Is Christ The Saviour Of All Men? Series

IS CHRIST THE SAVIOUR OF ALL MEN?

A study on 1 Tim. 4:10

12/2/07

We all know that in life things are not always as the appear. Things we see, things we read, things we hear are all filtered through our presuppositions, through our experiences, through our knowledge.

Think of a beautiful sunrise. I can see that sunrise and think to myself, wow, that’s beautiful. I can look at it and praise God for it, knowing that it comes from Him. A cow on the other hand can look at the very same sunrise and be totally unaffected by it. It will not see any beauty in it, it will mean nothing to the cow.

Why? Well first of all we have different natures. We have different levels of intelligence, (at least I hope so), different comprehensions and so forth. So while we may see the same thing, it means much more to me then to the cow.

The same is true in what we read. Say I know a physicist and he gives me a book on quantum physics. We both read the book. We can read the exact same words yet they can mean something totally different to him then they do to me. Why? Because he has a better understanding of physics then I do, his knowledge is greater. He has different presuppositions then I do and so forth.

The same is true when we read that Bible. When we read the Bible we bring baggage with us. We read it with different presuppositions, we read with different levels of knowledge. Perhaps a person knows Greek, or has studied 1st century culture, which may give them a better insight into a particular passage. It will color their understanding of it.

We read the Bible knowing what we know, and what we know often times effects how we read a given passage, how we understand it, how we see it. We all bring all these presuppositions with us when we open our Bibles. Very often because we know what we know we read a passage looking for it to prove what we already believe.

It is those passage that do not fit into what we know that can cause a lot of confusion for us. Too often rather then study something out, we simply ignore the passage, or come up with some out of context understanding rather then let the passage speak for itself within the context of chapter, or book, or the Bible itself.

Let me make something very clear. Just because folks may understand certain passages in different ways, does not mean that the passage does in fact have different meanings.

If a passage states “Paul sat on a chair.” And a person who does not believe in chairs understands that word chair to mean table, does not in fact mean that the word chair means table. Truth is not relative. The persons belief does not change the meaning of chair. The passage means what it means whether we like it or not. A passage of Scripture is NOT validated by OUR understanding of it, it is validated by what it states. While there may in fact be different viable interpretations of a passage, in the end only one is correct, only one is the truth.

It want us to understand as we move on.

The reason I bring all that up is because the next couple of passages that we will be looking at over the next couple weeks, have been understood in different ways. We are going to be looking a couple of difficult passages. As we look at them we must keep a couple things in mind.

First we must look at the context of the passage. You cannot simply pull a passage out of its context and say this means so and so. The passage is where it is at, it is in the context it is in because that is where the Holy Spirit of God wanted it.

Second, Scripture must be allowed to interpret Scripture. If your understanding of a passage contradicts other Scripture you have problem. I will say that your understanding of that passage is wrong. Scripture does not contradict itself. I would challenge anyone who says that it does. I have found that the person who states scripture contradicts scripture, either does not know what the Bible teaches as a whole, is taking something out of context, or does not understand what a contradiction is.

So let us keep those two things in mind. Context, and Scripture must interpret scripture.

Let us now look at our passage we will looking at. We will be spending a couple of weeks on this one. Please turn with me to 1 Tim 4:10.

I want to give you a quick background into the book we call 1 Tim. Which is of course actually a letter. It is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to young man by the name of Timothy. The book is thought to have been written sometime 62-66 AD.