We're going to go over to 1 Timothy tonight. Well, this morning we're looking at actually chapter 2. Tonight we're going to go to chapter 1 of 1 Timothy. And we're going to get the context from which chapter 2 flows. What is a common title for First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus? What are those called? The Trinity, the pastoral epistles. So the instruction is primarily given to pastors. It's here in this context given to Timothy. Titus is given to Titus. How to administrate the church. And so we saw this morning that in chapter two, Paul is instructing Titus about, of course, the role of men and women in the church. We have Paul doing the same thing in the book of Titus. We have him doing the same thing in Ephesians chapter five and six. We have a lot of it in the scriptures. So the intent is here, so we know how to govern ourselves in what is called the house of the Lord, the assembly of the Lord. We left off this morning looking at 1 Timothy chapter two, dealing with the issue, of course, with what it says in the first couple of verses there of that chapter. And that is going to take a considerable amount of effort for us to live in peace with one another. And part of the instruction of the scriptures is that we can do that, we can live peaceably one with another. So as we come here to this text tonight, we want to understand that a great deal of effort will be required by a man and a woman for them to live together as a husband-wife and lead a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty, as 1 Timothy 2.2 says. So, doing what God commands is called what? Here, doing what God commands in a way that obedience becomes righteous is called love. And so when we talk about righteousness, we can't just do what God says unless we do it in a loving way. So biblical love cannot be defined, cannot define or express apart from self-sacrifice. That's the word agapio or agape. In other words, loving biblically is to make your desires and needs subservient to the person loved. So this is what God means by the command in Ephesians 5.21, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. That's the foundation for all the relationships. He'll go on, he'll deal with that, you know, he'll speak specifically, wife submitting to her husband, husband loving their wives, employers being fair with their employees, children honoring their parents. All of that's defined here by this phrase, the governing phrase, submitting yourself one to another in the fear of God. That's that idea that Paul introduced in chapter two about raising up holy hands. Stand before a holy God. He knows us. We're not going to stand there and raise our hands to God that we've offered the appropriate sacrifices, that our life is right with Him, in prayer, holy hands, now expecting God to answer prayer, when we know our lives are wrong. I mean, how can we think we're going to be able to deceive God? That's the concept of raising holy hands. So the concept here is a general governing principle for all relationships given there in Ephesians 5 and 6. Now God's established various levels of authorities in this world to ensure some degree of order and to avoid the natural tendencies of sinners to advance towards anarchy or lawlessness. This was a substance of 1 Timothy 1. Let's go over there tonight. How many of you have ever watched a group of children play? Okay, isn't that an interesting thing to see? Very quickly, within a group of children, strangers or whether they know each other or not, you will see someone, one or two of those children, who will become obviously the person who is in charge, right? Now there may be a little battle going on there, and there may be some things that happen because of that, but there's always that battle that's going in charge. The intent of God is to eliminate that battle. He eliminates it in the home. He says, okay, husband's in charge. He eliminates it in the church. He says, okay, the pastor's in charge. He eliminates it at your work. How do you do that? Well, If you don't do what I'm going to do, you're going to get fired. So obviously, the boss is in charge. So let's stand. We're going to read verses 5 down through verse 7 here tonight. And then we'll let you sit back down and go to sleep. 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 5. Now the end, that word end means goal or point to aim at. That's our goal. The end of the commandment, which is God's mandate of righteousness, the commandments are intended to define what is righteous. Now the end of the commandment is what? Charity. That's God's ultimate charge to be given to the church, which is self-sacrificing love. So the end of the commandment, the point aimed at, the goal of all doctrine, is what? Is love. And then it comes out of what we call three pillars or three qualifiers. It's the end of the law, end of the commandment is charity out of, now three qualifiers, three pillars. A pure heart, that's purified by the knowledge of God's will. Of a good conscience, that's conscious convictions of right and wrong, otherwise knowing what's right and what's wrong by the word of God. And of faith unfamed, That's the third pillar. Unhypocritical or real, living, practicing faith. That's what he's saying, not unfeigned. Otherwise, not plastic faith. From which, okay, from those three pillars now, from which some have swerved, have been turned aside unto Vein jingling. That's meaningless talk. Random, meaningless talk. Babble. Talk much, but say little. And of course what happens in that context is that I've listened to some men stand up and what they call preaching for an hour, hour and a half, and they say nothing. Nothing to say. People leave. having heard a eloquent speech, but no truth. No truth, no teaching from the Word of God. So he goes on and he says, desiring to be the teachers of the law, of what's right and what's wrong, understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. They don't even understand their own affirmations. Father, thank you tonight for your word and for its instructions. Lord, I know that they are given mainly to pastors here this evening, but we know that each of your people are priests, each believer in the church is a priesthood of the believer, and we all need to know what the church is about and what we're trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish. So we pray tonight that you'd help us with these things, and we pray that you'd give us understanding and illumination. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Now we're gonna pick up here in verse eight again, but having this foundation here of Timothy, he's talking about these three pillars of the church. Of course, they're all based upon primarily the word of God, and then the outcome of the teaching the word of God. But look here at verse eight, but, that's a seal of word there, pause, think about it. But we know that the law is good. If a man use it lawfully or correctly, the correct purpose for which the law was intended, which is sanctification, not salvation. We know the law is a good thing when we use it for sanctification purposes, right? It defines that. And verse nine, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man. Good, I don't need to read the law. I'm a righteous man. I'm saved. Is that what it's saying? Shake your head like this. No, that's not what it's saying. The point is here, it says, here's what the law is for and here's what you are. When we're speaking to people, the preacher is speaking, he's one of these people, and the people he speaks to are one of these people. Who's the law for? Well, it's for lost people, but it's also for sinners, right? And he defines that. He says, now, the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient. for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for menslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menschalers, for liars, for perjured persons, and for being any other thing. That's contrary to sound doctrine. according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust." Now, he's passing it on to Timothy, who is, of course, passing it on to the church. Now, these are important things, because this is why sinners don't like to sit under the preaching of the Word of God. This is why sinners don't like to spend much time in the Old Testament. All right? We find the same truths in the New Testament, but God is very pointed with many of these things in the Old Testament. He puts his finger right on the bruised spot in our lives and deals with it. So what does the law do? What is the purpose? The law confronts the lawbreaker. The law confronts the lawbreaker. That's us. That's the purpose of preaching. That's what the church is all about. The law confronts the lawbreaker. Sometimes when you touch the soft spot when I'm preaching, and I know that there are people in the church who are living right there where that spot I've just touched because I'm the pastor and God makes us aware of those things. It's not that I've directed it to them, it's just that I'm dealing with what God says. And they say, well, yeah, you know that about me, and so you're preaching about me. No, no. I'm just preaching the truth. But the truth will touch us. And you can be pretty sure that if the truth has touched you about some area of your life, it's touched your pasture in the same places. Because we're all the same. Every one of us struggles with sin. We have a tendency to look at certain people and say, well, yeah, you know, they really walk on high ground. They're struggling with the same things you have always been struggling with. They just learn to be a little more victorious sometimes, at least in the apparent ways. So the point here is that every person is a lawbreaker in his heart, and every person wants something that the law forbids. This is what defines the fact that we are all sinners by nature. So fear of the consequences of breaking the law may keep us from doing what is forbidden. But in our hearts we know there is a desire for forbidden things. How many of you drive down the highway and your wife's sitting over here and you're just driving along and maybe having a little conversation and your wife says, that's a police officer. And you say, okay. That's great, I'm glad to see they're out here protecting and serving. I'm not doing anything. I'm not afraid of them. Sometimes she'll say it because I'm supposed to pull over to the other lane, and she knows I got a ticket for that one time, and that's a good thing. In Minnesota, you're supposed to change lanes. I was in heavy traffic and couldn't move over, and the officer said, well, you should have slowed down and stopped. Not sure I want to do that in 60-mile-an-hour traffic, stop in one lane, but I took the ticket and paid the $245 fine. But, you know, we don't have to fear the law. The law is a good thing. Police officers are there to help us, and they're a reminder to us that we can't do whatever we want to do. Now look here, it says in 1 Timothy 1.9, the law was not made for a righteous man. The law is God telling us what is right and what is wrong and that he is constantly watching. Consequences for disobedience are inevitable. God sees it. Therefore, the law is God's sovereign authority spelled out in words. The law says God will do what he says he will do when any person fails to submit to his authority in the law. God's gonna do it. It's not about when you get caught. You already have been caught. God's already observed it. God has already written it down. Now think about this for a minute. We read of David and his failures in the scriptures. God recorded that for all of us to see. There are private things that no one else knew about that God recorded in the scriptures about some people. How would you like to have your book, your life, recorded in your life and written down for everyone to see? Do you realize that God is going to judge you out of the books? Your life has been recorded. You're going to be judged out of those books. Maybe someday all of that will be available for everyone. How about people who have died? Our loved ones? They're already in glory. Is heaven out there someplace far, far away? Great separation? Or is heaven just another dimension of existence? That you can't see, a spiritual dimension. When we're caught up, we're gonna be caught up in the air to meet the Lord in the air. How do we know? There's a lot of things we don't know. First Timothy chapter two begins with instructions to all believers about authorities over them. For kings, for all that are in authority. Paul says that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving the thanks be made for all men. That's for all types of prayer right there. Supplications. That's individual requests, prayers, general prayers, intercessions, otherwise you're in the seating for someone who's going through a difficult time. And the giving of thanks be made what? For all men. The good, bad, and ugly. For kings. for all that are in authority. A pretty over-governing statement here when we think about this. We're supposed to pray for the people we love, the people we hate, even pray for some people who rule over us and may not be doing a good job. Every person has numerous levels of authorities in his life, and one of the first moral responsibilities as a believer is to discover, recognize, and submit to the authorities in our lives. I get kind of upset when I hear Christians complaining about their boss. Spend a little more time praying for your boss and stop complaining about it, yeah? Sometimes our jobs are difficult. Sometimes our boss is a jerk. Sometimes he has a bad day, but he's still your boss. and you ought to pray for him. I don't like to listen to men complain about their wives. I don't like to listen to women complain about their husbands. I don't like to hear men and women criticize their husbands and wives publicly. I don't like to see that. I don't like to hear it privately. We should be solution-oriented, not accusational-ordinated. God gives us numerous lists of authorities to which we are to submit. Now, come with me tonight over to 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11. We're going to look here tonight to this as God's chain of command. God's chain of command. 1 Corinthians 11, it is a precursor to the Lord's table. Now pretty much everything Paul has said in the earlier chapters is to prepare people for the Lord's table. He's fixing all of that which was broken in the church. Now he'll deal with this in some general terms in the Lord's Supper as we looked at a few weeks ago. But this is a foundational summary for all of those things. In verse 1 he says, be ye followers of what? Of me. He's talking about he was an apostle, and therefore to follow him was to follow the things that he taught. Be followers of me as a God-ordained authority in teaching God's truth. Be followers of me. It transfers to pastoral things now. But he qualifies it. Just don't follow me because I'm leading. He says, follow me even as I am of Christ. Follow me the way I follow Christ. No need to follow me if I'm not following Christ. Governing principle. Wives, no need to follow your husband if he's not following Christ. Now you may need to just to keep peace at home in some areas, but Husband, you don't have to do it. Your wife asks you to do, it's contrary to the word of God. Now verse two, he says, now I praise you, brethren. This is one of the first times he does that in this epistle. That you remember me in all things. He's praising them for the fact that they remember Paul. They prayed for Paul. They were concerned about his missions. And they prayed for him in all things. And also he says, I praise you that you keep the ordinances. What's he going to do next? He's going to teach on the Lord's table. He says, that you keep the ordinances, now here it is, as I delivered them to you. Now he's going to reiterate that, but he taught this before, it wasn't new. But I would, what's the first word there? But. But I will have you know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is a man and the head of Christ is God. Okay, he's talking about how you keep the ordinances. And foundation to keeping the ordinances and being right, not eating and drinking unworthily in the Lord's supper is that you understand the chain of command. He says, the head of every man is Christ, the head of who? Every man. Whether or not that man submits to the Lordship of Jesus Christ or not, Jesus still is Lord. He's the head of every man. And the head of every woman is the man. And the head of Christ is God. There's a chain of command. Christ, of course, is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity in his humanity. The level of sovereignty is the first person of the Trinity is the Father. He has, of course, the second person of the Trinity is Jesus, who now has become the God-man, Jesus, but he is the head of Christ. There's a chain of command. And that's what the term head here is talking about. Now, remember, we're gonna read this word head a number of times down through this text. Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered, that means his hair is too long like a woman, dishonors his head. Who's his head? Christ. If his hair is too long, if he has hair like a woman, he is dishonoring Christ. Verse 5, what's the first word? But every woman that's praying or prophesying with her head uncovered, that's hair too short like a man, dishonoreth her head. Who's her head? Her husband. He's dishonoring her head. Now, we're gonna see in chapter 14 that there in chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians, Paul will say that a woman shall keep silence in the church. And that is particularly in the context That's a Greek word, sykaos. In 1 Timothy 2, it's husykaos, different Greek word. But sykaos is a much stronger word. Husykaos says you shall be meek and quiet when you speak. Sykaos in 1st chapter 14 has to do with prophecy, interpretations of prophecy, and speaking in tongues. Sykaos means to desist from speaking. When it comes to prophecy, which of course is teaching, when it comes to speaking in tongues, or the interpretation of the tongues, women are not allowed to do that. That's a pretty strong text. So he says, every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonors his head, Christ. Every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, hair too short, dishonoreth her head, her husband. For that is even all one as if she were shaven. Now, civil authorities shave the heads of women to publicly shame them for certain things. And this is what Paul is addressing here. And he's saying, well, how short is too short and how long is long? What, you really want me to do that for you? Is that what you want? You want me to come into your home and say, your hair is too short or your hair is too long. Now, I think there ought to be a measurable difference. Otherwise, you ought to be able to tell a woman is a woman and a man is a man. You ought to be able to tell the difference by looking at them. And I always say, you ought to be able to tell the difference by looking at them from the back. How many times have you walked down the road and you saw two people walking by and you say, well, there's a couple of nice looking little girls. And you see one of them, when you finally get there, one of them's got a beard. But from the back, you never know the difference. You ought to be able to tell the difference. And the point is, the instruction here is eating and drinking unworthily. So he goes on and he says, for if the woman be, what, not covered. Some people say, well, women, they can have short hair, they just wear a veil. The point of the text is there's a natural veil that God has given the woman to cover her head, and that is her hair. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it be a shame for the woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. I don't know ever anywhere that I have ever heard either in church history or any writings I have read and I have collections of church histories where there is a record of anyone at any time where a church disciplined a woman by shaving her head. That is a civil responsibility. Verse seven, for a man indeed ought not to cover his head. for as much as he is the image and glory of God. That's why we don't have any pictures of Jesus around here with long flowing hair. We shouldn't have any pictures of Jesus anyway, but we don't have those. We cleaned those out of our house for years, years and years ago. So man ought not to cover his head, for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. That's why, that is, that's a sign, it's an understanding that there is a difference. Then verse nine, what's the first word there? Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman, of course, was created for the man. Adam needed to help me. And so God gave him one. Adam couldn't reproduce like he saw all the other animals doing, right? So God said, here's help me for you. Well, here's someone to help you do that. And of course, many other things. Now look at verse 10. What's the first three words there? For this cause ought the woman to have power that's hair covering to show her submission to her husband on her head, because of the angels. The angels desire to look into the issue of redemption. They don't understand this. Why did the angels fall? Why did Satan and one third of the angels fall into sin? Because they see this puny little man that God had created, And God said to Adam, here, creation is yours. You're going to be sovereign over creation. And the angels are here to serve you. Of course, that's what they're here for. God created angels, these powerful beings, to watch over man, protect him and guard them. They're called guardian angels. But Satan says, I'm not, I want that, I want man to worship me. I'm much more superior than he is. You get that point now? I'm much more superior than he is. God's order of gender roles has nothing to do with superiority. Nothing. Zip. Zero. In fact, I've known many women, I'm amazed that they could marry the idiot man that they married. Right? Not any of you tonight. I'll let you know if I think that way. But that's not the case. But some women, I think, are just spiritual giants. And the man, he's just struggling. He's just spiritually struggling, mainly because he doesn't have the commitment that his wife has. So he says, for this cause ought the woman to have power, hair covering, to show her submission to her husband. on her head because of the angels, because the angels fell into sin, because Satan refused to accept God's gift of dominion of the creation to humanity, and Adam, he just refused that, and superior beings, angels, were made subject to inferior beings. So I say, women, it's not because you're inferior. It had nothing to do with that. Nevertheless, verse 11, Neither is a man without the woman. Neither the woman without the man. What's that mean? Procreation requires one of each. Simple statement. Neither the man without the woman in the Lord. For as a woman is of the man, creation by God, God took woman out of man. Even so is a man also by the woman. That's procreation through birth. but all things of God. God is the ultimate authority and that he's a creator and is divine and established order of his authorities. So all of this is of God. He's the one that established the order. And so when you rebel against the order by these simple little things, now, why is that such a big deal? Why is the issue of, you know, hair length is the little bit part of this thing. It's been made a big part of this text. But what is the big part of the text? The big part is, understand that this has nothing to do with inferiority or superiority. It has to do with the way God has ordained things. And if you believe and trust in God, not just for your salvation, but with your life, you're going to fall into alignment with God's order, and you're going to work at it. Almost everyone wants to be their own boss, right? I particularly, for one, had a real difficult time working for other people. I never could understand why I would go and work for $4 and make my boss $25 an hour, or sometimes $100. I had one job where I made an arrangement to work two days a week for $35,000 a year plus benefits. I only had to work two days a week. And someone said, well, that's, boy, they paid you a lot of money. Well, I made my boss $250,000 every year. And I thought, well, why in the world should I do this for him? Well, the simple reason, he had the money, I didn't. Now, if I had the invested money, if I had the funds to invest in that, I could have done it myself, but I didn't. And so obviously they get the benefit. But nobody wants to work for somebody else. We all want to be our own boss. And almost no one wants to be subservient to someone else. Yet Christ said what? You want to be great in this world? Be a servant. That's a contradiction to selfish people. So being another servant to any degree is one of the most resistant aspects of life, and almost every war or revolution is the outcome of resistance and rejection of having another rule over us. In most cases, that resistance and rebellion is due to unjust, harsh, and even cruel treatment by taskmasters. Husbands don't make your home a taskmaster type of situation. However, that's not always the case. Some people are just anarchists. They reject all law, all authorities, living in constant rebellion against everything and everyone. That's a movement we see going on right now. The anarchists that were blowing things up and shooting things in the 1960s are all now college professors in our state universities. And they're training other anarchists. So this is a meaning of the phrase for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers in 1 Timothy 1.9. Where does murder begin? Christ says, if you hate someone, you've already created murder in your heart. So murder begins with hatred. And the purpose for hatred is to disdain, is a disdain for authority, for instance, to the child's life or anyone's life, it's a disdain for authority. Sometimes that disdain is created by parents who treat children in a manner that's just unjust and cruel. Most of the time, this disdain is just rebellion against authority. I know that to be true. I've known very godly homes of godly parents who pray and take care of their children, and their children just rebel. They're willing to run away from home, live out on the street, and prostitute themselves for drugs and other licentiousness just so they don't have to live under the authority of their parents who want to tell them what to do. In most cases, just want to protect them. That's anarchism. So the kind of rebellion that we're talking about here will be extended to almost every authority under which a child's life comes. They can't function in a school system, a teacher. They can't function in the public. They're going to be breaking laws. This is going to extend to his peers, not going to be willing, he can't work with other people, his older brothers and sisters, teachers, pastors, and finally even to police officers. Patty and I watch a show, well we used to, we don't anymore because we don't have cable, but we always watched a show called Cops. And it just amazed me about people who would get caught doing something and they lie and lie and get caught in the lie and then they lie some more. One guy had drugs in his pocket and he says, those aren't my pants. And so they said, okay. And then they find out that he had drugs in his underwear. He said, those aren't my underwear. And the police officer says, you wearing somebody else's underwear? But, you know, that's anarchy. So this rebellion is destined to become anarchy and a social disorder resolved in a very simple way, and that is by barred doors and barred windows. And it's gotten to the place now in most of our major metropolitan areas, they do not have room in the county jails for all the people that are there. And so the sheriff has the authority to let the lesser ones go. And the police officers who have arrested them, fought with them to get them into the system, they're so frustrated. You know, we need to pray for these men and women. Now the point of order of God's order of subservience is that God has ordained authorities to maintain some degree of order in a fallen universe. These authorities are not always ideal because they are part of the fallen universe, otherwise we're sinners too. And we have to understand that. Taking an idealistic look or view of everyone in our world will immediately disqualify anyone eventually for something in their life. However, at what point does the obedient, the surrendered believer say to an authority, he cannot obey a certain command? When does that happen? Well, the simple answer is no one should not obey any command that's contrary to God's command. Otherwise, if there's something contrary to God, whether it's your husband, whether it's your wife, whether it's children and their parents, they don't have to obey what is contrary to God's word. I remember a famous pastor, if I said his name, you'd all know him. But in one of the books he wrote, when he got saved as a teenager, he had a drunken father who abused him brutally. And his father forbade him to go to church on Sunday. But every single Sunday, he got up and went to church in the morning. And when he got home in the afternoon after church, his dad beat him for it. And then every Sunday evening, he went to church on Sunday evening. Every Sunday night when he got home, his dad beat him for it. And the same thing happens on Wednesday night. At what point do we need to disobey a command of someone when the command is contrary to God's command? For instance, a wife does not need to obey a husband who's leading her away from God's will. Some people, some wives will say, well, my husband doesn't want to come to church, I'm not going either. Well, you should go to church. That's how I got saved. My wife kept going to church. I wasn't going with her. And she'd always invite me to go with her. And finally, I went with her. The gospel got saved. But yet, even in her being unfaithful, her being faithful to God, she must be careful in how she refuses to follow her husband unless she creates a poor example for her undiscerning children. So not just a manner of saying, well, no, I'm not going to disobey a God. I'm going to obey a God. You better be very careful how she does it. And I understand. I mean, I've been doing this a long time. I have dealt with these things with women and with men, with unsaved husbands and unsaved wives, or sometimes saved husbands and saved wives. They just won't live for the Lord either. And it's tough. It's a tough situation. It's not the way God intended it to be. But there are grave responsibilities and considerations of ramifications anytime someone steps out of sides of God's chain of order. We better be very careful about it. Again, we must reiterate, God understands that his chain of command is intended to be practical when certain ideals are being practiced by everyone. But the more a society moves away from God's intended norms, the more difficult it will become to live in subservience to ungodly people while trying our best to be subservient to God's commands. That's the society we live in. That's the culture we live in. We have very, very few normal Christian homes. I mean, out of what we would say thousands of Christians' homes, otherwise these are professing Christians, we have these, this many that might be just normal, where husbands and wives have the proper roles, where children are obedient to their parents and honor them. Very, very few where that happens. For instance, a woman has a husband who beats her and her children. At what point does she call the police? That's a tough choice. At what point does she separate for mere protection? Now, he's breaking bones. What point does she do that? That's a tough issue. You say, well, that happens in Christian homes. Yes, it does. It does. At what point does she separate for protection? Does this behavior by a husband mean she can divorce him? No. Separation, divorce, two different things. What about Christ's command in Matthew 5.39? But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Okay, I understand that. What if someone hits you with a baseball bat? Should you turn to him the other part of your body to be broken? Is that what Christ means? What if someone shoots you in the one shoulder, should you turn to him your other shoulder to be wounded? Is that what Christ means? During Bible times, to smite someone on the cheek was to insult him, to publicly degrade or humiliate. And pride would respond in reciprocity by, because a person did not believe he deserved the humiliation, and pride would escalate the degradation, eventually resulting in war or killing one another, and that's where the duel came into place. And people practiced that. We actually have a president who was killed in a duel at one time. Now humility can turn the other cheek because pride's absent. This is a contextual context we got to bring back to First Timothy 2.8 through 5.15. Go over there with me. You see, idealism. I'm an idealist. Are you? I'm striving for an ideal. But I'm also a realist. I know what I am. I know where I am. And these two things are trying to get together. It's like this. Never quite get there. Never quite make it. But my work is towards the ideal. That's what Christ is talking about. Verse 8, 1 Timothy 2, I will therefore, that the men, men, that men, the men, pray everywhere, in every place as a testimony to dependence upon God for everything. They're supposed to pray lifting up holy hands, we've talked about that this morning, hands that have been cleansed and that are undefiled before God because we're right with God. That's the only way we can come to God in prayer and expect God to answer. If we regard iniquity in our heart, God will not hear us. Otherwise, if we're justifying sin in our life, God will not hear us. So we're supposed to lift up holy hands without wrath and doubting, not supposed to hate anyone, not want to hurt anyone, and without any doubting about God's will because we are right with God. Faith believes that God will respond in an appropriate way. His will will be done in our lives and through our lives and through our prayer when our life is right with God. So the implication is that our life and actions are constantly before the eyes of the Lord. The two great pains of life, what are they? What are the two great pains of life? Well, I believe they're childbearing and childrearing. They're the greatest pains that I've ever experienced in my life, to have a child rebel. I've never seen any kind of pain in my life like my wife had to endure giving birth to our children. to have to sit there and watch this little bitty woman give birth to this eight-pound monster. It took, the last one, when Darcy was born, she wasn't that big, but she was in hard, hard labor for 24 hours. And they finally took the baby by caesarean. And she was laying there on that bed, and the doctor comes in. He's already been working for about 18 hours that day. And he says, I'm going to go home. I'll do this in the morning. And I walked up to this little guy. He's about this tall. And I looked down at him. I said, no, you're not. He said, you're going to take her in, and you're going to take that baby right now. Right now. He took that baby by cesarean, and he had her in within an hour. And he never saw him again. Never saw that doctor again. Is that right? But, you know, watching that is so hard. You know, just to watch it is hard. She lived through it. So, burying children, that's a tough thing. That's a curse in practice. Now, praise God, I know some ladies One lady we had, a friend of ours in Dodd Center when we were there, her births were easy. She was out hanging up clothes on a clothesline one day and caught the baby in the clothes basket. You know, done. Now, I'm not home any of those, but most cases pretty tough. Well, where's the pain then? Pain's in child rearing. You know, to have a child that gets sick. You ever had your children be sick, put them in the hospital, and you feel so helpless? You want to rescue them? The hardest thing for me as a pastor is to go in and see children in the hospital that are sick, seriously injured, or maybe dying. It's hard. I still have trouble watching advertisements on television when they show very sick little children. I can't watch it. It breaks my heart. Because you want to rescue them. And you can't do it. And then to see your children grow up and disobey, that's the hardest thing. To choose another pathway than the one you've laid out for them carefully all of their lives. Choose a different pathway. Just to reject God. Go a different way. It's so hard. It's so difficult. You don't stop loving them. And that's where the pain comes in. Pain is overwhelming. Childbearing is born by the wife and the latter. Childrearing is born by both parents. But the responsibility falls mainly upon the father. Now, I could go on a lot more here tonight. I think we've got the gist of what we've said and covered some pretty heavy ground here tonight. But, you know, all of this just, first of all, it begins by loving the Lord. If you're not willing to submit to the order of God's chain of command, simply, you don't love the Lord. You don't trust Him with your life. He's the one that said to do that. Yeah, sometimes it's going to be really hard to do what God tells you to do. But remember, it's because the ideals aren't there. Not very often you get to have the kind of thing like where Daniel and Kaylee carefully get to examine each other. Sometimes it happens In a situation where a guy marries a woman and a woman marries a man, like my wife and I, you realize the grace of God that happened in that situation where we could have been and should have been, if it weren't for God saving us both and establishing us in the truth. It would have been, it was in chaos and it would have gotten worse, not better. Praise God for God's chain of command. I'm sure it was difficult for my wife many times to follow me and the decisions I made. But she did. And we were able to sit down after a number of years sometimes and say, yeah, that was a pretty stupid decision. She didn't say I told you so. I shouldn't say she didn't. Occasionally she may have. Well, I agree with that. It was. That's a difficulty, you know.