I want to continue focusing on widows this morning. I should have mentioned this sermon and maybe entitled it Women's Ministries. I'd like to approach this from this morning from the perspective of the ministry that women are to have in the life of the church. And while the focus is on widows, The widows that are here are described as people who have already a track record, have a testimony. They've already been living a particular kind of life long before they were widows. or women of 60 years of age or older, which seems to me helps us understand what should our younger women be doing. And I don't mean just younger married women, but our youngest young ladies. Young ladies, and I mean, you know, in their eight, 10, 12 teenage years, should already be about developing and cultivating a biblical idea of womanhood. And the biblical idea of womanhood is very much out of sorts with our culture. And so we want to look at this. We may take a couple of weeks. I don't know. We'll see how this morning goes. But we want to start by thinking about these widows, who are widows indeed, and what they are to have been doing. What qualifies them? And so, and from that, extrapolating, well, what is the role of women in the life of the church, regardless of your age or marital status? And last week we talked about honoring widows starts in the home. The honoring of a widow, the honoring of women begins in the home. And just by review in verse four, if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family. That's the children and the grandchildren. They must learn to practice a form of godliness in their own home towards the older people in their home, their mother or their grandmother. And they are to provide for them. And Paul puts this great warning in verse eight, but if anyone does not provide for his own and especially of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. For a family not to care for grandma is a denial of the faith. And right there, that kind of sets us apart from the world. Now, there's a lot of different ways in which we provide for the widow. There's a lot of different ways of structuring that. We need to be careful about not taking too strictly, you know, it's gotta be this way and not that way. But the principle is, we need to be thinking long before there is a need, how will we care for mom, for grandma? And I think I mentioned last week how in my own personal life, and again, not to make this the law, but just an example of thinking about principles, when I bought my house 21 years ago, I had no thought whatsoever that my parents might one day need to live in my house. And then when my parents did need to be in my house, it was unfit for them because of where they were and their physical needs in terms of stairs, in terms of bathrooms, in terms of bedrooms. And I'm not saying that you have to do that. I'm simply saying that would be an application of this, starting to think, okay, if I'm gonna provide for my own, how prepared am I in terms of maybe my finances and purchasing of a home, thinking about what were the possible needs? And since we don't really know exactly how those things will play out in the future, we can't be necessarily perfectly prepared, but neither should we be perfectly ill-prepared. And Paul wants Timothy to, verse seven, prescribe and teach these things so that they may be above reproach. Who are the they? Well, I think it includes the widows, but it includes the children, the grandchildren, the heads of the households, it's the whole congregation. These are things that need to be taught and they need to be laid out before us. In the Bible, there is no distinction ultimately between doctrine and practice. Let me qualify that. Yes, we make a distinction, and these are doctrines, and doctrines are doctrines, and practice are practice. We can distinguish them. But what I mean that ultimately there's no difference is in that distinguishing, we aren't separating them. We just teach doctrine here. Practice doesn't matter. Or we just teach practice, and the doctrine doesn't really matter. The doctrine informs the morality. The doctrine informs the ethics. The doctrine informs the behavior. And the behavior should be drawn from the doctrines. Therefore, they go together. So these widows. who are widows indeed, as he says in verse three, are those who have been, verse four, left alone. They have no family. There is no one to whom they can turn. And he reminds them again in verse 16, there's a distinction between widows. In verse 16, there are some widows who have Family, if any woman who is a believer has dependent widows, she is to assist them in the church so that the church may not be burdened and that the church might assist those who are widows. So here we have kind of the beginning of women's ministries. What are women to be doing? Women who have mothers and grandmothers should be thinking about how I might assist them so that they are not a burden to the church. And that might be something a woman does individually. That might be something a woman does in group with other women, discussing and planning, preparing. But that is one of the things that Christ would have women do, is be planning, scheming, if you will, preparing to be able to know how to care for mom or grandmom when they are widows, but not widows indeed. in order that the church might in fact be doing something for the widows who are widows indeed, and the church caring for them, providing for them. And so women's ministry would be thinking about women thinking about how do we prepare ourselves for that. Now, in these qualifications for who is this woman indeed, one, she is one who's been left alone. And she is also one who has, as it says in verse five, she is a widow indeed, is one who has been left alone and has fixed her hope on God and continues in treaties, in prayers, night and day. Now, see, this is distinct from these younger widows of verse 11 who are, you know, are young enough to remarry and have children, but they feel they've chosen to live a life where they're doing what they want to do and going about what they want to do. and they are living what he calls a life of wanton pleasure, verse six. And he describes the young widow who has not given herself to hope on God and to pray night and day as someone who was dead even while she lives. Well, what does that mean? Our lives are to be lived in the presence of God. Whatever our role is in culture, in society, in the family, or in the church, young or old, male or female, our lives are to be lived according to God, or in the presence of God, or in the Reformation, the Quorum Deo, in the presence of the Lord. To live for ourselves, disregarding God, just living as if God is not there, you are alive and you may have a meaningful life, a full life, a happy life, but you're living as if you're already dead. Because our life is connected to who God is and what he would have us do. If we live with no regard to God, we are living as those who are spiritually dead, in anticipating being physically dead where you are permanently separated from God. All of our lives, male and female, young and old, are to be lived in such a way as always connected to God. And in this case, the widow, who is a widow indeed, has fixed her hope on God alone. She's not putting her hope in things or people or circumstances. She's not trying to find her identity in what she looks like or what people think of her in terms of the temporal way. She's not trying to find her hope in terms of new experiences and travel and all that. Not to say she can't do those things. But her identity is one where she has fixed her hope in God. And one of the ways in which that is evidenced, because it's easy to say that, isn't it? Oh, I fixed my hope in God. But this widow was a widow indeed, it's evidenced by her prayer life. Much like Anna, remember in the story of the birth of Christ. And as they come to present Christ to the temple, and they meet Simeon, and they meet Anna, and Anna is described as a widow who was spending her entire life at the temple praying. And here Paul says, a widow indeed is not only someone who's been left alone, but she's someone who's fixed her hope on God, and she continues in prayers night and day. I mentioned her on several occasions, but I'll mention her again. An elderly lady in my life, Mrs. Maddox, who used to teach at the college I graduated from. And in her mid-70s, she was still the most popular teacher and had a waiting list to get into her classes. She fell and broke her hip, and that was the end of her teaching career. And I remember going to visit her in her apartment. And I asked Mrs. Maddox, who had been a pretty busy kind of person and doing things, what do you do all day long? She's living in an apartment by herself. She did have family in the area who'd come visit her, but she was there alone. And she was sitting in a big chair, something like a lazy boy kind of chair, with a table next to her. I said, what do you do, Mrs. Maddox, all day long? And she picked up the church directory. She says, I pray through this every day. And that's something, if you're not doing that now, you probably won't do that then. Maybe you'll do it more then, but who we are today is who we are gonna be tomorrow. I say that to young people when they come in for premarital counseling. Whoever you are the day before you get married is exactly who you're gonna be the day after you're married. A lot of people think, well, when I get married, then I'm going to get serious about whatever. Or even worse, when I get married, I'll change him or change her. You know, the old joke. The three words that a woman's mind the day she gets married are, I'll alter him. I'll alter him. No, that's not the way you get married. Who you are the day before you get married is who you are the day after you get married. The person you are the day before you're a widow is the person you are going to be the day after you are widowed. The circumstances have changed, but already Women ought to be cultivating an attitude of hoping in God and in prayer. Now, it's going to be different when you've got a family, and you've got children, and you're homeschooling, and you're preparing meals, and you're going to the store, and you're caring for your husband. You've got all these other things going on. You obviously are going to have a different schedule than when you are a widow, indeed, and you're at home. So it's not exactly the same, but the attitudes, the principles, the perspective, the ministry of women in the life of the church includes praying for the church. And so again, all of our women at the earliest possible age should be learning to be prayers. But that's part of the cultivation of womanhood in terms of a godly woman. Now in verse nine, Paul puts two qualifications upon a woman for being a widow indeed beyond what he's already said. Verse nine, a woman is to be put on the list only if she is not less than 60 years old. And having been a wife of one woman, one man, and having a reputation of good works, The first is, and I'm gonna link to, and maybe you wanna say there's three, and I'm not gonna quibble over that, but she's 60 years of age and she's had one husband. 60 is probably something that we might want to be careful with in that culture at that time. By the time a woman was 60, she was considered old. Sorry, women. But in our age, because of our lifespan, because of our health conditions and certain things, women live much longer than 60 or 65. They can be living into their 80s. And sometimes we think of old women when they're in their 80s. So we don't want to get too hard on the number 60, but the point is, whatever 60 represents is an age in where the woman She's beyond childbearing years. She's beyond the age in which she's very likely ever to be remarried. She's beyond the age in which she is probably gonna be very productive in terms of being able to go out and get a job. And if she's young enough to still be married and bear children and have a job, then she should not be a widow indeed. She may be a widow, but the church is not gonna care for her in exactly the same way as this woman who is older. And in this life, she's been the husband of one man. Now that's an interesting statement. It's the same grammatical construction found earlier back in chapter three of an elder who was the husband of one wife. Exactly the same grammatical construction, just the words are changed from husband to wife. And what does that mean? And I remember wrestling early, many years ago, probably close to 45 years ago, when I was taking my Greek, wrestling with the first Timothy three passage, a husband and one wife, what is that? And like so many passages, there's like nine different views. Nine different views, and we're not gonna go all over them. But the bottom line is, I believe that the 1 Timothy 3 is he's a husband of one wife, not meaning he has only one wife as opposed to polygamy, or having only one wife and that he's never been remarried, or having one wife as in he's not a bachelor. I believe the grammar there is that he has a life of fidelity in which he has been a man of one woman. He's a one woman kind of man. He's not a womanizer. He's not a flirt. He's not promiscuous. And I believe that's the same here. And in fact, I think the context is even stronger for this. I'll lay it out. This wife, who's 60 years of age, but now a widow, has a testimony, has a lifestyle of moral and sexual purity, regardless of how many times she may have been married. She may have been married, her husband has died, and she's remarried. For example, what's Paul say in verse 11? Refuse the younger widows to be put on the list because they feel the sensual desires and disregard of Christ. and they want to be married, thus incurring condemnation because they have set their previous pledge aside. At the same time, they have learned to be idle and go around and whatever. Therefore, verse 14, I want the younger windows to get married and bear children and keep house. It would be rather odd for a widow to be excluded from being a widow indeed because she followed the Apostle Paul's advice. I'm 40, my husband has died. Paul says, get married. She gets married again, and she lives another 20 years faithfully with that man. He now dies, and she is left alone. And she comes and says, I'm a widow indeed, I need some help. And the church says, nope, you followed the apostle Paul, you're excluded from the widow's list. That's a great way of arguing from the near context when you have a difficult passage. Here, she has a life where she has been faithful, loyal, pure. The fidelity that she has had is not just in name only, but in terms of who and what she is. She's a one man kind of woman. I remember I've told you about Esther Hughes many, many times, but Esther Hughes was a woman I met, she's already in her 90s, I think you already know that, but she had these two godly husbands. I knew her as Mrs. Hughes, but she was married before with Mr. Munsky, whom I never knew. And he died and she was not gonna get remarried. She wanted to live and was content. And Mr. Hughes pursued her for many years and finally won her heart and they got married. And she was always talking about these two godly men that she'd had. And when Esther spoke, I mean, she was, I remember when I first met her, she had been a godly or she'd been a Christian woman longer than I had been alive. and the wisdom that she would have was always profound. And one day I was alone with her and I said, you're always bragging about these two godly husbands that you had. And she had a sense of almost guilt over that because she said, you know, a lot of women don't even have one godly husband. And I've had two. And I said to her, tell me something that's different about them, because you're always telling me about how good they are and how godly they were. Tell me something that was different about them. She said, well, Mr. Munsky, he would hurt me. He'd hurt my feelings. I've told you this story before. I hurt my feelings. But he would never say he was sorry with words. He would give me a gift. And that would be his way of saying, I acknowledge I was wrong, I hurt you, and here's a gift. Mr. Hughes, on the other hand, didn't give me gifts, but boy, was he quick to be able to say, I am sorry, and I ask your forgiveness. I realize I, you know, whatever. And so I said, that's great. That's really interesting. I said, well, which did you like more, the gift or the words? And she pondered for a minute with a little twinkle in her eye. She says, I think I liked the gifts. But the point is, here this woman, who was a godly woman who loved the Lord in 90, was still a student of the word. When she started to attend our church, she did not believe in the gospel of sovereign grace. She was not what we might call a Calvinist. And she came to me after a service one day. She goes, this is all new to me. And at 90 plus years of age, she was still reading books. And she says, what can I read on this? I gave her some things to read. And months later, she came back to me. She says, you know, I think I'm a Calvinist. She loved the Lord. She loved the word. She tried to live the word and. but she had this reputation of being the kind of woman who was a one-woman kind of man, even though she had had two godly husbands. So she needs to be at least 60 years of age, and she needs, or I would say in our context, maybe that's a little older, but she's a woman who has gotten to a place where she's probably not ever going to be remarried, she's probably not going to be involved in the starting of a new household. She's probably not in a place where she can go out and do a lot of work that would enable her to be able to be independent. And she has this reputation, a lifestyle of true fidelity. The second, if you want to make those two, that's fine, but the second one, as I count them, is that she has a reputation for good works. And the word reputation is where we get our word, like when Jesus says to the disciples in Acts chapter two, you shall be my witnesses, martuo, or where we get our English word martyr, your witness, she has a witness, she has a life, a lifestyle, a testimony, you might say, of good works. Now, it's important that I make this comment. Notice in verse 10, it says good works, And later it will say at the end of verse 10, devoted herself to every good work. The word good in the beginning of the end of verse 9 and the word good at the end of verse 10 are not the same good. This first one, she has a reputation for good works. I guess it's there at the beginning of 10, not the end of nine. Good works is the Greek word for kalos. There's a wisdom. She has a reputation for, if you will, nobility. being a noble woman, someone who handles herself with class and stature. She has a wisdom about how to live, how to conduct herself, how to speak, how to relate to other people. And she's known for that. Very much like my thoughts of Esther Hughes that I mentioned, who's now with the Lord, obviously. Esther, if anyone had ever met Esther, you would have immediately known that she was a woman who qualified as this reputation of Kalos works, this wise, noble, insightful person. She's known for it, is what Paul is saying. Well, that obviously implies she's been doing something long before she's become a widow. All right, now I'm a widow, I'm gonna throw the light switch, I'm gonna become noble. I'm gonna throw the light switch, I'm gonna be a woman of great wisdom and discernment. I'm gonna be a woman committed to Colossal work. Colossal is this word for beauty. It can be used for fitting. It's right. Think of, you know, you're painting a beautiful masterpiece, and you've got it almost done, but there's this one little section, and you're trying to figure out, how do I make this one little section of this beautiful masterpiece fit? What hues am I going to use? What colors am I going to use? What hues of those colors am I going to use? How is it going to tie into the whole picture? That's kolos. It's beautiful. It's wise. It's discerning. It's right. It's fitting. And the painter might paint the picture. And he says, I think I'm going to use this shade of green. And he paints. No, that's not the right. And so he mixes his paint again and changes the green to a different shade of green. No, that's exactly right. And he does it a third time, maybe a fourth time. And finally, the shade of green that he's painted That's beautiful. That's right. That's kolos. And she has a reputation for that in her life. And that takes a lifetime to develop and to nurture, which again, I think, is something that tells us about what's going on in the life of any local church. Women ought to be encouraging one another with this sort of thing. In fact, Keep your finger in 1 Timothy and just turn over to Titus, and you find this is exactly how Paul is asking older women to live their lives. In Titus 2, verse 3, older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior. The word reverent there is used to describe the behavior and character of a priest serving in the temple. All right, you might in a kind of a, I wouldn't translate it this way, but if you thought about a priestess in the temple, you might catch the flavor of the idea. She's reverent in her behavior, not malicious gossips. And the word malicious gossip is only actually one word in the Greek. And gossips there is the word diabolos, and you've heard me teach on that for years. Everywhere the word diabolos appears in the singular in the New Testament, it's devil. All right, we get our word diabolical, and everywhere it appears in the plural, it's gossip or some synonym of gossip. She's not a gossip, she doesn't act diabolically, which is exactly what Paul has talked about these younger widows back in 1 Timothy 2. They're these gossips, they're these busy bodies, and they've already turned aside to Satan. Older women are not that, are not to be that. So she's reverent in her behavior, not a malicious gossip, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good. And the word teaching what is good almost sounds like a verb in the English, doesn't it? But it's actually an adjective. It's describing her. This noble behavior, this noble way of living and thinking and speaking permeates her life in such a way, we might call it she's a mentor. She's the one who can bring other younger women alongside and spend time with them, maybe cooking, maybe working, maybe talking, maybe praying, whatever they're doing. But in doing that, they are impressing upon others who are younger what it means to be a woman who is reverent in her behavior and is somebody who is wise, and somebody who is, in fact, has a reputation of good works. What are those good works? And verse four, so that, why should she be reverent in her behavior, not a malicious gossip, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good? Why? Verse four, so that they may encourage younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God will not be dishonored. The older women, not just widows who are indeed older women, in the life of the church are the mentors, are the encouragers, are the helpers, are the facilitators, are the ones who are passing on the daily practical wisdom of what it means to be a godly woman. and a godly wife and how to love your husband. And we all know, and I'm not really being funny, but it will come out funny, we all know husbands sometimes are just downright hard to love. How do I love this man? And that's hard. And some of us, as husbands, make it harder than others. But how to love a husband? How do I love my children? My children drive me nuts. How do I love them? How do I care for them? How do I nurture them? How do I discipline them? How do I help them grow? How do I teach them? How do I help teach my children in a way that's fit for them? And the older women who have gone through these things, and maybe they've been successful, maybe they have failed, maybe they have been successful but feel like they failed, the older women are to be engaged with the younger women on some type of regular basis to pass on what does it mean to be a Christian woman. And how do you work at home? That doesn't mean she can't work outside home, but a woman has domestic responsibilities. How do you make that happen? How do you keep a budget? How do you live within a budget? How do you organize meals? How do you prepare for a week full of meals for my family that are nutritious and healthy and taste good? There's an art. And our society used to honor this. When I went to high school, and some of you are old enough to remember this, in my high school, they had classes called home ec, where women would go, girls would go, and they would learn all these different disciplines. When I first started going to college, colleges, not just Christian colleges, actually had home ec departments. You could go get a degree in home economics. That might be helpful. But not only have the secular schools got rid of that, because the way we view women, oh, that's demeaning, even our Christian schools have, in many cases, dropped them, renamed them, or have greatly simplified them, because somehow, to actually train women to be excellent homemakers somehow is chauvinist, somehow is demeaning and devaluing of women. And the Bible says to the contrary. And he's not, Paul's not saying that when he says that she's a worker at home, that that's all she's gonna do. You read Proverbs 31, she's a real estate agent. She knows how to handle money out in the real world. She's doing all sorts of things. But whatever we do out there should never compromise what's going on in the home. And so she used to have this reputation of good works. Well, what are those good works? And you might notice, at least in my translation, you have a semicolon. So what comes after this is expounding on the good works. What are those good works? And this is not an exhaustive list. It's not even meant to be a specific list that she's got to be able to check off all these boxes. It's representative of what are these good works. And it says that she has brought up children. And it's fun to read the commentators on there because Paul, we wish Paul maybe had been more expansive here, but he uses a word for bringing up children that doesn't appear anywhere else in the New Testament. And it's not really clear, is he talking about having raised her own children, or has she raised orphans? And the commentators are split. Personally, I would very carefully and very non-dogmatically lean towards she's raised orphans. Now, what does that mean? In the time in which Paul wrote this, the Roman culture very much practiced infanticide. We always wanted a boy and we got a girl. What do you do with the girl? They literally would put them outside on the front porch and let them die to the elements. Child is born with a little handicap of some sort. You put them outside the door. There were no orphanages. Orphanages are actually a result of the Reformation. It was the church who ended up establishing orphanages. But in the early church, the early church so valued every person because they are created in the image of God. The early church was known for actually running throughout the town, finding these babies who had been put out left to die and snatching them up and raising them as their own. That's what the church did. And part of a lot of their early evangelism and the secular historians make note of this. And it was often part of the role of widows to take care of these kids, not necessarily exclusively the widows, but one of the customs. And again, I don't think it's a law that we now have to follow. It's just an interesting note of history that these widows were doing, now that they don't have their own children and they're widows indeed, that what they are doing is they are caring for this influx of young people who have no families. and have someone who needs to love them and care for them and teach them and feed them and educate them and all those sorts of things. That's what women did, especially the widows. And this becomes such a practice, I believe I mentioned it last week, that there is much written in the early church about exactly the role of widows in the life of the church. And it almost becomes an office. And some actually suggest it became an office of widowhood, these widows indeed. And it was so expansive, and it was so seriously taken. I mentioned last week, I believe, that both at the Council of Chalcedon and the Council of Laodicea, two of the seven ecumenical councils, While they're defining in Caleston, for example, the exact understanding of the dual nature of Christ as perfect God, perfect man, when they're done with that, they're also dealing with and write canons, write statements on exactly who a widow is and what they're to be doing in the life of the church and how you recognize them, building on passages like this. Widows, and what widows do is a huge part of the history of the church. for which most modern churches, like ours, we give very little time in thinking about it. But it took a great deal of time, and a lot of ink was spilt thinking through, working through, teaching, deciding the role of women, especially widows, in the life of the church. And so it's quite possible what Paul means in these good works, these beautiful works, that not only that she raised her own kids, but she has been very involved in seeing other children in the church cared for, especially maybe these orphans. Also, these good works is that she has shown hospitality to strangers. The word hospitality is two Greek words together, the lover of strangers. She is cared for, she's opened her home, she's been able to provide for, because remember, not only are there no orphanages at this time, there really aren't any hotels. And Christians are traveling the world and they're coming from city to city. And these widows have a reputation of having opened their home and provided a place for people to be cared for while they are in transit on their work for the Lord. Next, she's washed the saints' feet. She is one who is known for caring for the basic needs of other believers. Notice this qualification, the saint's feet, the holy one's feet. In the time, again, when you showed up at somebody's house, your feet were probably dirty from the dirt roads. And one of the things, if you had any wealth, you probably had a servant, and the servant's job was to include the washing of someone's feet. You see this, for example, in Luke chapter 7, where Jesus is having dinner with Simon, and this woman comes in and is washing Jesus' feet. And Jesus says to Simon, you know, I came to have dinner at your house, and you did not honor me in washing my feet. And this woman who you are rejecting is not only washing my feet, but she's doing so with her own tears and wiping them with her own hair. Or in John chapter 13, Jesus talks about the disciples in terms of loving one another, including washing their feet. Remember? And Peter says, I don't want to wash me. If I don't wash your feet, you have no part of me. Then wash all of me. Part of the love of the body is that it's not that we're washing people's feet. And some denominations have turned washing your feet into a sacrament. It's not. It's an attitudinal thing. For example, back in the book of 1 Samuel, David will eventually marry Abigail, and you might want to go back and read all of chapter 25. She's first of all married to Nabal, and she has this amazing ministry. She's laid out as this very godly woman, and eventually Nabal will die. And David, in verse 32 says, David said to Abigail, blessed be the Lord God of Israel who sent you this day to meet me, and blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you who have kept me. this day from bloodshed and from avenging myself by my own hand." She has this ministry of blessedness in the life of David and keeping him from being something he shouldn't be. He eventually will send his servants to her and ask her to marry him. And it says, and when the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they spoke to her saying, David has sent us to you to take you as his wife. Now listen to her response. I think this is what, this is an attitude. It's not the action that is being prescribed of washing feet, it's this attitude that is found in Abigail. Verse 41, 1 Samuel 25, verse 41. She rose and bowed her face to the ground and said, behold, your maid servant is a maid to wash the feet of my Lord's servants. Then Abigail quickly arose and rode on a donkey with her five maidens who attended her, and she followed the messengers to David and became his wife. That's what these widows indeed are known for, in their good works, in the caring for children, in the washing of feet and hospitality. They just have this, they're known. as people who just have this servant-caring attitude towards others. And lastly, he says, back in 1 Timothy, she's devoted herself to every good work. Now, remember I told you that's a different word, good. Here is the word agathos. She's devoted herself to every good work. Kolos, in verse 10, is the works that are seemly, they're beautiful, they're appropriate, they fit, they're noble. These every good work at the end, and notice it's wide open. That's why I'm saying this is not a checklist, nor is it an exhaustive list. The list could be made much longer. She has devoted herself to every good work, good being here, right. Appropriately right. Agathos. Good versus bad. The good, the right, the beautiful. the morally good, and that which is right as opposed to wrong. That's where her heart is. She's devoted herself to this. Again, that would be a thing that women's ministry should be discussing and thinking about. What are some of the ways in which we would, women, as women in the body of Christ, would do these things? Talking about them, the older women, passing on the knowledge of them, passing on the means of them, passing on how these things would look, how you might handle this, because not every husband's exactly the same, not every child is exactly the same, not every visitor who needs to have hospitality is exactly the same. How do you do these things? How do you make them happen? How do you keep them in balance? And that's what women in the life of the church should be doing, and those who do it really well. Those who are exceptional at doing this and become women who have set their hope on God and have been come in their circumstances by God's providence left alone, the church honors them by taking care of them so that they are provided for for as long as God has them alive. And this is a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. but our society has no time for it. Our society looks down upon this sort of thing. But then again, I think the church does too, because while we would not refute it, we don't necessarily embrace it. By embracing it, I mean cultivate it. What would that look like? How would Community Baptist Church look if this is the way, as a family of God, Remember, and Paul's described us, the church as the family of God. Remember back in chapter three, we are the household of God, the pillar of truth. And he started this chapter about talking about us in family relationships. Do not rebuke the older man, but treat him as a father, and younger men as brothers, and older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters. He's very much this family kind of language that permeates this chapter. which is the church, the church collected, individuals and families, married, never married, widows, widowers. In that context exactly, how should be the women be conducting themselves in preparing women to be godly biblical women and preparing women to be widows indeed, who've given themselves and have learned these things. so that when they are in that situation, the church has every right and every desire to actually take these widows who are widows of deed and bring them under their protection and provide for them. They've served the body so well that as the church, it's just a no-brainer. Of course, we're gonna take care of them. That's what the local church should be doing But again, it's not the light switch, now I'm 60 and now I'm widowed, now I'm gonna start. It starts when you're six, seven, eight, 10, 15, 18, 24. It's already part of how you are raising up your daughters, how we are raising up our women, how we are promoting this long before we get to actually having a widow who's a widow indeed. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the women you have brought into our life, our mothers, our wives, our grandmothers, our friends, our young and our old. We thank you for the women that you have provided for us. And we pray, Father, that you would create in us as a congregation an attitude that would treasure our women, value them, to see them as a wonderful gift, both to the body of Christ and to our own households. And that would be expressed in how we care for them, whether we have a mom or a grandmother who is a widow and how we as a family, an individual family, care for them, or those who become widows indeed, how the body of Christ cares for them. That we would create in us an attitude and a culture that would want to see the women working together and encouraging and promoting passing on the faith in the daily practical meaning of that faith to the younger women, that our women would be noble. Our women would just be the types of people that the good, beautiful, seemly works flow from them, and they are active in doing every good work that's necessary for their children, for their grandchildren, for the other families, and for the body of Christ. We pray that you'd help us understand these things, and more importantly, Father, in that understanding, move to applying these things that we might in all the more bring honor to Christ as the household of God. In Christ we pray, amen.