This morning we come to a solemn text and a weighty topic. As Christians, we welcome all, and affirm none, because all of us are sinners. Including leaders. Including Christian leaders. And sometimes gravely so. Power often corrupts, or at least magnifies the corruption of sin already in us. It is tragic on Capitol Hill and in Hollywood, and even more tragic in the church.

We all have heard far too many stories about Christian leaders abusing power and failing egregiously — especially when not held accountable by a plurality of other leaders. And we’ve heard of leaders covering up the sins of other leaders, both in the Roman Catholic Church, and in Protestant denominations. This is a great evil. And it is expressly what Paul stands against here in this text.

Women have influence in the local church — that’s why the apostle Paul wrote this chapter. If women did not have influence — if women did not matter — then Paul would not be addressing them. But because women do have an important influence in the church, the issue has to do with how they use that influence. The issue is whether women will use their influence for good works or not.

That is the option put before every woman of every church throughout every moment of history. Will they be women worthy of true widowhood, or will they not? Will they be godly women or not?

On the principle level, for our context, we can use this passage as a guideline for helping others. First, we can look to help those who are in need. But we can also look at the practical guidelines that Paul gives Timothy on how to help those in need in the church family. Even with some of these possible guidelines from Paul that we just went over, at the end of the day let's be a church family that is ready to help those among us in need.

Who has your attention? Who has your devotion? What are you giving your attention to? You are devoted to something. Someone has your attention. What’s on your screen? Who’s in your ear? Who gets your attention? My plea with you this morning is that Jesus is worthy of your ear. Christian teaching, God’s truth, the word of God, culminating in Jesus himself, is worthy of your attention. He will not disappoint, both in this life and in the life to come.

Wasn’t the whole life of Jesus a sowing in tears?

And isn’t that the way of God? Jesus is God become man to show us the way, and the way is hard. The way is a cross. And how did he do it? Hebrews 12, verse 2 says that Jesus “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” How? How did Jesus hope for joy in the way of the cross?

It’s because in God’s way, he knew God’s work. Jesus sowed his tears in hope because he knew what the psalmist knew in Psalm 126, and it’s that we have a God who can send rain. We have a God who makes rivers in the desert. We have a God who gives life to the dead.

And so the whole life of Jesus then was sowing. Last Sunday he rode into Jerusalem, sowing. He was conspired against on Wednesday, sowing. He was betrayed on Thursday, sowing. He as crucified on Friday, sowing. And then he was dead. Then it was over. He was finished. His body was wrapped. The tomb was sealed. All his tears had been sown.

But Sunday morning came the reaping. Sunday morning came the shouts of joy.

“He is not here,” the angel said. “For he has risen.”

Remember Paul intends for the whole church at Ephesus to read this letter. Although it’s addressed to Timothy, he is giving instructions for everybody, and so he uses a phrase with wide application. Every Christian is a servant of Jesus, and every Christian should want to be a good servant of Jesus. Which means, this is not just a section in the letter when Timothy leans in, but this when everybody in the church leans in. For all of us who follow Jesus, verse 6 gets our attention.

There are all kinds of things that we fear in life. There are all kinds of things that we consider to be challenging. We all have adversity. “In this world you will have tribulation,” Jesus says in John 16:33. But I need to tell you that your greatest enemy in this life — your greatest enemy is lies. And lies come from Satan.

At the outset today, I want you to think about BELIEF and BEHAVIOR. Paul says here that how one ought to behave in the household of God (the church), is connected to what we confess (believe to be true). We’ll think about this as we walk through four truths that we learn about the church in this passage.

1. The Church is a family.
2. The Church is alive.
3. The Church holds a secret.
4. The Church advances and protects.

The structuring and ordering of God’s household, the church, is based on a wise and prudent application of God’s design in creation, as expressed and clarified by the word of God, and is designed to both protect and advance the gospel of Jesus, to the glory of God.

And one thing I really appreciate about this summary statement is that it’s pointed toward our goal. Our hope, our goal, what we’re trying to do here, is to protect and advance the gospel of Jesus, to the glory of God. We don’t want to keep looking at our feet and counting our steps, we want to dance. We want a beautifully choreographed, Jesus-exalting dance.

In the narrower sense, some have thought that deacons only do practical ministry in the church—caring for the poor, caring for widows, and managing finances. This is usually based on the pattern for deacons established in Acts 6, where the apostles appoint seven men to address a practical issue in the distribution of food to widows, so that they can maintain their focus on preaching the word (Acts 6:1-6). However, at Cities we think that there’s no reason to restrict diaconal tasks to meeting practical needs, since even in the book of Acts, some of the deacons (like Stephen and Philip) have fruitful ministries involving the word. This appointment of the proto-deacons establishes a pattern that we lean on in considering the structuring of our church. And the reason for requiring skillfulness in teaching for elders and not deacons is that while all elders should be able to teach, not all deacons must.