Honor Widows Who Are Widows Indeed #1

So this morning, we're moving on in our study of 1 Timothy chapter 5. We're going to be moving on to a section that is fairly long, and we're going to be spending a couple of weeks in it. I don't know how long just yet, but if I had to venture a guess, I would say three to five weeks, which has been our habit sometimes. We'll take a bigger chunk of Scripture, and then we'll work our way through it each week, sort of reading the thing as a whole and focusing on certain parts of it. The topic that Paul's dealing with here is the topic of widows.

And so the verses 3 through 16 of chapter 5 in 1 Timothy deal with widows. It defines what a widow is. It talks about what her responsibilities are as a widow. And also it talks about what our responsibilities are to her. How are we supposed to view or to treat or care for widows? The general focus of our text, taken as a whole, is how widows should be cared for. It assumes that they're going to need to be cared for. And so the tension for us is working out who should take the lead in that work. That's going to be our topic this morning. What is a widow and who's responsible for taking care of a widow? In these sorts of situations, we have to realize that there's not a perfect flow chart. We'd like it very much to say, in this situation, you have options A, B, and C. And if you choose option A, then after that, you have options.

A, B, and C below that. And if you choose that, then you do this. We want this nice, clean way to handle it. And when it comes to dealing with widows and really with all of Scripture, we don't have a perfect description of how everything's supposed to be handled without any necessity of wisdom or discernment or prayer about what would be best to do. And so as we start out this discussion of widows, I want to acknowledge that it's not something we talk about all the time. It's something that we usually don't think about until, we're faced with a widow and going, I don't know, what should I do with my parent? My dad died last year and now my mom, what do I need to do? How do I love her? How do I care for her? And so it's a sort of issue that we don't engage with usually until it's sitting in our lap. And so my hope is that over the next couple of weeks we'll be able to prepare ourselves, our hearts and our minds and our lives to respond biblically and in a way that honors God when we are faced with the question of how we

as a church and as individuals are faced with a widow and how we can best love and care for them. And so I'd like for you to stand now for the reading of God's word. We'll be reading 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 3 through 16. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Honor widows who are widows indeed. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and to make some return to their parents. For this is acceptable in the sight of God. Now she who is a widow indeed, and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God, and continues in entreaties and prayers night and day. But she who gives herself to want and pleasure is dead even while she lives. Prescribe these things as well, so that they may be above reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.

A widow is to be put on the list only if she is not less than 60 years old, having been the wife of one man, having a reputation of good works, and if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints' feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work. But refuse to put younger widows on the list, for when they feel sensual desires in disregard of Christ, They want to get married, thus incurring condemnation because they have set aside their previous pledge. At the same time, they also learn to be idle as they go around from house to house, and not merely idle, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention. Therefore, I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach, for some have already turned aside to follow Satan. If any woman who is a believer has dependent widows,

She must assist them, and the church must not be burdened, so that it may assist those who are widows indeed. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. A few weeks ago I was talking with Vanessa about one of the sermons that I had preached, and I don't remember which one it was. But she's grown up in the church and has heard lots of sermons in her life, and I can't remember what the topic was. It was something in 1 Timothy. Maybe it was just last week. And she said, I don't ever remember hearing a sermon on that. on how to honor the older men and the older women and the younger men and the younger women. She says, I don't know that I've ever heard sermon on that before. Maybe she has, but she didn't seem to remember it. What she was acknowledging was there are certain parts of Scripture that often are neglected, that end up on the cutting room floor, that we don't talk about a lot. And as I said already, I think that widows is something that ends up in that category.

I think part of the reason that we don't talk about widows and don't think about it that much as a society is that we have an unspoken commitment to independence and caring for ourselves. And there's a sense in which it's good for us to take care of ourselves. You know, Scripture tells us that the thief should no longer steal but should work hard with his hands so that... one, he can take care of himself, and two, he has something to share with others. And so there's this idea that even in Scripture that we ought to take care of ourselves, that we ought to not just neglect provision for our future and then just fall upon the mercy or the dependence of other people due to a lack of our own care and our own forethought. And yet, when it comes to widows, The idea that they would become dependent again on the people in their family or on the church is a bit of a foreign idea to us. If you were to listen to the radio or pay attention to what happens typically with old people, widows in our society, they're not often spoken of as being brought back into their family's house or the church taking care of them. Typically we're talking about a retirement community. Then we may be talking about an assisted living community.

And if their health deteriorates beyond that, then they'll end up in some sort of a nursing home. And what we hope is that they end up in a nice nursing home where they take really good care of their needs and that they're engaged with activities and things of that nature so that they can live out their days there. And I realize that in saying that and bringing that up, I may be cutting across the grain or treading on some of your own families and decisions that you've made. And my goal is not to say from the very beginning, and that's always in every case wrong.

But I do want you to set aside your own experience and the own things that may have happened in your own life, and I want you to consider for a minute, what does Scripture teach us about how widows should be treated by Christians and by the church? Because that's what our passage is about. I also realize that in our society, I can say we have a principle of independence, and we'd all say, yes, we do. And part of it is that our older people, those who are widows, those who are elderly, have this same principle in them. they don't want to come into your house and live with you any more than you're prepared for them to. And yet, I don't think that that's biblical. I don't think we should just settle with that being the way it is and it's all fine and dandy. And so I'd ask you to open your hearts and your minds as we study this over the next couple of weeks to consider, what does the scripture teach me?

About widows. And how should I think about it as a Christian? What's it going to mean for my life as I think about my parents or the elderly in the church? How am I supposed to be preparing and organizing my life so that I'm in a position to bless them if and when that time comes? That's the goal of our sermon. It's not simply to say, if you do this, you're wrong, and if you do this, you're right. That's not the goal. What I'll tell you from the outset about... The vulnerability of old age and being a widow or a widower. This passage at the very beginning tells us to honor widows and to avoid that vulnerability and to allow those who are either incapable of or nearing the time where they're incapable of caring for themselves, to allow their vulnerability and their independence to carry the day is not to honor them. It's not to love them. Have you ever had an...

seen an older person driving and you think, I don't think they should be driving anymore. Well, of course they want to keep driving. And every one of us understands why they want to keep driving, right? Because we wouldn't want to be dependent on somebody else having to take us places. And yet, it's not honor or love if we never say anything to them about it. If we never say, Mom, I don't think you should drive anymore. What we'll think is, well, If they can get their license renewed, then that's not my job. And this is just an anecdotal example at the very beginning of the sort of care that we need to have as Christians for those who are in seasons of life that are vulnerable. We should know that they struggle with that vulnerability. If you've interacted with a widow in any context or a widower, you know that there is a mark on their life when their spouse died or their parent died that is painful.

And we tend to hide those things and to not talk about them. And what I want to say is that's not what Christians should do. We should be very careful and mindful and tender, but we should talk about it. And we need to know what God would have us do, how to love and how to honor a widow. And so it's not honoring them, first of all, to ignore their vulnerability and let them make their own decisions for always and forever. It takes a balance to work through their independence, their abilities, their mental faculties. their physical capabilities and all that sort of stuff. But as Christians, we should not be afraid of having to do that sort of work for those who've given us life and those that we love dearly. And so we start with the very beginning of the passage. It tells us in the first phrase, honor widows who are widows indeed. And so you see that there's a distinction of what a widow is. It tells us that not all women who are widows are widows indeed. And so there's women who are widows.

which means they've had a spouse die. And I would include, even though Scripture doesn't include widowers, men whose wives have died, I would include them in this passage. I would not think, oh, well, this applies to widows, but widowers, that's a completely whole other category. It's not, though it is more common that women will outlive their spouses. And so it tells us to honor widows who are widows indeed. So you have a man or woman whose spouse has died, and now what are we to do with them? They've lost their life made. Death has now separated them. They spent the vast majority of their life together if they're old, and now they're alone. And what do we do? What does it mean to honor widows? Honor is a strange thing. It's something that the Bible talks about a lot, but it's not something that we talk about a lot in our culture. We don't think in terms of honor. You may have heard that there are other societies that are honor-based societies. Middle Eastern societies are honor-based societies.

Asian culture is an honor-based society. America, not an honor-based society. We don't think in those terms. It's a category or a paradigm that we don't use naturally to process. It's something that is biblical, but it's not something that, in our circumstance, is cultural. And so we have something to learn here. When we're told at the very beginning, honor widows who are widows indeed, it's like we're being told something in another language or another tongue. We're supposed to honor them. Well, what's that mean? And that's what I want to get into. But before we get into that, I want you to know that honor is something that widows are in a category or a group of familiar company. Widows aren't the only people that we're told to honor, for instance. Children are told to honor their parents. Ephesians 6.1 reiterates the fifth commandment that says, children, honor your parents. Honor your father and your mother. And so children are to honor their parents. In Romans 13, Christians are told to honor those

who rule over them, render to all what is due to them, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor is due. Husbands are to honor their wives. 1 Peter 3 says that husbands in the same way are to live with their wives in an understanding way as with someone who's weaker since she's a woman and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered. Now, if I asked the husbands in here and said, what does that mean? for you to show your wife honor as a fellow heir of grace, I think we'd all kind of go, be nice to her and don't be upset that she's different than me. I'm not really sure. And above all, we're told to honor the Lord. In 1 Timothy 1.17, Paul says in this benediction, now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. So we have an obligation to honor Jesus Christ, to honor the Father.

and the Holy Spirit. And so honor is something that we don't learn about in our culture, but that scripture repeatedly tells us that we have an obligation to do. Widows are in this category of parents, of rulers, of wives, of the Lord. Honor, widow, same word, same type of thing that's supposed to be done. And so you're probably wondering, well, what does honor mean? What does it mean for me to honor? And with children, I think it's probably, you know, if I were to say, what does it mean for a child, a young child, to honor their parents? Well, Ephesians 6 tells us what that means. Honor your father and mother in the Lord, for this is right. Verse 2, children, obey your parents. And so honor has an element of obedience in it. And one of the things that children will ask as they get older is, as honor shifts away from doing what they're told, the requirement doesn't say, children, honor your parents while you live in their house. It says, children, honor your parents.

So it's a command that isn't limited by time. You don't say, oh, I've reached the age of majority. I no longer am supposed to do that. You moved out. You've gotten a job. You've gotten married. You're a parent. You have children of your own, yet you're still required to honor your parents. So what does it mean for an adult child to honor? Does it mean obey? No, it doesn't mean obey. It may shift to defer to, show deference toward, hold in high regard. But honor also carries with it a sense of weight or value, like money. Our money is paper money. And even more so, it's not even paper money. It's little pieces of plastic or a little thing on our phone. And so you realize, even our concept of money and the way Scripture talks about money is deteriorating. You go into Walmart to buy something and you swipe your first thing and it says, this machine no longer takes cash or you want to continue with your purchase. We're moving further and further away from money.

And so when I say money has weight or value, you think, what do you mean? A $100 bill doesn't weigh any more. A penny weighs more than a $100 bill. I don't know what you mean. But historically, money would have had weight. And the more heavy it was, the more weight it had, the more value it had. If you were handed a bag of coin, you'd say, yes, look, and it's gold coin or it's silver coin. And you'd say, it's heavy. It's got value. And with money that has weight, we're careful with it. We don't throw it away. We don't waste it. Why? Because it has value. And the same is true with those that were called to honor. They have a weight to them and a value to them that we shouldn't neglect or disregard. And so you could translate this very first section as give weight and assign value to widows who are widows indeed. Don't disregard them.

Don't think carelessly and treat them carelessly. When we think of widows, we ought to think of the value that they have, that they bring. And as such, they're not to be cast off or disregarded because of their circumstance, but rather they should be cared for. Now, what does it mean to honor widows? Remember I said with children, what does it mean for children to honor their parents? Well, when they're little, it means that they obey them. As they get older, it means that they would defer to them, that they would respect them, that they would hold them in high regard. Their wisdom, their counsel, their godliness. What does it mean in this context to honor a widow? Well, what's being talked about here very practically is her needs being met. How is she supposed to be taken care of? That's the question that's being addressed here. Largely it is, whose responsibility is it to provide for a widow? Presuming that she doesn't have the ability to provide for herself.

And so what we're going to see in this passage is first that the church does have a responsibility actually to care for widows. Paul speaks later on in the passage of the widow's list. A widow's list is not something that a church would publish on their website and say, here are the pastors and here are the elders and here are the deacons and here are the widows. It's a hidden work. It's an unseen work. But it is something that a church has an obligation to do, to know who are widows and to see to the fact that they're cared for and that they're ministered to.

The church is not the first responsible party when it comes to caring for widows. The first thing that Paul teaches us is that it's the family's job to take care of the widow, not the church's, specifically the children and the grandchildren of the widow. It's as if any widow has children or grandchildren, they, speaking of the children or grandchildren, they, must first learn to practice piety. So they have to be taught how to do this. They must learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and to make some return to their parents, to take some responsibility for their parents. For this is acceptable in the sight of God. So one of the ways that a grown Christian child, remember when they're little, we say you're supposed to obey your parents. That's the way you honor them. Well, what happens when you're a grown-up and you have a family of your own and you're parents, your mother, is entering into old age and she's entering the time when she's not going to be able to care for herself. What is your responsibility to honor her? It's to take her in and to provide for her. This is one way that Christian children honor their parents, especially if one of them has passed away. And so this is something that we should be thinking about and something we should be planning for before the time comes, because it's not something that you just do on a whim. You know, if everything's going along and you've got a widow mother and then she has a stroke,

and she can no longer drive, and she can't take care of herself anymore. It's not the sort of situation you just jump right into and say, come on over and live with us, Mom. It's the sort of thing that a family needs to talk about. You need to understand what your parents' desire is, what their fears are, what their ability to provide for themselves is financially. These are things that families have to talk about, and it's touchy. It's hard. A lot of times parents don't want to talk about that kind of stuff with their children. They don't want to burden them. They don't want to worry them. But part of a child being able to prepare for and to care for their parents when this time comes is knowing what's going on and knowing when that time is coming. Sometimes when you look for houses on Zillow or Realtor.com or whatever, they'll describe there being in-law quarters. And I often think of it in terms of when the in-laws come and visit.

And it's usually on the first floor because there's still these little tidbits throughout our society that we have interactions with people who are not able to climb stairs as well anymore or need a bathroom. So they'll say, it has two master suites, one upstairs and one on the main floor. And what are they communicating to you? Well, it's communicating to you that when older people come into your home, there's a place for them that isn't up a flight of stairs and the bathroom's not across the hall. That's one thing that we ought to think about as Christians. When the time comes, how will I care for them? That's something that's helpful if you're able, is to have a master suite on the main floor where they can stay. Am I saying you're unfaithful if you can't have that or don't have that? No. But many of us aren't dealing with a widow immediately today going, well, what am I going to do? How am I going to care for them? Well, you should be thinking about it. This would be a nice thing to have. Maybe we can...

you know, finish out a garage or a bedroom and add a bathroom to it so there's a master suite on the main floor. Maybe we can turn the study into that or things like that. These are the sorts of things that children and grandchildren ought to be thinking about with regard to their parents. This is what the Bible commends to us, that we ought to make some return to our parents and practice piety with regard to them. It's a sacrifice and it's a particularly Christian one to take care of other people, your parents, when they can no longer take care of themselves anymore. The reason that assisted living costs so much is because it's hard work. And it shouldn't be true of Christians that their first and only response is to say, I'm going to pay somebody else to do that hard work because I've got more important things to do. It's very, very true that if you have an elderly person come live in your house, it will change your life and the lives of your children. There's just no way around it. But I would contend to you that it will change it for the better. For your children and for you.

to slow down and to care for those who can't care for themselves anymore. But it's not something that's popular in our day. You see it at both ends of life. We're talking about it now at the end of life, but you also see it at the beginning of life. When you have a baby or you have someone who's vulnerable and who's weak and who just needs you. They can't feed themselves. They can't change themselves. They can't wipe their mouth. They can't do anything. And you go, you know, I can't wait till this baby can take care of itself. And it's sweet when they grow up and they do learn those sorts of things.

But it's good training ground to take care of babies because you're all they got. And the same is true in some sense, the same is true with the elderly. You have an obligation as a Christian child to care for your parents. You really do. And I'm not saying that to make you feel bad or to feel guilty or to think, oh no, I'm a failure. I'm only saying it to you to say no one else is saying that to you. No one else is telling you that your parents are not supposed to fend for themselves when they're old and unable to care for themselves. You shouldn't just assume, oh, well, we'll get them in the nice place. And yet it may be that that's what the best answer is. But you should ask the question. And you should think about it and consider, what can we do? And if they are going to go into an assisted living place, perhaps because they have the means to do it, perhaps because your house wouldn't accommodate them, perhaps because they need the sort of care that you can't provide, then you should be thinking about, well, what does it mean for me to go and...

care for my mom or to care for my dad, even if they live in another place? What should I go do for them? What should I go do with them? This is part of how we honor widows. Their time of usefulness in their life has expired, and now they can go live out their days with people that we pay to take care of them. That's our job. In another place in Scripture, other than our passage this morning, Jesus condemns the Pharisees for keeping his people from doing this work. Now the Pharisees were doing it because they loved money and they wanted the people's money. And so they had swiped up all of the money of the people and convinced them that that was good. But Jesus rebukes them. And he says in Mark 7, 10-13, it says, For Moses said, Honor your father and mother. And also, he who speaks evil of his father and mother is to be put to death.

And so he's saying, this is what God has taught us through Moses and the law, that we have an obligation to our parents to care for them. And those who speak evil of their parents, who say, I have no obligation to you, I can't take care of you, I've got more important things to do. Moses has said those things to us, and he goes on and he says, but you say, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban, that is to say, given to the Lord, you no longer permit him to do anything for his father and mother.

Thus you invalidate the word of God by your tradition, which you've handed down. And you do many such things as that. And so Jesus teaches us that our responsibility as Christians, we have a real obligation to our parents to care for them and to love them and to minister to them as they finish their race. And I know that in saying that, many of you are thinking, man, but I don't know if I want to live with them because they're kind of gnarly. You're not the first person to think that, and they are gnarly, and so are you. And someday you're going to want your kids to love you and to care for you. It used to be that in a culture, the parents would assume that their children would take care of them. They would expect it. But we live in a society where we all agree that that's not a reasonable expectation or idea even. And oftentimes the reason we think that is because it's hard. I think, man, I don't know about living with my mom. I don't know how that would be. And I just want to tell you,

The fact that it may be difficult or hard and it's going to require a sacrifice of you does not mean it shouldn't be done. And in Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees, he's got them in view and he's rebuking them for the things they've taught and required of the people. But it's also true that you and I can fill up our lives and our time and our resources with the things that we want to do and end up with the same result, which is that we don't have anything left for our parents. We don't have any time. We don't have any space. We don't have any energy for them.

And Jesus says that when that happens, the word of God's been invalidated because we're supposed to honor our parents. We're supposed to honor widows. And so a child's responsibility with regard to this is very high. Paul says that if those who take up this mantle are doing something that is acceptable to God, that he looks on this sort of sacrifice and this sort of care and he smiles at it and says, good job, well done, good and faithful servant. The one who takes time and energy and gives of themselves to care for those who are weak, and unable to take care of themselves. And if you think about it, this is exactly what God does for us in our lives. In one of the most graphic passages of Scripture, the nation of Israel is described as an infant without a mother that's been born, that's still covered with the blood and the stuff of birth. And there's no one to clean them. There's no one to care for them. And they're at languages, weak and helpless.

unable to do for itself, left to die. And God says, I came to you and I picked you up and I wrapped you and I rubbed you with salt and I loved you. And that's a prophecy or a foreshadowing of what he was going to do in sending his son Jesus to come and to help those who were helpless themselves. And that's you and that's me. And we have opportunity in our own lives with babies and with widows to do the very thing for them that God has done for us. And so we ought to be about that work. We ought to care about it. There ought to be space in our heart and our lives to love and honor our mothers and fathers in this way. Now practically speaking, does that mean that there's no other option except having them stay with you? Does honoring a widow and practicing piety in regard to them require them to come into your house? Not always. It could be something as simple as, Dad's 250 pounds.

And we can't help him get from place to place. His daughter can't help him because she's not big enough or strong enough. That's a real thing that does happen. It may be that your house, as I said earlier, doesn't accommodate them, hasn't accommodated them, and you're not in a position to get a new house or alter your house to accommodate them. It may be that they absolutely refuse to come to your house. That's a real thing. They'll do it. And I think it's wrong of them to just dismiss it out of hand, but I think it requires a lot of wisdom to know how to honor our parents and widows especially in this regard. It's not a simple thing. Well, you're going to come live with us. That may not be the answer. But we ought to give ourselves to figuring out how, as children, to honor our parents. And the reason we need to do it, Paul says at the very end of this passage, is so that the church is not burdened.

which may seem kind of gnarly to you to say that it's just very practical and plain. Paul says, this is your job so that the church isn't burdened because of your negligence. But that is what he's saying. This is your responsibility. This is your work. They're your parents. They loved you and cared for you. It's time for you to care for them. And so the responsibility that a child has to their parent could be summed up as saying, your job is to keep them from being what's described in our passage as a widow indeed. A widow is just someone whose spouse has died. A widow indeed is someone whose spouse has died and they have no family to take care of them. At that point, that person, that woman becomes a responsibility of the church to care for and to provide for. When there's no family who is able or willing to honor them, that's where we get involved. Some women won't have children. Some spouses, husbands and wives will have children and their children won't be willing or able.

They're very, very poor. Their daughter is divorced and doesn't have the ability to care for them. There's all kinds of circumstances in which the child is either incapable or unwilling to take care of their parent. In that case, it falls to us as a church. And so our responsibility is first to take care of our own families, our own parents. You could stretch that, and I think we'll see in weeks to come that it's not just limited to... our nuclear family and our parents. It may be that you have the ability, even though they're not your parents, to take them in and care for them. At the end of our passage, it talks about, it says, if any woman has a dependent widow, then she's to see to their needs and to care for them so that the church isn't burdened. And so our thinking doesn't stop when we think of our own mother and father. We think of this in terms of an opportunity for us to show mercy and kindness, the same mercy and kindness that God's shown us.

We get to show to other people, and that extends beyond our own parents, even to those people that are in the church. You adopt a grandma. And by adopt, I mean you visit her. You have her over. You eat with her. You make sure that her needs are met. You take her to places she needs to go. And you're thinking in your mind that as her care increases, we're going to be the ones who are taking responsibility for making sure that her needs are met in an ongoing manner. We're going to work with her children to make sure that these things are taken care of.

All of that so that if the immediate children or grandchildren can't take care of them, that we would step in even as brothers and sisters in the Lord and take on that responsibility. So that when there are true widows, widows indeed as Paul describes, those who have no one else, the church can step in and care for them because they've not been burdened with others that their family should have taken care of. James 1.27 says, Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their distress. and to keep oneself unstained from the world. And so we have to learn to think this way as Christians. What do I need to do to honor my father and my mother? What do my priorities need to be? How do I need to be organizing my life and my time to accommodate this work when it comes? How can you do that? That's the last thing I want to talk about. How do you do it? How do you prepare your heart? How do you do this sort of thing? Well, I can tell you that this is not the sort of ministry that we have a sign-up for at the church.

There's not a list somewhere that says, I want to adopt a grandma. It's just the sort of thing you do. How do you do it? Well, you open your eyes. You cultivate willingness to sacrifice, to slow down. Older people don't move as fast. They can't do as much as we can. So you slow down to accommodate them. And at a most basic level, you talk to them. You touch them. You hug them. You pray with them. What else can you do to prepare yourself for this sort of work? Take your kids to nursing homes. during visiting hours. I know COVID's messed all this stuff up, so some of the things I'm saying, you're like, I can't do that right now. And I know you can today. But there will come a time when you can do this. Take your children to nursing homes. Visit with them. Talk to them. Pray with them. Go at Christmas time. Take your small group and sing carols. Mow their grass. Wash their windows. Take them and help them get their hair cut and their clothes washed when they can't do it themselves. This is honor.

They're no longer able to do for themselves. And so we step in as Christians and we say, I'm going to help you. I want to help you. You're important. And I love you. And no, I don't have something better to do. So this is the sort of breaking up of the soil that we need to be doing in our hearts and our minds. How am I going to do that? Some of you guys are young. Your parents might be in their 50s. And you think, there's no reason. This isn't my work yet. And they say, well, it'll be your work before you know it. And you have grandparents. The scriptures doesn't say just the children, but the grandchildren. What happens if you're 30 and your parents are 60 and your grandparents are 80 and your 60-year-old parents can't really take care of your 80-year-old grandparents? Learn to practice piety in regard to your family, making a return to them and caring for them. Spend time with them. It's sad to me in our society that the old are not honored, that they're disregarded. And I don't just mean their wisdom. It's like we don't have a place for them.

In our hearts and our lives. Because they're not productive. And I think that we value productivity more than we should. Or in a way that's unhelpful perhaps. Maybe not more than we should, but in a way that doesn't see that we one day are going to be like them. And that they have things yet to learn from us because the Lord hasn't, or we have things to learn from them because the Lord hasn't called them home yet. And so we can benefit from from their life and from their ministry and their experience and their godliness. So what can I say? Honor widows who are widows indeed. Take responsibility for them, not just the ones in your family. Make a point of talking to those who are older, those who are weaker, those who are slower, those who naturally have less honor coming to them because of their station in life. Be especially tender with them. Give special attention to them because it's the most Christian thing you can do with them.

Next week we're going to come into some of the particulars of what Paul says about widows and what a widow is. There's lots and lots of qualifications and expectations for a widow. And it's really a sweet thing that he talks about widows needing to be godly. When he says prescribe and teach these things well, as well, so that they will be above reproach. He's saying the widows still need to grow in godliness and they still face a danger of falling into sin and being ungodly. So you need to help them, Pastor. We need to love them. And care for them. And we'll look at that in the weeks to come. Let's pray.