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0:48
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
0:55
Our guys, welcome back to the forging table, the mission of Undaunted Life is equipping
0:58
men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:03
At the forging table, you'll see a group of regular guys forging spiritual resilience
1:06
by digging into God's word, and we're welcoming all of you to come along on that journey with
1:10
us.
1:11
That's Matt, that's Zach, that's Derek.
1:12
Guys, we're digging into first Timothy five.
1:14
And as with everything in this letter, there is literally like, sorry, we can't get our
1:18
timer going.
1:19
Here we go.
1:20
Can we do it?
1:21
How many college degrees did it take for us to make that?
1:22
Or four college degrees total to get the timer work?
1:25
Two each.
1:26
All right, here we go.
1:27
So, so the thing with with verse Timothy five, but also with the rest of first Timothy,
1:30
I guess you could extrapolate it out to all of Paul's writings.
1:33
Is it so dense?
1:34
And there's so many things and you we always have to remember that later was when they
1:38
broke things up into chapters, broke things up into section headers and you know, gave
1:41
them all these things.
1:42
But this is just a letter to to from Timothy to his pupil or from Paul to his pupil, Timothy.
1:49
And there's so much packed in even from the very, very beginning here.
1:52
And as we were talking about off air before we got hopped into this, like where else do
1:56
you see like standards for what actually makes a widow that we should help?
2:01
And I think that that's a very interesting way to start.
2:04
But there's almost an admonishment here before we get to verse eight, because I do want to
2:06
kind of camp out on verse eight, but in the first seven verses are really from verse three
2:11
to seven, you see basically like, Hey, if you're a widow that has children or grandchildren,
2:17
like you should let them show their godliness by caring for those people.
2:23
And so we live in a culture, obviously that we default to when something goes wrong, we
2:26
want the government to fix it.
2:28
But then there's also within the church, like when something goes wrong, we want the church
2:30
automatically fix it.
2:32
But there are times in the Bible where there are examples to where it's like the primary
2:37
care for people is within the context of a family.
2:41
And so when you talk about even as father as a father, as we all are, your primary catechism
2:48
for your kids is not their Sunday school class.
2:50
It's not their youth group.
2:51
It's not their retreat.
2:52
It's not their their camp.
2:54
It's your household.
2:55
It's a place where they spend the majority of their time and that's where they should
2:58
be being ministered to way more often than just a youth pastor or somebody else.
3:04
And that is the end of the show because everyone just looked at me with a blank stare.
3:07
So that means I'm the smartest person alive or nobody agrees.
3:10
So somebody.
3:11
I agree with that.
3:12
I think I think there's some some things that Paul's saying, like obviously the church,
3:17
the church should be there to help people that need help.
3:20
But I think it's not a free for all.
3:22
And I think you see that throughout this this chapter is where he's he's putting some parameters
3:26
on what the church should look at to you can't just say, I need help.
3:31
So we're going to just help whoever they're like, there's some there's some caveats there.
3:36
There's some some potential knows coming out of the church.
3:40
And it's okay to say no, exactly.
3:42
It's okay to say no.
3:43
And it's okay to say no from the perspective of if Paul was charging Timothy in these letters
3:50
specifically on, you know, charging him, giving him instruction and direction on the church
3:55
and Ephesus.
3:56
Hey, this is how you steward that church and Ephesus, which means including stewarding
4:01
the finances and who you serve and don't serve.
4:05
And I believe from from what I've read about context in this is that there were older.
4:11
There were younger widows in the church that were verse six, self-indulgent, right?
4:18
The way that they dressed, the way that they acted, the way that they talked, the way that
4:21
they projected themselves into leadership perspectives.
4:23
So he was referencing that.
4:25
And to your point, Kyle, I think when it comes to Paul's letters, they're so dense.
4:31
And sometimes there is this, is he talking generally to all believers or is he talking
4:38
specifically to them at that time, exactly, at that church, at that time, in that location?
4:42
Well, how the let's let's not leave that point too quick, Eric, like, what do y'all think
4:47
about that?
4:48
Because I tell people all the time, I was like, if you're new to the Bible, don't read
4:51
the Bible as if everything is the same, because inside of that document, there is history,
4:55
there's lamentations, there's poetry, there's wisdom writing, there's prophecy, there's
5:00
whatever category revelation would be, would that just be apocalyptic literature or something
5:03
like that?
5:04
Same thing within these letters is like, okay, is this an admonishment to a particular group
5:08
at a particular time in history?
5:10
Or is this how we're supposed to be operating currently in Edmond, Oklahoma in 2023?
5:13
I think it's both.
5:14
I think he's speaking to a specific problem of widows or people who are claiming to be
5:19
widows, who the church is called to serve and bring under Christ's protection, like we
5:26
are a refuge, but there are people who are obviously taking advantage of that.
5:31
You know, kind of like you see, like I'm a Christian, so you should buy from me because
5:35
I'm a Christian business owner, and I'm using that as a way to sell my goods.
5:39
I think Paul here's also saying like, there are people who don't actually need help, they
5:45
have financial resources, they have means, but they're trying to come into the church
5:51
to take advantage of that, and you should have some discernment to be able to tell the
5:55
difference, or at least ask the right questions to figure it out.
5:59
Okay, so Zach, I'll pitch it to you.
6:03
We learned a couple episodes back.
6:04
You're a new-ish believer.
6:05
I don't know when you cross that line from a new to substantial, but new believer.
6:11
What do you think to Kyle's question?
6:12
How do you interpret?
6:13
How do you know?
6:14
How are you reading or interpreting what goes to all believers, what goes specifically
6:19
to these people at that time in this location?
6:23
I think as I read this, a couple of things stand out.
6:25
The first one is just going back to the very beginning of chapter five.
6:28
For me, this is actually pretty impactful when I first read it a couple of years ago,
6:32
which is kind of how to behave and how to perceive those around you that are in different
6:36
echelons.
6:37
So do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as
6:42
brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters in all purity.
6:47
It actually did a lot for me.
6:49
Walking around a church organization and a community to understand how should I be
6:53
interacting with you?
6:54
You know, you want to, and especially as he's talking with Timothy about that weird line
6:58
between giving deference to people that are older than you while leading them, right?
7:03
There's a way that you need to be able to do that.
7:04
So I guess the way that I think about it is I think that you can pull things out.
7:09
They're going to be useful to you personally that you can understand that are written for
7:12
somebody else also so that you could understand how they're supposed to be behaving and you
7:16
can sort of slot in the right way.
7:19
So I guess I kind of take it at face value initially would be my, my thought, which is
7:24
incredibly helpful.
7:25
And the realization just hit me right now as you were talking that when I hear a new believer,
7:31
I think new relationship with Christ.
7:34
I don't think somebody who then is injected into church culture because church culture
7:40
is a real thing that inside the church walls, it's a, I mean, it's frankly a weird culture
7:47
of, well, bless you, brother, a name in this, you know, where you would never say the same
7:51
things outside the church.
7:52
Right.
7:53
Yeah.
7:54
Right.
7:55
I mean, it's, so, so Zach, you actually said something, you said face value.
7:57
Okay.
7:58
So I kind of keyed into that whenever you were speaking just now.
8:01
So a child, when you know you hear about child like faith and those types of things, like
8:06
a child sees things at face value.
8:07
That doesn't mean they're not creative.
8:08
It doesn't mean they don't use their imaginations, but it's like, they see things in the exact
8:12
moment.
8:13
That's why that's why they respond as if their entire world is melting down because their
8:16
brother took their block.
8:17
You know what I mean?
8:18
Like it's, it's just face value, what's happening to them.
8:20
But when you've been in the church, whatever the hell that means for decades, and you've
8:25
been a part of church culture and denominational culture, and you've done all these different
8:30
camps and studies and blah, blah, blah.
8:32
You have all these lenses through which you view things and people bring their own theology
8:37
and lived experience to use a frickin overused bull crap term to whatever they're reading
8:42
in the Bible.
8:43
Whereas as a new believer, you're like, oh, it just says what it says guys.
8:47
Whereas it's like, well, this guy's been in the church crest for a long time.
8:49
This guy was Catholic.
8:50
Now it's Protestant.
8:51
This guy used to be Muslim.
8:52
Then he was atheist.
8:53
Now he's in how he goes to a Methodist or like everyone kind of brings their lens to it.
8:57
Whereas you just said, no, face value.
8:59
Like read it at face value.
9:00
Like imagine trying to go through mental gymnastics with verse one and two.
9:04
And no, it's like, hey, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would
9:08
a father, even if you don't like your dad, you know what that means.
9:13
Like, and we try to extrapolate it out and make it this big philosophical nonsense thing.
9:16
It's like, no, just just read it.
9:18
Like, I don't even know if you notice that you said that, but do you feel like in your
9:21
first couple of years of being a Christian, like you've just been way more pragmatic about
9:25
no, it just, it says what it says, like, and I'm not gonna pretend I'm smarter than what
9:28
it says.
9:29
Yeah, that's key for me.
9:30
I spent an awful lot of time actually reading in depth, like I mentioned, all of these different
9:34
perspectives about this and going into the depth and blah, blah, blah.
9:38
But the reality is if you're trying to bring this into your life in a way that's meaningful
9:42
and you're living it, I think you need to understand what it means.
9:45
I go back to like a Billy Graham as an example, again, I mean, I think he could go as deep
9:48
as you wanted, but what he brought was this.
9:52
It's very evident what it's trying to say.
9:54
And if you can actually do it, it's gonna show in your life and that's gonna be the most
9:58
important thing.
9:59
Matt, you look like you went to hop in on that just with the face value stuff, 'cause
10:03
I know I'll just even tee you up a little bit.
10:05
One of the reasons, as I mentioned, I think one of our early episodes is you're a guy
10:11
that likes to marinate on things, but then you will give feedback, but you kind of have
10:15
a light touch in the things that you say back to people.
10:19
And so, but you seem to, when you describe scripture, as you and I've talked about it
10:23
off air and even on here, like you have a very, like a matter of fact way of saying,
10:27
well, like, this is what it says.
10:29
And so it's like, I understand we just talked about this thing.
10:31
We talked in a circle for 10 or 15 minutes, but this is just kind of what it says.
10:34
It seems like you're a face value guy too.
10:36
I am, but I think, I think you can take stuff at face value, and like verse one, I think
10:41
that's pretty cut and dry.
10:43
But I think, I think God also gives us wisdom and discernment to say, to look at, to look
10:48
at things where Paul is instructing the church and how it should act, how it should choose
10:53
elders and deacons, how it should deal with widows.
10:58
Like he, he's not specifically addressing just some got some random guy off the street
11:02
who comes in and is putting his hands in the offering bucket, right?
11:06
But like, I think, I think that God gives us wisdom and discernment to say, okay, this
11:11
is a principle that we can use to discern other things within the church.
11:18
And so like, yeah, verse one and two, I think that's pretty cut and dry.
11:22
When we get into the widows, I think the church has lots of people that come in that try to
11:28
take advantage of it, and you speak, that you speak churchees and you say all the right
11:33
things.
11:35
And I think if we're to be good stewards of what the church has and what Paul is calling
11:41
Timothy to do, I think some discernment is necessary to divide the people who are coming
11:48
to take advantage and the people who actually need things.
11:51
And so like, it all comes down to asking questions because if a widow comes in the church
11:54
and says, hey, I'm a widow, I need help.
11:56
Okay.
11:57
Tell me about your family.
11:58
Tell me your story.
11:59
Tell me your story, right?
12:00
Tell me, like, do you have kids, like, I'm all alone.
12:04
I have nobody is way different than I have three grown children.
12:07
Well, where are they?
12:09
You know, I'm like, so, and that, I think that's what he's speaking to here.
12:12
Like, if I were to just go into a church, I think the same principle would apply.
12:16
Well, do you have family that can take care of you should be a question that should be
12:20
asked.
12:21
I'm not a widow just asking for help.
12:24
I think the church would be, I think the church would be doing God's body a disservice by
12:33
just saying, yeah, whatever, whatever, just anything else bets are off.
12:37
Anybody can come in and get, get whatever they need.
12:39
Not that we should be looking to turn people away, but clearly the family is the focal
12:45
point of how we're to take care of each other.
12:48
And it should come from the family first because that's, that's how God ordained it, right?
12:53
It is the family.
12:54
We certainly have that backwards now.
12:56
I mean, agreed.
12:58
When even, I think it looks different because obviously in that culture, it was, you know,
13:03
you, you all live together, like you had multi-generational houses, whereas now, if you have a house
13:08
as multi-generations in it, that's weird.
13:10
That's really strange.
13:11
You're poor.
13:12
Yeah.
13:13
And like people say, in, in, even if you're not, people think, oh, well, you must live
13:16
in the slums.
13:17
Right.
13:18
Yeah, I mean, you just, you know, that's not typically indicative of well off people or
13:23
whatever.
13:24
And again, we live in a community where there are so many old folks homes and so many old
13:28
folks communities.
13:29
And it's kind of one of those things.
13:30
It's like you pay for your responsibility to go away.
13:32
And so it's like you, you have an indebtedness to your parents to care for them because they
13:36
cared for you at the beginning.
13:37
You care for them at the end.
13:38
That's kind of how society has been built upon in terms of, you know, familial interactions.
13:42
But then we get to where we're at now to where it's like, it seems more convenient to do
13:45
it that way.
13:46
It's certainly not hating on, you know, these, these facilities that take really, really
13:50
good care of these, these people, but it does seem a little bit outside.
13:54
It's like it's kind of out of sight out of mind where mom or dad can be taken care of
13:58
somewhere and you don't actually have to do it.
14:00
Like, anyway, I struggle with that because it's like, you know, I get the convenience
14:04
of it.
14:05
And if you have the means, like, why wouldn't you do something like that?
14:07
But it's almost, I don't know, I don't want to say something stupid, but it seems like
14:11
almost dishonorable to a way to your parents that you're not the one directly caring for
14:15
them.
14:16
You're just visiting.
14:17
You're popping in a few times a week to have a conversation and, you know, assuage your
14:20
guilt and then move on with your life.
14:21
Well, Kyle, I think I think it goes back to Zach's face value comment right there, right?
14:26
Because in verse four, it says, if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first
14:31
learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, why
14:36
here's the transition.
14:37
Paul is the king of, of transition and, and I mean, for this is pleasing in the side of
14:43
God.
14:44
I mean, that again, if you're reading it for face value, and it's just cut and dry, it
14:49
is.
14:50
Hey, it pleases God if you take care of your parents and grandparents, if you're able
14:53
to, if you're able to is the key, right?
14:55
Hey, if you take care of your parents or grandparents, please is God.
14:59
Yeah, one thing I was exposed to recently, just total polar opposite is a Muslim guy.
15:06
It's from Bangladesh.
15:08
And their culture is that their families live together in the same homes.
15:12
And as the family grows, they add floors and they actually, there's a payment system and
15:18
you, you, you pay the older person, et cetera.
15:21
And then as people, you know, die, et cetera, then you move up.
15:24
And that's how it works for the entire family and all of the different homes.
15:28
So in other places in the world, things are different.
15:30
And one thing that's, that's interesting about this is it really encourages you to have a,
15:34
it seems like a clean break from your parents as you depart and cleave to your wife and have
15:39
your own household, but still recognizing that you need to have that close relationship.
15:43
So, you know, different cultures, different ideas, but it kind of, it kind of challenged
15:46
me because it's obvious that they value that family piece and that they take care of each
15:51
other.
15:52
And you know, it was, it was convicting to make sure that, you know, we should be doing
15:55
the same.
15:56
Yeah.
15:57
And I don't want to belabor this point too far because we spent a lot of time talking
16:00
about it.
16:01
But I do wonder just to leave it even as a thought experiment for the people listening,
16:04
but also for us, like, what precipitated us as a culture not valuing our elderly?
16:12
Because as Westerners and specifically as Americans, like that's why elder care is such
16:17
big business is because people don't want to do it themselves within their families.
16:21
And for millennia and for generations and generations and generations, people were able
16:26
to take care of themselves without immense wealth, right?
16:29
They were able to have seven kids and no one looked at them like they were crazy because
16:34
they weren't thinking about, well, that's seven times X amount that I planned for college.
16:38
You know, four of them are girls crap.
16:40
That's four weddings.
16:41
You know, that's X amount of dollars or, you know, oh, yeah, that's this many dowries
16:44
or whatever the cultural thing is.
16:46
It's like, where have we gotten to in our most elevated evolved state as 2023 Western Americans
16:53
to where we don't value those people anymore and we also don't value children.
16:56
So leaving that out there in the ether while we get to verse eight, that's nothing to tackle
17:02
there.
17:03
We'll just leave it.
17:04
Fine.
17:05
Let's actually dig it.
17:06
Okay.
17:07
Let's dig into that.
17:08
There's a lot of great stuff here and we're watching the clock.
17:09
I don't have an answer to that.
17:11
And I think it's an important thing to discuss, but I don't know how we got here.
17:15
I don't specifically understand the sociological data as it pertains to what has happened
17:19
in the West from the, you know, 1700 stood out.
17:22
I think there is a lot of layers and variables and things that have contributed to that.
17:29
There's not, I don't think there's a one answer, but I think the devaluing of family, a lot
17:38
of that comes from consumerism.
17:40
And if you look at, if you look at, you know, 150 years ago, people had seven kids, people
17:47
are also making all their own stuff.
17:49
If I had four daughters who were going to get married, my wife was making all four of
17:52
those dresses.
17:54
And now it's, well, I don't have time to do any of that because I'm pursuing my best
18:03
life and I'm pursuing what I deem important.
18:09
And if I don't deem that I have enough time to take care of my parents and I don't, but
18:15
it's just like reading your Bible and find time.
18:18
You can find a way to do it.
18:19
It just might be uncomfortable.
18:21
And again, I say all these things because these are things that I struggle with too.
18:25
Like I'm not, I'm not coming to the table going, right?
18:27
I got it all figured out because like that's something that I have to reconcile to.
18:31
Like my dad's 77 and he still has a job and there's going to be like, there's three of
18:38
us and there's going to be a day where he can't take care of himself anymore.
18:43
And that's, if that's, if he, if he were to come into my house, that would, that would
18:49
just disrupt the entire dynamic of my nuclear family right now.
18:54
But the Bible saying, well, you're, okay, so Matt, I'll add, I'll add to that.
18:59
Okay.
19:00
I'll add to that.
19:01
Um, I believe, and this is my opinion.
19:03
This isn't based on science or some special study.
19:06
I think it's the idol of convenience and the idol of comfort.
19:10
And I think that that goes a couple ways, right?
19:12
Like if Kyle, to your point, if you have seven kids in the year in the 1800s, you also didn't
19:17
have a retirement date in 401(k) to say, Hey, I understand that when I turn this age, I'm
19:21
going to go into complete comfort and all I'm going to do all day is play golf and do this.
19:25
Like, no, there is a, I'm going to work hard until I can't work hard.
19:30
And then I've got family around to help take care of me and maybe work the forum or whatever
19:34
it is, right?
19:35
Because, um, I'm not putting myself or my life on the idol of convenience.
19:40
Hey, the average cost of a kid is this.
19:43
And so I think we can afford this many kids.
19:44
And outside of that, even though children are arrows and a quiver and great as a man who
19:49
has many children to sit at his table in his elderly days, yeah, we wouldn't be able to
19:54
take his great vacations or even take a vacation.
19:56
And that sounds really good.
19:57
So I'm going to conveniently not have more kids so that I can have a better life, a better
20:03
quality of life or lifestyle.
20:05
It's the idol of convenience and comfort.
20:07
And John Piper calls it the tragedy of self comfort and what do I get out of it?
20:15
His famous sermon seashells that he gave back in 2000, I think where he talks about the
20:20
tragedy, the couple that that saved and saved and saved so they could go live in some small
20:25
villa in Florida and go pick up seashells and compared that to like a missionary family
20:31
who gave up everything to go to Africa to evangelize and they died tragically or what
20:37
we would consider tragically.
20:39
But if you compare the two, there's only one tragedy and that's a couple that saved and
20:44
saved for retirement so they could go be by themselves on the beach picking up seashells.
20:48
And to your point, I know, Zach, you're jumping in here, but one real quick is I also don't
20:52
want to disqualify myself from that because to your point, I'm not exempt from that.
20:59
You know, I mean, the draw of culture is on me as well towards convenience and comfort.
21:06
I struggle, I wrestle, I have to consciously humble myself or make decisions or pray through
21:12
and have conversations with God to say, Hey, look, this pile of cash in the bank makes
21:16
me feel comfortable, but I know you're calling me over here.
21:20
So I have to consciously trade what you're calling me to do for the comfort or the false
21:26
sense of security of a number in a bank account, right?
21:30
That's not I'm not exempt from that.
21:32
And I want to put my name in the hat to say I also struggle with those things.
21:36
Zach, yeah, you said, I'm not sure if we could pinpoint one thing.
21:39
I think a lot of people would probably point towards industrial revolution.
21:42
Right.
21:43
Fact that the families blew up and dad, you know, dad went to work and then he had to
21:45
show his value and all that sort of thing.
21:48
And then eventually I think the elder generations from a work perspective were not able to provide
21:52
the value.
21:53
And so there was some sort of decline in the opinion about that.
21:56
And I think we have to fight back against that.
21:58
I know a lot of people in my world that work for 40 years and then when that's done, they've
22:03
self identified their identity with their work and they have to rediscover themselves.
22:08
One thing that was put to me recently at that really made an impact was every time a person
22:12
dies, a universe dies.
22:16
There's never a combination of that person's experience, what they've learned in their
22:21
life, what they can convey to you, the history that they saw, et cetera.
22:25
And when you get to universes together, you can learn a lot.
22:28
And so I think just having that respect for the people around you and a genuine human
22:32
connection and asking them about what they've experienced is critical.
22:35
Last thing is I've heard that differently.
22:38
In fact, in family ministry, we use it a lot and the phrase or statement that we use is
22:44
when a grandparent dies, a library burns and it's usually a total loss, right?
22:52
All of that wisdom and history and story, because we haven't valued that, we've seen
22:56
their output instead of we've valued what they can produce as an output instead of their
23:02
story as a life.
23:05
And so we do challenge and I challenge listeners here is, hey, view your elders, older man,
23:11
older woman, view your elders and your parents and begin to ask that question, Matt, you said
23:17
it earlier as a widow comes into the church and if the church says, hey, what's your story?
23:22
If we could ask those questions inside of our family, imagine the generational wisdom
23:27
that can get passed down from generation to generation to say, hey, dad, hey, grandfather,
23:33
what's your story?
23:34
Well, that's that's typically the lament when a grandparent passes away is we've got the
23:40
old pictures, you know, we have some, you know, the old crock potter, you know, whatever
23:44
that thing is.
23:45
But we don't have the wisdom and we don't have the stories or something that I've noticed
23:49
with my particular family is everyone keeps it to themselves.
23:52
Like, you know, one of my family members that was elderly was arrested at the airport because
23:57
they accidentally had a pistol in their travel bag.
24:00
Like literal honest mistake, like this was the van travel bag and then, you know, they
24:04
took it to the airport on accident.
24:05
And here is his elderly, you know, member of my family that's in handcuffs with TSA and
24:09
all that.
24:10
I found out about that like seven years after it happened.
24:13
Like my family just doesn't communicate these stories and these, these wisdoms.
24:16
And, you know, last year, basically all my grandparents died.
24:19
So it's like, you know, as of last year, I have no grandparents anymore.
24:22
And I picked up bits and pieces of their stories about how they grew up and things like that.
24:27
But those like, those like tangible foundational life lessons, like I didn't get that.
24:32
And so, you know, that's why things like you would assume like these ancestry.coms and
24:36
all these DNA things.
24:37
It's like, most people don't know their family's story.
24:39
Like they don't, they don't know where their family came from.
24:41
They don't know exactly when they got to this country.
24:43
They don't, they don't know any of that kind of stuff.
24:45
And that kind of goes back to our identity, identity, which is something that you were
24:48
talking about, Zach, which, you know, that especially makes verse eight of this chapter.
24:53
So haunting to me personally, because this is verse eight, but if anyone does not provide
24:57
for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith
25:01
and is worse than an unbeliever.
25:04
So I say that that verse is haunting for me because, you know, I'm an alpha personality.
25:10
I'm a competitor.
25:11
I want to do well.
25:13
If there's 10 people competing, I want to be number one.
25:15
If there's a million people competing, I want to be number one.
25:17
That's the guy I want to be.
25:18
And I've talked about this before on the podcast because we've, we've covered suicide
25:21
and talked about suicide before that I talked about, you know, the times in my life where
25:25
I thought about suicide, not contemplated suicide.
25:29
There is a, I guess a physical and tangible difference there, but where I've caught where
25:33
I thought about it, it was always an intellectual exercise for me.
25:37
And when those thoughts were the loudest in my brain is when I was doing the worst in
25:41
my career.
25:42
And my identity as a provider was that, oh, I'm only making this much.
25:48
I should be making more.
25:50
I'm in sales.
25:51
I'm, I'm built for this.
25:53
And yet I'm not getting it done.
25:55
And in our community, you're surrounded by opulence.
25:58
You're surrounded by people that are absolutely murdering it.
26:02
And like when you talk to your, to, we talked to our friends in our, in this community that
26:04
are CPAs, it is astonishing the amount of money that people have and that they're able
26:09
to produce and all those types of things, and I'm a comparison person as well.
26:12
Because like athletically, I would always be like, okay, that guy's a little bit faster
26:15
than me.
26:16
I need to be able to get faster than that guy.
26:17
Or that guy is, you know, hitting better right now.
26:19
That's why he's hiring the lineup.
26:20
I need to start hitting better.
26:21
And so you constantly compare, but that's such a haunting verse for me because when I
26:25
was at my lowest points in my career, when I felt like I was really not doing good work,
26:30
I would read that scripture and it's like, Oh, I don't just feel bad.
26:33
I'm sinning.
26:34
It's just like, Oh, it's way worse than that.
26:36
Like I'm not providing in a way, and this was even before we had kids and then when
26:40
you have kids, everything gets elevated, you know, just gets jacked way, way up.
26:45
But I don't know about for you guys, but for me, I know that there are a lot of guys that
26:48
when they read that, that is the ultimate gut check when it comes to practically providing
26:53
on this planet, because this, this book is full of opportunities for you to feel like
26:58
you're missing the mark, but right there, when it comes to being a provider, if you're
27:02
not hitting the mark, it freaking sucks.
27:05
It's so debilitating.
27:06
That's a probably, I don't know how he'll take this, but it all says he, him, he, him.
27:10
So as you're reading it, it's it's personally convicting, and I know that may be controversial.
27:14
But when you're as the male provider of your house, it hits you pretty hard.
27:21
It does.
27:22
And you want to make sure that you're not just providing eventually, but spiritually and
27:25
everything else that you need.
27:27
Well, in God's order, like Jesus talks about it, Paul talks about it, and it was created
27:33
first, like in the order of things, like God, God taking chaos into order, there's a specific
27:40
way he did that.
27:41
And we have this authority, this of this divine authority.
27:44
And I think that gets thrown around as like this, Oh, do what I say.
27:49
I'm the head of the household.
27:51
I think we can misconstrue that a lot.
27:52
And that can become a sin in itself, but this right here, it's like, it's bringing you back
27:57
to this.
27:58
Okay, you have the authority, but it's this is this authority to serve and to provide and
28:07
and to know that if I go, if I go work and provide for my family, that's one thing and
28:14
money's great.
28:15
But I'm also called to provide other things for my family, like if I go work from eight
28:21
to five, I come home.
28:23
My days just started.
28:24
Paul washer has a sermon on the authority of men, and he talks about that quite a bit.
28:28
That was one of the most convicting sermons that I've ever I've ever listened to is like,
28:32
if I when I get home from work, my day has just begun, I have the authority to stay up
28:37
until everybody is taken care of.
28:40
And I don't I'm not a part of the equation at all.
28:42
I don't like I don't get.
28:44
I provide.
28:46
I have the authority to provide.
28:48
And you should always be coming back to this verse because that's what we're called to
28:53
do.
28:54
Now, I will I will add a couple things so Matt, to your point, I've never heard it said
28:59
that way is that I say that again for me.
29:04
I don't get I get to provide.
29:06
I have the authority to provide for my family.
29:09
I I'm not part of the equation.
29:11
I can see I can see you guys though, the link, okay, not part of the equation to receive.
29:15
To receive.
29:16
Yeah.
29:17
I'm the provider.
29:18
I absolutely have never heard it that way, but I think you're I think he is spot on in
29:22
that.
29:24
And I think that goes back to the idols of convenience and comfort and entitlement, right, because
29:30
a lot of men, even if they do go eight to five, they come home and they say, well, I'm entitled
29:34
to because I worked hard out there.
29:36
Now I'm entitled to sit and relax.
29:38
Yeah.
29:39
Some transparency like I I work hard and I've been successful at work and I think that if
29:43
you're looking at all the metrics of the world, you would say like, okay, Matt has done pretty
29:47
well for himself, but when you go home and you think like, okay, I have literally worked
29:54
my tail off, I deserve to take a break, I deserve to look at my phone and you've got
30:00
a two year old kid.
30:01
This is this is a real life experience.
30:02
You got a kid who's like, I don't see my dad all day.
30:05
His face is buried in his phone dad, put your phone down dad, put your phone down.
30:09
It's like, what are you doing?
30:12
I've waited all day for my dad.
30:14
I deserve to see my dad's face.
30:16
And like, what am I?
30:17
What am I doing?
30:18
Like I am I am in sin outside of God's ordained will for me because I think that I worked
30:25
really hard today, that's that's absurd.
30:29
That's asinine.
30:30
And like I like I still struggle with that like I still have to, that's a daily reminder.
30:36
That's a daily thing that I have to call myself to do, but yeah, there's a lot on our shoulders.
30:42
So going, going back to eight Kyle, I have a slight twist from, from what you're saying
30:47
in the interpretation of verse eight is the notes that I wrote here to the side was just
30:52
that Paul holds no fields for the lazy.
30:55
Like for me, providing yes is a, there is a dollar amount that is required.
31:02
There is an amount that's required to provide meals and shelter and clothing, which I think
31:07
that's later on here in five or six, right?
31:10
Like, hey, if you have meals and shelter and clothing, what else do you really need?
31:13
But I actually see that as just a Paul's call to not be lazy, not be lazy.
31:22
Yeah.
31:23
One thing that's been really convicting for me recently has been, and Joey mentioned
31:28
this too, that your words as a dad are going to have a thousand times the weight, whether
31:33
you like it or not, things like that.
31:37
And it's come up in my household explicitly that when I, when I come back after a long
31:41
day or travel or whatever, the way that I conduct myself and, and the impact that has
31:46
on the atmosphere in my home with my family and the way that my kids behave and the way
31:50
my wife reflects me is really a massive force.
31:55
So I think as men, if you're having challenges at your house, you've, you've got to look
32:00
in the mirror on a percent and you can't, you can't cluck out.
32:03
You have to put the effort in, but once you've done it and you've seen it and you slide
32:07
into the way that this, this book says that you should behave, you see it all come together
32:12
and you see the space bright and see your kids eyes lighten up.
32:16
You see your wife look at you in a way that maybe you haven't seen in a while.
32:19
It's really convicting.
32:20
Okay.
32:21
And, and, and I'll wrap up my perspective.
32:23
I heard this from, he's a great leader out of Tulsa, his name's Chris Hart and he talks
32:28
about, hey, as, as men, we are called to lean just beyond our current state, not too far
32:35
that we, you know, get stressed and, and, and we're unstable or unhealthy and not too far
32:39
back to where we become lazy, but just outside of our current ability so that we're always
32:45
growing and developing.
32:47
That's one.
32:48
And, and the way that he says it is, um, choosing to do things that we're not good at today
32:53
hardens us for future difficulties.
32:55
So he, he says, choose hard.
32:57
Choose hard.
32:58
Choose hard.
32:59
Get hard, right?
33:00
You're harden for tomorrow's tomorrow's difficulties.
33:04
And I think to your point, Zach is truth is guys, there's no end in sight.
33:10
There's no end in sight.
33:11
There's no, like, hey, we don't get to finish as a Christ follower until we join Christ
33:16
on the other side of heaven.
33:17
We don't get to end as a husband or a dad.
33:20
That is not a race that has an end in sight.
33:22
So we have to continually operate at a pace that we are proud of when there's no end in
33:27
sight.
33:28
And that takes grit and that takes determination and that takes perseverance, just resonating
33:33
with that deep down inside of, of the heart of a man who says, no, no, no, I can do that.
33:39
There's a million guys out there.
33:40
I'm going to be number one.
33:41
But there's also like there's a reliance to like, I, I have to have God absolutely this.
33:46
And I think to your point of like, we should be, we should be leaning forward enough that
33:50
we're outside of our comfort zone, but not far enough back, like Proverbs talks about
33:53
that too.
33:54
Like, give me enough bread that I'm, that I'm full, but I don't have so much that I forget
33:59
that God gave it to me.
34:00
Make me just hungry enough that I know I need God in everything.
34:04
I just remembered hearing about, uh, it was this guy that was digging into the Exodus
34:08
stories and you get the manna from heaven.
34:10
And they're depending upon the level of faith that the Israelites were operating with, depending
34:18
on the amount of manna that fell from heaven.
34:19
So on the days when people would gather extra manna, like manna that would not just sustain
34:24
them for that day, but would sustain them for two or three days after less manna would
34:28
fall.
34:29
And like it was almost like, Hey, I'm giving you what you need.
34:31
You don't need to keep storing this up.
34:33
I got you.
34:34
And so like that was just an interesting thing.
34:36
But I thought about, you know, I've heard people talk about before, like a man, no matter
34:40
what someone's going to lose, because if you focus too much on your family, your, your
34:45
work life's going to suffer and your boss needs more of you, right?
34:49
And if you run your own business, you're your boss.
34:51
You need more of you.
34:52
You know, if you focus too much on work, then your family needs more of you and like, no
34:55
matter what you're going to fail, anybody that's selling these, you know, become a CEO in 48
35:01
hours and like, you know, all these all like self-helpy business type things, they're
35:05
full of it.
35:06
They're absolutely full of crap.
35:08
These people are not crushing it in all areas of their life.
35:10
They're simply not somebody is always left wanting, but you get to choose what category
35:16
of people is left wanting.
35:17
Is it your followers on Instagram?
35:19
Is it your family?
35:20
Is it your employees?
35:22
And the thing is, is the level of responsibility, Zach, to back to what you were talking about,
35:25
the level of responsibility for a man is very, very high, tough.
35:30
That is the mandate that you were given.
35:32
Is it fair?
35:33
No.
35:34
But you don't have to get birth.
35:35
And so it's like, you know, like we all have our roles and we all have the things in
35:37
our life that sucks, and it's like, just get over you're spending all this time lamenting
35:42
the responsibilities you were given, but they were given to you nonetheless.
35:46
Deal with it.
35:47
But is it fair?
35:48
Like, I think God says it's fair.
35:49
Like, I think you could argue that- Through our perspective, it's not, through his perspective,
35:53
it's perfect.
35:54
Yeah, through the world.
35:55
Sanders is like, yeah, it's not fair and lies, but like, we don't get to decide that.
35:59
We're not the arbitrator of fairness.
36:01
That's a good point.
36:02
And Kyle, to your point, building on yours, Zach, is we get to choose, right?
36:07
If something's going to fail, we get to choose.
36:09
Now, this kind of goes against verse eight, in a way, but if we provide for his relatives,
36:15
I think God calls us to be present in the places that only we can be present.
36:22
Nobody can be a husband to Gina, except for me.
36:24
Nobody can be a father to my children, except for me.
36:27
Nobody can read my Bible and pray, except for me.
36:30
I can't outsource that to somebody else.
36:32
Hey, will you read my Bible and pray for me on these three things and just fill me in
36:35
later, right?
36:36
Look, those are the highest priorities, the places that require me as a husband and a
36:42
father and as a Christ follower to be.
36:45
My job should, in my opinion, move farther down the list without losing the perspective
36:51
here that I still have a responsibility to provide for my relatives.
36:55
Practical responsibility to kind of kind of speak towards what Zach's saying.
36:58
There's a lot of practicality in there.
37:00
My son, a school teacher, Terry Fakes, he's a great teacher, the word he always says,
37:05
the people read their Bible and did what it said.
37:07
The self-help industry would be nonexistent.
37:10
And I think that's so true, it's funny, but I think it's true.
37:14
There are practical truths in here like it's not just an admonishment, it's not just saying
37:19
like you're worse than an unbeliever, it's a call, it's an invitation to provide for
37:26
your family.
37:27
Right.
37:28
And it's a breath of fresh air.
37:29
I mean, it's the culture that we're in right now, we're fighting against perception.
37:32
I saw something the other day and it said only a woman who's had birth with no epidural
37:38
can understand what it's like for a man to have a cold.
37:42
No.
37:43
So it's just women patting themselves on the back for things that only they can do.
37:49
That's the bar.
37:50
Yeah.
37:51
Well, here's the thing and maybe this would be a good place to wrap this up because there's
37:54
still some good stuff in chapter five.
37:57
But Derek, this goes to something that you were talking about, it's like, okay, providing
38:01
for food, shelter, like, you know, uh, those basic provisions, right?
38:08
But typically when somebody reads a verse eight and feels that haunting condemnation
38:13
like I did is it was because the ideal life that I think I have in my brain is what I'm
38:20
trying to provide for my kids.
38:22
So in addition to food, shelter and basic necessities is whatever college they want
38:27
to go to and the exact shoes that'll make me run that mile a little bit faster and, uh,
38:32
making sure that we've got enough money to train jujitsu and make sure we can take vacations
38:36
and making sure we can do this, making sure we can do that in and of itself, those things
38:40
are not negative things.
38:41
They're not simple things, but they become little idols, right?
38:44
And it's like, I need money to feed my little idols.
38:47
And so a lot of guys that listen to this are golfers.
38:49
So you need money and you need time because you're going to go golf two or three times
38:52
a week.
38:53
You're going to spend X amount of dollars.
38:54
You know, eat at the clubhouse at the turn or whatever, like you're, you're just feeding
38:59
into that idol.
39:00
And like, regardless of what your thing is, it could be hunting.
39:02
It could be shooting.
39:03
It could be, you know, playing pickup basketball and, you know, playing in leagues or whatever,
39:06
like all these things take money, time and attention away.
39:10
And that's the life that we're thinking we're not providing for our children because we're
39:15
not, we want to live in the same house that our friends are living in.
39:18
We want to be driving the same cars.
39:19
We want to be doing all the things and then that extrapolate to self out and the people
39:22
putting themselves into a measurable amounts of debt just so that they can keep up with
39:27
people that don't actually even pay attention to them.
39:30
So you want to get this car so everyone will notice and then no one notices.
39:32
And so you think it's the problem with the car, right?
39:36
It's like, no, it's like they're, they're living their life and they're chasing somebody
39:39
else and they're not paying attention to you because you're below them in terms of this
39:42
socioeconomic scale.
39:43
And so I think that's a very interesting thing guys, like if you're providing or to not talk
39:48
about spiritually right now, just talking about financially, are you able to feed and
39:52
clothe and shelter your kids?
39:54
Okay, everything else is window dressing, everything else.
39:58
And so that's hard when you live in a society like we do that has riches that were incomprehensible
40:05
to an audience in the Mediterranean rim 2000 years ago, like an unbelievable amount of
40:10
opulence.
40:11
But that's the world that we live in.
40:12
And so we have to take that into account as we're thinking through these scriptures and
40:16
how they apply to us today.
40:19
One thing that I did want to talk about from, again, there's so much here in the fifth chapter
40:23
that we can't possibly get into all of it, but I wanted to go ahead and skip on to verse
40:27
20.
40:28
It says, as for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest
40:33
may stand in fear.
40:34
Okay.
40:35
So on the forging table, you know, a couple months back, we went through Galatians two,
40:38
we went through Paul rebuking Peter directly to his face in front of people, right?
40:44
Because Peter was acting in a somewhat racist fashion.
40:46
He was, you know, pretending to be down with what the Judaizers were saying and doing thus
40:51
making the Gentiles feels if they were lesser than, then if they were, you know, Jews and
40:55
all these different things.
40:56
And so it was just a bad thing.
40:57
And Paul rebuked Peter to his face.
40:59
And that's one of my favorite parts of the Bible, because I think as Christians, we get
41:02
rebuke wrong.
41:03
We handle it incorrectly because we think rebuke is icky and mean and judgmental and
41:08
yuck in Christ wouldn't possibly do such a thing.
41:11
But again, right here, as for those who persist in sin, so he's giving you a standard.
41:16
So it's not somebody that trips and falls into sin in once.
41:18
And then you're like, I am going to rebuke you in public.
41:21
Like, no, somebody that is persisting in sin, you rebuke them in the presence of all.
41:27
And then my favorite part of this verse, so that the rest may stand in fear.
41:31
This is why that's important because we were talking about this off air.
41:35
We live in a culture that does not think utilizing fear or shame is a positive thing.
41:41
But those are tremendous motivators.
41:44
One of the reasons why I don't look at porn and masturbate anymore is because the level
41:47
of shame that I remember feeling when almost 20 years ago, my girlfriend found porn on
41:54
my computer and the hurt and the pain that I remember seeing in her face, that's part
42:00
of the shame that I feel, but also the shame is not so I can identify with that shame and
42:05
say, Oh, I'm I'm this type of a person.
42:08
But it's like that's part of my story of depravity as well.
42:11
If I don't understand the level of depravity inside of me, if I don't understand the motivator
42:16
that shame and fear is because I am fearful of letting my wife and family down.
42:21
I am fearful of a good just God that can't have sin in his presence.
42:26
And man, you can glaze right over verse 20, but that man, that is like some, this is how
42:31
we should live stuff because people talking about, Oh, you shouldn't fear God.
42:35
And you know, God's just this, you know, pussy cat and he's just this really, really nice
42:38
thing.
42:39
He loves you for who you are.
42:40
Yeah, he loves you for who you are.
42:41
Be known for what you're for or not, what you're against.
42:42
Like those types of people like that.
42:45
This shows you like no, bro, like fear is a great motivator.
42:48
Shame is a tremendous motivator.
42:49
There are a lot of people that used to be fat that aren't fat anymore because shame motivates
42:53
them every day to put on their workout shoes and go hit the gym, right?
42:56
It's a powerful motivator.
42:58
I think we should utilize it.
42:59
I agree.
43:00
But I think that one of the keywords here, well, there's a few persist is one and then
43:03
as for like he's, he's calling back, it's almost like Paul's calling back to the first
43:08
part of this chapter where he's saying he's, he's telling us to use gentleness.
43:15
And there's a, there's a specific way that, that we've been, you know, called to, to call
43:20
out sin and to, to rebuke people.
43:23
But he's saying that this, this is like a guy who's like Derek sitting, I've called
43:29
him out, Kyle's called him out.
43:30
He's like, ah, I'm going to do it anyway.
43:33
All right.
43:34
That's where we're at here.
43:35
And this verse is like, okay, clearly you have not listened to our gentle, our gentle
43:40
reminder that you should not be sitting.
43:42
Now it's time to push that a little bit further.
43:46
But yeah, I think we don't, we don't do that really at all big, big sea church doesn't
43:52
do that at all.
43:53
But I think I think there's a balance there too.
43:55
I think people jump to that.
43:56
People want to go.
43:57
Calvinists are famous for this, you know, especially new cabinets that are like, you're
44:03
the worst, you know, man, I just, I don't know what I did, but you know, psychologically speaking,
44:13
I've got a little bit of a background, a negotiation standpoint and all that kind of stuff.
44:17
And what they'll tell you is that the fear of loss is overwhelmingly more influential
44:21
than gain.
44:24
So we're wired that way.
44:26
We were created to think that way.
44:27
And I think it's something that's going to sear into you.
44:30
If you have to experience her, if you have to think about experiencing it.
44:33
And I think that's why it's here.
44:35
And one thing I'll say that I thought this was really good is that the purpose of discipline
44:38
is restoration, not revenge.
44:40
Yep.
44:41
That's the best way to save the offender, not to drive him away.
44:44
Our attitude must be one of love and tenderness.
44:47
In fact, the verb restore that Paul used in Galatians 6-1 means to set a broken bone.
44:53
So speak the truth in love.
44:55
Make sure you have a connection.
44:57
You should be motivated from the right reasons.
44:59
And that person should understand that.
45:01
And then, you know, somewhere else it also says that, you know, if that person is rebuked,
45:05
a wise person will learn from it.
45:07
Yep.
45:08
And again, it's so that the rest may stand in fear as well because people are watching.
45:12
Yep.
45:13
And so like for any of you listening to the audience, I have multiple children, and my
45:16
children are a little bit too young for this to notice.
45:18
But when one of the kids gets in trouble for doing something and all the other kids see
45:22
the punishment and see the wrongdoing, they know the score now.
45:26
They're like, so if I do that, like I should expect a similar punishment.
45:30
Now, some people punish their kids based on their age and they're standing in the house
45:33
on blah, blah, blah, blah.
45:34
But like, that's such an important thing that you punish, you admonish, you rebuke in public
45:40
so that people understand, hey, here are the wages of what you're doing.
45:44
Like the wages of this particular sin, you know, I know from scripture, the wages of
45:48
sin or death, but in this particular sin, like this is the rebuke that you're going
45:51
to get.
45:52
And guys, all of us have played different sports in our lives.
45:55
And I think all of us have been chewed out by a coach before.
45:58
How often does that coach take you aside away from everybody to give you a nice little light
46:04
talking to where nobody hears you and is embarrassed?
46:06
Because I don't know about you guys, but all my butt tunes came in front of the team,
46:11
right?
46:12
So much so thereby stop what they were doing pretending like they're still playing catch
46:15
and like, oh, man, Kyle's getting ripped to know what this is awesome.
46:18
But that that's what happens.
46:20
He's not doing your coach is not doing that to embarrass you.
46:24
He's also not doing that because practically it makes more sense to do it right now where
46:27
we're standing as opposed to walking 50 yards over there and doing it.
46:31
It's because he's trying to uphold a standard for the entire team, right?
46:36
And he's it.
46:37
He's rebuking you in that moment to teach you something, but he's also teaching everybody
46:41
else.
46:42
The same would be true for us as Christians.
46:43
If we're being rebuked by a brother in Christ, you know, that's utilizing the love of Christ
46:48
to rebuke us, that should make all the stand to attention and think, yeah, I'm glad I'm
46:53
not in his seat right now, but I'm still learning the lesson.
46:55
Okay.
46:56
So two things.
46:57
One, Matt, you made the comment earlier.
46:58
What if we just read the Bible and did what it said?
47:01
How different would that make?
47:02
How different would that make things?
47:04
I mean, it'd be absolutely a complete culture shift.
47:07
Number one, number two is, you know, verse 19, the one right before it do not admit a
47:12
charge against an elder, except on the evidence of two or three witnesses as far as as for
47:16
those who persistence and rebuke them in the presence of all.
47:20
What that requires is also a relationship.
47:23
It requires a relationship and it's not your see somebody in the parking lot.
47:27
You've never seen them before.
47:28
They do something.
47:29
They yell at their kid.
47:30
They'll yell at church.
47:31
It is you.
47:32
I saw you yell at your children.
47:33
You know, it is your coach.
47:34
And Kyle, you talked about your shame when it came to that girlfriend 20 years ago.
47:39
Mine is I immediately went to sporting situations exactly where a coach rips you, grabs you by
47:44
the shoulders and moves you over here and says, I want you here this time now.
47:47
And you're like, okay, I'll never do that again.
47:49
And, or I remember it specifically at time when I was in high school running cross country.
47:54
And it was like, I, southeastern Oklahoma is 180 degrees outside and we're in the middle
48:00
of a cross country run and it was, I just, I didn't want to run anymore.
48:04
And so I sat down and then at the end of the race, I finished and of course I was so slow
48:13
and the coach asked me, it's that was horrible.
48:16
What happened?
48:17
Oh, it was heat exhaustion.
48:21
And so it was the overwhelming shame of lying about why I stopped and I remember completely
48:29
making the agreement mentally with myself.
48:32
I never want to feel that way again.
48:34
It's so funny how like we are all Adam's children, like he like God knows what happened.
48:42
And Adam still tries to tell him a different story.
48:45
It was that woman you gave me.
48:47
I don't need the blame.
48:48
Don't give me the blame.
48:49
Somebody else's fault, like it's so interesting that like it, these, it just echoes through
48:54
all of time.
48:55
But, but guys, but think about it pragmatically, like all of us have had successes and failures
48:59
in our careers and our lives and relationships and whatever.
49:01
What do you remember more?
49:03
The, the wild successes and everything that got you there or the horrific failures of
49:08
failures and shame.
49:09
Every time you stepped on your own, you know what?
49:11
And face planted and like, you know, I talked about this in terms of hunting.
49:14
I've shot one animal in my life that I wounded and didn't kill.
49:17
And I think about that animal all the time, because there are three or four mistakes directly
49:23
that I made that led to the wounding of one of God's creation, right?
49:27
And I think about that.
49:28
So I have had some big successes and some really fun things that have happened because
49:31
of hunting, but it's the mistakes that I made.
49:34
But you don't just look at them so that you can shame yourself.
49:37
You look at them so you can learn from them.
49:39
Yeah.
49:40
Like look at the, the things that I did wrong in preparation.
49:42
Look at the things that I did wrong in terms of mindset.
49:44
You don't sit down in the middle of a race, like, and not actually have heat stroke.
49:49
If you had done what it, what you needed to do to make sure you were mentally ready to
49:52
go for that.
49:53
And so that, that's the thing that I think is very, very important for all of us.
49:57
There's a level of preparation that you do for everything.
49:59
For some people, Matt, as you were talking about with the, the Paul washer sermon, it's
50:03
like, okay, if your day starts when you get home, what do you need to do to mentally prepare
50:07
yourself before you walk in the door?
50:09
Like, you don't just walk in and say, Oh, I guess I'll respond to whatever happens.
50:13
That's when you're, that's when you're becoming a thermometer, not a thermostat, right?
50:17
And so I know guys that, well, literally, I've, I've heard this before.
50:20
I can't remember where I heard it the first time where a dad would get home from work
50:22
long day at the whatever job he had, and he would walk over to a tree and he would pretend
50:27
as if he was taking off the backpack of his day and he would hang it on the tree and say,
50:32
all my problems from work, all my problems with my bosses, all my problems with all the
50:35
other people that that's on that bag.
50:37
That's the weight that I'm carrying from that bag.
50:39
The weight is on that tree now.
50:41
It's time to take care of my family and when he walked out in the morning to go to work,
50:44
walks back over to the tree, grabs a non-existent bag, pretends to put it on his back.
50:49
Now he's back in work mode, right?
50:51
That that's a tremendous apologetic for guys to look at.
50:54
It's like, look, you don't just do things by happenstance.
50:57
No, you do them based on a certain level of preparation.
51:01
Now before we, we wrap up the fifth chapter of first Timothy, Derek, you were talking
51:04
off here about versus 24 and 25 and to be honest, I buzzed right through those and missed everything
51:09
that you were talking about.
51:10
I'm not sure you talk about that.
51:11
Okay, 24, 25.
51:12
The sins of some people are conspicuous going before them to judgment, but the sins of others
51:15
appear later.
51:17
So also good works are conspicuous.
51:19
And even those that are not, even those that are not cannot remain hidden.
51:24
What I pulled out of that was two pieces.
51:27
One, we have to be patient in the good and the bad to see what happens.
51:31
I think it is a call back to Paul's letter in three when he was telling Timothy that,
51:39
hey, leaders of the church should not be new believers, right?
51:43
There's not enough maturity and time to let either good fruit or bad fruit.
51:47
I think Kyle, what I said off air was that, hey, it's like a tree, you have to give it
51:51
time.
51:52
But when a tree is planted, sometimes it doesn't produce fruit for one, two or three years.
51:59
And so you have to see a good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit.
52:03
Let's give it time to produce fruit to see what happens here.
52:05
So be patient in both the good and bad to see what's faithful.
52:09
What's not faithful.
52:10
It's sinful.
52:11
Yeah, I was looking for the Psalm.
52:13
I don't have time to look for it now.
52:15
There's a Psalm where it talks about the success of the wicked and in like by worldly standards,
52:24
like the wicked look good, they make a lot of money, but God is sovereign.
52:30
Those things will be revealed.
52:33
Those things will play out.
52:35
There's a cosmic justice.
52:36
And so I got, yeah, I think that's a great point, like the, like somebody might look
52:40
like they're got it all together, but to a certain extent, like sometimes like it's not
52:45
always our place to, you shouldn't be going looking for that, right?
52:49
We should, we should be able to look inward.
52:51
We should have our own, our own sin more than we hate others.
52:54
For sure.
52:55
Yeah, I think being patient is, is a, is a, is a great point because both trees, a good
53:01
tree and a bad tree, they can look good when those leaves come out, right?
53:05
But then you got to see what fruit is actually produced.
53:07
And, and what I like about this is the second part, good works are conspicuous.
53:12
And even those that are not.
53:14
So when you do good thing, hidden good things, because you're serving people, you're giving
53:20
whatever it is, they will not always remain hidden.
53:24
Those good things will, will bubble or boil to the surface.
53:28
And people will understand and see impact if you're doing good things and, and planting
53:32
good seed eventually after when the harvest comes, you, you will reap a good harvest.
53:37
Well, I think there's a connection here too, too.
53:39
I couldn't find the exact reference quickly, but like the sin of partiality, I think that's
53:43
in James too.
53:44
James James James.
53:45
But then also just, you know, when you prefer people that dress a certain way, that's what
53:50
I was trying to find where the rich people were given preference, preferential treatment
53:53
and preferential placement.
53:55
Is it where they're being sat in the temple and all that?
53:57
Exactly.
53:58
We do that with people as well in our lives, because again, people that look attractive,
54:04
people that are good at sports, people that are successful in business, people that have
54:09
attained judicial power or governmental power or something like that.
54:15
We look at those people differently and we give them more grace, don't we?
54:20
Because like if a, not I'm using the mayor, so, because our mayor is a very upstanding
54:27
man in this town.
54:28
Let's say he wasn't.
54:29
Let's say he was a drunkard and a swindler and, you know, a womanizer and those types
54:32
of things.
54:33
That's something that I don't know the, the current mayor of Edmond, Oklahoma to be.
54:36
But let's say that person is that way, but he's the mayor of your city and you run a
54:40
business in that city.
54:41
And so when you see him doing some of those things, you kind of give him the benefit of
54:43
the doubt.
54:44
But then when you see just some, like some, you know, Jack Wagon or some homeless guy
54:48
or something like that, like someone you see is beneath that doing the exact same exact
54:51
type of behaviors, you look at that person with disgust.
54:54
You're just like, what a wretched person, that's why you're in that station in life,
54:58
because look how terrible you are.
55:00
But again, we look at people's shiny outsides and we're just like, Oh, well, there's probably
55:04
a good reason why they made that off color joke.
55:07
You know what?
55:08
That was kind of racist, what they just said, but man, he's got like three successful businesses.
55:12
So maybe it wasn't racist.
55:14
Maybe I'm the problem.
55:15
Maybe my truth is that they're not a raving narcissist in that there, there's something
55:19
different, right?
55:20
Like that's kind of what it gets into.
55:21
Okay, go to Ecclesiastes, I mean, all of that is about trying to sort out that very real
55:26
predicament in life of why are some people in this position where they're very well off
55:30
and everything.
55:31
Just real quick.
55:32
I read this the other day and I thought it was really good for he.
55:35
This is from or some 49, where he sees that even the wise die, the fool and the stupid
55:42
alike must perish and leave their wealth to others.
55:45
Their graves are their homes forever.
55:47
They're dwelling places to all generations, though they called lands by their own names
55:52
and in his pomp will not remain is like the beast that perishes and it talks about going
55:57
to the pit.
55:58
So from God's perspective, we're here for a blip.
56:00
Yep.
56:01
You don't take it with you when you're stacking yourself against other people, they get with
56:04
a grain of salt.
56:05
Yeah, I was going to say like when you're talking about we look at people differently,
56:08
like I think that's why Paul uses the elder, like that we're rebuking, we're rebuking
56:13
an elder so that other people know like no one, not even the guy who runs our church
56:18
is above the law word of God.
56:21
And I think we live in a society where we don't touch the anointed.
56:25
We don't rebuke the anointed and there are celebrity pastors out there.
56:30
You can't call out because again, we don't we don't mess with that person who is ordained
56:36
by God.
56:37
We can't call them out.
56:38
And I think that's that's why Paul does that right there's like man, even the elder even
56:42
the pastor is held to the standard that he's telling y'all to be captive to even he is
56:48
not above that.
56:49
Well, he says it right there in verse 21, keep these rules, you know, he's talking to Timothy,
56:53
keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality.
56:58
Yep.
56:59
Nothing at all.
57:00
Yep.
57:01
Do nothing, which that's incredibly hard on a day to day basis.
57:03
For sure.
57:04
You were talking through Kyle, I mean, that's it's incredibly challenging to do this on
57:08
a day to day basis, given what we see people and they're posing, right?
57:13
What they're putting out there pretending to be, that's all we see for the most part.
57:17
And so it's hard to make that determination.
57:19
Social media makes that worse and, you know, because again, you put your highlight reel
57:24
on your Instagram, like you don't, you don't put the horrible things that happen.
57:26
I remember I was on the phone with somebody yesterday and obviously I'll remain them remain
57:29
nameless, but I've known these people for a very, very long time.
57:33
And I've known their wife to always be very, very sweet and very, you know, very subdued.
57:38
And anyway, like I was on the phone with him and then they were trying to like coordinate
57:42
who was going to leave and who was going to pick up which kid and all that.
57:45
And for the first time in my life, I heard this person's wife and they were, they had
57:48
some bite to their tone.
57:50
They weren't exactly rude, but I was like, oh my gosh, like that's how she talks when
57:55
no one's around.
57:56
And I've known this girl for 20 years.
57:59
And then all of a sudden it was like, I just heard a slightly different side of her, but
58:03
isn't that all true of us?
58:05
Because like, you know, I tried to be as authentic as possible.
58:07
And that's kind of part of my brain is I'm going to authentically give you my opinion
58:10
because words and anger and ginger and whatever.
58:12
But like, that's the thing that I try to do, but y'all don't know the level of my depravity.
58:17
Y'all don't know the worst things that I've said and done.
58:19
You certainly don't know the worst things that I've thought.
58:21
Well, we have three minutes left, Kyle.
58:23
Yeah.
58:24
Yeah, we do.
58:25
Well, the point I was trying to make you jerk face, the point I was trying to make is there
58:30
is someone that does know exactly the level of our depravity and that's God and even in
58:36
that knowledge, that foreknowledge of everything that we would think and do that would be evil.
58:41
He still found it in his goodness to send his son to this earth to give us the opportunity
58:47
to have propitiation or payment in full for our sins.
58:51
So that's why when you're preaching the gospel, you preach the full-throated gospel where you
58:56
are not the hero and you are not the point.
58:59
You are merely a bystander to the tremendous value that is grace that is given freely.
59:04
And so I don't know of a better way to leave that.
59:06
But if you want me to go into loose today, all my horrible things, maybe we could go.
59:10
Can we go ahead and pass on there?
59:11
I think we can stop there.
59:12
Okay.
59:13
I think we need to have it.
59:14
Okay, guys, we're going to have to leave it there.
59:15
There's a whole lot more that we could have talked about, but we're going to come back
59:17
next Sunday and dig into first Timothy six wrapping up first Timothy.
59:20
Hey, guys, make sure that you read first Timothy six this next week so that you can be prepared
59:24
for that.
59:25
Excuse me.
59:26
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