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Glorious Gospel

1Timothy 1:1-11
Sunday, 17th January, 2010

 It is not particularly polite to read other people's mail. But that is precisely what we are about to do in the next two months. 1Timothy is a personal letter between Paul and Timothy.

 

So how does it get to be in the Bible? Primarily because the early church recognised the Holy Spirit's guidance that this and other letters of Paul were more than personal letters. They were the authentic word of God. So while we will discuss it as a letter we must not forget that this is God’s Word. We will seek to understand it better. But more importantly, what we understand we must obey.

 

 Like all letters it has a recognized structure. It begins with the sender’s name, Paul and then whom it is to, Timothy followed by a greeting.

Then we have the substance of the letter, which is about the good news and how to protect the church from false teachers. There are instructions about worship; a section about appointing leadership; more on teaching sound doctrine; advice about widows, elders and slaves and a homily on contentment.  Paul then charges Timothy to be faithful in his ministry. Unlike public letters, there is no list of individual messages; it ends with a brief greeting. Grace be to you.

It is not possible to be sure of the exact point when this was written.

 If you read Acts you will be aware that Timothy joined Paul's missionary team and rapidly became an assistant, sent as messenger, then as follow-up missionary in various places. It is in this context the letter was written. The church was young and moving from apostolic missionary work towards a more established church. So our tradition has long examined this, 2Timothy and Titus, which are known as the "Pastoral Epistles", as a recipe for church organization.

First then we have Paul plunging into what is on top of his mind. Remember this is not an email, dashed off and sent. Paul would have employed a scribe to write and discuss how to best express himself.

 Macedonia is modern Northern Greece with cities like Philippi and Thessalonica, Ephesus is in Turkey which was known as Asia. The letter would have travelled by sea in the hand of a friend or slave. We think that it is written after the end of Acts, when Paul was freed from Rome.

So what is the most burning issue?

 God's work, which is love and a right understanding of the law.

In Paul's day, even in the young church, study of genealogy had replaced the good news. Like can you list all the descendants of Adam to Abraham including many not in our Bible? As that is not our concern these days, we need to concentrate on the positive.

God's work is

  by faith The point here is quite simple but none the less profound, God’s work is not understanding the complex nature of some highly complex theology or carefully crafted prediction of the second coming but a matter of faith, where your trust is. A child does that without thinking. They assume you are reliable and safe. That makes them vulnerable. But God is trustworthy, and our faith in him is never at risk but it is faith not understanding or complex. So often we make life complicated, by looking for hidden meaning in the scriptures, building theories as to the historic context when the words are plain and simple. Mark Twain, writer of Tom Sawyer and other novels is quoted as saying it is not the bits of the Bible I don’t understand that worry me, it’s the bits I do understand. And rather than stretching the All scripture is profitable… to include some of the more obscure passages as if we are somehow fraudulent if we do not see value in discussing them, we need to challenge ourselves as to whether we are living by faith, showing love from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.

 

Our passage  says, the end of the command is love. This command is the one already mentioned in verse 3. Timothy is called to command, Paul uses a military word here for command. So this is not the same as Jesus telling his disciples to love one another, it is telling the false teachers not to teach wrong doctrine so that love triumphs in the church. The idea behind the words ‘God’s work’ is not so much what God does but what we do in service to God for the church the Greek word meaning ‘stewardship’. While we are debating whether there were three kings or a donkey or a the angels sang or what over the Christmas story we are missing the point of the narrative that God became man and dwelt among us. If we stop there we have still missed the point because until we have received Jesus as Saviour and friend, the story is just an intellectual tale of no more value than a good novel. But if we allow Jesus to enter our lives, we are transformed by the love of God into a living spiritual person in a real relationship of trust in the God who created us. We can debate worship for hours and not appreciate the awesome presence of God and his love for us at all. We can have a fully developed theology of the Holy Spirit but never receive the fullness of that Holy Spirit in our lives. Good teaching must lead to us changing the way we think so that our actions and our thoughts and our worship are transformed into what God wants of us.

Paul says that has to come from three things: a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.

 

Of ourselves we have none of these.

 Pure heart. This is about our thoughts and our emotions. But we are riddled with mixed emotions and twisted. Our hearts are an open book to God, so we may be able to hide our thoughts from our friends, even our nearest and dearest but they are plain to him. The Greek word is katharas -  clean, a clean heart and that should speak to us of the cleansing by the blood of Jesus. We have to receive the forgiveness through Jesus and live in the light of it.

Good conscience.  Not clear or clean. The underlying idea is how we perceive good and evil. The unsaved person’s conscience is dulled or seared and best confused. When we come to Christ, The Holy Spirit convinces us of sin and righteousness and judgement. We need to be looking into the heart of God to understand what pleases him and what pains him. As to the past, confessed sin is forgiven and for that our conscience is clear. We have been released from it. Christ has paid the penalty on the cross. And a good conscience would have led us to make reasonable reparations, whether that is apologising for wrong behaviour to the person we wronged or repaying what was lost.

 Sincere faith We are back to faith. Our faith is to be sincere. The word here is without hypocrisy. We frequently play up to fellow Christians and make out we are more spiritual than we are. And we deceive ourselves when sin lies in our hearts and is not repented of and turned away from. We think we can pretend before God, forgetting that our thoughts are an open book to him. Sincerity will mean humility and honesty. Quite different to the teachers Timothy was to oppose who were trying to sound grand and impressive with their knowledge of the additional sons of Adam and Enoch and their knowledge of the levitical law.

 

Paul's second concern seems to come from a reaction to thinking that the Old Testament Law applies to all Christians, which was a major problem in the early church. However, his reaction is to affirm that the Law is good. The BIG TEN we have here is good. It is good

The Law is good. In what way is it good?

The Formula of Concord (1577), specified a threefold use of the law. It is a means to the preservation of human society to restrain evil, It is a summons to repentance and faith to lead to Christ, It is a direction for the church to determine the conduct of believers.

Here it is good for those who are breakers of the law to tell them they are off limits.

 The list reflects the BIG TEN except, as you would expect the 10th Command. So we have

1.No other Godsungodly and sinful
2.No idolsunholy
3.No swearingirreligious
4.Remember the Sabbath   Sabbath-breakers
5.Honour Parentsparent-killers
6.No Murdermurderers
7.No Adulteryadulterers and perverts
8.No stealingslave-traders
9.No lyingliars and perjurers
10. Not Covet-

The 10th Commandment is not mentioned because, as was said by Frank Murphy last week, it is a matter of the heart and expresses itself in the other 9.

 

Do not be fooled, coming to Christ exposes our rebellion to these commandments. They remind us that our relationship with God is broken and therefore they direct us to the salvation and forgiveness that only Christ can give.

And then Paul lumps the false teachers with all the lawbreakers, anything that opposes the teaching of

 the glorious good news of the blessed God. This Good News we have is great, isn’t it! It is about righteousness that comes from God through Jesus, a righteousness that given by grace and is received by faith. It opens the prospect of inner spiritual healing, an eternal home, and the presence of the Holy Spirit day by day by day by day. It is that Good news we can have a clean heart, a good conscience and trust God sincerely.  It is hope to the worst of sinners and the best of sinners, it is Good News for the desperate of Haiti and the well healed of Ruislip. And you and I have this Good News to share. We are not here to keep it to ourselves. It’s too glorious and wonderful for that. Go out and tell it to your friends, your relations, your neighbours, and your work colleagues.

This verse launches us into the next part of the letter which is Paul ‘telling what God did ‘ in his life. So don’t miss next week. Read God’s word, hear God’s word and let God change your life. Live by Faith.

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