-Christmas beef: we’ve done real trees, we’ve done flimsy ornaments. This week it’s Christmas songs. Did you know not all the songs we sing during the Christmas season were written to be Christmas songs? Joy to the World wasn’t written to be sung at Christmas. It’s a song about the incarnation, the reality that Jesus became a man, and that’s something that we need to celebrate all the time. 

-And some songs that WERE written for Christmas just make no sense! One of my personal favorites (that actually has a message that I think is great) is ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ I’ve been in the room for 4 deliveries, and I can guarantee that the last thing Mary would want in the room with her after delivery was a drummer boy, especially a “little” drummer boy! If you’re wondering why I still like that song, the message of it is beautiful. A little boy sees Jesus, has nothing to give Him, so he uses the one thing he has to worship Jesus, and it says “I played my best for Him.” And just so we’re all on the same page, the For King & Country version is the best version of this song! 

-When I was growing up, my family would sing Christmas carols each year, but specifically on Christmas Eve before we opened any presents, we had our own Christmas program. One year during the singing, my dad decided to create his own rendition of the song: Hark the Harold Saastad’s sing. It was only funny to us, because my grandpa’s name was Harold Saastad. But now I can’t sing that song anymore without hearing my dad’s voice booming about my grandpa. 

-There’s something fascinating to me about this week’s idea about God being our everlasting father, actually there’s a couple things. The first is the reality that this means God has a family. By definition, a father requires children! That IS the requirement to be a father!

-But the second piece comes from a podcast I listened to a couple years ago that asked a question about the Bible that really stood out to me. The podcast host asked the question: can you think of any good examples of a father in the Bible? Since then, I’ve asked this question to more people than I can keep track of, and the only one I’ve heard has been Joseph, the father of Jesus. But that’s more of an argument from silence than explicit things in the Bible. And I wonder if what we’re supposed to take from that is that no dad, no matter how good they were, will be able to provide exactly what every kid needs, which means all of us are going to be looking for the perfect father figure until we understand that only God can be that for us, can meet us exactly where we’re at, know us perfectly, and still love us unconditionally exactly as God created us to be!

-Let’s read Isaiah 9 again, and then we’ll talk about what I just said.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

-We’ve worked our way through 3 of these names so far. Wonderful Counselor is what God provides through us by indwelling us with the Holy Spirit (who’s referred to as a counselor), last week we say that the Mighty God has been working out His plans in human history to accomplish His purposes. I think all 4 of these names are connected to each other, they build on each other, and it helps us to live as humans in the world as God designed us to live (hence IRL). One of the things we need to flourish is a family. Now, please don’t jump to viewing this through the lens of your nuclear family, when I talk about this I’m referring to something else, something that takes place spiritually, outside of our control. We talked about this pretty regularly this Fall as we worked our way through 1 Timothy. God’s plan for the church is to treat each other like a family! To be devoted to each other, to sacrificially care for each other, to come alongside each other and encourage each other to grow closer to Jesus each day. As we think about God being our everlasting Father, I’m going to work to answer 3 questions that are implications of this reality: what is a family, what is God’s family, and how does God’s family behave?

1. What is a Family?

-Is it those who live in close proximity to you? Is it those that are related to you through blood? So siblings, cousins, aunts & uncles. Is it 2 parents with 1.9 kids living in a house with a dog and a white picket fence? For some of you, maybe all you think of when you hear family is: trauma or tension! I thought it would be helpful to ask all knowing Google, and here’s what I got, 3 different options. I think we jump to the 1 definition anytime we hear the word, which I would argue starts to affect our view of the church, too.

-Another piece that I think is true is that in many cases the church assumes the nuclear family as the norm, and has inadvertently created an idol of the nuclear family, which has been harmful to the health of the church (broadly, not just South Suburban). I have 2 primary problems with this:

-1 is I think we misunderstand the priority of God’s family. The church (which is just another way of saying God’s family, I’ll use those terms interchangeably throughout this message), is meant to be a place where multiple nuclear families commit to helping each other flourish on this side of eternity, we’ll get there under the next question.

-My 2 problem is it either ignores or alienates anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of a nuclear family. We live in a broken and messy world, which means there’s going to be people who have suffered through divorce, or have never been married, or maybe people that have been married and have been unable to have kids. And friends, I can name people in our church family right now who fit each one of those categories. Is there a place here for them? Because what Jesus does is level the playing field for all to come find healing and A FAMILY in His body. I heard a single speaker onetime at a conference talk about singleness in the church, and the church where he was a member was hosting “Supper for Six” groups (assuming that it would be for couples). He went up to the table to sign up and asked if there was room for a “Supper for 5” or a “Supper for 7” and he got blank stares in response! 

-I actually experienced this when I first started in ministry! I was single (which meant all the grandma’s tried setting me up with their granddaughters, that’s a story for a different day!), but when I arrived at the church the way the Lead Pastor described their church was a “Family-focused” church. What did that communicate to the singles (like me!)? 

-Meeting where someone proposed doing a “family night” on Fridays for the whole church instead of the typical Wednesday nights, even saying “I thought this was supposed to be a family focused church, but it doesn’t feel like it’s focusing on my family!” I work here, and I don’t want to come to that! There’s a tendency for us to attempt to force the church to fit our family instead of working to apply our family to our church. I think we’ve flipped the ordering of what God intended us to be! I’m all for a “family focused” church, if it’s the church family!

• What is God’s Family? (Galatians 4)

-So let’s talk about that! What is God’s family? How should we define it? I want to start with a couple things Jesus said, because I believe he laid the foundation for what comes up in Galatians, and for us I think we read it as pretty ordinary, but this was revolutionary in the 1^st century! In the 1^st century, family relationships were literally everything! We miss it because we view the world as a meritocracy: you have to “earn” whatever comes your way (which has a different set of problems!)

-One brief example. In the middle of the moment where Jesus asks Peter who people say He is and then turns to Peter and says “What about you?” Jesus calls him by his dad’s name (growing up this was transliterated to “Simon bar Jonah” and I was always confused about why Jesus called him a bar!). The translation we use fixes that confusion, what Jesus is doing is identifying Simon/Peter by his dad’s name. But it went beyond just a name, if your dad was a fisherman, that meant you were a fisherman. If your dad was a blacksmith, that meant you were a blacksmith. The individual was completely lost in the community. Make sense?

-The first example of Jesus shifting the focus of this communal from the nuclear family comes during His preaching ministry. This story is in a few of the Gospels, I’ll use Mark’s because I just used Matthew! And Mark adds a detail where he says why his family came to him: Mark 3:21 “When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him, because they said, “He’s out of his mind.”” Shortly after that story, Mark picks it up with Jesus being so surrounded by people that his family can’t reach Him.

-Word traveled through the crowd up to Jesus that his mother, brothers, and sisters were outside trying to meet with Him. That’s all well and good! You’d think Jesus would respond, particularly because of how family oriented this culture was supposed to be! And there’s even another story where we see how much Jesus cared about his family! So before we finish this part of Mark:

-One of Jesus’s last acts before He dies is making sure that His mother will be provided for after He’s gone. Around Jesus while He’s hanging on the cross is a group of Mary’s: his mother, wife, and Magdalene. Most scholars believe the disciple He loved refers to John (whom this book is named after), He tells Mary that she should view John as her new son, and John should view Mary as his mother, and the text tells us that’s exactly what happened. So we see that Jesus did care about His nuclear family, He didn’t just leave His mother to figure things out on her own! So keep that in mind as we go back to Mark.

-Remember that Jesus’s mother and siblings were trying to talk to Him, and look how he replies. He intentionally shifts the focus of family from biological family to: whoever does the will of God. That means Jesus is changing our allegiances from our biological family to the family of God, which means that just like in our biological families, in our church families we don’t get to pick who’s in! God does! We’re just called to love them like family!

-With that foundation from Jesus, now let’s look at Galatians 4.

-The right time, this gets to what we looked at last week, God is the author of history, which means He determines the times and places of our lives. The passing of time is in His hands, if He isn’t in complete control then he would stop being God. That includes the time that Jesus was sent to earth. Have you ever thought about all the promises that Jesus perfectly fulfilled? From the right lineage, from the right towns. Even the way God used a census from a pagan Roman, who wanted to make sure he was taxing the people enough, that little decision led to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. You can’t make up a story like this! At just the right time, God sent Jesus. 

-Born of a woman. Friends, this is VERY important! This means that Jesus was completely human, he HAD to be. In a letter written in the 4^th century, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Archbishop of Constantinople) defended the incarnation of Jesus in a letter where he said: This is another way of saying what Heb. 2:17 says, that Jesus became like us in every way, except sin. If there was any part of human that Jesus was not, that part wouldn’t be included in salvation. But because Jesus was fully, completely human He is able to completely redeem us!

-Because He came as a human, that also means he was under the law, the rules that God gave for His people to represent Him to the world. But where those laws were a prison for everyone else, for Jesus it led to complete freedom because He was able to perfectly obey every single one of those rules! (active obedience)

-And the outcome of that is redemption and adoption. Most translations, even the ones that work really hard to be incredibly gender inclusive still keep the word sons here, because it’s connected to a 1^st century tradition that an inheritance is only passed to sons. What Paul is saying is that through Jesus’s work, all of us are now worthy of receiving a heavenly inheritance, we’re all the favored children of God!

-So in response, we cry out to God as “Abba, Father” an affection way of talking about your dear dad who you know loves and cares for you. And do you see how we’re enabled to cry out to God? Through the Spirit who lives in us. Friends, this is the message of the gospel, the message of Christmas

-And that gospel is what unites us together, what makes us a family! The moment that we’re saved, we go from being strangers to family. And think about what that means. Even if we have the worst family in the world, even if we’ve been completely abandoned, we have a new family that is as everlasting as our Father. We have a family that we’re going to be spend eternity with! This all gets us to the last question:

• How Does God’s Family Behave? (Matthew 6)

-The appropriate behavior begins with how we approach God, that has to be the starting point for everything we do. I saw a tweet from Tim Keller over 10 years ago now where he said this:

-Can you picture God that way? Maybe I should say DO you picture God that way? God has invited us to not only call Him Father, but to approach Him with everything we have, with anything we need, at all times! He never sleeps, He’s never grumpy, He’s never too busy, He’s always and perfectly present to every single one of His children.

-Not only is God available, but J.I. Packer says this may be at the heart of Christianity. If we understand God as our Father it changes everything else about our lives. It means we are accepted as His children, and there’s no takebacks! It means what He calls us to do and be come from being His children, from being called to represent Him, to image Him to the rest of the creation.

-But what stood out to me as I was preparing this week is how much Jesus talks about our Father in the Sermon on the Mount. Look at how pervasive this is:

-First is we’re supposed to shine before others so they see our Father (just like kids are images of their biological fathers)

-We are supposed to live differently than the world, we’re supposed to love everyone, even our enemies! Jesus says that’s how we demonstrate that we’re children of God. And then He goes even further and says we’re supposed to act just like our heavenly Father: perfect. No pressure, but that’s the standard that we’re supposed to be aiming for. How are you doing at that? 

-Then He tells us that we need to ensure that our motives are right, that we’re not acting to impress people, because our Father will only reward those who are faithfully following after Him, which also affects the way we’re supposed to pray. Don’t pray to try to impress others, pray without worrying about others, knowing that God knows everything we need even before we ask Him. Which is also how we’re supposed to practice our spiritual disciplines: don’t do them to try to impress others, do them to draw nearer to God! 

-Same thing with worry: God provides for the birds of the air, and He cares even more for us as His children! Which means we’re supposed to worry ourselves with pursuing the kingdom of God, that is living in such a way that people can see we’re citizens of heaven, not citizens of earth.

-And friends, the way God often intends to provide for us is through the church.

–Rom. 12:10 CSB: “Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.” GRK: Show familial affection to each other (be devoted), prefer the honor of another. What are your preferences? What are the things you need to die to in order to be devoted to your brother or sister in the church? What might God be calling you to give up for the sake of someone else? 

-This isn’t easy, just like being involved in a biological family isn’t easy! There’s things you need to give up or let go of so that someone else can be honored and cared for in ways that maybe only you could provide. 

-One of the easiest examples is with music, and I can say that now because I’m not a worship pastor anymore! People used to think I was being self-serving when I’d say this! Friends: music isn’t for you to get some emotional “high” each week, we’re actually commanded to sing to each other! The early church took this idea literally, and each person was expected to sing some kind of encouraging song each week. What if, instead of only looking for the songs I like, we came to church looking for ways to encourage our brothers and sisters, so even a song I don’t like is an opportunity for me to encourage the person sitting next to me?

-One of the areas that I don’t think receives enough attention in churches is generational differences. I think this is because people tend to gravitate towards those who are similar to them: their own age. It’s more work to spend time with someone who views the world differently than you, but it’s also worth it. Because that’s what God has called us to pursue: a family comprised of people from all ages AND nations. It takes work to be this family, just like it takes work to be a healthy family. 

-Story from When the Church was a Family

-Have you noticed how easy it can be to slip in and out of churches today? You have ushers to guide you into your seat in a dark auditorium. The music is so loud you can’t hear anyone singing next to you (which probably is appealing for some of you, right?), but it’s ok, because it’s still so dark that you can’t see if anyone’s sitting there anyway!

-Every age has their own segmented spaces so adults don’t need to be inconvenienced by little ones who have trouble sitting still, teenagers have video games so they don’t get bored listening to a middle-aged man talk for too long.

-But what if that’s not what church is supposed to be or look like? What if church is supposed to be a place where we’re pushed outside our comfort zones, where there are people who don’t look, think, or act like us who are involved in our lives on a daily basis? Paul is going to use some incredibly intimate language in today’s text to point out a different way for the church to treat each other.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1052)

1. Family Members (1-2)

-How do we treat or view each other? For most of us, there will always be people older and younger than you in the church! We’re going to spend most of our time on these first 2 verses today because I think we need to talk about them more, and I would argue that the latter section is actually fairly straight-forward in terms of interpretation, I’m not completely sure how to apply it, but we’ll get there in a bit!

-1^st century relationships were almost the opposite of what we have today, we live in a youth driven culture, 1^st century was elderly driven, where the older you were the more respect you were supposed to be given. 

-I’ve experienced this moving back to MN! I run into my friend’s parents and I still call them Mr. or Mrs., even after they’ve told me to call them by their first name (I didn’t even think adults had first names!) I remember my parents asking me the names of my friend’s parents and I would tell them “Mr. and Mrs.”

-But even that has changed over my life! My kids call adults Ms. Or Mr. first name! 

-Older men: don’t rebuke, instead exhort or encourage him. 

-I’ve felt a shift in my ministry over the last few years, where I’m suddenly not the young guy at these conferences anymore! And I look at these other pastors who I just assume as high schoolers who are attending these conferences with their dads! But this is a tension point, because how do we live this verse out if older men are sinning? Which, let’s be clear, is true of everyone! We’ll continue our fight against sin until the Lord returns or takes us home. So what does this text mean when talking about leadership in the church?

-Don’t be flippant or dismissive towards older men, instead treat them respectfully and honorable, like you would treat your father. Does that mean you never confront sin in their lives? Absolutely not! Unfortunately, growth in holiness can’t be assumed (just a quick reminder, the name for growth in holiness is sanctification).

-Remember from last week the way Paul described our Christian walk: he says we’re to train ourselves in godliness, to labor and strive, practice these things, be committed to them, pay close attention to them, persevere in them. Does that sound easy to you? Friends, God calls us to give our everything in following after Him, to literally lay down our lives for Him! It takes grace-drive, God-enabled effort.

-And it doesn’t matter how old you are, your work isn’t done. Carson quote.

-And friends, you can tell the difference in older age between someone who has (through grace-driven effort) become more holy, and someone who has become more grumpy. Let me caution all of you who are older to not give up pursuing holiness in your life!

-I’ve shared this picture before, but I think it’s worth looking at again, because it’s been a couple years since I shared it. This gets at our whole concept of “One Step Closer” where I’ve had people ask me what those steps are moving towards, and we’ll go from the bottom to the top.

-Domain of darkness: those who aren’t following Christ, and as you can see that domain will continue until Christ returns. But there was a point in history where that realm was defeated, where a new people was formed called “the church” where people from every tribe, tongue, and nation can become new people, brought into the kingdom of the Son.

-Those people have an “L” above them to signify that they’re “Learners” who are learning the way of Jesus, following after Him, and never stopping learning more about Him. Just like in marriage where you never stop learning new things about your spouse, your faith is meant to continually be growing. And there’s various levels of growth that take place, but I would argue that you never remain stagnant, as Carson said. The drift, pull is always backwards. 

-The goal is gathering around the throne and worshipping Jesus perfectly, that’s why we work to daily take 1 step closer to that end. And then as we do that day after day we’ll become more and more like Jesus. And just so it’s clear: no one graduates in this! We all have places and areas in which we need to grow! But in relationships, we’re supposed to speak the truth in love, always looking to help people take steps closer to Jesus in our interactions, including with those older. Now, because we’ve done all this work, the next ones can be quicker!

-Young men: treat them like brothers. I never had brothers growing up, but I have 3 sons, and I’m not sure many of you would appreciate being treated how they treat each other! But there should be a familial connection to those younger.

-Similar to the older men, treat older women like mothers! Respectfully, honoring.

-We need to spend a little more time on the younger women part, because Paul adds something here: treat them like sisters, but with all purity. I want to talk a bit about this one, because I think there’s been some misunderstanding in relation to this.

-Unfortunately, there have been too many accounts of abuse from pastors to younger women in the church, and each one of those breaks God’s heart and defames the name of Jesus in the church. That’s not a new thing, in fact it led Billy Graham (20^th century evangelist) to commit to never being alone with any woman besides his wife, which then was became known as the “Billy Graham rule” and it popped back in up popularity a few years ago because VP Mike Pence also practiced it.

-At first glance, it sounds great! And for someone like Graham, who traveled all over (or Pence) there’s some wisdom to it. The problem is 2-fold. 1 is when everyone viewed this as the golden standard for every Christian leader to follow, because churches generally have more women than men, which means if you follow this rule you would refuse to meet with a majority of the church. 2 is it treats every woman as a temptress. And I hate to break it to most guys, but you’re not that tempting! I thought it was the Christian standard to follow the Billy Graham rule when I was in college, but then I had someone point this text out to me and ask me: would you ignore your sister? Well, no…

-Now, this does require wisdom! It doesn’t say treat them as your wife! There’s a difference between your spouse and your sister, right? We have to understand that we’re more than sexual beings, and the overly sexualization of our culture goes completely contrary to the way of Jesus. Friends, we must work to live in all purity in all our relationships in the church. We must show the world a better way. We even see this with same-sexual friendships! People read about Jonathan and David and assume they were erotic lovers. Or they read letters exchanged between men 200 years ago and assume the same. The problem is we don’t know how to be friends today! It’s ok to love a friend, but it’s a different love than the love I have towards my wife! Are we ok admitting that we need friends? I would argue the best place to find those friends is in the church! It’s people who should be the most understanding of you, acknowledging our common need of God’s grace, and accepting us as the sinners we are.

-Did you know that the surgeon general labeled loneliness one of the biggest epidemics in our country today? Here’s what he said:

-And at the same time, did you know that Harvard released a study. QUOTE. Any guess what the medicine is? Attending church! This is literally life-giving, and I would argue it’s because it provides our true identity, tells us who we are and how we should live and brings us into a new family who is committed to loving and caring for us through thick and thin.

• Care for Widows (3-15)

-I have no clue what to do with this next section! I’ve been wrestling through it all week, because the context is so different from Paul to us. I said earlier that the 1^st century was more focused on the elders (older), but what I didn’t mention is it was also focused on men, so women were only viewed in relation to men: either fathers or husbands. That means that if a woman became a widow, she was essentially destitute. She wasn’t supposed to work, wasn’t supposed to inherit money, was supposed to continue relying on the rest of her family to take care of her. Which means if she didn’t have any family, she had nothing to live for and no one to support her. And into that world comes this new thing called “The church,” which actively looked to help the least of these. In fact, Rodney Stark, a sociologist, argues in his book The Rise of Christianity that the primary reason the church grew so quickly was because it cared for the people no one else did: women, infants and children, and the sick.

-Where I struggle is what do we do with this text in a world of social welfare systems, 401Ks, retirement accounts, and assisted living? There are some principles I think we can take away from this, but we have to admit our world today is very different than the world Paul was writing to!

1. In Your Family (3-8)

-Paul begins with a command to care for widows. This would have been completely revolutionary! There’s some people that try to argue that Paul is attempting to keep women subservient to the men and trying to perpetuate the gender gap that already existed in the culture. I don’t see that just with using this first verse! He’s saying to come alongside and care for them!

-Now there are some caveats given: first being genuinely in need, which means something different to Paul than it would to us! This is why I struggled with what to do with this text, because the rest of this section is all the reasons a woman doesn’t qualify! 

-The first reason a woman wouldn’t qualify for this is if she has living family. This connects to the 10 commandments, where God’s people were commanded to honor their parents. This was true in the 1^stcentury too, but apparently people would look for loopholes where they didn’t need to fulfill their responsibility to their parents. This is what Jesus says in Matt. 15. This is getting to something known as:

-Subsidiarity argues “that social problems should be addressed at the lowest and most local level possible.” (EDT, 675). So if a widow has family, the family should look to care for her.

-Then Paul goes back to the true widow: she’s in need, is all alone, but entrusts herself to God and focuses on praying to Him (petitions is another form of prayer). Hold on to this role that they’re focusing on, because I want to talk about it again in vs. 9. 

-In contrast to a widow who focuses on prayer is someone who is self-indulgent. Some translations emphasize a sexual nature of this, but the primary focus of the word is on material excess, flaunting her wealth. This leads to her looking like she’s spiritually alive (like all these godly widows) but spiritually she’s dead!

-We’ve seen “above reproach” in relation to church leaders previously, so hold on to that thought until vs. 9 too!

-Really briefly, Paul explicitly gives us the idea of subsidiarity here: if someone doesn’t care for their nuclear family, they are worse than an unbeliever. I would argue that what Paul is including here is the new family that we all have – the church family that comes about under God the Father. Think of what Jesus said in Luke 8.

-Paul is saying that the faith that saves us must be a faith that changes how we live. We’re called to work to provide for the needs of our church family, otherwise we’re even worse than those who aren’t following after Jesus!

-An implication of this in our lives is that Christians should work to be the best employees they can possibly be! And they should look to extend that blessing to others! Work hard, live a faithful life, be a faithful witness to God’s plan to reconcile the world to Himself. 

• In Your Church Family (9-15)

-This is the verse we’ve been building up to! And the reason I said to wait is because some people argue that this was an official role in the church: the widows who devoted their time and energy to praying for the church, thus were compensated by the church. This is the minority position (meaning less people believe this to be the case). Most people believe that this was merely a list of women who were widows who qualified for church assistance, committing to remain widows and care for others (12), but not referring to an additional office to elders and deacons.

-But Paul’s expectations sound similar to church offices, don’t they? Age limit, faithful in her marriage, and faithful in good works. 60 would be past the age of being able to work and provide for herself. The good works listed are interesting:

-Brought up children: not only has she been a faithful wife (assuming she was married) if she had children, she was faithful in raising them. It doesn’t say she must have children, but the normal ordering is marriage to children (infertility)

-Shown hospitality: she was willing to share with others out of her abundance.

-Washed: just as Jesus did on the night He died, this designates that the widow is someone who was willing to be a faithful servant to the church

-helped the afflicted: helps the marginalized, even more marginalized than she was!

-devoted to good work: intentionally looking for ways and opportunities to be a blessing to everyone she comes into contact with.

-In contrast with this, Paul goes back to those who should not be put on this list: younger women who have become widows because they’ll want to re-marry. And the desire for marriage is a good thing! But if they had promised to focus their attention and energies on the church, and then renounce that promise to pursue marriage they’ll be forced to go back on their word to focus their energies on praying for the church.

-And those who are younger have too much energy! He says they’re idle, wasting the days away. AND they’re gossips and busybodies, women who are spreading stories around to places they shouldn’t be, stirring up division in the church.

-And friends, this isn’t just an issue for women! This is just as true of the rest of us! Anytime you’re tempted to complain about someone else when they’re not in the room you’re turning to gossip. The Bible commands us to not do that, but it says if we have a problem with someone, we’re required to go to them.

-And the reason for this, Paul says, is for our witness to the world. We look to be faithful in our homes because our homes are outposts of God’s kingdom. Our families are supposed to represent a new way of living where we live as if Jesus is actually the King (because He is!). Friends, your Christian witness starts with the way you treat your family, both your nuclear family and your church family!

-And the church is called to actually care for widows who have legitimate need. What does that look like? That’s where I’m not completely sure! I asked a pastor/friend about this yesterday, and he said they have a list that the Deacons hold on to so that if a widow asks for help the church bends over backwards to come alongside and help. That sounds like a reasonable application point from this text to me! But we haven’t done that before, which is something for us to pray for together! We haven’t even had Deacons in the past, so add widow care to the list of things we need to do! But I’ll end with some things for us to think and pray about as a church family.

-First: do you honor your mother and father? Honoring doesn’t mean just going along with whatever they want, especially if there’s painful things you need to work through. At the minimum, even if the relationship is strained or hurtful, you can pray!

-Second: do you honor your church family? Are you willing to prioritize your siblings and parents in the church, or do you try to just sneak in and out as fast as you can?

-Third: how do you show that honor? What does it look like for you to show honor, and would others in the church see that?

-One of the most difficult things about the church is that it’s full of sinners. On top of that, if you were to find a church that was absolutely perfect, the moment you walked in the door you would corrupt the whole thing. 

-If you didn’t know, my dad was a pastor, which means I literally grew up in the church! And some of my biggest wounds from growing up were connected to church. I remember a moment where a couple other guys and I learned the word “pathetic,” so we took turns making ridiculous faces and calling each other pathetic until it got to 1 of the guys (the last one). As soon as we said he looked pathetic he started crying and ran to his mom (we were in middle school, so it was weird), his mom immediately came running over to us and started chewing us out, and the other friend and I made this face.

-Today’s text gives us a few descriptions of the church that are supposed to understand how we should live and function in the church.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1052)

1. The Pillar and Foundation (14-16)

-We start with the verse that explains the story behind Paul writing this letter! This is supposed to be the warm-up song for Paul, he’s planning to visit Timothy and the church in Ephesus, but in preparation for that visit he’s sent this letter, covering how the church should organize themselves, and how the people in the church should live.

-So how should people conduct themselves in God’s household? Let’s think through some of the issues people may have that would make them start to question whether or not we should even engage the church:

-Church hurt: what do you do after someone that you trusted in the church hurts you, or even worse if someone in the leadership of a church hurts you? Friends, there have been FAR too many stories of abuse of power in the church over the last decade. And then throw in that at times people in churches can feel like they’re even more mean than people who aren’t! That’s a real issue! And at the same time, let me caution labeling things as “church hurt” because often it’s A church that hurts you, not the whole church.

-Disillusionment: what about someone who grew up in the church, seemed to bear fruit in their lives, but ends up just drifting away over time? Someone who is glad that church “works” for you, but they found it lacking. Once again, how many churches has this person tried?

-Betrayal: this connects to church hurt, but because there’s a different level of relationship that you go to with another Christian, betrayal in the church cuts even deeper than outside the church because it’s people that you think would know better than to be mean, right? One of my favorite verses from Paul gets to this idea in Phil. 4:2, and I’ve been saving this passage for today! Remember that Philippians was written to an entire church, and was read out loud to the church (just like we do each week). That means Euodia and Syntyche were sitting out in the pews when this was read! The whole church knew what was going on, can you imagine how awkward that would have been? And notice that these are Christians, he says they’ve contended for the gospel together, but something’s going on where they can’t get along. Friends, dysfunction in the church is the norm. It’s a bunch of sinful people who realize they need a Savior who gather together every week. You’re going to get hurt and betrayed. 

-On the other side, some people turn the church into a social club: nothing more than likeminded people gathering together without any need for the Bible. Far too many churches don’t realize that they stopped actually being a church decades ago and have just become gathering without any transformation taking place where there’s a refusal to change or grow to try reaching a new era. Like one of the things that’s been shocking to me is how many pastors I talk to who don’t keep reading after seminary!

-I would argue that all of these issues connect back to what we read previously in this chapter – if we take seriously the character of our leaders, it protects the church from a host of issues. If we actually take the Bible seriously and view it as the ultimate authority in our lives and in our practices, it will protect us from a world of hurt! The other piece that connects to this as being incredibly important is meaningful membership! Membership is the means by which our church remains accountable, it’s the way we commit to love each other, and the means God uses to continue passing down the faith to new generations, at least in our congregational polity (if you don’t know what that is, come to the new class Micah and I are teaching starting Nov. 9).

-Paul uses multiple phrases or words to describe the church in this section. What comes to mind when you hear the word “church”? Building, people, outdated, boring, judgmental. Paul doesn’t use any of those words, he starts by referring to the church as God’s:

-Household. This is a word I think we need to recover today! We often think of this as a nuclear family that drives into their house, closes the garage door, and doesn’t acknowledge anyone else around them. But that’s not only what it meant in the 1^st century. 

-A household was a willing association of people pursuing the common goal of the flourishing of each other. It included multiple generations living under 1 roof, some people who weren’t even biologically related, and all worked together for the household the function. You could also think of this as a small family business. And just like a household has various roles (father, mother, children), the church has various roles to be filled! But I think it gets to something that we’ve missed in our culture: we’re supposed to be so involved in each other’s lives, that it’s like we live in the same house. Is there anyone that would know you that well? Go back and listen to my first sermon on this book for some ideas about what that means! 

-But Paul goes on, not only is it a household, it’s also: church of the living God

-The word for church refers to a meeting/assembly, the regular gathering of God’s people. It also is a compound word that means the called-out ones. But there’s more: it’s the gathering, the called-out people of the living God.

-This is intentionally contrasting the buildings of the dead gods (like Artemis in Ephesus!), hold on that thought!

-The last description of the church is: pillar and foundation of the truth. This may have been referring to one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world that was in Ephesus: the temple to Artemis. This is a replication of it, but in the original, those pillars were each about 60 ft. high, and the temple was about as big as a soccer field. And this ancient wonder has nothing on the wonder of the church!

-Pillar: lifts high the truth, foundation: supports the truth. And this should cause you to ask the question: what about the Bible? Isn’t the Bible our pillar and foundation of the truth?

-I love the way John Stott summarizes it. The ultimate source of truth is the Bible! But friends, the church is supposed to be the place where truth is both modeled and proclaimed! In Titus, Paul actually says we’re supposed to adorn the teaching of gospel with our good works. So the way we live is supposed to show the world truth.

-What is that truth that we’re supposed to proclaim? A specific confession, that Heb. 4:14 tells us is centered on Jesus. But what’s interesting is it doesn’t say to hold onto Jesus, it says to hold fast to our confession.

-Gospel message- a subversive fulfilment of all the stories of the world. We are supernatural creatures, we have a desire to find and define our place in the world, but all those stories are just a story, unless they connect to the 1 true story. Paul seems to continue his contrast with the cult dedicated to Artemis in Ephesus, but unlike that cult, Jesus is the true one who’s great. He subverts their cult by calling a mystery great, but then fulfills their desires for the worship of a god by pointing them to Jesus.

-Lots of debate around these 6 lines. It’s clear they’re intentionally connected, the question is how and why are they connected?

-Some say 3 pairs of 2, others say 2 pairs of 3, others say it’s correspondence. What makes most sense to me is the pairs of 2 and the correspondence, comparing Christ’s earthly work to the spiritual realities of that work. So he was manifested earthly, taken up spiritually, vindicated, just like the world believes spiritually, angels spiritually see and that message is sent to the world.

-Everyone agrees that this was a liturgical element used by the early church to confess truths about Jesus. Friends, the church has been using phrases like this forever to help believers confess and remember truths about who Jesus is. That’s why we recite a confession together after communion, that’s why we will use things like catechisms or creeds, because that’s how the church has held on to the truth through the centuries.

-And remember that Paul has just compared the spiritual realities of what Jesus did with the earthly realities, now he goes on to talk more about the spiritual realities:

• The Spirit vs. the spirits (4:1-3)

-Not all spiritual activity is good! There’s a difference between the Spirit of God and the deceitful, lying spirits. There’s been an increase in interest in spiritual things over the past few years (mostly because the belief in naturalism (that this world is all there is) has just fallen flat for so many people, one of the best questions you can ask people who are trying to live for themselves is: how is that working for you?) A fascinating book that traces this thinking is ‘Strange Rites’, which early in the book says is the story “of how more and more Americans…envision themselves as creators of their own bespoke religions, mixing and matching spiritual and aesthetic and experiential and philosophical traditions”

-“Later times” starts now. The church has been in “the last days” since Jesus ascended into heaven 2,000 years ago. The best way to think about the time period we live in is the already and the not yet. Christ has already come and defeated Satan, sin, and death, but we do not yet see the full implications of that reality. We will someday!

-We can get the appearance that everything is going smoothly at this church from reading this letter. They’ve got their church leadership figured out, they were planted by Paul, but this section reminds us that the church has always had conflict and tension! Because we still deal with the realities of sin.

-Depart from the faith: what do you do when people abandon the faith they once believed in and proclaimed? This text should comfort us! People will leave their faith. I think of pastors that I looked up to when I was growing up, or friends that I had who no longer follow after Jesus, and it breaks my heart! But I know that’s reality, and I know we’re at war: the world, the flesh, and the devil.

-Deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons: just because someone claims to be speaking on behalf of God doesn’t mean they are! 

-This is why it’s so important to be saturated in God’s Word. I’ve talked to a number of people who have asked me questions about something they read/heard that just felt off, and they were able to tell because they’ve spent enough time in the Word! 

-Hypocrisy of liars is someone who isn’t following the truth, someone who knows the right thing to do but refuses to do it. He also says their consciences are seared, they can no longer feel that what they’re doing is wrong, they just go along with the flow.

-Paul talks about this in more detail in Rom. 1. Notice how he describes their connection to the truth: suppress it! How does that align with Paul’s description of the church? Remember last week I shared the example Edwards gave on the conscience being like a sundial, it only works when it’s used under the correct light. If we aren’t holding fast to the truth, if we’re just chasing after our own desires our lives will be completely out of whack.

-I just read a Recent study this week that traced the decline of college students claiming to be transgender, which peaked at about 7% in 2023 and has dropped almost in half since then. How much of this is because of a denial of the truth, of continually pushing against what God has revealed? So instead of having consciences continually aligned the Truth, people continue chasing whatever high they’re feeling in the moment. And not just with gender, you could say the same thing about food, or possessions, or money, or experiences, if it’s not something that’s done with thanksgiving to God, it will sear our conscience.

-But in contrast to suppressing the truth, or having a seared conscience, what about when people go too far the other way and add to what God has demanded? That was another issue Timothy faced! Forbidding marriage and demanding that others abstain from food.

-And I’ll be honest, this way of living is tempting! It’s easier to add more boundaries to protect us from even getting close to crossing the line. But that becomes a problem when we demand others live the same way we do. When I grew up, Christians weren’t supposed to celebrate Halloween. So we (and most of my friends) literally hid in our house! We’d shut lights off, hide in the basement, close all the blinds, and then if anyone knocked we’d just wait for them to realize we weren’t coming. What a missed opportunity! Instead, we as Christians have nothing to fear because we have Christ living in us, we should look for ways that we can redeem what the world offers us, shining as lights in the darkness. 

-What legalism does is try to deal with all the externals without addressing the real issue: sin inside. There was an article that was written shortly after the news came out about Josh Duggar molesting multiple girls (and since then it’s gotten even worse and he’s now in prison). And think about what the Duggars projected: no tv, no dating without chaperones, modesty at all times. But what gets missed in this is sin isn’t something out there, sin isn’t something you can hide away from like my family grew up hiding in the basement during Halloween, sin is something in here, something that we need to be delivered from! And I get the impulse to want to protect! I have 5 children that are various stages of development, we try hard to make sure they don’t see or hear things they shouldn’t, but you know what: they’re all sinners! They are going to do terrible things, which is why we need to continue pointing them to Jesus.

Which is where Paul goes next:

• Thanksgiving (4:4-5)

-Everything created by God is good. What did God create? Everything – except sin. Sin cannot be redeemed. But the things God has given to us (food, drink, friends, even resources and possessions) are given as gifts to be enjoyed.

-This helps us avoid both the excess of something and the avoidance of something. I heard a retired pastor preach at a church I was at onetime, and he referenced a movie, and then apologized because he said he knew he wasn’t supposed to watch movies. 

-Believe it or not, God isn’t a killjoy who wants us walking around with frowns and grumpy all the time, never having any fun. He wants good for us, and He’s given us the world to enjoy! Like have you ever just sat and watched a sunset? It’s gorgeous, and it’s gorgeous because God likes beautiful things! Have you ever eaten a delicious meal? God didn’t need to make food taste good, we could have gotten our nutrition from the sun like a plant, but God gave us taste buds and a world full of food for us to enjoy, to receive it with thanksgiving.

-All these gifts are for our good, and I would argue that this means nothing is outside of the realm of redemption for Christians, assuming it’s not inherently sinful. This verse says things are sanctified, that means they’re made holy, through the Word and prayer. We’ve talked about food and movies, but we could extend that to something like yoga (stretching), reading Harry Potter, politics, school choices, marriage.

-What makes Christians unique is that we’re able to enjoy all these gifts without worshipping them, that is they don’t control us. Similarly, in the church we understand that people are going to have different boundaries or areas where they’ve been convicted of something that maybe we haven’t, things that are in the Christian liberty area. For example: alcohol. Is it a sin to drink alcohol? No, not by itself. But if you’re prone to addiction or you can’t drink in moderation, then don’t drink! And your church family should be able to help you with that. Or what about money? Believe it or not, we don’t all make the same amount of money! Not only that, but I’m also guessing that we don’t spend our money the same way! Like I know people who place a high priority on buying organic food. Meanwhile, we shop at Aldi and only get organic if it’s the only option! But we do drop some good money on coffee! That’s something that’s important for us, and as Paul says here, God says it’s good, and it’s made holy by the word of God and prayer! So drink more coffee!

-Friends, let’s hold fast the truths of the gospel! The truth of what Jesus did in our lives, because that will protect us from chasing after the wrong spirits and help us to receive all of God’s gifts as good, and even better this gives us an outline of what we can pursue together! We don’t have to be afraid of the world, we instead receive God’s gifts with thanksgiving, and even though we’re all very different people, we can live together in one church sacrificially loving and caring for others who may not act exactly like us. Friends, welcome to the church! When you’re sinned against, be quick to forgive. And when you sin against someone else, be even quicker to apologize! It takes all of us dying to our preferences to allow us to live as the church.