SORTING OUT THOSE WORTHY OF RELIEF – A BIBLICAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL WELFARE.
(I Tim. 5:3-16)
Overview of I Tim. 4:1-5:16
4:1-2 How False Teaching Enters the Church
4:3-5 Common Grace
4:6 Word of God in Life of the Believer
4:7a Godliness – Divine / Human Role
4:7b Train Yourself to be Godly
4:7c Spiritual Disciplines (The Word of God)
4:7d Spiritual Disciplines (Devotions, Worship)
4.7e Spiritual Disciplines (Church Attendance, Journaling, Practicing Presence of God)
4:8-9 Why Godliness Has Great Value
4:10 Putting Our Hope in the Living God
4:12 Setting an Example for Believers
4:13 What a Christian Worship Service Looked Like in the First Century
4:14 Neglecting the Spiritual Gift God has Given Us
4:15-16 Getting Home Before Dark
5:1-2 So, How Should We Describe the Church?
5:3-16 God’s Tilt Towards the Disenfranchised
5:3-16 Sorting Out those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare
SORTING OUT THOSE WORTHY OF RELIEF – A BIBILICAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL WELFARE
(I Tim. 5:3-16)
3Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. 4But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God. 5The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. 6But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives. 7Give the people these instructions, too, so that no one may be open to blame. 8If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
9No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, 10and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the saints, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds.
11 As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. 12Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. 13Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to. 14So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. 15Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.
16If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.
INTRODUCTION:
A. Topics for Discussion in I Tim. 5:3-16
1. God’s Tilt Toward the Disenfranchised
2. Ministry to Widows in the Early Church
3. Sorting Out Those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare
4. The Underlying Motivation for Christian Caring
5. The Christian’s Responsibility for His Family
6. The “Good Works” of a New Testament Woman
7. Gossips, Busybodies and False Teachers
8. What about “Younger Widows”?
B. The Breakdown of the Passage
1. Different class of widows in I Tim. 5:3-16
The widow who is really in need
The widow who has children and grandchildren
The widow who lives for pleasure
The widow who qualifies for official service
The widow who should remarry
2. Two main sections are:
a. Widows served by the church – Destitute (3-8, 16)
b. Widows who serve the church – Deserving (9-15)
C. Definition of the word “widow”
“The English word widow describes a woman whose husband is dead. The Greek word chera includes that meaning, but is not limited to it. It is an adjective used as a noun, and means “bereft,” “robbed,” “having suffered loss,” or “left alone.” The word does not speak of how a woman was left alone, it merely describes the situation. It is broad enough to encompass those who lost their husbands through death, desertion, divorce, or imprisonment. It could even encompass those cases where a polygamist came to Christ and sent away his extra wives (William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], 105.
In our society the single mother or any single woman deserted by her husband or divorced or left alone because her husband is imprisoned would be in the same category as a widow.
D. “The Tragedy of American Compassion”
1. Written by Marvin Olasky, professor at the University of Texas. Bill Bennett, editor of The Book of Virtues wrote, “This is the most important book on welfare and social policy in a decade. Period.”
2. The book analyzes 300 years of American social and welfare activism and shows how America helped the poor in prior centuries.
3. “The answer [to the problem of poverty in America] is sitting on pages of old magazines and reports deep in the stacks of the Library of Congress. Americans in urban areas a century ago faced many of the problems we face today in fighting poverty, and they came up with truly compassionate solutions. We may not realize this, because only two kinds of books on overall history of poverty-fighting in America are now available. A few of the books argue that the free market itself solves all problems of poverty. The more conventional approach stresses government intervention to restructure economic relations. But neither kind emphasizes the crucial role of truly compassionate individuals and groups in the long fight against poverty. Neither goes beyond smug rejection or neglect of pre-twentieth century moral understanding.” (The Tragedy of American Compassion, pg. 4)
4. “It is hard to get an overall number of the people helped by the tens of thousands of points of light, not only because of the diversity of the small organizations but also because many individual churches and synagogues carried on their own private programs and varied tremendously in their record-keeping. One analysis of activity among 112 Protestant churches in Manhattan and the Bronx alone showed that 297 social agencies were run by churches, including 48 industrial schools, 45 libraries and reading rooms, 44 sewing schools, 40 kindergartens, 29 small-sum savings banks and loan associations, 21 employment offices, 20 gymnasia and swimming pools, 8 medical dispensaries, 7 full-day nurseries, and 4 lodging houses. There were also dozens of laundries, night schools, and cooking schools as well as a legal aid society, a medical aid society, a bowling alley, a billiard room, two wood yards and two low-cost coal clubs.” (The Tragedy of American Compassion, Pg. 86)
E. What were the core principles that Americans used in fighting poverty in the 1800s? Where did they get those principles? Basically from the Bible. God shows us the right way to love our neighbor. The Bible contains the “wisdom of the ages.” We will look at seven principles used by Americans in the 18th century (ABCDEFG) and see how many spring from and are supported in I Tim. 5:3-16 and in Scripture in general.
I. AFFILIATION
Affiliation meant linking people back with a relative, neighbor, former coworker or co-worshippers. The key question was always, “Who is bound to help in this case?”
“Relief given without reference to friends and neighbors is accompanied by moral loss.”
What support do we get for “AFFILIATION” in I Tim. 5:3-16?
“But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should ….” (4) … “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family ….” (8) “If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them …” (16). … “So I counsel younger widows to marry …” (14).
ILLUSTRATION: Elderly widower in Boston … Last paragraph, pg. 102, “Tragedy.”
II. BONDING
When adult applicants for help were truly alone, then it was time for BONDING with volunteers, who is essence because the new family.
Each volunteer social worker was given from three to five families to help. “… a small number of families, from three to five, are enough to exhaust all the time, attention, and friendly care which one visitor has” (Tragedy… , 103).
The idea was to become deeply involved and develop a close ‘family’ relationship with the poor. The help went way beyond just providing money.
QUESTION: What does our text say about bonding?
The text repeats that the church will help those widows who are “really in need.” It seems that those widows on the “list of widows” were paid church workers and were known for their good deeds. It can be assumed that they developed relationships with the widows who were truly alone. Of course the church also become their “family” as the family of God.
QUESTION: What Scripture would encourage us to bond with a person really in need?
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
III. CATEGORIZATION
Charity organizations determined who were “worthy of relief.” Only those who were poor through no fault of their own and unable to change their situation quickly were considered “worthy of relief.” In this category were orphans, the aged, the incurably ill, children with one parent unable to support them and adults suffering from temporary illness of accident … the shiftless and intemperate who were unwilling to work were categorized as “Unworthy, Not Entitled to Relief.”
ILLUSTRATION: When an able bodied man asked for relief, he was asked to chop wood, women to sew etc. See illustration on page Tragedy …., Pg. 105.
QUESTION: Does our text ‘categorize’ who does and who doesn’t need relief?
The widow who is really in need
The widow who has children and grandchildren
The widow who lives for pleasure “Not Entitled to Relief”
The widow who qualifies for official service
The widow who should remarry
IV. DISCERNMENT
Discernment grew out of the benign suspicion that came naturally to charity workers who had grown up reading the Bible. Aware from their theology of the deviousness of the human heart, nineteenth-century charity workers were not surprised when some among the poor ‘preferred their condition and even took advantage of it’. (Tragedy…, Pg. 107)
Genesis 6
5 The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
Job 15
16 how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!
Psalm 53
2 God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. 3 Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.
Jeremiah 17
9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Mark 7
21For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
QUESTION: What in our text would indicate that the early church was very discerning about who received their relief?
“The widow who lives for pleasure” (6). Also Christians were aware of the problems of breaking pledges, idleness, going from house to house, gossiping and busybodies.
A FEW QUOTES:
“Intelligent giving and intelligent withholding are both true charity.”
Giving money to alcoholics was considered positively immoral.
Indiscriminate donors were called: “Well-meaning, tender-hearted, sweet-voiced criminals.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, but it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I have the manhood to withhold.”
V. EMPLOYMENT
“Labor is the life of society, and the beggar who will not work is a social cannibal feeding on that life.” Indiana officials declared, “Nothing creates pauperism (poverty) so rapidly as the giving of relief to [able-bodied] persons without requiring them to earn what they receive by some kind of honest labor.” (Tragedy…, pg. 109)
Genesis 3
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Proverbs 21
25 The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work.
2 Thessalonians 3
10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”
QUESTION: What in our text indicates an emphasis on work/employment for those who were able to work?
The widows who met the qualifications (9-10) were put on the “List of Widows” and it seems were paid employees of the church. The younger widows were to marry and “manage” their homes.
VI. FREEDOM
This refers to freedom to work and worship without government restriction. Freedom to move up the ladder from poverty, to change jobs, to cut hair without a government license. Freedom from dependency.
“Charity leaders and preachers frequently spoke of freedom and showed how dependency was merely slavery with a smiling mask. … It is very easy to make our well-meant charity a curse to our fellow-men.” (Tragedy, Pg. 112)
This was probably based on the Biblical concept of all men being created by God and thus equality and freedom from enslavement and continual degradation.
VII. GOD
True philanthropy must take into account spiritual as well as physical needs …the victims of …. lust and idleness… must revere the Bible …
They saw God in the Bible showing compassion while demanding change and they tried to do the same.
Christians had the expectation that the Holy Spirit could change lives.
ILLUSTRATION: The New York Herald told of how “the woman known as Bluebird up to a year ago was one of the worst drunkards in the Lower East Side … Scores of times she had been in the police courts.” Then she talked with an evangelist and agreed to go to The Door of Hope rescue home. She was converted and the Herald reporter told what happened:
I went to 63 Park Street, the Five Points Mission Hall. A big crowd of ragged, bloated and generally disreputable looking men and women were seeking admission … A very pleasant looking young woman dressed neatly in black and having a bunch of flowers at her waist … spoke to them of love and hope. The crowds kept coming until the break of day. No one would ever think that the neatly attired young lady speaking so appealingly had once been the terror of the slums, always alert to get in the first blow.
Some one hundred of Bluebird’s former gang associates changed their lives over the next several years as, in the words of the New York Times, she was “transformed into one of the most earnest and eloquent female evangelists who ever worked among the human derelicts in dark alleys and dives” and “threw her whole soul in the worked of evangelism among her former associates.” Most of those hundred changes were permanent, a follow-up years later concluded. (Tragedy…, pg. 114)
QUESTION: What does I Tim. 5:3-16 say about the role of God in dealing with the disenfranchised poor?
When you care for your family you are “pleasing God,” a widow who “lives for pleasure is dead even when she lives;” If you don’t care for the poor you are worse than an unbeliever; dedication to Christ needs to be taken seriously; some have turned away and followed Satan.
SO WHAT????
1. Christians in America’s past did a good job of fighting poverty by applying Scriptural principles to social welfare. This is important when we hear both political parties setting forth their social-welfare agendas.
2. The Bible is God’s Word and does contain the “wisdom of the ages.” We need a new appreciation of the Bible as a source of knowledge to deal with all situations.
3. We need to keep the principles of: Affiliation, Bonding, Categorization, Discernment, Employment, Freedom, God in mind when seeking to help the poor.
4. Christians need to be very cautious in giving to social welfare programs to make sure we are not giving a “wicked dollar” or being “kindly” criminals.