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(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
invite you to one of our weekend services. Visit us online at saddleback.

com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
- Hi, this is Pastor Tom.

Welcome to day two of our look through First Timothy chapter five. And looking
at verses three to eight today, we're going to be talking about relationships. A
lot of this chapter is about relationships to each other in the body of Christ.

You want to make a bad relationship better or a good one great? Step one is found
in these verses. Step one is you have to make it the top priority.

Relationships work when we make them, we put them in their proper place. And
their proper place is the top priority. Let me read for you verses three to
seven, and then we'll take a look at what they have to say to us about
relationships.

Beginning in verse three, give proper recognition to those widows who are really
in need. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first
of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family. And
so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

The widow who is really in need and left all alone puts her hope in God and
continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. But the widow who lives
for pleasure is dead even while she lives. Give the people these instructions
too, so that no one may be open to blame.

If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate
family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Well, those
verses, verses three to seven, there's some strong words about the way that we
serve each other and love each other and our families. There's also some words
about widows.

We're going to read a lot about widows in the church these next couple of days. Why
is this so important? Why is Paul writing to Timothy about widows?

Because in that day, widows were taken care of by the church. Remember, this is
a society where women could not get a job. So if they were widowed, they had no
way to get food to eat.

They would starve unless someone took care of them. Someone took them in. If no
one else was there to take them in for years and years, it had been the
synagogue that had taken these widows in.

Now that there is this new church, it is the church that is taking these widows
in to make sure that they are cared for. And the Bible here talks about these
older widows who would serve the church. Now, it's interesting.

The Bible also talks about some widows in verse six who live only for pleasure.
There were some widows, just human nature. There's always going to be some.

There were some who just lived for themselves. They didn't live to serve the
church. They were using even the fact that they were widows to just serve
themselves and focus on themselves.

But that's not the majority that Paul focuses on here with Timothy. This idea of
being dead even while she lives is talking about spiritual death. It's talking
about missing out on the life of God by chasing after the wrong things.

But the focus in these verses, and in the verses we're going to look at the next
few days, is on widows who have hearts to serve, on widows who have hearts to
make a difference. And if there's no one else to take care of that widow, the
church is to make sure that she is taken care of. But the church had a question.

What if there was someone else to take care of that widow? What if their family
was still around? Was it still the church's responsibility, or is it the
family's responsibility?

Well, the answer from God is extremely, extremely clear in these verses. It
should be the family. And focus on that phrase in verse four.

They should first, if there's a family, if there's children or grandchildren,
they should learn first of all, first of all, to put their religion into
practice by caring for their own family. First of all, that's the priority word.
You make it the top priority, the kind of priority that Jesus talked about.

When Jesus talked about relationships, he was asked one time, what are the most
important commandments? And Jesus said, the most important command is this. Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength.

And the second is right there with it. Love your neighbor as yourself. He talked
about our relationship with God and our relationship with each other as the most
important commandments.

You have to make it the top priority. And these verses, Paul writes about our
family and the way that we love our family. And he says, without a shadow of a
doubt, that to serve the world and to ignore your own family is the exact
opposite of the priority and the plan of God in your life.

Now, let me just take that a step further. Because if you take a close look at
the New Testament, you find out that also to hide from the needs of the world in
your family is also the exact opposite of the plan and the priority of God. So
to serve the world and ignore your family is the exact opposite of the priority
and plan of God.

But to hide from the needs of the world within your family is the exact opposite
of the priority and plan of God. First, you love your own family. Well, first
means there's a second.

First means that there's something else I need to be doing because something
second is there. And in this case, it's taking care of the needs of a hurting
world, hurting people. Don't use hurting people, Paul is saying.

Don't use hurting people as an excuse for not taking care of your family. And
don't use your family as an excuse for not taking care of hurting people. We can
do both.

God's called us to do both. In fact, both strengthen each other. As I love my
family, it helps me to help hurting people.

And as I, through my family, serve hurting people, it strengthens my family.
Paul here says you should first take care of your family. And he's saying you
have to put it into a place of priority.

Have you noticed that relationships do not slip into a place of higher priority?
You have to make them a priority. Money can slip into a place of priority in
your life very easily.

All of a sudden, it's the most important thing in your life and you don't even
know how it slipped in. Success can slip into a place of highest priority in
your life. You don't even have to think about it, but not relationships.

You have to choose to make relationships a priority. And it's a day-to-day
choice. Because with relationships, we tend to take each other for granted.

And what was most important easily becomes less important and sometimes even
slips to a place of no importance. And so Paul, in these practical words from
God's Spirit to our hearts, gives us practical warning to those who use their
faith as an excuse to ignore their family. And he uses some strong words.

In verse 8, he says worse than an unbeliever to do that. What he's saying here
is even those who have no faith in Christ take care of their own family. He's
not talking about whether you have a relationship with God or not or going to
heaven or hell in these verses.

He's talking about how you treat people. And he's saying even unbelievers treat
their family well and you're worse than an unbeliever if you, as a person who
knows Jesus Christ, aren't treating your family well. Now, let's just be honest
about this.

Let's face it. You may get more fulfillment and strokes from your ministry than
from meeting your family's needs. You get a lot more applause there, seemingly.

But it's not what God put you on this planet for. And in the end, you're going to
miss out on the greatest fulfillment in life in not doing what only you can do.
Only you can be the parent to your kids.

Only you can be the child to your parents. Only you can be the spouse to your
spouse. I'll never forget hearing Billy Graham interviewed by David Frost, the
famous interviewer years ago.

And Frost asked him, "Do you have any regrets about your wonderful life of
ministry? " And Billy Graham said, "I regret that I wasn't the kind of dad I
wanted to be. " He said, "My kids wouldn't say this.

My wife wouldn't say this. But I let Ruth raise my kids in the early years. And
I miss seeing them grow up.

And I will always regret missing that. " Is there something in your life that
you would regret with your family? Changing the world and yet regrets with
mistime with family.

If you do not make it a priority, it won't become a priority. Now, you can't do
it all. You can't do all the things that you want to do.

You're just one human being, but you can do both. You can serve your family and
serve the world. Oh, you may not be able to be flying all over the world all the
time, never at home and doing that.

If you have a family, you gotta be at home. But you can serve together in your
family. You can do both.

Serve the world. And serve your family. But you have to make it a priority.

And things move up the priority list when you do three things. When I plan 'em,
when I schedule them, and when I do them. So I have to plan time with my family.

I have to then schedule that time that I planned with my family. And then I have
to do the schedule that I planned to do with my family. That's just the way that
it happens.

You schedule at work, you plan at work, you need to plan and schedule with your
family. You have to do it. You make an appointment to do something fun with your
kids or to be on a date with your spouse, then you have to do it.

Listen, it is a lot easier to break an appointment with your kids than with your
best client. But the truth of the matter is that client won't remember your
name, sometimes within a few months. And your kids, they might remember that
broken appointment for the rest of their lives.

That's how important it is to them. It all starts with planning. What could you
do right now?

What's in your heart? What's happening in your mind even as we talk about this?
Where you could plan to make a bad relationship better or a good relationship
great in your family.

What could you do to make a difference? Jesus, as we talk to you today, we ask
you to lead us and guide us. If there's a place where we would have regrets with
our family, help us to be honest about that before you now.

And as we see that, to begin to plan and schedule and do different things so
that relationships, that relationship becomes a higher priority in our lives. If
there's a place where we're hiding from the needs of our family or the hurts in
our family through ministry, saying we're serving the church, but we're really
running from our family, God help us to be honest about that. And as much as it
hurts, as difficult as it is, help us to have the strength to love our family.

And Lord, for many of us, if there's just a simple thing we need to do this
week, some way we need to express love. We're doing pretty well. We've been
doing some good things with our kids or with our spouse, but maybe it's been a
while since we talked.

Maybe it's been a while since we connected. Lord, show us how, show us what to
do and then help us to do that plan that you put into our hearts. We ask Jesus
that you would strengthen us to do this in your name, amen.

Join us tomorrow, we're going to continue to talk about the importance of
relationships in God's church.