Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Timothy 5:1,2

On Relationships in the Church

 

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father.

Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

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how me how the members of the church relate to one another, and I will tell you the spiritual condition of that membership.

Our response to one another indicates our understanding of Christ and of our call.

Our reaction to the demands placed on us by the presence of others reveals our spiritual perception.

Though we are urged by various religious organisations to */join the church of our choice/*, we who are conversant with the Word of God know that we are responsible to join the church where He sets us.

The foundation for this distinction is found in our text this day.

Join me in exploration of Paul’s instruction to Timothy, the Bishop of Ephesus.

The Basis for Our Relationship in the Church is Family — One could easily draw the conclusion that the *First Letter to Timothy* and the Letter to *Titus* were drafted at approximately the same time; each deals with similar subject matter.

Paul’s missive to Titus addresses the issue of relationship and our treatment of each other in *Titus 2:1-8*.

The passage there is an expanded form of what we see in the letter to Timothy; the seed is clearly present in our text.

Relationships in the church are an issue of doctrine.

It is vital to take a moment to explain this issue in order to avoid confusion arising from this assertion.

The manner in which I live out my life is dictated by what I believe.

Another way of stating this issue is that what I believe is seen in how I live.

Perhaps for a brief while I can become an actor, masking my beliefs through acting out a role unrelated to the true me.

Eventually, however, beliefs will be expressed through lifestyle.

The core values to which I adhere must ultimately dictate how I live.

This is in contrast to the popular assertion of recent vintage that it is nobody’s business what one does in private.

Eventually, my faith – or lack thereof – dictates how I live.

Permit me to give a couple of examples.

If I believe God is just, I will not panic when falsely accused.

Though the world seems opposed to me, I will rest in the Lord.

If, on the other hand, I think God capricious, regardless of what I say, I will resent every false accusation.

If I believe salvation is all of grace and that I cannot add to God’s gracious gift of life, I will serve Him out of a motive of love.

I will emphasise freedom in both my service and my life.

On the other hand, if I suspect that I must secure my own salvation, I will slavishly attempt to coerce God into accepting me, becoming a virtual serf in the process.

My core beliefs must at the last be expressed in the manner in which I live.

This is a vital point which must not be overlooked.

The Word of God treats the people of God as a family.

This is apparent even from the language of our Lord who not only addressed Holy God as /Father/, but also taught His disciples to approach the Living God as Father.

Even the Model Prayer which Jesus taught His disciples begins by addressing God with the intimate title of /Our Father/.

To be saved is to be /born again/, or to be /born from above/, and into the Family of God.

Thus, all Christians share in common this Divine parentage.

If we believe this, we will, of necessity, be greatly effected by that knowledge.

We will relate to one another as members of the same family and not as mere inhabitants of the same world.

Throughout his writings, Paul treats the people of God as though they were family members.

Certainly this treatment accords with the revealed mind of God in the Gospels.

It would appear that his favourite form of address to those reading his missives is /brothers/.

He addresses the readers as brothers nearly one hundred times in the thirteen epistles which he indisputably authored.

This fact sits in contradistinction to use of either the term /friends/ or /dear friends/, which he employs but six times in those same letters.

As Christians, we are family and not merely friends.

Here, in our text, he speaks of /fathers/ and /brothers/, of /mothers/ and /sisters/.

It is a tragic observation that we ofttimes treat our friends with greater courtesy than we do the members of our family.

Similarly, we often form cliques within the assembly because we permit friendships to assume precedence over relationships.

Perhaps one reason for this disturbing situation is that we take family for granted; we know that there is a measure of truth in the old adage that blood is thicker than water.

In a pinch, we trade on the knowledge that family will close ranks and draw together.

However, simply because we know that our family will always be there for us should not give us license to treat them less graciously than we do our friends.

If that is true in the physical~/social realm of life, how much more should it hold true for the Body of Christ?

Infants are disposable and children unwanted to an astonishing degree today.

Melissa Drexler and Amy Grossberg are not monsters different from all other women; they are but two of a long and growing list of self-centred women willing to dispose of their infants rather than be encumbered with them.

In is highly inconsistent to punish young women such as these and commend others who choose to kill their children second hand with a physician’s scalpel and suction tube.

Even in nearby cities, infants are discarded in garbage bins and left to die from exposure to the elements, not unlike the practise of the ancient Romans.

But why shouldn’t young women despise the fruit of the womb since we sanction the slaughter of the unborn?

If it is a woman’s right to kill her unborn child, what does it matter if the child is left to die of exposure instead of being slain with sterile instruments in a partial-birth abortion?

Consequently, the elderly are seen as an encumbrance upon the earth, fit only to be removed.

This is evident from the general attitudes displayed toward our aged citizens.

When the governor of an American state can say that the elderly are obligated to die to make room for the young, and not experience censure by his legislature or from federal officials of his own party, it is apparent that the aged are no longer respected.

Again, this attitude should not be a surprise since the generation which follows baby boomers are essentially a generation of survivors.

We trained our children to believe that they were selected by mere caprice, their siblings being slain in utero.

Consequently, if their parents had the right to determine whether they should live or die, should they not have the same power of life or death over their parents’ lives when the youth have assumed the reigns of government?

I am not alone in wondering if the prophecies of the Apostle are being fulfilled in our day.

I speak of the dark prophecies which speak of the conditions prevailing at the end of the age.

In a later letter to Timothy, Paul warned: /There will be terrible times in the last days.

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power.

Have nothing to do with them/ [*2 Timothy 3:1-5*].

Again, in the opening words of the letter to the Roman saints, the Apostle wrote.

/Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.

They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them/ [*Romans 1:28-32*].

In either of these dark lists occurs the Greek word  which is translated /without love/ or /heartless/.

This is a rare word, occurring but twice in the whole of the New Testament, and that in the texts I have cited.

I fear that the translation of our text for the word  may mask the impact which that word would have had upon the first readers of these two letters.

What is known as the alpha privative, the addition of an alpha at the beginning of a word, negates that word.

We use either /un/- or non- to accomplish the same thing in English, though some of the Greek concept still exists in our tongue.

Moral is negated when it becomes amoral.

Theist is negated when we speak of an atheist.

The thought of the word   is that of without natural affection.

The charge is that parents will be unkind and cruel to their children.

This is in juxtaposition to children who are disobedient to parents [*Romans 1:30*; *2 Timothy 3:2*].

Disobedient children are justly punished with unnatural parents; and, on the contrary, unnatural parents with disobedient children.

In the Romans passage, the consequence of rejecting the knowledge of God is that God surrenders the individual to the consequences of human choice.

Consequently, families disintegrate and the love of mother for child and of child for father evaporates in the sultry heat of self-exaltation.

The message this day is not intended to be an exposition of the wickedness of mankind, but it is rather an exhortation for the people to God to embrace God’s ideal for His church.

What, then, have these dark prophecies to do with our text?

The social climate infects the church in far too many cases.

We live in a rapidly decaying world and we permit ourselves to be influenced by the social condition to a far greater degree than we could ever imagine.

The lack of love for family, the exaltation of self, is imported into the Body of Christ with chilling effect upon our life and love as a people called by the Name of the Son of God.

It becomes distressingly easy to enjoy our cliques more than we enjoy the Family of God.

Our treatment of one another reflects more of our influence from the world than it does the influence of the Word of God.

If I am wrong, humour me, for it may be that someone among us will be confronted by an attitude which cannot please the Father.

If, however, I am right, consider what is being done among us and stop every action which dishonours the Lord our God.

Is it not true that we shrink from submitting to the Word of God, considering our own thoughts to have greater validity than does the mind of God?

When our actions are at variance to the Word, we defend ourselves though it means we must despise the will of God.

When we are offended in some among the people of God, we can always withdraw.