The Elders Who Rule Well

Well, we did very much, my family, miss you guys last week. I was able for just a few minutes to join with you guys online, which I don't normally do, obviously, as the pastor. I'm normally the one that's here doing the talking. But I got to join with you in worship just for a little while last week by Facebook Live, and it was nice to be able to do that. Very much nicer to be back with you in person this week. We had a very good time out in Moscow, Vanessa and I. and our kids all had good times at their various houses that they went to. Park and Sarah's wedding was very sweet. I know some of you guys were able to be there, and it was nice to have you there with us. All that to say, it's nice to be home. I'm glad to be back. We're going to be going back into our study of 1 Timothy 5 this morning. In our previous study, we learned, we're talking largely about how elders ought to be treated in the church. How should pastors be treated? How should elders be treated?

And first we saw how Paul teaches Timothy to care for pastors and their compensation, basically, that they ought to be paid well and that you shouldn't use money as a manipulative tool to punish the pastors, but that they ought to be provided for well. Then next we saw how to process accusations that arise against elders, knowing that elders do get accused oftentimes of sinning. And it shouldn't surprise us if elders sin. We shouldn't go, oh, no, not an elder. They wouldn't do that. We know elders sin. They're not less sinful than the congregants and the congregation. And yet, there is a way to process that. And we should suffice it to say that we shouldn't even listen to a disgruntled complaint against an elder unless there's more than two or three witnesses. No grumbling, no complaining, no gossip. We shouldn't even entertain it.

if it comes to us, unless there's more than one person who saw it and can say, yeah, that is what happened, that is what he did. Then, if the testimony is able to be corroborated, then the elder is not to receive any sort of special treatment, but he's to be disciplined because of his office. He's to be disciplined publicly so that all the rest of us will see and will be warned away from sin. And so now, that's basically verses 17 through 21. And now what we're going to do is pick up in verse 22 with our study once we read it, and we're going to go through the end of the section, which is 25. And I found as I was preparing for this that it was a hard text to prepare for because generally there's a statement. Paul will say, do this, and then here's why. If we were to look at this, he says, elders are worthy of double honor. Why? Well, because they shouldn't be muzzled and they're worthy of their hire. He gives a reason for his expectation.

And then when he talks about disciplining elders, he says you shouldn't receive an accusation unless it's like this, and he gives an explanation. But when you come down to the very bottom, there isn't any of that. There's no explanation. It's almost as if you're listening to a father speak to his son and just say, son, I want you to do this, and I want you to do this, and I want you to be careful of that. And there's really no explanation given. And so as I was preparing, I thought, this is like three little topical snippets. There's three things that happen in these verses. And so we're going to go through them in order.

listening to and learning what Paul had to say to Timothy with regard to ordination, with regard to alcohol and health, and with regard to sin and patience, how they relate. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? From 1 Timothy 5, verses 17 to 25. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. For scripture says you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing, and the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. Those who continue in sin rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. And I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of his chosen angels to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality.

Do not lay hands upon anyone too hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others. Keep yourself free from sin. No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. The sins of some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment. For others, their sins follow after. Likewise also, deeds that are good are quite evident, and those which are otherwise cannot be concealed. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated now. And so you see when we picked up in verse 22, there's a verse that has something to do with ordination, and then there's a verse about drinking alcohol and wine to deal with his bodily ailments, and then there's a section, verses 24 and 25, about sin and how to deal with it and good things, good fruits. And so what I want us to do is just go through these things and open up a little bit what each one of these instructions by Paul has to do with Timothy. The first has to do with ordination. He tells him not to lay hands upon anyone too hastily.

and thereby share in the responsibility for the sin of others. Keep yourself free from sin. We know that one of Paul's jobs, or one of Timothy's jobs that Paul tells him, is that he's supposed to find other men. He's supposed to disciple other men up into the ministry, the gospel ministry. In 2 Timothy 2.2, Paul tells Timothy, The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. How is Timothy supposed to do that? Well, he's supposed to train them up. He's supposed to disciple them. He's supposed to identify them and say, if they are qualified men, if they are worthy of this office, if they're able to do it, then he should entrust these gospel truths to them. And really what he's talking about here is you ought to be looking for the next generation of leadership in the church. And part of your job, Timothy, is to be raising them up. Now, how do you identify those men and how do you set them apart? Well, it's through ordination.

So what is ordination? Well, it's sort of the culmination of years of training and testing of a man where the church comes together and says, this man is being set apart for the ministry, for gospel ministry. And then they pray for him, and they lay their hands on him, and he is now set apart for this work, whether that's to be a pastor or to be an elder or to be a deacon. They all are ordained, even though they're ordained to different works. And so Paul warns Timothy in this work to be careful, specifically that he doesn't do it too quickly. Now, ordination's a varied thing. If you were to go to different churches, they have very different practices for how ordination works. Some churches don't really worry about it too much at all. I've heard tell of men coming up, and they'll go to their pastor, and maybe they're in high school or something, and they'll say, well, I think that I want to be a pastor. And the pastor will meet with them a little bit.

and then not too long after that, this young man will be ordained. I've had numerous young men. They say, well, I was ordained when I was 18, or I was ordained when I was 19, because I felt a sense of call. I wanted to teach. I wanted to proclaim the gospel, and so I was ordained. And I would submit to you that that's the sort of thing that Paul's warning against right now, that men who are ordained for ministry ought not to be ordained quickly. That's not something that should happen overnight. They're being set apart to... a work that's going to mean for them a life of greater temptation, a life of greater struggle, and a life of stricter judgment, or a judgment that's stricter than the rest. And that's not something that we ought to set men up for quickly because they say, I think I should do this work. It's a good desire. Paul also tells us in 1 Timothy 3 that all who aspire to the office of overseer desire a good thing.

But that desire is not sufficient for a man to be ordained. That desire needs to be cultivated. It needs to be tested. And there are a number of men who may have a desire to do this sort of work that don't end up making the cut. And we might think, well, that's awfully harsh and that's awfully difficult and that's awfully mean. And I'd say, we accept that in every other discipline, every other profession, every other work. We'd say, if you aren't good enough at this, then you can't do it. I remember when I was... much younger, just out of high school, and I was working for a tree company, climbing trees. And I was a crew leader at the time, and we had hired this new guy. And whatever he was supposed to do with his life, it was not tree work, okay? It was not what he was supposed to be doing, because he was going to kill himself. He had no regard for the danger of the work that we did. And so I made it my point, my purpose, to get him fired.

And, I mean, he did drive me nuts, and he did make my job harder, but it was really because I didn't want to see him go through a chipper. And so I did have a modicum of love for him in going, buddy, this is not where you belong. And when I'd ask him, well, why'd you take the job? And he's like, oh, well, my girlfriend, we just had a baby, and I needed to stop working my 20-hour-a-week part-time job. I needed to get a real job. So this is this guy's first pass into the real world. And he's got a girlfriend, and he's got a baby.

And I'm telling you my job, as I understood it, was to get him fired. And say, I don't know how you're going to do, take care of it and make your ends meet, but I know this is not where you belong. And so some men aren't cut out for the things that they want to do, even if they want to do them. It's not sufficient. Their desire is not sufficient. And so that's one of the reasons Paul tells them, slow down. Don't do it quickly. Paul just got done telling Timothy how to handle elders in their sin. He says, if an elder sins, Don't just accept the accusation, unless there's more than one witness. But if there are two or three witnesses, then you have to discipline the elder. And a few weeks ago, when I preached on that topic, I said, this is one of the most difficult things that elders will do for one another, that pastors will do. To take a man, a brother, someone you've worked with in ministry, and say, that thing you've done is no good.

and it's not going to be handled quietly behind the scenes. It doesn't mean we're going to drag your name through the mud, but it does mean that this is not going to be ignored. It's going to have to be dealt with. And Paul, in the strongest terms, tells Timothy, don't you show any partiality. In the presence of God the Father and of Jesus Christ and of his chosen angels, don't do that work with partiality. No special treatment for him. Now that's hard, hard work. And it's one of the reasons that men ought not to be ordained too quickly to gospel ministry, because that hard, hard work, you want to have some reasonable confidence that they'll actually do it. If Timothy was being warned against this sort of falter, this sort of, well, maybe we can handle this some other way, then we ought to be very careful in who we place that burden on, because it's a heavy weight to carry. And so it's not the sort of thing that a man ought to want to rush into, and it's not the sort of thing that we ought to rush other men into.

I told you earlier about when I worked for a tree company, and you go, well, maybe life calling is not such a big deal if it's just climbing trees. And I'd say, okay, fine, but what about medical doctors? What is their training like? What about lawyers? What about military commanders? How long does it take to get to the point where you're in charge of the lives of other people? It takes years and years and years of training and testing. And all of those disciplines, their goal is... to break you down to there's nothing left and to build you back up exactly how they want you to be. They want to teach you how to think about everything and how to process everything. Their training is so rigorous and the expectation is so high because their work is so important. You wouldn't want a doctor who's like, well, I read on Google for six months and I took an online course or two in immunology and so here's what I think you ought to do. That's not the person I would want to entrust my life to. And you shouldn't either.

You ought to take some comfort in their training and their discipline and the years that they had to put into their craft, honing it. It takes a long time, and it's important that they be tested ahead of time, not just trained, because they're going to face very difficult situations in the field. Can you imagine being in surgery and the doctor has to decide something goes wrong and the doctor has to decide what to do? And your life hangs in the balance of it. You want someone who's not missed their training or... been pushed into that position quickly because, well, we need somebody to do it. You want someone who's been trained well. And so if we go to these lengths with doctors and with lawyers in the military, how much more so ought we to do this or desire this or expect this to be the case with those who keep watch over our souls? I had a friend when I lived down in Bloomington who was a pastor, and I wasn't a pastor yet. I was a youth leader, and I just worked with this guy part-time. And he had no Bible training at all.

Not at all. He'd never taken any classes. But he was a pastor. The church had ordained him, and he was supposed to preach and teach and care for people. So then it turns out that years later, he and his wife get a divorce, and he's still in the ministry. And so recently I saw him, he put something up on Facebook about how awkward it is. It's just a meme. And it was about how awkward it is when you sit next to your ex-wife in worship. And I thought, that should never be the case. Like, how are you still in ministry and you think this is a funny thing? Like, this is how it's supposed to be processed. This has nothing to do with gospel ministry. You should never have been ordained. You shouldn't be a pastor. Not just because you're divorced, but because you've never been tested or trained. Because this is what you think is acceptable to joke about and laugh about. And so ordination is not something that should be done quickly, without testing. Instead, it should be done with years of training.

to equip men for the job. Last week we had a presbytery meeting here, and there were two men who were examined for ordination. I was not able to be here for that, but Dan was here, and Dan said he was very, very encouraged by the detail and the expectation, how high the bar was for those men, what they were expected to know and to be able to articulate. And I can tell you that not everyone who goes through ordination in presbytery passes the first time. Both of those men were here being ordained, or being examined over areas that they had failed the previous time. There were various areas of focus in their ordination, and they had failed certain parts of the thing, and so they had to go back, they had to study more, and then they came and had to be examined again in front of 40 men, most of whom didn't know them very well, and they were asked hard questions.

You want the men who keep watch over your souls to have been tested and trained and to see if they're going to be able to stand up under that sort of scrutiny because their work is hard, and you want them to be faithful. And so it follows that you can't do it quickly. Now, how long is long enough? Well, Paul doesn't tell us, but not quickly, not hastily, not passing over the work and saying, oh, well, there's an emergency. We've got to hurry and get this done right now. No, you don't. Paul warns Timothy. He says, well, if that's what happens, you can't just go along to get along. He says, don't lay hands on them too hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others. If other men are saying, no, we need to go ahead with this, and you say, no, I don't think this man is fit for ministry, he's saying, don't keep your mouth shut. Keep yourself free from sin. Don't participate in men being ordained and set apart for ministry that you don't believe are qualified. I don't know if John Mark was ordained or not, but I know that at one point there was a great conflict between,

Paul and Barnabas and John Mark. And Paul and Barnabas got into a big fight about John Mark. And Paul said, get rid of him. I have no use of him anymore. I don't want him. And it was a bit of a stink. It ended up causing quite a division between Paul and Barnabas, who had been missionary partners going throughout preaching the gospel. They ended up parting ways for a time. The scripture tells us that in time, we don't know the details, but John Mark came back around and Paul had use of him. John Mark repented at some point. But Paul... did the very thing that he's telling Timothy here to do, which is if you think something's off, if you think something's wrong, don't go with it. Don't agree with it. Don't participate in the sin of others. And this principle we can apply not just with ordination, but you can apply it in other areas. Whenever there's a congregational meeting and there's a vote, if you don't agree with the ordination of a man, for instance, whether that's a pastor or an elder or a deacon, or you don't agree with the church budget or whatever's being voted on, you ought to say, I don't agree.

You shouldn't just go, well, if I say I don't agree, it's not going to matter because it's going to pass anyway, so I'll just go ahead with it. No, don't do that. I recently was on the losing end of a vote. I said, I don't agree with what's going on. And we talked about it some more, and I said, I still don't agree with what's going on, and I don't think anybody else should agree with what's going on. I think we should do this other thing instead. And when it came to a vote, I lost. And I didn't lose by myself. There were a few other men that agreed with me, but we lost.

And that's the blessing of Presbyterian polity and having other men working together is you can disagree and you can still work together. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't say when you disagree. Don't participate in the sin of others. Keep yourself free from sin. Don't lay hands on men too quickly. You want the men to be tested. Good men. Then Paul says to his son, if you will, Timothy, completely different subject. No longer drink water exclusively, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments. And this is quite a non sequitur, if you will. Non sequitur just means having nothing to do with what came before or after. He starts giving Timothy a little bit of health advice. I know that you only drink water. You ought not to do that anymore. You ought to drink a little bit of wine. So what can we learn from it? Well, we can learn apparently that Timothy has some sort of a weak constitution.

And that wine at the time was something that they understood to help that. And so Paul tells Timothy, go ahead and drink wine. Have some wine. It'll help your stomach. So what's Paul really telling him? What's the motivation here? Well, what he's telling him is, Timothy, you're a gospel minister. You have the work of preaching the gospel and caring for these people, and you can't have your health getting in the way unnecessarily. So much as it's in your control, take care of yourself so that you're able to do the work well and not be hindered by your weak constitution. Take a little bit of wine. We don't know why Timothy didn't take wine, but we know that he didn't. It's also worth noting that he tells him just a little wine. You can imagine the arguments and the fights that many people have had over this council. Take a little bit of wine. Jesus makes wine, and some people say, no, no, it wasn't real. It didn't have alcohol in it. And here Paul tells Timothy, have a little bit of wine. And they go, no, no, no, not alcohol, not alcohol. But yes, alcohol, a little bit of it.

And so even in his counsel to him, he counsels to him moderation, temperance. Enough to make you feel better, but not enough to be drunk. Harsh treatment of his body isn't any godlier. Drinking water only, suffering more. You know, if Timothy has some sort of a problem with his digestion, he's not suffering for godliness sake to carry on with that difficulty. He should take something for it. That's what Paul's telling him. Do something, take care of yourself. Be moderate as you do it so that you're above reproach and people can't accuse you of drunkenness. And then we come to the last two verses. The sins of some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment. For others, their sins follow after. And he says a very similar thing about good deeds. It's been my experience, both in my own life and as a pastor, that whenever a problem arises, we all want a quick fix. Whatever's wrong, tell me quick how to fix it. Whatever it is, just give me a pill, give me a drink, give me a...

I want it gone. I want it done. And that couldn't be further from what Paul is telling Timothy here with regard to sin. Our desire for a quick fix is to say, in other words, that we lack patience. We don't like to bear with hardships or difficulties, whether they're physical, bodily ailments, whether they're relational hardships. If we can't fix it, we want it to go away. We want, we're willing to do something drastic to just get rid of it. Instead, Paul tells us that we need to be patient, but he doesn't say it exactly in those words. To young parents, and you have crying babies, some of you are going to have young babies, and you're going to have to listen to babies cry for the first time, and they're going to keep you up at night. This is just an example. What does a young parent have to learn at that point? They have to learn patience. Sometimes babies just cry in the middle of the night, and you don't get to sleep, and there's no fixing it. They're going to wake you up. You have to bear with it. You can go on Google. You can look up all the fancy little things to do.

The fact is you're still up at 2 a.m. with a crying baby trying to figure out how to make them be quiet. You have to bear with it at some level. What about with teenagers that are rebellious? If we were to fast forward, lying, cheating, stealing, what are parents supposed to do? What they want to do is duct tape the child to a chair and lock them in a room so that they can't go get in any more trouble. But they can't do that. So what do they end up having to do? Well, they end up having to bear the difficulty. Because whatever sins they're committing, they haven't found the consequence of them yet.

Same is true if you have an unreasonable boss or parents. These situations have to be borne. These sins, even those sins that are committed against us, we have to bear them. We can't just blow up our relationships. We can't just throw them away because people sin against us. And so as much as our desire is to have our troubles go away as soon as they arise, that's not often God's answer. Oftentimes what we're supposed to do is bear those burdens until they can be dealt with. And this is what Paul's getting at when he says that there are some sins that are quite evident going before them to judgment, but really there are others, the sins follow after them. Sometimes there are situations, there are sins that have not come to a head yet. They're not able to be dealt with. And if you think about it, we have this kind of thing happen in our lives quite a bit where there are problems, but they haven't risen to the level of being dealt with yet. Whether it's a rebellious 14-year-old and you go, I want to put them out of my house, but you can't put them out of your house yet.

There does come a time when a parent can put their child out of the house, but not when they're 14, unless it's really, really bad. And so what do you do when the sins follow after, when they take time to develop, when they take time to come to maturity, until there's something actually concrete to deal with? You have to bear it. You have to be patient. Think of it this way. If you were to only go to the dentist, if you were only to come to Abram as our resident dentist, when you go, oh, my tooth hurts. What does Abram know about your oral health? Unless you got punched or something, there was some sort of immediate trauma, what do you know about this person and their toothache? They're probably not taking care of their teeth, and they've probably got a problem that's been building for years. But it hasn't come to a head yet until their tooth hurts. And at that point, a lot of your options are a lot of remedies that they could have in terms of healing.

are gone. They're limited now. They've missed the window. And it's because the sin or the consequence of that sin is following after. It takes time, if you will. The same is true, I would say, of young parents as another example. I would say that even, I would say it's until your first child is probably five to seven years old before you really start to see what your sins were as a parent. You spend a lot of years trying, knowing you're not doing it perfectly, but not being really sure what you're doing wrong. until your kids are five, six years old. And then you start to see, like, why are they that way? And every young parent asks that question. Why do they do that? And then they go, oh, I know why they do that. I know where they learned that. I know where they saw that. It takes years for those things to come along. Now I want to ask you, you older parents, when you see a young parent with their six-month-old or their 18-month-old, can you see the problems, the potential problems? I can.

I can look and go, that's not going to scale well. That thing you're doing is not going to work when they're two years old. You shouldn't be doing it now, but it's really not going to work when they get older. And not too much older, but the parents don't see it yet. They don't know. It hasn't come to their attention yet. And so what can I do? Well, I can go talk to a parent. If I was to use myself as an example, or Dan or Wendy, we can see it. We can come talk to you and say, that thing you're doing, it's not going to work long term. You're not helping your child, actually. That's not loving them.

And the parent kind of looks at us, and they're like, well, you don't know what you're talking about. And I go, what's that? Mine's different, yes. My child is different. Okay. And then usually about five, six, seven years into that child's life, the parents are really tenderized, and they're willing to have a little input now. What's wrong? Say, well, this is what's wrong. Really? Yeah. Do you remember? Four years ago? No? See, that's too bad, because we could have prevented some of this. The sins that the parents are committing, they're ignorant of them. They don't know what they're doing. They think, I'm trying to love my baby. But it turns out that what they're doing is not helpful. And so what has to happen? Well, we have to bear with and be patient with those who haven't realized it yet, whose tooth hasn't started to ache yet, whose kids haven't grown to the age of...

obvious problems yet. We have to bear with them. Sometimes the sin or the recognition of it follows afterward. And you realize that the reason Paul's writing this is because my temptation would be if I look at you and I go, I've been married for almost 15 years. I know there are people in this room that have been married a lot longer than me, but 15 years is long enough to look at someone who's been married a year or two and be like, there's bumps on that road that you're on. I've ridden over some of them. I've watched other people ride over them. And I want to help, but you're not listening yet.

So we watch. So we wait. It's very easy for me to want to get cynical about it and to say, well, they're just, they just know better. We'll see. And I'll say, I told you so. But that's what Paul's warning against here. Some people's sins are obvious and they can be dealt with quickly. And other people's sins aren't. And you have to bear with them. You can't dismiss them. You can't just write them off and get rid of them, even though there's sin and even though you can see it. I think this is especially difficult for young men as they start to realize the sins of older men or just other men. It's like they found a hammer and everything is a nail. And they just want to whap and you're wrong and you don't know what you're talking about and it should be this other way. They just know everything under the sun. Everything that Paul would counsel you to have patience, to be quiet, to listen, to learn, and to know just as many sins as you see in other people and as frustrated as you get with them.

You don't have any less. While you can see sins that are sort of incubating in other people, you have the same thing going on inside of you. We would all wish that in the church, right, among God's people, we wouldn't have this problem of constant sin and struggles. We'd wish that, oh, well, since God's changed us, we wish that we were really actually done with sin already. And the fact is, we're not. There's not one person in here who's done with sin. We're all still fighting and we're all still struggling and we're all still ignorant. In large part, to many of the sins that we commit and many of our inclinations. We don't even recognize them yet. This is who we are, all of us. And wouldn't it be nice if God, when he saved us, when he justified us, wouldn't have put us into this mixture of desires to do right things and lusts to do wrong things. We have to be born with. Our own weaknesses have to be born with. Your husbands, your wife has to bear with your sins.

You husbands, the other way around, your wives, your husbands have to bear with your sins. You kids, your parents, we wish more than anything that you just stop it. We do know better than you. And the reason we know better is because we've done what you're doing. And we've watched what it turns into. But a lot of the time, what we have to do is bear with your sins. Bear with your weaknesses, knowing that that's what God does with us. Our sins follow after us. Many, many, many of them follow after us. If we had to put a percentage to, you know, which is more, are most of our sins quite evident or are most of our sins following after us? I'd say I think most of them actually follow after us. We know that they're there. We have some knowledge that we sin, that we do bad stuff pretty regularly, but they're not quite evident all the time. We just have sort of this kind of shadow of suspicion of like, maybe I'm wicked. I think I might.

I heard and read that I was wicked. I don't feel wicked. I don't think I'm wicked. So we have to bear with each other, knowing that God bears with us. Romans 2.4 says, Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and his tolerance and his patience? Why does God have to be kind with us? What does he have to tolerate? What does he have to be patient with? Do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? So what is he tolerant of? He's tolerant of your sin. And I don't mean that in the sense that he excuses it and says, oh, it's not a big deal. I'm tolerant of it. I'm saying he's long-suffering. Our Father is long-suffering with our weaknesses. He bears with us. And so we ought to bear with each other. When it's not apparent what should be done with some sin, the answer is to bear with it because some sins follow afterwards.

And to not say, I told you so, or yeah, I saw that coming, or you should have known better when it does come to a head. Some sins are quite evident. Other sins follow after. This same sort of structure Paul uses to describe good deeds. Sometimes sins can be hidden, but sometimes good deeds can be hidden. Sometimes God hides them for a time. Have you ever gotten in trouble for doing the right thing? You ever had someone get mad at you because you did the right thing? And you go, this is a bum deal. I get it if someone's upset with me for doing the wrong thing, but I did the right thing. And they're still mad. Maybe they're more mad. And now they've taken to making fun and mocking and slandering and gossiping or whatever. I did the right thing, and I'm in trouble for it. That's a great incentive to not do the right thing. No, it shouldn't be, though we're tempted that way. Oftentimes, good things...

bring you trouble. Sometimes they're evident right away. Sometimes you do a good thing and it's immediately evident to everyone that what you did was the right thing. Oftentimes it's not the case. I want you to think for a minute about someone you respect, living or dead, some Christian that you respect, and you think, were their good deeds always applauded? No. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Most of the men that you look up to and most of the men that you respect, the women that you say, she was godly. They suffered for it. They were martyred for it. They were despised for it. They were unpopular. Their good deeds made them a stench. We're reformed around here, so we like to read John Calvin. We like to read Matthew Henry. We like John Knox. These men were not popular when they were alive. We can look at them and go, look at them, wow. That's not what anybody thought of them when they were alive.

John Calvin got run out. He got exiled from the town he lived in. He ministered for three years, got himself exiled for his preaching, kicked out. We can look and go, John Calvin was great in his preaching. He's not perfect, but, you know, what a man of the faith. He got himself kicked out of his city, could not come back for years. Eventually, they repented. They brought him back, and he picked up right where he left off, and his life was difficult. And we can look at him and go, man, look at all the good things he did. Look how I bet his life. No, it wasn't. It was not easy. Jonathan Edwards was sort of the American version of John Calvin, if you will, an American Puritan, great theological mind. He got fired from his church because he asked for a raise. And if he wanted to do ministry, he had to go out and minister to the savages. That's what they called them at the time, the Indians.

He had to go be a missionary to be able to do it. And he's one of the greatest American theologians we've ever had. He got fired for asking for a raise and then had to go be a missionary to preach the gospel. That was his life. And we look back and we go, it was wonderful. Look at what he did. And I go, it is true. It is amazing how God used him. But he wouldn't have had the same opinion of his life that we do. Many of his good deeds were concealed. They were hidden for a time. Our passage is a little difficult to understand.

In 25, it says, likewise also deeds that are good are quite evident, and those which are otherwise cannot be concealed. The question is, what is otherwise referring to? Is it referring to good deeds? Is it saying bad deeds cannot be concealed? No, that's not what it's saying. Actually, that otherwise is referring to quite evident. Some good deeds are quite evident, and others in time will not be able to be concealed. And so what I want you to see as we talk about whether it's John Calvin or whether it's... Jonathan Edwards, or maybe it's just your dad or pastor that you had when you were young, and you thought, man, he had a tough go of it, but the older I get, the more faithful I see that he was. That's what our passage is getting at, that some good deeds are very evident right away, and other deeds become evident in time. But for whatever reason, God hides them. In the end, the truth will become evident, sometimes right away, sometimes not for a long time, sometimes not even in our lifetime.

But we ought to be comforted in knowing that if we do good deeds in Jesus' name, he sees them right away. While they may be concealed from the world, they're not concealed from him. And so if you do good deeds in private and in quiet where no one sees it, I'm talking to you mothers especially, when you're taking care of your kids and no one's watching and no one's seeing, you think, what's my life become? I'm just, I'm washed up and lost in this work. God sees. And your good deeds will be shown in time. Because your kids will grow up. And the work that you put into them and the love and the sacrifice that you made will be evident. And so don't demand that they be seen right away. I often tell my kids something along these lines. I say, listen, did you do what was right? And they say, yeah, I did what was right. They're usually telling me through tears, angry tears. Yeah, I did what was right. It got me in trouble. I got mad. They kept making fun of me. And I say, but God saw. If what you did was right and God saw it, then you don't need to have any fear that he was glorified and he'll honor you for it.

He'll bless you for it. Even if no one else can see it right now, in time, your good deeds will become evident. And so we as Christians ought to take comfort in that. So often we want our return right now. We want the affirmation right now. I did a good deed. Now where's the fruit of my good deed? Where's the praise? Where's the thanks? Where's the gratitude? All I'm getting is frustration and ridicule and slander. I don't know if it makes any sense to me. Trust God. Your good deeds that you do in secret are seen by God. And they'll be revealed in time. 1 Corinthians 3, 6, Paul says, I planted Apollos water, but God was causing the growth. He causes that growth in his time. If you've invested in your kids, they're growing up, and you go, when are they going to believe? When are they going to come to faith? When is all of this investment going to materialize? Trust God and keep pouring into them and teaching them and training them. There's no better ministry for you. Trust God with his timing. You know what happens when they're, when...

The prairie catches on fire and all the weeds and all the stuff that's grown up is burned away. All the dormant seed that was laying in the ground now gets water and now gets sun and it grows. And it lays there for how long? In time, God will cause the good seeds that you plant to grow. And so trust God to do that in his time. He's a good manager of the good deeds that we do in his name. And he'll use them as he sees fit in his time. So what's our work? as Christians? Well, it's to listen to these things that Timothy's been told as though they were said to us by our Father. Be careful not to ordain men too quickly. They have a big task ahead of them and a lot of work and difficulty coming to them in that work, and so don't rush them into it. Take care of yourselves for the sake of the gospel, your health. Keep an eye to it, not because you need to live forever and not because you need to have perfect health. That's not what Paul's arguing for here. He's not saying, oh, your health is above all the most important thing. You're going to die.

of something and i'm not saying that to say don't worry about how you live or when you die i'm saying your goal and your aim whether god gives you 10 more days or 50 more years is to be as useful to him as as you're able and to produce as much good fruit for him as you can and so remove the hindrances in your life whether they're with regard to your health or with regard to your time or your money or whatever it is Make everything you do be aimed at producing as much fruit for God as you can. Paul tells Timothy, take a little wine. I don't want your fruit to be hindered. I don't want your productiveness to be squelched because you're sick. And finally, patience. Bear with one another in sin because God bears with you. So often we think that if God really knew what I was like, I would just expect him to just swap me away.

But the truth is, God does know what you're like. Better than you do. And he bears with you, leading you to repentance. Knowing that your repentance, even when you do it, will not be perfect. Not until you stand before God and he makes you perfect. And then it will be perfect, and it'll be glorious. And so if he's willing, and it's his desire to bear with us and our weaknesses like that, then we ought to do the same for one another. And when we do good things and people... Don't see them or don't give us credit or don't understand what went into that good deed. That's okay. God does. He sees it and he knows it. And the things that you do in secret in service of him, he doesn't miss a one of them. And he will reward you for them. So trust God with them. Let's pray.