1 Timothy 4:6-10

Not on board, huh?
All right, friends, welcome back.
Joining us, thank you for another week
as we continue to make our way through 1 Timothy.
We are in the fourth chapter,
picking up today in verse–
what do we have?
Verse 6 here as Paul continues to give instruction to Timothy.
So let me read a little bit of this,
and then we will have some conversation about it.
“If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters,
you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus,
nourished on the words of the faith
and of the sound teaching that you have followed.”
Let’s stop there, Michael.
Look at the positive,
then we’ll check the negative.
So Paul’s encouragement to Timothy,
he’s been giving him some advice.
He’s been giving him some direction.
And he now says,
if you can put these instructions,
put these things that I’ve told you,
share them with the brothers and sisters.
In the Greek, the word is brother.
So the Bible I’m using adds sisters,
because it’s clear that it is in the context
of the whole community.
You will be a good servant.
In other words,
you will fulfill your leadership role faithfully.
You will be a good servant of Christ,
nourished
on the words of the faith and the sound teaching
that you have followed.
I think this is a really great phrase,
Michael.
The idea that we are nourished in our faith,
both by the words of faith,
which we might say
would be scripture or the words of mentors,
and the sound teaching that sort of we
stand in line with people who have tried to understand
the faith and pass it down to us,
and that both of these aspects make it
more likely for us
to be good servants.
In other words, both of these set for us
a pathway toward being faithful.
Yeah, I think that this is incredibly helpful in beginning
to put some context here into what we’ve seen before.
To make that point here,
I just want to bring up and show you what we had just yesterday,
this moment here where we were talking
about that hypocrisy of liars,
those whose consciences are
seared with a hot iron,
that this is an example of those false teachers,
those people who have it the wrong way.
And today, as we turn our attention now
to the positive example of what it
means to be a good minister,
someone who is not
caught up in hypocrisy,
whose conscience is actually sound,
that this is the person who is going
to share these words with the people of faith.
Clint,
notice how communal that is,
how transparent that is,
how open this is.
While this letter is clearly being written to Timothy,
it is explicit here in this section
that this should be
shared with the entire body that
is gathered, that good leadership looks
like passing along the kind of training that has come.
In our own tradition,
the Presbyterian tradition, pastors have gone by lots of names
over the course of the years.
One of the ones that has been suggested in recent times
has been teaching elder.
And I find that a helpful term.
I think it fits in a context like this,
where the role of the leader of a community of faith
is to teach and equip every member of that community
in faith so that they too can grow in faith and discipleship.
And I think that is a simple kind of truth,
but embodied in words like this,
that fundamentally sound teaching is not just to be received by church leadership,
but to be passed on to the whole body.
Because fundamentally, that’s how a healthy and strong church community will grow,
is that being handed from one generation to the next.
Yeah, I think Paul does this a real service here in the idea
that we not only have the words of faith,
we not only inherit teaching,
but it takes teaching
to follow it,
sound teaching.
There is all kinds of unsound teaching.
There is unsound teaching from the words of faith.
But in combination, those two work together
to help us serve Jesus Christ in a faithful way,
that we are nourished on them.
We get sustenance,
we grow from the words of faith
and the sound teaching regarding that you have followed.
That would be the other part to follow.
And then we move into a kind of negative.
Some of what we saw yesterday have nothing to do
with profane myths and old wives’ tales.
Train yourself in godliness.
For while physical training is of some value,
godliness is valuable in every way,
holding promise for both the present life
and the life to come.
So we’ve seen this,
we saw this early in the book,
we saw this a little bit even yesterday,
this kind of consistent theme,
don’t chase rabbit trails,
profane myths,
old wives’ tales,
stay away from that stuff.
It would be fascinating if Paul were writing this letter today,
what he might tell us to stay away from.
YouTube videos and social media, unprofitable conversations.
I don’t know what the equivalent would be,
but his
point here is,
you know what builds the faith,
scripture and sound teaching,
so stay away from what isn’t that.
Stay away from those things that take you
the wrong direction and train yourself.
The word train brings to mind the idea of repetition,
of consistency,
of discipline.
If you’ve ever applied yourself to an exercise program, a diet program,
you know that those are the three keys.
You have to do it regularly,
it has to be consistent,
you have to have discipline,
and it has to be work,
it has to be effective.
And so Paul says,
train yourself in godliness.
And the church in Ephesus is well acquainted
with kind of physical games and activities
that happens there.
And so physical training is something
they probably celebrate culturally.
And he says, yeah, that’s good,
there’s nothing wrong with that,
but godly training
is better for all of your life.
It is overarching.
It’s not just good for your body,
it’s good for everything.
And again, I think,
Michael, that these are,
these are really helpful words.
I think these are the kind of words,
you know,
for me, this is the kind of verse you could cut out
or write on a note and put it in your car
or on your Bible or on your front door.
You know,
train yourself in godliness,
which is a value for your whole life.
Those are really good words to try and live by.
Okay, so Clint,
I apologize for this in advance
because this may at first glance
seem like an extreme diversion,
but I think there is a lesson to be had here
if we look at verse eight and the importance
of taking a moment to get out of our own shoes
in the appreciation of what we’re being taught in scripture.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
So some of you know that I grew up in a Christian school,
very small school,
but all of our teachers were Christian
and the curriculum was.
And so we got after our PE teacher,
our physical education teacher,
often because there was this talk about,
well, we need to, you know, be physically fit because that helps build up the temple that God gave us.
We literally used
verse eight.
Like we opened the Bible,
brought it to PE class
and showed, you know, physical training is of some value,
but godliness is valuable in every way.
And we tried to make the case as, you know,
smart aleck high schoolers that we shouldn’t need to do.
You need to go out and run a mile.
No, no.
You need to be Christian.
What was the good of running a mile
when we could be practicing faith?
Now that’s,
it’s near the level of sheer stupidity,
but the point I want to make here is this,
that to a kid looking at this text,
it could be used in defense of laziness.
And we,
you know, we’re joking, but there was a sense in which I think
that was our ability at that stage in our life
to actually interpret and understand scripture.
But if we as adults come to the text and we recognize,
because we’ve done a little bit of work on the front end,
that there may be some asceticism in the Ephesian community,
or in other words,
there may be some folks there
who are suspicious of what you can
and can’t do with your body,
that Paul’s already gotten after some people
for things like maybe they were saying
you can’t get married.
That’s a practice you shouldn’t do.
That in the midst of a place where there’s real debate
about where the line between what you eat
and what you do should be,
and what you should wear should be,
all these kinds of things,
that here we’re told that it’s fundamentally good to be
in the practice of physical training.
That’s not a bad thing,
but true godly character should be the source and font
of our Christian discipleship.
You see how that radically transforms a text.
It’s just a little bit of work to find yourself back
into that sort of
what is the nature of this conversation
and asking some of those fundamental questions
about why the critiques that are being offered.
If you’re willing to answer some of those, Clint,
it has a way of transforming the scripture.
I would even say making it come alive.
And then from that vantage,
we can begin to see how it speaks directly
to our present day lives.
So silly example,
but I think when you come
to a biblical text,
you can be surprised often
how different the interpretations
that folks come up with are.
And I think that that’s a helpful beginning
for a corrective to that.
And keep in mind the backdrop.
What is Paul arguing against?
What did we start the letter with?
That there are these people in this church community
in Ephesus who believe they have this special revelation.
They believe they’ve been given this gift of knowledge
that allows them to impart spiritual wisdom on others
that to Paul sounds very different than the gospel.
And what is he saying as the corrective?
That just like everything else,
the spiritual life is not magical.
It is a daily toil,
like exercise,
like diet, like work.
It is a thing that we have to apply ourselves to.
It’s not waving a wand and all of a sudden
we fathom all the mysteries of spiritual life.
It is an effort to be trained in godliness,
to nourish ourselves with the words of faith,
to embody and live out sound teaching,
to seek out sound teaching and to listen to it.
And I appreciate this,
having sort of come on the other side where
I would have wanted all my classes to just be gym.
But I appreciate about this sort of metaphor
that Paul uses, that idea that exercise
or that anything we aspire to do and do well
is going to take some work.
It is not the result of some
divine moment of understanding.
It is throwing yourself against it
over and over and over again and making progress, which is sometimes
slow,
but important.
And I appreciate that Paul gives us that perspective.
And then he follows that up,
the saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.
That’s
the truth,
that godliness has benefit
for all areas of life.
That’s the truth.
And then he finishes here, verse 10,
“For to this end,” and to my point here,
we repeat the language,
“For to this end,
we toil and struggle
“because we have our hope set on the living God
“who is the savior of all people,
“especially of those who believe.”
So let’s just take the front end of that
since that’s the theme we’re on,
toil and struggle.
Now,
these are not words that most people bring to mind
when you think about the faith.
If you say, define the Christian faith,
tell me about the Christian faith.
You’re not going to tell a non-believer,
well, we toil and struggle,
you’re going to,
but from the inside,
we know that that’s part of the journey.
And I appreciate that about Paul because,
and why do we toil and struggle?
Because we have our hope set on the living God.
That’s why.
Our hope guides us in the struggle.
Our hope guides us in the work.
And whatever work we do,
it is to the end of the hope we’ve been given in Jesus Christ.
Paul has this ability to get an entire sermon
shoved into one sentence,
and I would say this is a good example of it.
Clint,
we in the Protestant reform tradition specifically
have spent a lot of time emphasizing salvation
is by grace alone,
not by works.
You do not get into the door
because of something you have done or achieved
or bring with you.
The temptation of that may be to suggest
that there is never any work,
that there’s never any toil or never any struggle
because it’s all been done on our behalf.
The reality is,
anyone who’s been Christian knows
that because we are human,
because we’re fallible,
because we have received grace,
we now stand in front of the mountain
that is the reality of our brokenness.
And to be Christian alone is difficult work.
To be Christian within our own mind,
Jesus himself says, you know,
so you say you haven’t committed adultery,
show me the person who hasn’t looked upon a woman lustfully.
When Jesus says, you know, even within our own conscious thoughts,
we are incapable of restraining ourselves.
Well, all the same, even more so,
that’s true in Christian community.
When you start adding other people into the mix
with different understandings and life experiences
and interpretations and it requires patience
and diligence and generosity and, you know,
all of these sort of spiritual gifts
that are required for living as one body in Christ,
it is therefore unnecessary.
I mean, there’s no other way to live out the faith
than to do so in the midst of struggle
because we are going to struggle with ourselves,
we’re gonna struggle with others
and that’s not a sign of Godlessness,
that’s a sign of faithfulness,
that’s a sign of us taking the good news seriously
and desiring wholeheartedly to become disciples
whose character matches our belief
and that for anyone who has set themselves to the task,
they know is a very brutally difficult process
but it’s a beautiful process.
It’s not one where we achieve salvation
or sanctification to our own ends
but rather it’s a process by which we,
by taking a step of faith every day,
find God’s strength and mercy to be sufficient
and if we can remember that today
and then we can put our faith and hope in the God
who continues to carry us into tomorrow,
that is the fulfillment of the faith
that we see proclaimed here.
Yeah, and again,
that the end of that,
the goal in that is godliness,
that that is ultimately what we’re pursuing
and what we struggle with is to embody
a Christ-likeness in our life
and the thing that gets us there
is God’s word and sound teaching.
Just wanna say, Michael,
a word about this last part of this passage.
This is one of those verses
that has kind of led to a lot of head scratching.
Nobody knows exactly what to make of this.
Paul says a few things that are sort of like this
in other places but by and large, this is a
kind of lone voice
and some have not known exactly what to make of it.
So this line,
who is the living God,
who is the savior of all people,
especially of those who believe.
Now,
nobody’s exactly sure what to do with that
and I don’t know that we have any answers.
Just wanna point out that it is there,
that it has caused some discussion.
If you were with us in our Roman study,
you know how much emphasis Paul put on belief
but you also know how much emphasis Paul put
on the work of Christ on our behalf
and how those two things work in relation to one another
is a question that continues to generate discussion
in the community of faith
and so here, there is a very interesting verse
that is sort of out of step
with where we have generally been
and again, we’ve told you many,
many times, be very, very careful taking one part of one verse
and running with it as a theology
but I do wanna point out that this is here.
It’s difficult to interpret,
it’s difficult to understand
and it’s not entirely clear why the author says it
in the way that it’s written here.
Yeah, maybe one thing to just contribute to that.
I pulled up chapter two,
verse one here.
Just know this in this section specifically
once you get down to verse four,
that God desires everyone to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
We already have in this letter,
this is just two chapters previous,
this kind of language of God’s whole perspective
which is for everyone,
a kind of desire
to bring wholeness to every person and once again,
to Clint’s point,
resolving that theologically has not been done
in a comprehensive way up to this point
so we’re surely not gonna accomplish it
in the next minute and 30 seconds
but it is to say that I do think
if you want to extrapolate from a text like this
into a larger arc of scripture,
all the way back in Genesis,
if you joined us for that study,
from the very beginning of the Bible,
it’s been clear that God’s covenantal promise
was intended for all,
that God has always had a cosmic scope
in this idea of salvation
and how that gets worked out in salvific history,
that’s a matter for theologians
and biblical scholars to address.
From our vantage as people living on the ground
seeking to be faithful,
that means that every person we encounter,
whether we call them friend or enemy,
is someone who God desires
for the salvific message to break through
and our prayer and our work should always be to that end,
even in the face of adversity.
Yeah, if nothing else, this is a confusing but helpful reminder
that God’s bent is toward bringing the world,
bringing all people back to himself.
Now, if, how,
when that happens, those are things beyond our understanding
but it is good to be reminded
that that is God’s intention,
that is God’s hope if we can use a word like that in that context,
but that is the will of God
is that those who are yet outside would be inside
and from there it would break down into lots of pathways
but it’s a good place to start.
And for us today,
it will be the place we end.
So thank you for being with us for this conversation
and we look forward to having you join us tomorrow
as we continue on.
Thanks everybody.