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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 Gods | ungodly and sinful |
2.No idols | unholy |
3.No swearing | irreligious |
4.Remember the Sabbath | Sabbath-breakers |
5.Honour Parents | parent-killers |
6.No Murder | murderers |
7.No Adultery | adulterers and perverts |
8.No stealing | slave-traders |
9.No lying | liars 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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