Our text this morning will be in 1 Timothy 5. Continuing to work our way through Paul's letter to a young disciple, Timothy. It is the first Sunday in the Lenten season, and most traditions trace that back to about the 4th century. Athanasius was a young man growing up during the time of Constantine. And you should know that time in church history. If you don't, lock on to it. Constantine was kind of the first one to endorse the Christian faith. Up until that point, the church had been persecuted largely by the Roman Empire, looked on with tremendous suspicion, if not downright antagonism. a number of waves of persecution, but with Constantine, for a variety of reasons, things began to change. And he lifted the restrictions against the Christian faith and ultimately came to endorse it. And so it became more mainstream to be a Christian. And this is the time in which Athanasius was growing up. It was a time of what might be called cheap grace. You could follow Christ without cost. And he was one of the leaders, came to be one of the leaders of the church in North Africa. And they used to put out a little encyclical, a little newsletter, in part because Good Friday, the Easter celebrations were all keying off of the lunar calendar as opposed to the solar calendar. And so not everybody knew when to celebrate. So they would put out a little notice, okay, we're going to be celebrating. Here's the dates this year. And make sure everybody's on the same page. And at some point in there, Athanasius began to encourage the churches to have a season of preparation. He was concerned that the church would just move so quickly to Easter and celebration and joy and they would move right past the cross and lose sight of sin and the reason why Jesus had to come. And so many church traditions have continued through the years to observe a season of preparation. It is appropriate that here on this first Sunday in the Lenten season, we consider the seriousness of sin. It is not a popular topic. In some settings, in some churches, in the lives of some believers, the language of sin has passed out of their vocabulary, along with words like hell and blood. which have such tremendous significance for our faith. And so we turn again to consider the importance of this topic of sin. If we don't understand sin, then we don't understand the gospel. We don't understand why salvation was necessary. Sin is not just a passing inconvenience. It's not that we have foibles. That we kind of come up a little bit short in many of our attempts. But no, rather we are sinners. Every one of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the righteousness of God. We have been separated from God rightly under His judgment and His wrath. We are rebels against God. We have vandalized His creation. Sin is serious business. And until we come to understand and comprehend even a brief glimpse of who we really are before God, we will never understand our need for a Savior. It's easy for us sometimes to get by and feel pretty good about ourselves by comparing ourselves to other people. We can always find somebody that sort of has it worse off, that has more obvious, overt sins than we do. And we can think, well, I'm actually doing pretty well, at least in those areas. But the standard is not other people. The standard is God Himself. And when we compare ourselves to God and His righteousness and His holiness, we all find ourselves sinners. So we turn to that today, and passages like Colossians 3.5, which is in your notes here this morning, there's a whole series of texts that would speak in very aggressive, very violent terms about the mortification of sin, the putting to death of sin, or we might just plainly say killing sin. This is something that we need to be involved in and engaged in. In some sense, it seems that sin has sort of fallen into grace. It's been enveloped in grace. And there's a sense in which that's true, right? Those that have placed faith in Jesus Christ, that have been joined to Him, we've received the righteousness of Christ, and our sin has been atoned for through Jesus' death on the cross. There is a sense in which sin has been enveloped in grace. And we no longer face condemnation. We're no longer guilty before God. But that doesn't mean that sin is a non-issue. Sin is still prevalent. It has destructive consequences. It disrupts our fellowship with God. We need to be giving attention to sin. We need to be serious about sin. We need to be killing sin. So you have a passage like this, Colossians 3, John Owen, one of the Puritans, wrote a large tome about this called, The Mortification of Sin. I would not suggest it for your bedtime reading, okay? John Owen is one of the harder of the Puritans to sort of wade through. Really great stuff, but you can only process it in smaller chunks. But here was John Owen. Do not mortify. Do not make it your daily work. Be always at it whilst you live. Cease not a day from this work. Be killing sin, or it will be killing you." That this is always happening. Something's dying. Either you are dying under the destructive influences of sin, or sin is dying. And you are putting to death sin in your life. And Owen understood the magnitude and the scope of this and that it needed to be an aggressive, intentional effort. He also said this, hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification. Plain as mud, right? I told you Owen wasn't easy. So there's that big word at the end, spiritual mortification. Putting to death. That means putting to death. So he's talking about this topic. How do we combat sin? How do we kill sin in our lives? He says that we need to hate sin not just because it makes our lives miserable, That's galling. Something that's galling is something that's irritating. It's bothersome. And so sin, you might have a habit. I had somebody talk to me not long ago. They said, I'm a liar. They were pretty honest. I appreciated that. They said, you know, my lying has lost me a lot of friends. And this person said, I want to change that. And that's good, Owen says, it's not enough to just try to change so that my life works better. He said, the real motivation for change, the motivation for killing sin, is that I come to understand God's grace. I come to understand what God has done for me in providing a Savior, in providing atonement for my sin. That is the motivation to change. God at great cost to Himself came and freed me out of the slave market of sin. I was dead and now I've been made alive. And how unthinkable to go back to the slave market. to go back and live the way that I had lived before. So the cross, the grace of God is what ought to motivate us to kill sin. To be active against sin. Perhaps no sin is more grievous than the sin of a spiritual leader. And this is where Paul directs Timothy's attention here in 1 Timothy 5. Not only is it destructive for that individual leader, as it is for any believer who's engaged in sin, but obviously a person who has influence, it's even more destructive for the church. For everyone else. We could all recount stories of those in positions of influence and spiritual leadership who have fallen into sin and the far-reaching consequences of that. So this is the topic that Paul is wanting to address with Timothy. Here in chapter 5, he's been dealing with some very practical problems in the church. One of them had to do with widows, their care, the behavior of widows, and now this whole arena of elders. He talks about the church's need to provide for their elders in verses 17 and 18, to take care of them. But then he gets into sort of the real issue, the real problem, And that is that there were some elders who had come into positions of authority, who were leading the church astray in some ways, who had engaged in sin, and needed to be confronted. And so Timothy unpacks that here in these verses. So let's look, 1 Timothy 5, beginning in verse 19. Hear the word of the Lord. Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure. No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden. May God add His blessing to the reading of His Word. So, several ways in which the church can safeguard spiritual leadership. It's important that spiritual leaders who are in such great position of influence being monitored, and what are some safeguards that the church can take? Number one, don't entertain groundless accusations against a spiritual leader. Don't entertain groundless accusations. So first, a word of caution. Paul wants to extend the same type of protection to a spiritual leader as would be extended to anyone. The Old Testament law was pretty clear that no one should be convicted except on the testimony of two or three witnesses. So he kind of brings that principle out of Deuteronomy 19 and he kind of brings it right here into the context of the church. It's pretty consistent with what he talked about, what Jesus talked about in Matthew 18 as well. And so he puts that protection in place. I think particularly for spiritual leaders, they are qualified to serve in that capacity primarily on the basis of their character and their reputation. They need to not only be respected and live respectfully or respectfully within the congregation, but they also need to have a good reputation with outsiders. So, so much of their ability to serve is premised on their character. So, be very careful about making an accusation against a spiritual leader. I think there would have been reasons why Paul needed to give this instruction. It seems to me that that a spiritual leader could easily find themselves on the receiving end of a vindictive spirit, a groundless accusation. Spiritual leaders, by their very responsibility, were sometimes asked to say things to people that people didn't want to hear. So the writer of the Hebrews says, I want you to respect those who are over you, who admonish you, in your faith, right? By the way, admonish is not a good word. It's not a comfortable word. So oftentimes, an elder pastor is in a position to speak something that you don't want to hear. So it would be easy to respond emotionally, wouldn't it? We all do at times. If you have a coach, that coach pushes you, they say you're slacking off, you sit on the bench until you learn You know, go after that loose ball. I want you to run another lap. And you kind of take it, right, if you're a player on that team. And hopefully you come to value it. If you sit under that for long enough, you know that they're trying to make you better. They're pointing out weaknesses. They're helping you strengthen aspects of your skill and your endurance. But in the spiritual realm, we don't really like to be told what to do. At least if the coach practices over and you go home and you live your life, A pastor sometimes is telling you how to live your life. That's meddling, right? That kind of broaches into some other areas. So there could be some sense in which it would be easy for someone to be upset and to put forward a vindictive, groundless accusation just because they're angry. And so Paul is clear. One of the things to safeguard spiritual leadership would be don't entertain groundless accusations. 2. Publicly expose a spiritual leader who is sinning. Publicly expose a spiritual leader who is sinning. So v. 20, "...as for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all." So in no way are spiritual leaders to be shielded from accountability, from confrontation. If the matter has been established, if there are two or three witnesses, the matter has been determined and identified, then that person ought to be rebuked. The word there might be translated, exposed. This ought to be made known. It ought to be put out there. There's some question as to how far it should be broadcast. As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all. Some have said that's all the other leaders, all the other elders. I tend to think this means all the congregation. It needs to be made known to everybody. It cannot be covered over in any sense. This person has been in a position of authority and they're held to a higher standard. If you look at Matthew 18 and some of the other protocol for confrontation, once someone has acknowledged their sin and turned from it, it's over. It's done. It doesn't go any further than that. There's no service for public embarrassment. Once that has been acknowledged, It's finished. But with a spiritual leader, the matter is to be made known publicly. There's a higher standard that is expected. And the emphasis seems to be on sins that are ongoing for those who persist in sin. It's an active tense here. That's not to say that someone couldn't be disqualified or confronted for a one-time act. But the emphasis here seems to be on habitual, demonstrated, ongoing, persistent sin. And the reality is even in situations where there's been moral failure with a spiritual leader, it's usually not a one-time act. Right? There's patterns. Paul seems to be pointing to something that again is observable, it is traceable, and Paul says in that case, you need to make this known, you need to expose that. Now there's significance to this. There's a reason, Paul gives a reason as to why this is so important and what is to be accomplished in this. Notice again the end of v. 20, "...so that the rest may stand in fear." This type of action serves as a powerful deterrent for other believers. So we're made to think, and hopefully we always think this, whenever anybody engages in confession of sin, whenever there's any need for confrontation, that we think to ourselves, God help me. We look at somebody in this case that's in spiritual leadership, and there's some measure of sin that has taken over in this person's life. They've become entrapped in sin, and we see the consequences. We could all identify it, right? Spiritual leaders, people of great influence in our lives, in our circle of influence, maybe in a church that you grew up in. who fell into some sort of sin and their reputation was lost, and you think of the far-reaching consequences, the shame that was brought on the testimony of that church. We've all grieved in those situations. Those ought to be reminders to us. Those ought to motivate us. We're tempted to think, to be self-deceived and to think that this little sin is a little thing and it's not really going to affect anybody. The reality is that sin always affects others. There's no such thing as a secret, private sin. Other people might not know about it, but it impacts others. So Paul says one of the reasons why we have to treat sin so seriously with leadership is because it has an effect, an impact on the entire congregation. The entire congregation needs to be sobered. by this. It should be a deterrent. He also gives Timothy a perspective here. Verse 21, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging. Do nothing from partiality. We see the principle here that God is passionate about the purity of the church. This is serious. And God is standing witness as Paul gives Timothy this charge to make sure to confront sin without partiality, without any favoritism, without brushing anything under the rug, because ultimately he's going to have to answer to God. Timothy was in a tough spot. Kind of think about it. He's a young guy. It was undoubtedly going to be hard to confront someone who was older than he was. It was going to be hard to challenge someone who was very popular in the congregation. It was going to be very difficult to risk estrangement when that leader is a generous giver or a gifted and charismatic teacher. And what Paul says to Timothy is, Timothy, I know you have reason to be afraid, but I want you to fear God more. Paul brings God into the picture. They're standing in God's throne room and God is commissioning And God is concerned about the purity of His church. I don't know of any others that tend to be afraid. Afraid of people. Paul says, I want you to be afraid of God more. I want you to live with an awareness that you will answer. No partiality. You can't look the other way because this is your friend. You can't look the other way of any other factors, or because you're afraid of what the outcome will be, you need to do the right thing before God. We did lose a Supreme Court Justice this week, Antonin Scalia. We're learning a little bit more even in the last hours, in the last 24 hours, about just the nature of his integrity. He was undoubtedly a conservative judge who interpreted the Constitution and did not go beyond or did not rewrite the Constitution. He gave a quote. He had said that the Constitution is not a living organism. It's a legal document. And it says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say. In other words, we can't change the Constitution. I can't pretend that that part isn't in there. I've been charged under oath to apply and to render judgments based on the Constitution. Not public opinion. Right? And I think when we think about our interactions with one another, here Timothy again is functioning, having been commissioned by an apostle. He's carrying out this role in the church. Timothy needed to function based on the commands of God. Not based on public opinion. Not based on how people might respond. He needed to operate with conviction and integrity Interesting to think, isn't it, about who is responsible for this in the church today, right? Who's Timothy? Timothy wasn't an apostle, but he had been sent by an apostle, commissioned by the Apostle Paul. But who is responsible for spiritual leaders in the church today? Well, the elders have certain responsibilities, certainly. Even in this local church, according to our Constitution, the congregation. has ultimate responsibility. We've been charged with maintaining the purity of the church, with confronting sin where it needs to be confronted. So don't entertain groundless accusations against a spiritual leader. Publicly expose a spiritual leader who is sinning. And number three, ensure that prospective spiritual leaders are carefully evaluated. This is the third safeguard for the church. Verse 22, "...do not be hasty in the laying on of hands." This is a reference to ordination where a young person would be identified for ministry, Their gifts had been evident. They'd gone through some examination process. And the leadership, the elders would lay hands on them and commission them into gospel ministry. Endorse them. And Paul is warning Timothy here. You have sins sometimes that you just have to deal with and it has to be rebuked and made known. But we can also help ourselves by making sure that we vet elders carefully, that we do the hard work of discerning, that we don't rush into it, but we give enough time for careful evaluation. There's significance to this as well. Paul wants Timothy to think about what's at stake here. And he goes on to say there at the end of v. 22, "...Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure." Grammatically, the first part of this verse and the second part of the verse are connected. Paul is not saying, Timothy, don't identify someone for ministry too quickly. Oh, and also, by the way, don't get involved in sin yourself. Paul is saying is don't put people into ministry or endorse them for leadership too quickly, or you will share in their guilt. You will have some culpability for their sin if you don't do your job properly. if you're not careful about identifying spiritual leadership. So again, there's significance here. There's a reason why this is so important. Because in some sense, if we don't carefully discern and identify spiritual leaders and go through a process of careful vetting, then we run the risk of sharing in that sin. There's also an interesting notation here, put in parenthesis, regarding wine. At first glance, it doesn't seem to fit. There's a few different possible reasons why Paul addresses this right here in this spot. We won't linger on it, but we see here that Timothy, again, some physical ailments that he experienced. We've learned a little bit about Timothy's personality. He was a little bit more timid. He was not this fiery leader that Paul was. Timothy seemed to maybe second-guess himself a lot, so from a temperament standpoint. And then in addition, he seems to have had some physical ailments. It talks about here his stomach. And in the ancient world, clean drinking water was not readily available. And so dysentery and these sorts of things were pretty common. It seems that this was going on here with Timothy. Paul says to Timothy, you know, you've made a commitment. You want to steer clear of wine. Maybe steer clear of any type of addiction or anything like that. The sense of the text is that Timothy had made some type of resolve that way to drink only water. But Paul urges him to include a little bit of wine for his stomach's sake. What would commonly happen is that wine would be diluted with water. And the alcohol content in the wine would kill the bacteria in the water, making it clean to drink. And so Paul says, I appreciate your commitment, Timothy, but let's watch out for your health here. And it might do you some good physically. So why does Paul say this? Again, there's a few different reasons. It could be just the stressful nature of what Timothy was being charged to do. And Paul is wanting to make some editorial comment on Timothy's health to encourage him to take care of himself so that he will be fit for ministry. He also provides perspective here as well. Ensure the perspective spiritual leaders are carefully evaluated. And here in verses 24 and 25, he again just brings some perspective, helping to train Timothy's mind. He says that a person's character is not always obvious and immediately evident. The sins of some people are conspicuous, obvious, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. They're not immediately evident. And conversely, The good works are conspicuous. In some cases, you see something, you see somebody do something, and you think, oh, that was wonderful. What a blessing. Thank you. In other cases, it maybe takes a while before you discern and you see different patterns and you begin to understand a little bit more about what makes a person tick, right? And so Paul is reminding Timothy here about how character, truly discerning character, takes time. Don't rush this process. It's Valentine's Day, so I was thinking of my wife this weekend. It's a good thing, right? Went to Cedarville University, fall of 1989, many moons ago. And there were a few gals that caught my attention. And they were ones that were looking to catch people's attention by the way they dressed, and a lot of makeup, and kind of flashy. And they succeeded. They caught my attention. By the way, that wasn't Sherry. I know that's a big shocker to most of you, right? Sherry was not, like, trying to grab people's attention. Sherry is quietly doing her thing in the background, engaged in Christian service, dressing very modestly, just very gracious in her demeanor. And over the course of a couple of years, like cream rises to the top, I realized and started to take notice of this beautiful, godly woman, right? The rest is history nearly 21 years later, right? But that's kind of how it is sometimes, right? You maybe look at somebody and maybe the first impression isn't necessarily, you know, so great, or you don't take much notice of it, you don't think that much about it, but, you know, over time, then you think, well, I really appreciate that person, and the way that they are always engaged in service, or they're just quietly working behind the scenes, or they always have an encouraging word, you know, even in a dark circumstance, they always have a perspective of faith. And over time you come to see that, and Paul says that's kind of the way it is sometimes. That's the way it works with sin too, in certain patterns that maybe just aren't evident at first, but if you give it a little time, you'll see and be able to discern things that might be of concern. So he says this again to Timothy as a safeguard. Again, a reminder of the seriousness of sin, about how much God is concerned about sin in the church, and particularly the sin of spiritual leaders that can be so destructive. And so Paul outlines here some safeguards for sin. Don't entertain godless accusations against a spiritual leader. Publicly expose a spiritual leader who is sinning. And ensure that prospective spiritual leaders are carefully evaluated.