1 Timothy 1:3-5

Alright, welcome back everybody.
Thanks for joining us as we continue to make our way
through the early parts of 1 Timothy here.
Got through the salutation yesterday.
Typically, there would be in a Greek letter,
there would be something that comes after the salutation
that would be a kind of affirmation of a person,
“How are you doing?
Good to think.
I think about you.
I’ve been praying for you,” whatever.
But here Paul jumps right into the substance of the letter.
He doesn’t even—maybe he assumes that Timothy knows that.
He’s already said some nice
things about him in the salutation.
But rather than what we see in many other of Paul’s letters
where he has a moment where he says some encouraging thing,
here he gets right down
to business with Timothy.
So let me start in verse 3.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
We’ll try to get
through as much of it as we can to be helpful here.
“I urge you,
as I did when I was on my way
to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different
doctrine.” Maybe just we can pause there,
Michael.
So it may be helpful to have a sense of what the
early church looks like we think.
And what we think is that unlike our experience of church,
where all the people in a church would come to a central place to gather,
the New Testament early
church was more a series of house churches in an area.
And within that area,
there would be these
individuals called overseers or elders,
and they would each have some responsibility for
a group of people.
And this letter,
this book, is very concerned about that kind of leadership.
Who is going out to the people in this fellowship,
and what are they teaching?
And I think the reason
that’s helpful, Michael, is because when this says certain people teaching different doctrine,
it sounds like Paul is interacting with the culture.
But this is about the church.
In other words,
Paul and Timothy know who certain people,
they know those names.
Timothy knows who Paul is talking about.
Paul’s not talking about people out in the world who teach things other than Christianity.
He’s talking about people in the church in some leadership role who are
sharing things, teaching things,
following things,
that he believes to be out of step with the gospel
that he taught Timothy,
and that Timothy is now called to teach the church.
And I think that
matters, Michael, because we should remember when we read especially a letter like this,
that this is written inside the circle,
not outside the circle.
We are only three verses in.
This is verse three,
right?
Our first two verses were those greetings,
the hello,
all of that kind of initial letter stuff.
And if that seems short to you,
it’s because it is.
We have in other letters in our New Testament much longer introductions
than this.
The fact
that Paul goes so quickly to the substance in verse three where he says,
I urge you.
I mean, that carries even in English the kind of force that we see in the original
language, this idea of you need to take action or I want you to take this seriously.
This is an important thing, Timothy,
and immediately turns to this instruction that was given previously in Macedonia,
this idea that you should remain in Ephesus to make your point,
Clint. No one is going to be in Ephesus doing this teaching that needs corrected if they’re not
inside the church, right?
We’re not talking about some external philosopher.
We’re not talking about
some professor down at the local community college who has nothing to do with the church.
No,
this is a teacher who Timothy has to keep in mind.
And this, while I have glossed here in the NIV as certain people,
it is glossed correctly.
It’s not just like one person.
It is that group.
It is that cohort.
It’s people who are united around some theme.
Now, this is what makes biblical
interpretation really interesting is we don’t ever have a dictionary that tells us
the people that are being addressed in this letter are united around this theological issue.
We get it in some brief, fleeting comments,
some images, some things that Paul says that scholars go back and make some
intuitive,
educated guesses about.
But not to spoil it,
Clint, we’re never going to know
exactly what binds this group of teachers together.
But what we do know is Paul believes
there’s a different doctrine at stake,
that there is something substantial on the table and that
Timothy needs to hold an important line.
Ideally, he’s going to hold the line that he was taught in,
Paul’s understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And Paul’s concern is that if Timothy
doesn’t do that, there’s a different doctrine at stake.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so,
as background here,
there is this thing that readers of first and second Timothy and Titus try to figure out.
There’s clearly some set of teachings being taught, being shared.
There’s a heresy of some sort
that is making its way around these churches.
And we don’t know what that is.
There are guesses
made.
There are inferences in the text.
We read the text and we think,
“Oh, it must have involved
that,” or something like that.
We’ll see that in the very next verse.
But it’s interesting that that’s where Paul has to start.
This letter, we’re going to see in these six chapters,
Paul’s going to talk with Timothy about a variety of things, church leadership,
marriages,
widows, behaviors,
theology,
and he doesn’t start with any of that.
He’s going to talk to Timothy about his leadership.
He doesn’t start with any.
Paul dives into the deepest part of the pool,
the place where he believes all of it lie,
the responsibility for all of it is found,
and what is it?
They are not to teach different doctrine.
For Paul,
the most dangerous thing in the church
is this different doctrine.
This teaching or group of teachings,
set of teachings, these ideas that he believes lead people away from the gospel of Jesus Christ and into something else.
Now, in the next verse,
we get some hints,
perhaps, at what it involves or the kind of stuff
it might have in it.
But Michael, I think it’s especially telling that he begins here.
In other letters we see Paul,
when we went through Romans,
we see Paul take a very long run-up,
almost five chapters to get where he wants to land.
Here he takes two verses and then just puts it out there.
Certain people,
and Timothy likely knows who they are,
are teaching a different doctrine,
and Timothy likely knows what it is.
And for Paul,
I think that’s the heart of whatever’s going on in
Ephesus, that’s the heart of it.
Yeah, and maybe it helps.
We didn’t explicitly tease this out too much.
But this idea that Timothy is teaching in Ephesus that there’s these groups that are
relevant to this place,
you need to know this is a very cosmopolitan society,
that there is a lot of
business and merchants that come from all around the world.
Ephesus has one of the major ancient temples,
so there’s a substantial religious,
even,
let me use the word economy,
that exists there because there’s a lot of
idols sold and a lot of sort of exchanges that happen as part of that society.
What makes that relevant is
you have lots of different kinds of expression of even
racial and ethnic sort of groups within the city.
And so we’re going to see teased out here very
quickly, even verse four,
a little bit of some of the things that may hint to some Hellenism,
some Hellenistic Jews who may be part of that group and will tease out what some of that reasoning is.
But what you need to know is that there was a messy sort of crosswind happening in the midst of a culture like
the one that Paul’s speaking into because you have so many different influences.
You have the Roman influence,
you have the sort of more ancient religions influence,
you have the economic sort of reality of idols and different sort of people groups all gathering and mixing.
And in the midst of that,
you have Paul and Timothy trying to proclaim the gospel and for
this seed to grow into a robust Christian faith.
And that’s what Paul deeply cares about.
He’s not trying to get a Christian light group or Christian sort of like group.
Paul wants a group of
Christians, people who are in the body of Christ.
And to do that,
he clearly feels a level of
commitment to the foundation of that community of believers.
And Timothy is on the front lines of that work.
Yeah.
And Paul speaking into Timothy’s leadership is giving him that guidance.
You have to instruct these people.
In other words, Timothy,
it falls to you because what Paul
understands is that in the absence of leadership,
chaos thrives.
If Timothy can’t find a way
to confront these people and can’t contain them,
that it is likely to damage and potentially destroy this fellowship.
So I think it’s very helpful to keep this
opening verse in mind
because it really is the backdrop against which everything else
Paul says.
When we get to things
in a chapter or so that sound hard for us to kind of come to terms with,
it helps to put them in
conversation with this idea that in the background is a different doctrine that Paul is afraid
will damage the Christian spirit in Ephesus.
And so I will bring this up a lot.
But let me go
on to the next verse here.
Not to teach different doctrine in verse 4,
and not to occupy themselves
with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculation rather than the divine teaching
that is known by faith.
And again, I think we can pause there,
Michael.
So here we get our first kind of glimpse.
What are these doctrines Paul’s talking about?
Well,
myths,
so things that aren’t in scripture,
endless genealogies, those probably are in the scripture,
and promoting speculation rather than divine training.
The theory is that in Ephesus there
was a group of Christian Jewish people or formerly Jewish people who had begun
believing that they had found in what we call the Old Testament some secret stuff.
They had combed through genealogies.
They had put numbers together.
They kind of built this system of
looking at the scripture as a code book.
And they believed that with their spirituality,
they had seen into this.
And so they were building this kind of theology of a sort based on all of
that.
And if that sounds very strange,
it has plagued the church in every generation.
Not a year goes by that I don’t get an article or a book or someone comes in to visit to tell me,
“Hey, if you read the book of Revelation,
this chapter, and combine it with Ezekiel in this chapter,
take this word from Daniel and look at this story in 1 Kings,
guess what you find out?”
And the answer is nothing,
right?
I mean, Paul says you’re speculating,
you’re promoting speculation rather than divine training.
And there is this temptation in the history
of Christianity, Michael, to become obsessed with little stuff that is strange instead of big stuff
that is clearly spoken.
And it seems to me that Ephesus has some Christians that have
fallen into that trap.
Oh,
Clint knows.
I love this stuff.
Yeah, this is your wheelhouse.
No, it is my wheelhouse.
And I’m not going to burden you with why.
But number one,
Clint’s exactly right that if we’re going to allow this text to speak to our current context,
this is unbelievably prescient.
Now, let’s not move to that too quickly.
Let’s start with the text itself.
This is the very foundation why scholars start leaning on this idea
that maybe these folks have a Jewish orientation,
the people that Paul is speaking against,
because the draw to genealogies,
most likely those genealogies are Old Testament genealogies.
Those would only really be interesting to people who had some understanding of the history of the
connection.
And so that’s a sort of indirect reason why scholars say that may be a particular
point of evidence as to the fact that maybe this group has some Jewish leanings in their theology.
But then there’s also this idea that there’s some of this myth or this sort of not connected
to reality kind of thinking.
Maybe that’s allegory.
Maybe that’s that they are just so
metaphorical and spiritual that they kind of think beyond this world.
Of course, in the ancient world,
there was a lot of platonic sort of philosophy and different branches of that that worked its
way into public life.
The point here that I want to make is that fundamentally,
regardless of exactly who this is describing,
the impact of it is clear.
Paul says right here at the end of this
section here that these promote speculations rather than what,
than divine training known
by the faith.
And that divine training could also be translated divine plan,
this idea of gospel or God’s
revelation.
This is absolutely essential.
The place,
as Paul is arguing,
these folks are missing the mark.
The point,
the why in the road is that they have chosen a version of the faith in
his mind that is not connected to real human life.
It’s all lived out in the fantasy and imagination
of the mind.
It’s all connecting dots,
none of it connecting to hearts.
And this is what makes
Timothy’s letter so brutal is it is practical.
Paul is going to get down on the ground level
over and over again.
He’s going to tell Timothy very
specifically, you should do this or you shouldn’t do this.
That is the kind of implementation of God’s plan as Paul understands it.
His critique appears to be that these false leaders are kind of living out in outer space.
They’re living out a kind of spiritual life that’s disconnected from any kind of real human life.
Yeah, and I think it’s helpful,
Michael, and pushback if you don’t agree with this, but
Paul is not a person who doesn’t believe in the sort of mystical stuff.
I mean, Paul
speaks in tongues.
Paul talks about praying in the spirit.
Paul has references to these kind of
metaphysical ideas or ultra-spiritual ideas.
And yet,
Paul fundamentally believes that all we need to know,
we know in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And therefore, I think Paul has just a patent
disinterest for the idea that you need some secret decoder ring to understand what God is doing.
Because in Paul’s mind,
what God has done in Christ is made so clear to people that it is
the obvious sign that God has acted.
And for Paul,
it is just then unthinkable and unacceptable
that you would have church people teaching,
“Yeah,
Jesus is great,
but let me show you what else
you need.” And that simply doesn’t work for Paul.
It takes him to a place where he feels compelled
to work against them and to correct them.
And he calls Timothy to that.
They’re chasing these things,
Timothy,
and you need to tell them to stop and you need to return them to divine training that is known.
That is an important word,
known, because they believe they have discovered the unknown.
And what Paul argues is that God has made Jesus Christ known.
There is no secrecy.
There is no magic formula.
There is the gospel of Jesus Christ,
and Christ is sufficient.
This is the bedrock.
I can’t stress enough how much this is the central theme of Paul’s teaching and the
danger and probably why he reacts so strongly to this idea that there’s something else you need
to know to go with it.
Okay. So what you’ve so,
I think, eloquently laid out there is the
fundamental Christian doctrine of revelation,
which we see in Paul.
And just to quick throw this up here,
when you look at this word,
it shows you right here
this idea of Jesus Christ
reveals that fundamentally he shows us in his person perfectly what God needs for us to know.
That when we look at Jesus,
there is nothing more that we need for life,
faith,
godliness,
righteousness,
that if we look beyond that,
in fact, I would go so far Clint,
as to say, if we lean upon our own wit,
our ability to put together the numbers and connect the genealogies
and figure out the date and find the accurate faith sort of substance,
then we have become
the mechanism of our own divinity.
We have,
like Adam and Eve,
strove to take for ourselves a thing
that can only be available to those who have received it as a gift.
And that gift is Jesus
Christ.
Jesus reveals who God is,
and anything less than that is not substantial.
It’s myth, it’s false,
it’s ethereal and airy, it’s not Christian.
Right.
And the word reveal means to uncover.
So again, the idea that God has uncovered this saving truth,
this most important truth of human existence,
and then to have people say,
well,
that’s most of it,
but some of it still
covered up and you have to listen to me because I’ll tell you how to uncover it.
You can,
I don’t, we don’t want to beat this into the ground,
but you just can’t imagine how much that would irk Paul,
and how much it cuts against his grain.
Michael, we’re pressed for time a little bit,
but I’d like, I think it’s helpful to get through one more verse here,
because Paul does kind of come in hot.
But
this next verse, verse five,
“But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart,
a good conscience,
and a sincere faith.” This is a beautiful reminder from an older man to a
younger man in telling him that as you are put in a position that you have to say hard words to
people, you do so with a soft heart,
with a clean heart,
with a pure conscience,
that to confront them,
you know,
most people don’t love conflict.
And so this young pastor,
we’re going to learn,
he’s got a sour stomach,
we’re going to learn that he’s conscious,
self-conscious about being young.
And here he is being called to stand up to very likely
elders in the church and tell them shape up.
And he probably
doesn’t revel in that.
And in fact, we get the impression he certainly doesn’t want to.
But Paul says you have to do that and it has to come from the right place.
It’s not arguing for argument’s sake.
It’s not conflict, just for conflict.
It’s for their good.
It’s to show them
a better way.
It’s to bring them back to the truth of Jesus Christ.
And this is the great calling of
leadership in the church to do things that are sometimes not very easy and fun to do for the
right reasons and to keep those two realities in balance as one works within a community.
Yeah, a lot more could be said and for sake of time,
I’ll be very brief.
I just want to point
out, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.
We are now just at the end of verse five.
I want you to just consider how far we’ve traveled in five,
in what we have is five verses.
We have a greeting.
We have an encouragement to stand strong in the original purpose,
right?
To stand up,
to straighten your spine, Timothy.
There are some things worth
defending.
And then,
yet he has still eloquently made clear the heart and purpose behind all of it.
And that is the purpose of such instruction is what?
Love. Love that comes from a pure heart,
good conscience,
sincere faith.
In other words,
Timothy, this is not a Timothy show.
This isn’t about you winning.
It’s not you about,
about you being advanced or made great.
It’s not about you
having a high title or status or running people out.
It is about having a good conscience rooted
in real love.
You cannot read this,
friends, without thinking 1 Corinthians 13.
This beautiful
exposition of what love truly is.
Paul is incredible.
We’ve had a few sentences,
literally, is all this has been.
And we’ve already had a full sermon delivered to us.
It’s not an accident.
And it is amazing if you’re willing to slow down to see how deep Paul is within the very,
just few short words of this book.
Yeah.
You may be already getting the sense.
We’re going to be
in 1 Timothy for a while in this Bible study.
There’s a lot here.
It won’t all be as slow as
today, but much of it may be.
But we don’t want to miss things because we do think that what’s here
is really, really good and very helpful.
And so that’s where we’ll end for today.
We’ll pick up next Monday.
Hope you can be with us.
Hope you all have a good weekend and thank you for your time.
Thanks for joining us.