1 Timothy: An Introduction

Hey,
welcome back, everybody.
Thanks for joining us.
Possibly with some of the announcement,
you may be joining us.
Maybe you’re new.
If so,
I’d love for you to leave a comment.
Let us know that you are here with us.
Whether you’re new or not,
we’re grateful that you’re with us as we
move into a new book.
We switch just about everything,
to be honest with you.
We switch testaments.
We switch tone.
We switch theology.
We switch literature.
We’re not dealing with a history kind of book anymore.
This is very much Paul writing some theology.
This is an interesting letter in lots of ways
as we move into 1 Timothy.
1 Timothy is part of three letters,
1 and 2 Timothy
and Titus, that are called the pastoral letters,
essentially because they’re written
to people who are functioning as pastors
or who are in some sort of church leadership.
There’s a lot that we don’t know about these individuals.
There’s a lot that we don’t know about these churches.
Timothy is a co-traveler.
His father was Greek.
His mother is Christian and is mentioned.
He grows up, seems to be in the faith,
grows up in the faith.
So he’s essentially kind of a
third generation Christian.
And Paul has taken a liking to him.
Paul has used him as a co-worker.
Paul sends him to churches,
sends him on errands.
Paul has been training him.
Timothy now finds himself in Ephesus
helping a church, a community.
And so these three letters are often
called pastoral because they deal
with people who are in the midst of kind of helping the church.
And you know, Michael, you could listen to that description and think, well,
why would someone want to read these letters then,
unless they were a pastor?
That might make sense for us.
But there is a lot in here about what
it means to be the church and what
it means to kind of follow Jesus in the context of being
connected to other people.
Right, yeah.
So I think that’s really a helpful frame here
because one of the questions that all of us
would ask at some point is,
why do we pick up
a book like Timothy if in some ways
it’s like reading mail that was sent to someone else?
I mean, my name’s not on the true address.
So why would I read this?
And I think one maybe very helpful way
to come to a text like 1 Timothy is
to recognize that within the specific nature of the things
that are being addressed,
there are universal and deeply true reflections of what
it means to be Christian in a universal sense,
regardless of when we’re alive.
And quite frankly,
as the early church
selected this book to be part of our scriptures,
we go another step further to say
that it is relevant regardless of what
is happening in the world and in culture,
that there’s something true in this
if we’re willing to humbly submit to the words that has.
One note here, quick Clint, that I think is helpful
is my commentator makes note
that neither Paul or Timothy
are ever lifelong pastors in one place.
They’re religious leaders for sure,
but they’re far more of the apostle type ministry
where you go into a place,
you support the church
for a short period of time,
and then you make your way forward
and you help somewhere else.
So there’s also a nature in which you have a seasoned,
traveling, itinerant kind of pastoral leader now writing to someone who’s younger,
but not necessarily someone who’s
going to always live in this church either.
So there’s a sense in which there’s a
kind of mobility assumed in the text,
and I think that maybe helps us
relate to it as well.
Yeah, and this letter is a really interesting
combination of things.
On one hand, it’s
advice from a mentor.
It is words of wisdom to a young leader
in a congregation that has some issues, has some struggles.
On the other hand, it’s encouragement.
There’s personal words to Timothy
that really don’t have to do with the situation
and the circumstances that he’s in,
but are simply kind of an encouragement,
a challenge for him to continue to pursue his own growth,
his own discipleship.
I hesitate to use the word psychology,
Michael, but there is a little bit of an older man guiding
a younger man toward some sort of maturity in his leadership,
telling him things like,
don’t be intimidated by the older people,
but don’t be rude to them either.
There’s a kind of practicality to this.
It won’t surprise you, I think,
that I love this book
as a pastor, reading it through the lens of pastoring.
I think I begin to be able to more deeply appreciate
the wisdom of Paul as he’s able to speak into circumstances
that he doesn’t get to be there to fix,
right?
He’s trying to address some things,
but he’s doing that
respectfully from a distance
with the person who’s on the ground in that circle.
And I think that gives this book,
these books, really,
a very interesting characteristic,
though I think we also have to go on to say, Michael,
because at their heart,
this is also a
book that deals with some issues.
There’s some not easy stuff in here.
There are some issues that are cultural.
There are some things that Paul tells Timothy
that the church has struggled with really ever since,
trying to understand and make sense of them.
What do we do with those words?
Things, for instance, like the role of women in church
and some other kind of
nuts and bolts issue,
day-to-day kind of issues.
And I don’t know,
I think, I hope that you will,
as you come through these letters,
I hope you’ll gain a sense not only of Paul and Timothy,
but I think you will be surprised
by how remarkably contemporary these letters are.
They don’t read to me for the most part.
There are exceptions,
but for the most part,
these don’t read to me like they’re 2,000 years old.
So I’m going to sound like I’m actually
maybe even contradicting what I just said
a few moments ago,
but bear with me here.
There’s a sense in which Timothy includes
some incredibly specific directions
with very appointed kinds of details.
And we are most certainly going to come to points
where things seem like they are
maybe even excessively spelled out.
An example of that is we’re going to come later in this book
to hear some qualifications for Christian leadership.
And it’s amazing to me
because some of the things
in the list for Christian leaders,
you’re going to have people say enthusiastically,
this is the litmus test for pastors.
If a pastor doesn’t fill in these categories,
then they shouldn’t be a pastor.
But then you watch and life happens
and decisions get made and a mistake happens or whatever, whatever,
and people will then come
to a text like Timothy and say,
oh, it’s a guideline.
We shouldn’t take that word for word.
It’s the idea behind it.
My point here is this,
is that in the book,
that’s one example of something
that’s going to happen a dozen times.
And every time we see Paul and Timothy engaging
in a very specific and intentional matter,
I believe if you’re willing to look closely at that
and to really begin to hear the pattern,
the heart that Paul’s offering,
these words move from beyond like a
church manual
to scripture,
to a reflection of what it looks like
to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.
It at some point is going to feel a little painful
because it’s going to come crossways
of some of our cultural assumptions.
And when that happens,
we should vulnerably and humbly ask the scriptures to teach us
instead of us trying to teach the scriptures.
But at the same time,
I think an honest
and inquisitive person will come to Timothy
and will say, you know, I think there’s a lot to glean here.
And I think that as we allow Paul’s wisdom
being given to a younger pastoral leader
to live in our own hearts,
I mean, I’m confident, Clint, there’ll be something here for all of us.
Yeah, I think so.
Again,
I think where these books
can really be of interest to us
are in some of the depictions of life together in the church.
And I’m always kind of torn when I meet people
who don’t go to church or who aren’t people of faith and they say,
well,
you don’t know, church people have done this
and church people have acted like this
and I’ve seen Christians do this and that.
I always want to,
I’m always tempted to say,
you don’t know the half of it, right?
We who live in the church know how crazy the church can be.
We know how misguided people can get.
We know how dug in we can get about things
that don’t really matter.
We know that better than anyone.
And whenever I have some non-church person telling me
how crazy the church is,
I just always want to say,
I promise I have more of those stories than you do.
I guarantee you and it’s not even close.
And yet there’s something wonderfully gracious in that
as Paul and Timothy try to navigate these circumstances
of,
well, this person is doing that and this group,
oh, they started doing this
and we’ve got a problem over here.
As they do that,
there’s a wonderful realness to it,
a sort of genuine expression of people trying
to really be Christian together.
And while I think,
if you were with us a couple of books ago,
we look through a book like Romans that is deep
and theological and really tries to set a foundation for us
of what we believe and what the gospel means.
Timothy has a little of that,
but I think Timothy seems to be more concerned
with the bridge between that foundation
and how we live that out,
particularly in community.
This is a fairly church-centered book.
And we’ll talk about that in a minute,
what that means for when it was written.
But this
is a book I think specifically intended
to challenge us in the context of being a part
of the body of Christ and is fully aware
of the challenges that represents
and some of the problems that it creates.
I think a really interesting thing about Timothy Clint
is that in a lot of Paul’s writings,
Paul’s really concerned with putting down opponents,
really getting after false teachings
and correcting the record.
That’s especially true in the first and second Corinthians.
Here in Timothy,
it is a very warm relationship.
It’s a positive context between these two individuals.
So it’s not harsh in criticism.
Paul’s not attacking anything per se.
He’s instead
encouraging and modeling
a kind of best case scenario.
And that makes these books unique.
And I think it also makes them interesting.
Yeah, I think there’s a very different tone
when Paul is writing directly to the people
of the church causing problems.
And when he’s writing to the person who’s trying to deal
with the people in the church causing problems,
it gives it a much different flavor.
A couple of background things about this book
that may or may not be particularly helpful,
but at least if they come up as we go through it,
it may be interesting to know.
Historically, there’s been some real questions
about whether first and second Timothy and Titus
were actually written by Paul.
And there’s a lot of stuff in that.
There’s a ton of words in these three books
that aren’t used in any of the other
letters that Paul writes.
Also,
the development of the church structure
seems to be pretty far down the road
for when Paul lived and died.
We are, I think, going to progress.
We’ll be aware of those questions
and we’ll try to point out if there are things
that have a bearing in that conversation.
But I think for purposes of our study here,
we’re going to assume that Paul,
in fact, is the author of this,
as many scholars do.
That’s a question that they throw back and forth.
And
that these letters are probably written
late enough in Paul’s life that A,
impedes him from travel.
In fact, he may be under arrest at the time.
Or B,
that allows the time to have a church
community,
particularly in a place like Ephesus
that’s fairly early, to be developed and to have the kind of structure that we see here.
I think,
again, I have to be careful
because I love books about the church
trying to be the church and the difficulties therein.
And so I’ll try not to get carried away on this book.
This is a rich ground for me.
This is fertile soil.
And I
can’t really show you,
but in my Bible, this thing is,
my book of Timothy has highlighted
and scratched up and marked up.
And there’s just a lot of great stuff in here.
And I hope that it will be helpful to you as well.
So just a quick note about the tenor
and tone of this study.
If you were with us in Genesis,
I imagine that very few people
would have joined that study probably
with a spiritual journal of any kind.
I think as we went through that study, it’s very narrative.
There’s a lot of discovering the characters
and reflecting upon what that means.
But it’s not particularly devotional.
It doesn’t particularly connect to our understanding
of our own discipleship,
of living out our faith
on the day-to-day where the rubber meets the road.
But this book, that all changes.
And this may be the kind of study for the next few weeks
as we commit together to look through the book
of First Timothy, where you do set aside a notebook
and maybe write down one word or idea.
Most days, there’s gonna be at least one nugget
of something that we can live with for a while,
that we can let work within our souls.
Sometimes, it’s gonna be very specific,
and it may cause us to reflect and ask,
how do I live that out in my life today?
In other cases,
there’s gonna be calls to generosity.
There’s gonna be calls to sobriety.
There’s gonna be calls to service,
that we would be fools to not take as a serious question for self appraisal.
How am I doing?
Am I truly serving and loving as Christ has loved me?
He’s gonna come to practical questions,
like how you treat some of the older in need folks in the church,
how you deal with people
in the church in conflict.
Some of this is just very practical kind of life advice even.
And so, I would say,
if you’re looking for,
in this study,
a
way to approach it.
I might do that with a goal to look each day
for sort of a word for the day,
sort of as we say in the prayer,
today’s daily bread.
And I think that this book will surely have that
if we’re looking for it.
I think the last piece that may or may not be helpful
as we go through here,
there are a sort of host of issues
that come up in the book.
And some of them we understand pretty specifically,
and some of them we sort of infer from the text.
And so Michael and I will do our best.
Some of those are going to seem very applicable
and others of those are going to seem kind of outdated.
But we will do our best to help identify
if not the specific issue,
what might be the issue given the word.
So Paul’s gonna make reference
to some people doing some stuff.
And we,
thousands of years later,
don’t actually know who those people were
or exactly what they were doing.
And we have to take some guesses
based on what he says about them to Timothy.
And we’ll do our best to parse that out.
But I agree 100% Michael,
this is far more devotional than a book like Genesis,
which I think is inspirational.
But this is a book of Christian teaching,
a book of Christian theology.
Now,
we’re going to,
there’s going to be some looseness in some of it
as to where the lines might be
and whether it means literally what it says or not,
we’ll have to talk that through.
But I think as we listen in on this conversation
between Paul the missionary and Timothy,
the pastoral presence in a Christian community,
there is a lot to be gained at multiple levels.
I hope it will be helpful to you.
I can’t imagine that you won’t find some things in this book
that both challenge you and comfort you,
inspire you.
There’s a lot of good stuff in here.
Some difficult stuff,
but a lot of great stuff.
That’s, I think, a great place to end the day.
Thanks for being with us.
Hope that you’d share this with people
who might want to join us for the journey.
And we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.