THE TALE OF TWO WIDOWS – A BIBLICAL APPROACH TO PLEASURE
(I Tim. 5:5-6)
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
5:3-16 The Biblical Rationale for Providing for Relatives
5:5-16 The Tale of Two Widows – A Biblical Approach to Pleasure
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 Tilts Towards the Disenfranchised
2. Sorting Out Those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare
3. The Biblical Rationale for Providing for Our Relatives
4. The Tale of Two Widows – The Biblical Approach to Pleasure (5-6)
5. Ministry to Widows in the Early Church
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 classes 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.
I. THE GODLY WIDOW, IN NEED AND ALL ALONE
The 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
(5)
A. She put her Hope in God
Definition: Hope is a favorable and confident expectation (Vine); The happy anticipation of future good.
I Cor 13 ends with, “But not abideth these three: faith, hope and charity. Charity (love) is much emphasized by North American Christians as is faith. We rarely think of or emphasize hope.
QUESTION: Why is hope not uppermost in the thinking of North American Christians?
ANSWER: We are very comfortable, suffer little, have all of our needs met here and personally feel it a great loss to die. People who suffer emphasize hope because they long for a better world!
What Christians are to hope for: Salvation (I Thes. 5:8), Righteousness (Gal. 5:5), Eternal Life (Titus 1:2, 3:7), Resurrection (Acts 23:6, 24:15), Christ’s coming (Titus 2:3), Glory (Romans 5:2, Col. 1:27).
Hope, like faith, is totally focused on God. In I Tim. 1:1 we read of “Christ Jesus our hope” and in 4:1 Paul writes that “we have put our hope in the living God.” In this verse the widow “puts her hope in God.”
Where does hope come from?
From the Scriptures: “…so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).
In the Gospel: “Hope that you have heard about in the Gospel” (Col. 1:5), “…the hope held out to you in the Gospel” (Co. 1:23).
By the Grace of God: “…by His grace He gave us … good hope” (Romans 15:4).
Christian hymnody of the past contained many stanzas about hope:
THE SOLID ROCK: My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. … When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.
GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS: Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
JESUS, THE VERY THOUGHT OF THEE: O hope of every contrite heart, of joy of all the meek.
AMAZING GRACE: His Word my hope secures NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD OF JESUS: This is all my
hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus. IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL: Oh trump of the angel, O
voice of the Lord, blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul. GRACIOUS SPIRIT, DWELL WITH ME: Ever by a mighty hope, pressing on and bearing up.
The Scripture plainly states that a person who is unsaved, who has not asked Christ to save him from the wrath of God and the power of sin is “without hope” (Eph. 2:12).
“Hope is an essential and fundamental element of the Christian life. So essential indeed, that, like faith and love it can itself designate the essence of the Christian life.”
B. Faith – She continued night and day to pray and to ask God for help.
We have a fairly good grasp of faith and prayer. This woman looked to God for help … as we all tend to do when we are desperate. She believed God would hear her and help her.
C. Charity
QUESTION: What could be one reason why the widow in vs. 5 not grouped with the widows in verse 9-10?
ANSWER: She may not be sixty years old.
Knowing that she hoped in God and was a woman of faith, it can be assumed also that she exercised the good deeds (charity, acts of love, listed in verses 9-10).
In Paul’s mind this widow was “really in need.” She was left all alone (no relatives), not young enough to remarry, not old enough to be put on the list of serving widows yet she was a godly woman who put her hope in God and lived a life of full trust in Him.
II. THE DEAD WIDOW WHO LIVES FOR PLEASURE
QUESTION: What makes an experience pleasing, a pleasure?
Certainly the senses working in conjunction with the mind interacting with the experience but sometimes the mind alone.
QUESTION: What are great “pleasures” to Americans, Christian? Americans, people anywhere?
PLEASURES THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE BEEN BASICALLY THE SAME:
Job 21 – 11 They send forth their children as a flock; their little ones dance about. 12 They sing to the music of tambourine and harp; they make merry to the sound of the flute. 13 They spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace.
Amos 6 – 6 You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
Luke 12 – 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”
Luke 16 – 19 There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.
James 5 – 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.
The sins of Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and the needy (Ezek. 16:49).
“Living for pleasure in vs. 5 may be an allusion to the younger widows of 11-15 who spend their days in idleness and gossip.
Today people are challenged to “live life to the fullest” which is defined as a fashionable ride from one new experience to the next.
QUESTION: What pleasures do widows live for today?
Answer: golf, travel, bridge, bingo …
A description of Americans by the Non-Western World:
The Kyoto professors in 1943 described Americans as rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, fashion-addicted civilization, shallow. A machine like society, coldly rationalistic, and without a human soul. Others describe us as a soulless whore, decadent, degenerate, dishonorable, without faith, unfeeling parasites, greedy automatons, focused on selfish individualism, a zoo of depraved animals consumed by lust who worship the cult of the golden calf and live only for pleasure.
A PERSON WHO “LIVES FOR PLEASURE IS DEAD WHILE LIVING.”
One commentator – a person who lives for pleasure is a religious corpse and John MacArthur considers her one of the “unregenerate dead.”
The father of the prodigal son said, “My son that was dead, is alive again.” Jesus said of the church in Sardis that they had a reputation of being alive but were really dead (Rev. 3:1).
Metaphorical use of “dead” is never pleasant. We speak of a “dead head,” the meeting was dead, don’t play “dead,” and “dead as a doornail,” a dead stop, dead loss, dead silence, dead party.
The point is that both Christians and non-Christians can appear very much alive and yet be dead, dead spiritually, deader than a doornail! The non-Christian is dead because he is unregenerate; the Christian is dead spiritually if he lives for pleasure.
III. THE BIBLICAL APPROACH TO PLEASURE
QUESTION: Why does Paul state that a person who lives for pleasure is dead? Isn’t that a little strong?
1. Because they are prioritizing pleasure (idolizing pleasure) instead of prioritizing God in their lives. “Seek ye first (prioritize) the kingdom of God …”
2. Because their pursuit of pleasure is smothering their need for hope and faith and acts of charity. She does not “continue night and day to pray and to ask God for help” nor is she “well known for her good deeds” (vs.10).
3. Because the enjoyment of pleasure does not produce the worship of God that it is intended to produce.
“Too late I have loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new,” Augustine laments in The Confessions. He proceeds to describe a time in his life when he allowed things of beauty to seduce him away from God their maker” … Augustine knew well the seductions of desire [pleasure] that might tempt him away from the giver of good gifts. For this reason he prayed for God to gather together his ‘scattered longings’ and keep them in their proper place. “I had my back to the light and my face turned towards the things upon which the light fell,” he said of the desires [pleasures] he felt during his days as a pagan. Only as he turned to face the light could he see the generous source of all good things” (Yancey, Rumors of Another World, pg. 46, 36).
We need to “trace the rays of light to their source”
Pleasures are pointers to the supernatural, not obstacles. God wants us to receive them as gifts, tokens of love and not loves in themselves.
Every pleasure should generate awe; a sense of worship for is not worshipping God acknowledging Him for who He is and what He does?
When you track a pleasure to its source, to God, and thank Him, you are making that pleasure sacred.
God has not only the source of all pleasure but it is only a pleasure to us because he has given us our senses, our mind. Apart from the senses very little would be enjoyable. What if hunger made us eat but we had no sense of taste?
Stanza from “For the Beauty of the Earth”
For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and mind’s delight,
For the mystic harmony
Linking sense to sound and sight.
Paul writes in I Tim. 6:17 that, “God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”
“Living for Pleasure” is deadening because it is worshipping the rays of the sun and not the Son.
For each perfect gift of Thine,
To our race so freely given,
Graces human and divine,
Flowers of earth and buds of Heaven.
Lord of all to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.
APPRECIATION FOR A soft pillow, the taste of your favorite ice cream, an enjoyable sit-com, a warm hug from a friend, the ability to see in Technicolor every day, the melody of your favorite music, the cooling effect of a glass of cold water, the ability to enjoy a crisp morning, a comfortable drive to work etc … all are “rays” from the Son. Tracing these pleasures back to their source and thanking God for His good gifts is a true act of worship.
So What????
1. Faith, hope and charity … faith and charity might be there … but what about “hope?” Are we dissatisfied with this world and “hoping” for a brighter and better future?
2. Living for pleasure is damning and deadening and something that is not true of the growing Christian who is pleasing God. In verse 4 we are told to care for our parents and grandparents because this is pleasing to God. Here we have a woman living for pleasure, to please herself.
3. In John 4 Jesus said his food [his pleasure] was to do the will of God. The key to keeping ‘pleasure’ in its place is to live a life focused on pleasing God.
4. Are we good at tracing to their source all of the good things that we enjoy? Are the good things, the pleasures we enjoy generating true worship in our hearts?