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This world is getting older and you and I are part of it, and we get
older all the time. One of the best ways I know to remember just how
old we are getting is to remember that by the year 2020, 20 percent
of the entire population of the world will be over 65. By the year
2020, 20% will be "elderly" in this world. And not just in
the United States--throughout the world. The problem is as extreme in
other countries as it is in our own country. And yet there is a
commandment in God's Word--it is the fifth commandment--it is the
first commandment with a promise, and that is to honor your father
and your mother.
And I want to suggest to you today that it is
just as important that you invest your life in your parents when they
are older as it is that you invest your life in your children,
because you have a responsibility on both ends of life. And that's
what the Bible means when it talks about honoring our parents. Jesus
said, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples,
that you have love one for another" (John 13:35). But one of
those "others" is your mother and your father. And when
people become older, when they join the senior generation; we find
that they have special needs. One of those special needs is--they
have a special need for attention. The bones are brittle, the back is
weak, and sometimes they can't see or hear as well. They need your
help. They need special attention. Secondly, they also need special
understanding because sometimes the mind doesn't work exactly the way
it used to.
But let me suggest a third need that these
people have. Our parents, who are senior citizens, they have a need
of special grace--special grace from us. Let's look at a verse in the
New Testament that speaks about that. It's the first letter that Paul
wrote to Timothy--1 Timothy, chapter 5 and the first verse. It says
this, "Do not rebuke an elder" or literally an older
man--do not rebuke an older man, "but exhort him as a father,
the younger men as brothers." Now the context here is the
context of families. It's also the context of the church, but I don't
think this is talking about an official in the church. I think it's
talking about older people in general. And he says, "Do not
rebuke an older man."
What is it that our parents need when they get
older and the mind doesn't work quite the way it did, and the back
doesn't work quite the way it did? Well, have you noticed that not
only do they need this special attention, and they need this special
understanding; but they need special grace because older people have
a tendency to become a little--how can I say this nicely--cranky. All
right, is that a good word--cranky?
We have a tendency to become a little bit
irritable. And sometimes our parents, who are getting older, get a
little bit irritable because--well you would be irritable too if
everybody was talking and you couldn't hear them. You'd be irritable
too if you had to turn the TV up so loud that everyone else said,
"Turn down that television." It's just a part of life, and
they need a special grace at that time. They need us to cut them a
little slack. They need for us to show them the kind of grace that I
think it talks about here in chapter 5, verse 1 of 1 Timothy, not to
rebuke an older brother--not to rebuke an older man and older woman
as the case may be. Our parents have a need of special grace because
this is a pretty tough time in their life. And the Bible shows us the
example of being kind to those who are older simply because they are
older.
In the western society, we're not like that.
We live in a disposable society, right? You drink a can of coke, what
do you do with the can? You chuck the can. You open a plastic bag,
you go to the store and you buy a VCR and you spend about 20 or 30
minutes getting the shrink-wrap off that VCR. And when you finally
do, you throw it away. And it's that same throwaway mentality that
says to us as a society when people get older, and get more irritable,
and they become a burden to us; we simply put them away somewhere.
This is a time these people need special
grace; and I think chapter 5, verse 1 speaks to that. We are not to
rebuke an elder man. That is to say we are to show an elder person
the kind of respect that God shows to us. We need a guide. We need
some insight. And we don't get that guide or that insight generally
from the world because the world is not all that interested in older
people. But God's Word certainly is. So, of the special needs our
senior adults have, they have a special need for attention. They have
a special need for understanding. They certainly have a special need
for grace.
Here's a fourth special need that they have.
It's likely as adults get older in your family you're going to find
that they have a special need for special support. Now what do I mean
by special support? Well, let's read on. Chapter 5, 1 Timothy, verse
1, "Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father,
younger men as brothers, the older women as mothers, the younger as
sisters, with all purity. Honor widows who are really widows. But if
any widow has children" now listen to this, "children or
grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to
repay their parents; for this is good and acceptable before God. Now
she who is really a widow and left alone trusts in God and continues
in supplication and prayers night and day. But she who lives in
pleasure is dead while she lives. And these things command that they
may be blameless, but if anyone does not provide for his own, and
especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is
worse than an unbeliever--an infidel."
Now those are pretty strong words but even in
Paul's day, older people were being kind of cast out; and that's very
strange because this is a society in which multi-generational
families were the norm. And today, that's not the case, especially in
a lot of countries of the world. Now this passage tells us something
very special about the needs of older people. They have special
support needs. Incomes are low--expenses are high. Now that is a
prescription for disaster in old age.
Maybe your parents today are on Social
Security. They may be drawing Social Security, they may get some
state aid, they may get some government aid or government benefits,
perhaps they are drawing from their own pension, maybe from their own
private savings account; but let's face it, our parents were hard
workers but they were not financially astute people. And there are
lots of hard workers who have come to the end of life with very, very
little to live on at this point in their life.
Now I believe if you paid into a system, you
should reclaim that from the system, but a lot of people are not
going to have enough in Social Security to live on. That means that
we have to get back to what God says about our responsibility as
children and grandchildren to our parents. And that simply means that
sometimes our parents are going to have certain financial needs that
we can certainly take care of. But it's sad that so many parents
cannot look to their children for financial support. Some of you may
be those parents today. You are experiencing this right now. One of
the saddest verses in the book of Proverbs this, "A poor man is
shunned by all his relatives--how much more do his friends avoid him!
Though he pursues them with pleading, they are nowhere to be
found" (Prov 19:7).
I think that it's incredibly sad that when a
person is older and perhaps doesn't have the kind of income that he
or she needs, that a verse like this exists that a poor man is
shunned by his relatives. We are the ones that the Word of God tells
have the basic responsibility of caring financially for our parents,
for widows who are really widows, who do not have any kind of
sustenance by themselves. And yet in society today, unfortunately, I
have seen cases--and you probably have as well--where parents have
pleaded with children to help them out just a little. But the
children could not afford the second home, and the boat, and the
third car, and the second microwave if they also helped out their
parents. And unfortunately the parents are the ones who suffered as a
result.
When we get older, we all have special needs,
and some of those special needs are the kinds of needs that are
addressed by the Bible--some of them are not. And when those are
special needs addressed by the Bible, and we've specific instructions
as we do right here in 1 Timothy, chapter 5, then we have also
specific responsibilities. Five special needs of older adults--and if
they are your parents, five special needs of your parents:
1. The need for special attention, because old
bones don't work the way new bones do.
2. There is the need for special understanding
because the mind plays horrible tricks on you when it becomes older
and doesn't work the way it once did.
3. I think they have need for special grace
because when things don't work the way we want them to or when most
of our life is behind us, we have a tendency to view the world
differently than we did as wide-eyed idealists. And that's when it
takes some special grace on the part of others, because irritability
is a part of growing older.
4. I think there are occasions when they need
special support. They just need us to help them. They are the ones
who perhaps got us through college. They are the ones who fed us.
They are the ones who brought us up and now they need us. And one of
the greatest positions in life is to have children on both ends of
your life--one end being parents, the other end being your kids--but
people who need you as children need you on both ends of your life.
There is one final need that I think our
parents have, and that is--older adults have special care needs. By
special care needs, I mean that sometimes older adults become the
victims of abuse simply because they are older adults and they can't
tell anybody. The National Center for Elder Abuse, which monitors
domestic abuse in the United States, says that domestic abuse against
elderly Americans increased from 117,000 cases reported in 1986 to
241,000 cases reported in 1994. Last year, 818,000 elder Americans
reported abuse from their family members. And listen to this--the
abuse sometimes was physical. It often was emotional. It frequently
was financial. And sometimes it was sexual.
There's a point at life in which babies are
unable to care for themselves and we have become incredibly aware of
the need to take up the cause of little babies. But on the other end
of life, there are people who sometimes have the capabilities of
babies, and I'm not sure the church has entirely taken up their cause
yet. You know, when you think about elder abuse and it being
financial abuse, physical abuse, domestic abuse, a verse like
Proverbs 28:24 becomes incredibly meaningful. "Whoever robs his
father or his mother and says, " It is no transgression, the
same is companion to a destroyer." In some places children are
robbing their parents of dignity. In some places they're robbing them
of their personality. In some places they're robbing them of their
bank accounts. And all because we have forgotten that these are God's
creatures, too. And in a society that has a tendency to throw away
anything that doesn't seem to be usable anymore, the concerns of our
parents as to how we are going to treat them are major concerns.
You know what one of the major concerns older
adults have of those of us who are younger? Their major concern is
that we will simply abandon them--we'll simply move on in our own
life and let them fend for themselves. Wasn't that exactly the
concern the psalmist had? --"Cast me not off in the time of my
old age, forsake me not when my strength faileth" (Ps 71:9).
This has been a concern for a long time, and one of the major
concerns I have for senior adults is concern for their eternal
destiny. Because, let's face it, when our parents are 80, 90, or more
years of age, their opportunities to respond to the Gospel are
getting smaller all the time, fewer all the time.
If today you have parents who are unsaved, I
want to encourage you to care for them physically, care for them
mentally, give them special grace, give them special attention, care
for all these special needs. But they have a spiritual need. Keep
your faith strong before them. Keep your witness strong before them.
Be faithful in everything you say and do so that they see in you the
Lord Jesus. And take every opportunity you have to tell them about
the love of the Lord Jesus. Just because their minds are not as sharp
as they once were, their bodies not as active as they once were, that
does not mean they cannot respond to the Gospel. This is a drawing of
the Spirit of God.
These older people in our society are not
cast-offs. They are part of our friends and family. And if we are
going to pay attention to the intent of God in His Word, we have to
pay attention to the care of seniors. I thank God for everyone who
works with children because I was saved as a child. And I'm beginning
now to thank God for everyone who works with older people, because
I'm not young anymore, and neither are you.
Just as our parents took care of us when we
were young, God gives us an opportunity to love and care for them as
they grow older.
Curtis
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