of Shiloh Baptist and that is a little group that still goes on. They meet on Tuesdays at 11:00.
51:51
My mom was one of those and then there are several ladies who are widows that get together and miss Bennett was one of those for many years. She always loved to arrange flowers, was in charge for many years with the floral arrangements at church for special functions. She was a member of the Grand International Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. Her most important job was caretaker. Now, I can say about miss Bennett that I never saw her when she was not doing something.
52:20
She never was idle. If you read further down, there is it says, don't let them be idle. People who are idle tend to gossip and do other things. That's further down the text. I'm not going that far but miss Bennett was never idle.
52:33
LG or Lawrence Bennett had a farm and when he died, she kept running the farm and doing the flower arrangements and teaching Sunday school. She was steady. She was a loving mother, a grandmother, loved to cook and feed everyone, proceeded in death by and it goes on. But that looks a whole lot to me like that list. Just about everything, it hit just about every box right there.
53:03
She was older than 60. And as a matter of fact, when she was 60, exactly 60, she gave me this book. Imma read one more thing before I share that with you. This is from Vanessa Carlisle, grew up across the street from me. I was good friends with her younger brother, Jeremy.
53:23
Julie, that's miss Bennett's daughter. Julie and family. Heaven's gained one of the most precious angels this week as miss Zany was just that. As a youngster in Shiloh, she loved all of us as her own. I remember thinking when I grew up, I'd like to be just like miss Zany.
53:42
You see, she set an example as Christians should. She loved God and it was abundantly clear that he lived in her heart as well as that radiant smile that she wore on her face. As I grew up and I got married, miss Zaney gave me a book for one of my wedding gift and it remains in my library today and it says, love God with all your heart and always put him first in your marriage. Signed, I love you, miss Zany. She did her part here on Earth and she touched a lot of souls including mine and I could say, including mine.
54:16
In fact, she gave me She gave me this book. It's a Bible. It's the everyday Bible. It's in the new century version. She gave it to me not for graduation which we gave the graduates Bibles this morning, a little book of God's promises but she gave me this book and it is the new century version of the Bible.
54:36
I was in my second year of college. She was 60 this year. And it's on it's written on a fifth grade level. I was in my second year of college. She was not condescending, I promise But she gave me this and it's a very easy to understand.
54:50
And all of the study I've done this week has made the next few verses really, really hard. But when I looked into this fifth grade version of the Bible, it made it easier for me to read the rest of this passage. I'm not going to go forward any further than verse 10 right now or miss Zany but I do want to mention the reputation principle. So, from here, it goes into younger widows and I honestly, emotionally cannot do that right now. I just can't do it.
55:19
Y'all know that my best friend four months older than me, Chad, I've mentioned him many times from up here, died last March 25 and his birthday was May 31 just a couple days ago. I played a guitar I built for him yesterday at the at the funeral that his widow, Amy, gave back to me when I went home in November and baptized his daughter. I can't do it right now. I can't go into the younger widows right now but I do want for us to honor and be distinguishing, prayerful, and I do want for all of us to be serving but I want for us to be concerned about Christ's reputation. When Vanessa said that everyone knew that Jesus was in her heart because of the way she acted.
56:10
I want for all of us to act in that way. Does that make sense? I don't want for it to be an act. I want for it to flow out of us. So be concerned about Christ's reputation.
56:20
Be ready to speak a word and help the vilest sinner because the vilest sinner who truly believes that moment from Jesus apart and receives. Do not cut them off. Be concerned about Christ's reputation. I said this morning and I'll say it again. When you are online and you are commenting or arguing with someone who is in this ditch or who is in this ditch, be concerned about Christ's reputation, okay?
56:49
Take it to heart. Got one question for us. What could an outsider, someone who does not believe in Jesus? What could an outsider come in here and rightfully criticize? Do we have a good attitude about everyone?
57:05
Do we have a good attitude? Are we distinguishing? Are we honoring one another like family? Are we taking care of one another's needs? Are we taking care of our own family's needs?
57:20
Are we serving well with good intent and are we concerned about Christ's reputation? What could an outsider come in here and rightfully criticize? Now, they'll criticize you. Don't get me wrong. You're going to get criticism from the world.
57:34
But let it be on behalf of how Jesus is and who Jesus is rather than how you are. Your attitude. Does that make sense? I think that's the last slide. If I had gone five more verses, I promise it would end even harder.
57:46
Okay? Would y'all stand? I'll ask Judy to come on back up and Scott to come on back up and we're going to sing, take my life, lead me lord and that's that's what we want. It's for him to do the leading, for us to do the following, for us to be submitted to his will and not asking him to submit to ours but would you also pray for me? Lord God, if there be among us, true widows that we don't know about, would you allow us, lord, the privilege of honoring them and helping them?
58:19
Lord God, we want to be true to your word. We want to be true to you in our treatment of others. Would you give us the grace to be able to handle well people from both sides, all sides of this modern political spectrum and the culture we're in but drawing them out into into your good old gospel way. In Jesus name, would you take our life and lead us forward? Amen.
58:53
Speaker 2Take my life leave me lord take my life leave me lord make my life useful to thee take my life lead me lord take my life lead me lord make my life useful to me lord. Amen.
1:00:22
Speaker 1And now, I'm going to use that same verse that we use for the graduates because as we walk forth from here, we should all trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on your own understanding but in all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths and I'm going ask one more thing that your path go right through either Nick or Chris Darren with the camera in their hand so that they can take your pictures. It helps in honoring you. Trust me, okay? In Jesus name, lord, would you bless as we go forth and share your good, old gospel witness with our lives and with our words. Amen.
