Take your Bibles and turn with me to 1 Timothy chapter 5. Last week we finished in chapter 4, so today we begin to move into the next chapter that is a part of this book in which we're looking at six marks of an effective church. Today I want to talk to us about all in the family. I want you to notice what Paul tells Timothy in chapter 5, verse 1 and 2. Do not rebuke an older man, but rather exhort him as you would a father. Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, but without purity. Would you join me this morning in a word of prayer as we begin? Father, I thank you. that when we are born again, we are also baptized by your spirit into the body. And Father, I just pray that as we think on that truth today, that we are a part of the body, we are a part of the bride, we're a part of the family, the household of God, that you would help us to understand what a blessing it is to be one of your children. to be related to one another in Christ. And so I pray in Jesus name. Amen. I don't know how people get through life without God. Do you? People that don't know the Lord, when they come against hard times and difficulty, I have no understanding how they can get through life. I don't know how people get along in life without the church. You know, sometimes people come into the Christian faith, and they kind of look at their faith in a very individualistic way. And they're just going to walk with God, they think, themselves, and thrive spiritually. And they never become a part of a body, a local church, and sink their roots deep into that community, that family. I don't know how they get through life. The church is vital in our relationship with Christ and then in our relationship with one another. As we think about the church, we're looking at six marks of an effective church and doing so from each one of the chapters. And let's just remind ourselves of where we've gone. Chapter one, we talked about An effective church is committed to sound doctrine. That's at the core, that's the foundation. If a church is not committed to the truth of God's word and does not build itself on God's word, it quickly drifts into apostasy and error and becomes a false church. It must be committed to sound doctrine. Chapter two. Paul has said, I beseech you therefore, I stress you that first of all, prayers be made. The church, an effective church, is consecrated to the purpose of prayer. We studied that. Prayer is the air we breathe as Christians. We are to pray without ceasing. We're to lift one another up in prayer. We're to lift up leaders in our country, leaders in the world. We are to be a people of prayer. Chapter three, an effective church is controlled by godly leaders. And so we talked about eldership, we talked about deacons. Chapter four, an effective church is conscious of seducing spirits. He began that chapter by saying, I am telling you specifically in the latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to the doctrines of demons. And we talked about the antidote to that and all the different things that were in chapter four. When we come to chapter five, Paul is clearly developing a counterweight to some of the things he said in chapter four. We'll develop that in a minute. But what Paul is telling Timothy in this whole chapter is that the church must be compassionate in the way it deals with its members. There are three breakdowns to this idea in the chapter. We only read verses one and two, but each one of the things in this chapter deals with this central issue of compassion. In verses one and two, this is where we'll go today, the church must be controlled by compassion when it corrects. It says, do not rebuke, but rather exhort. The church must be controlled by compassion when it corrects. Secondly, in this chapter, beginning in verse three and going down to verse 16, we'll see that the church must be compassionate in the way that it deals with those who are less fortunate. And he's gonna specifically develop how the church was to deal and is to deal with the issue of widows in its midst. We'll develop that beginning next week. At the end of the chapter, beginning in verse 17 and going to the end of the chapter, he then says the church needs to be compassionate in the way it deals with its leaders or its elders. And he sets out a bunch of guidelines for how the church is to deal with its leaders. The governing concept is this idea of compassion. The word compassion never appears in the chapter, okay? But it is clear that the concept runs all through it. In the scripture, there are four primary words that stand behind the concept of compassion. One of the words means to feel distress. One of the words means to be moved. One of the words means to suffer with someone. One of the word means to show mercy. All four of those words, to feel distress, to be moved, to suffer with someone, to have mercy, all of those words summarize our English concept of the word compassion. It speaks of both feelings and actions. John deals with that, doesn't he? When he says, how can you say you love your brother when you see him naked and destitute and you don't give him what he needs? You just feel something in your heart, but you don't act on it. It's not really compassion. Or Paul deals with him first Corinthians 13, and he says, you can bestow all your goods to feed the poor, but if you don't love him, it's just the gong show. It's just a bunch of noise. So it's both feelings and action. This word is used extensively in the Gospels to describe the person of our Savior. Think of the reality that God come in the flesh, walking among people, seeing their needs, is moved by their sorrow and by their situation and by their suffering. For instance, in Matthew chapter 9, it says that Jesus went about all the cities and villages in Galilee. He was teaching in the synagogues. He is preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He is healing all who are sick. but when he saw the multitudes. And I think the idea in that concept is when he sees the mass of people who are coming to him with struggles, he didn't say, oh, I'm sick and tired of dealing with this. He didn't say, well, it's my day off. Did he? How did Jesus respond? It tells us in the text, He was moved with compassion. He was moved with compassion. This is our Savior. He is a compassionate Lord. The church's mission flourishes when there is a spirit of compassion. The church, we as individuals in the church, See, every person we meet, no matter what their problem is, no matter what their sin is, we see them as created in the image of God. And each individual, no matter what their struggle is, needs compassion. That is why the church has always been involved in the ministries of building hospitals, building orphanages, doing rehab work, prison ministries. Down the list goes of the ways the church reaches out to people in need and shows them compassion. The church doesn't come alongside an individual and just slap them on the back and say, you're OK as you are, willy-nilly go your way. No, the church sees the person and their problem, feels grief because of the problem, and seeks to help restore them from it. Contrast that with all of the purported compassion ministries that the world offers. You know, one of the earliest feminazis One of the early feminist leaders that our country produced was a woman named Margaret Sanger. We've probably all heard of her. She wrote a book called The Woman Rebel. Wanting to supposedly lift women from their plight, she said things like this in her book. Jews and Italians should not be able to procreate. Marriage is a degenerate institution. This is back in the 1920s, and she says, the most merciful thing that a large family could do when it has a new baby is kill it. Birth control and forced sterilization should be used to weed out the poor. And she was an outspoken advocate of eugenics. Think of people like Lenin and Marx. who left in their wake piles of corpses. I'll take Jesus any day. There are three points in these verses that I really want to make this morning, and then we'll close. The first point that I want to make from verses one and two, as we look at them specifically at what Paul tells Timothy, the first thing that I want to develop is, What Paul is saying here is to serve as a counterweight to some of what he said in chapter 4. The second thing I want to develop for a minute is this idea that the church is a family. The third thing that I want to develop is that an important part of being in the family is the ministry of correction, and none of us likes correction. First of all, what Paul says here is a counterweight to Chapter 4. Notice what Paul says, do not rebuke an older man. Exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity. If you remember our study in Chapter 4, You will remember that Paul has entrusted Timothy with a tremendous amount of authority. He has laid on him the authority to correct what is wrong in the church. And there is much that is wrong in the church in Ephesus. When Paul tells Timothy how he is to correct it, he is to do it patiently, And he is to take great pains in instructing the church and stopping the mouth of those who teach error. And now he says, protect the relationships. Now Paul says to Timothy, don't abuse your authority. I think this is an important point for us to deal with for a minute. Authority can lead any person to become autocratic. Leadership exposes us to pride. And he says to Timothy, you must be careful how you deal with people. Protect the relationships. Timothy is to guard against this You know, authority can lead someone to becoming an autocrat. It is never intentional. I guarantee that. Someone that goes into politics, because we all pick on politicians. I'm not saying every one of them, but most of them. And I've come to know a good deal of them, elected officials. The vast majority of them go in to that line of work with good motives, with proper intentions. Most people that go into ministry don't go into ministry just to make a buck. Most people that go into ministry go into ministry to serve people. And yet, as time goes on, it is easy for frustration to build and for a person to begin to abuse the authority that they have been given and to deal with people in less than stellar ways. He is to show proper respect, isn't he? That's what he's saying here. In the book of Leviticus in chapter 19, Moses tells the people of Israel, stand when a gray-headed man comes in the room. Honor him. And Paul is telling Timothy, yes, you are in a place of authority. Don't abuse that authority in how you deal with older men or younger men who are your brothers. Older women or younger women who are your sisters. He is to be wise in how and when he approaches the situation. I think Paul is telling Timothy, don't be like a bull in the china closet. Don't just go in there and clean house. He, you know, we could really sideline on this thing, what he says to him about his sisters in the Lord. When he says in all purity, Titus chapter two, Paul there instructs in the church at Crete that the older women are to disciple the younger women. Why? safeguard, guardrails. And Paul is here telling Timothy, don't think so highly of yourself that you're not susceptible to sin. Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. All of us should analyze our life and our relationships with members of the opposite sex, and be careful that we maintain boundaries and safeguards for our protection and theirs. This should be done in the church, and it should be true in the community. Sad to say, in the world today, many people are put in compromising situations because of the political correctness of the day. And so Timothy is told here he must not show disdain and disregard. He must treat people with respect and impurity. The second thing I want to notice for just a minute is the church is a family. Just notice what he says. It's not just an older man. He's your father. It's not just an older woman that sits down the pew. She's your mother. It's not just another young guy. He's your brother, and she's your sister. He puts it into the terms of the family. Now, he is not abolishing the nuclear family, and he is not diminishing the nuclear family and its role. Because later in this chapter, he's going to say in verse four, if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them take care of their mother. So there is a core responsibility of the nuclear family. Nevertheless, the church is a family of families. And it extends and it brings into its midst the fatherless, the widow, the outcast, and it gives them a home. It gives them a place to belong. Many things we can say about this. In American Christianity, it's just so easy to come to church and just come to church. But God doesn't want us just to come to church, he wants us to be the church. He wants us to relate to one another in real ways. There are many ways this happens. I think as the church becomes larger, this is why smaller discipleship units are important. Things like small groups. where you can relate to someone in a more personal way, the cohesion and the unity of the church must be maintained. But nevertheless, these smaller discipleship groups are very important. And our goal is to start two or three more this year, perhaps in the fall, because we think it's important. People long to belong, don't they? They want to belong. You see this even in the inner cities in America when you have gangs. And we have a culture of fatherlessness in those inner cities. And so boys want to belong and they join a gang. This is also why church splits are so destructive. Because it's not like just saying, well, I'm going to quit going to that McDonald's and I'll go to this one. It's like a divorce. It splits up a family. And so the church is a family. We need to relate to one another in those ways. That's why we eat together a lot of times. That's why we not only come together and worship, we work together, we do life together. And if you're never involved in those other things, if all you are involved in is this service, You do yourself a great disservice. You need to be a part of the family. Last point I want to make is that an important part of being in the family is correction. He says, don't rebuke him, exhort him. I want to deal with this for just a minute. You know, correction is hard. It's hard to take and it's hard to give, isn't it? Hard to take, it's also hard to give. In correction, there is a call to intervention in someone else's life. In the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament, God says, if you're a watchman on the wall and you see the enemy coming and you don't blow the trumpet, they will die, but the blood is on your hands. Telling us that there is a responsibility. a call to intervention. Jesus deals with this in Matthew 18 when he tells us how to intervene, how to correct. But let's understand something. We need to love one another enough that when we see someone else in the body going down a road that is dangerous to their faith, we have a conversation about it. We don't just disregard it. We seek to intervene. Why is that hard? It makes us vulnerable, doesn't it? It also makes us examine ourselves. Jesus said to his followers in Matthew 7, why are you trying to take a splinter out of somebody else's eye when you got a two by four sticking out of yours? Take the two by four out of your own eye, then you can see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother. And so it is a call to self-examination. I want you to notice something. Paul says in verse 1, don't rebuke an older man. And then in verse 20, he says, when an elder is accused, don't deal with it unless there's two or three witnesses. And then those who are sinning, rebuke. So what does he say in verse 1? Don't rebuke an older man. And in verse 20, he says, rebuke an older man. What's the difference? Sad to say, it's hidden in translation, but it's an important distinction. The only place in the entire Bible that this word for rebuke is used is in this verse, in 5.1. And it's an interesting Greek word. There's a prefix, a P, which means to be upon, and pleso is the root word, and it means to beat someone. And so this word in chapter 5 verse 1 is a Greek word, which means to hit upon someone. It's the only place in the Bible it's used. The typical word that is translated rebuke that we see later in this chapter is a Greek word, which basically means to convince someone, to bring them to a place of conviction. That word really speaks of the result of effective correction. The difference in these two words all comes down to the motive. The first one in verse one, when he says, don't rebuke a man, don't beat upon another man or a woman, speaks of the motive of hurting someone. getting back at them. Have you ever tried to get back at somebody? It usually starts that old cycle that I remember with my brothers in the station wagon when I was a kid. I hit my brother on the arm, and it's a little soft, and the next thing I know, he hits me on the arm, and it's a little harder. Well, I won't take that. I'll give it to him a little harder. And then I get one back a little harder. And you know, it's kind of a hit last thing, right? When am I going to cry mercy? It just starts that cycle. You start out in a motive to hit someone, to hurt them, maybe because they hurt you. It does not end well. And that is Paul's point in Romans chapter 12, when he says, don't get vengeance for yourself. Leave it with God. On the other hand, the word exhort speaks of helping someone. The motive is to help. So when you see somebody who is doing wrong or even going down a bad road in their life, you don't go with them to hurt them. You go to them to help them. That is the motive. Galatians chapter 6. In that section, he begins by telling us, even if any man is caught in any trespass. Not just some, any. You who are spiritual, go to that person, considering yourself in a spirit of gentleness and seek to restore them. He says, consider yourself, go in a spirit of gentleness and aim to restore. So Paul tells us in these first two verses, some important truths. We are not to abuse authority. We are not to abuse relationships. On the other hand, we should see one another as we are in Christ, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. And we should fulfill in each other's lives a ministry of help. I need you, and you need me, and you need one another. And God has brought us in this time and this place to this body to be the family of God. Let us relate to one another in the spirit of love and care. Let's close in a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for your word that it is living and active, it teaches, it corrects, it exhorts. Lord, as we examine ourselves under your word this morning, help us to see ways that all of us become authoritarian. Help us on the other hand to be like our Lord and to be a servant of all. And so we close in Jesus' name.