If you had to write to a young pastor giving him instructions for pastoring his church and for keeping his spiritual life intact what would you say to him? What spiritual and theological truths would you try to impart in order that he would be able to do his job effectively. Would your instructions fill volumes or would they be fairly simple? How much time and how many words would you spend reiterating the basics of salvation not to mention the necessity of a pure and holy life style?
Remember that the young man will be ministering in a hostile environment where Christianity was the exception rather then the norm. Where paganism was the accepted practice and people lived hedonistic life styles interested in only satisfying their own lust and desires. Not only that but there appeared to be trouble within the church with people teaching doctrines that ran contrary to the gospel and orthodox teachings of the church.
Not an easy task for a preacher of any age and yet Timothy was facing circumstances very like that when Paul wrote to him in this first letter. Up to now the letters that we have looked at have all been corporate letters that is letters written to the collective members of a church. And those letters would have been read aloud on Sunday as the church gathered together for worship, probably discussed, perhaps debated.
I’m pretty sure that some people would have been offended by some of the things Paul had written and perhaps some had left the church because of those letters. Remember Paul had discussed specific sins in some of these letters and talked about money and peoples giving habits, I’ve seen people leave churches when those things were mentioned.
He used letters to encourage the believers but also to chastise them, to correct them. And most people prefer to be encouraged as opposed to being corrected.
The book of 1 Timothy is different then the previous letters that we have looked at. This book is a personal letter; it wasn’t addressed to the congregation in the Ephesian church it was addressed to the pastor of the Ephesian church. And so as we look into the book of 1 Timothy understand that we are reading somebody else’s mail this morning. 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon all fall into this category and are known now as the Pastoral Epistles or letters.
1 Timothy is the 15th book of the New Testament meaning that we are well and truly half way through the New Testament. It was written by Paul and was addressed this way
1 Timothy 1:2 . . . written to Timothy, my true child in the faith. May God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace. Timothy was first introduced to us in the book of Acts chapter 16, we are told that he was a young disciple who lived in Lystra and that his mother was Jewish and his father was Greek. If we pull down our map we discover Lystra is here in the Roman Province of Galatia. And while they thought quite highly of themselves, enough that they referred to themselves as “The most brilliant colony of Lystra.” William Barclay in his Daily Study bible said and I quote “. . . in reality it was a little place at the ends of the civilized earth”
We are also told that Timothy was well thought of by the believers in that city and obviously impressed Paul because Paul took him with him when he left. And over the next number of years he became Paul’s closest assistant. And Paul often sent Timothy to personally represent him when churches needed correction. In 1 Corinthians 4:17 Paul writes That is the very reason I am sending Timothy—to help you do this. For he is my beloved and trustworthy child in the Lord. He will remind you of what I teach about Christ Jesus in all the churches wherever I go. And again in Philippians 2:19 If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon. Then when he comes back, he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along.
Timothy even accompanied Paul to Prison in Rome and from there became his personal trouble shooter, so to speak. And so it would appear that Timothy is in the City of Ephesus, if we pull down our map again you can see that Ephesus is in what is now Turkey, to deal with the heresy and false teachings in the church.
The letter was written around AD 63, shortly after Paul had been released from prison and the reason was to give Timothy some advice on confronting false teachers.
And so for six chapters we find some practical wisdom and advice for some very specific problems but problems that are still encountered in various ways 2000 years later.
This morning we are going to look at some of the advice that Paul gives to Timothy at the close of this letter. Angela actually read it as part of the scripture reading earlier. 1 Timothy 6:11-12 But you, Timothy, belong to God; so run from all these evil things, and follow what is right and good. Pursue a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight for what we believe. Hold tightly to the eternal life that God has given you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.
Three pieces of advice for Timothy to follow, three pieces of advice for Denn to follow, three pieces of advice for you to follow, if you are indeed a Christ follower.
This is what Paul told Timothy, 1 Timothy 6:11 But you, Timothy, belong to God; so run from all these evil things . . .
1) There are Times You Have to Run The word run is mentioned 102 times in the Bible, ten of those times are in the New Testament. And when the writers are not speaking about literal running they are telling us to run to God, run the race set before us, run with endurance. But three times we are told to run away from certain things. We are told in 1 Corinthians 6:18 Run away from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Plus 1 Timothy 6:11 But you, Timothy, belong to God; so run from all these evil things . . . And finally in 2 Timothy 2:22 Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Kind of a common theme that is running through there.
So here we go. Most of us have survived in life by knowing that there are times that we need to execute what has been called as a tactical advance to the rear. That whatever it is ahead of us it’s either too big to fight, or not worth the effort. Do you remember the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they are up against the Killer Bunny? Do you remember the advice that was given? “Run Away, Run Away.”
Now I know that retreat is a dirty word, to most of us it signifies giving up or surrendering. But it would appear that Paul is telling Timothy that in this particular instance that discretion might be the best part of valour. When I was young my father imparted some advice upon me which while not necessarily heroic sounding was certainly practical, here it is, you might want to write it down. “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.” I thought that was pretty profound and it was only as an adult I found that Dad was actually quoting the Roman Historian Tacitus who said “He that fights and runs away, May turn and fight another day; But he that is in battle slain, Will never rise to fight again.”
What we are being warned about are those areas in life that we are prone to be spiritually weak in. And it’s a personal thing, what may tempt you may not tempt me and vice versa. But you know what areas you are weak in. Someone once said “The reason most people don’t pray ‘lead me not into temptation’ is they are afraid God will take them serious.”
This isn’t rocket surgery people. If you have a problem with gambling you don’t go down to watch the folks feed the VLTs, if you have a problem with lust you don’t watch certain programs or go to certain movies, if you struggle with alcohol you don’t hang out in the bars or keep a bottle around just in case.
Paul doesn’t tell Timothy to walk away from evil, or to saunter away from evil or to stroll away from evil. Instead he yells, Run away, run away. Don’t mess with it, don’t play with it, just walk away from it.
You say “Don’t worry Denn, I have everything under control.” Sure, famous last words, I think Custer said the same thing. Listen up, write it down, engrave it on your forehead, I don’t care what you do to remember it but remember it. But you, belong to God; so run from all these evil things . . . And I shouldn’t have to give you a list of what evil things Paul is talking about, E V I L Things, evil things. Things that you should not be messing with, things you shouldn’t be looking at, things you shouldn’t be thinking
about. And you know what they are. Remember what Solomon asked in Proverbs 6:27 Can a man scoop fire into his lap and not be burned? While that is a rhetorical question and isn’t meant to be answered, the correct answer is “No you dummy.” You don’t stick your hand into the fire and pray that you won’t be burned, you keep your hand out of the fire and pray for enough sense to not put it in.
I’ve told you before, I am telling you now and I will tell you again. Sin will always take you further then you want to go, keep you longer then you want to stay and cost you more then you want to pay. Run Away, Run Away.
But we can’t spend our lives running so Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:11 But you, Timothy, belong to God; so run from all these evil things, and follow what is right and good. Pursue a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.
2) There are Times You Have to Follow. Follow is another one of those words that doesn’t have a high profile. We don’t want to follow we want to lead. Following is for followers. Ahhhhh. Like Christ Followers, those who would follow Jesus. What was the invitation that Christ extended to those he met? “Come, follow me.”
You ever hear the old adage “Idle hands are the Devil’s hands”? The easiest way to stay away from what is evil is to immerse yourself in what is good. That’s the concept that Paul is teaching to Timothy, the concept that we need to learn as well. So, if you commit yourself to following what is right and good. To pursue a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. How much time are you going to have for evil?
Focus on the good. Read good books, watch good movies, listen to good music, think good thoughts. But Denn, don’t but Denn me. A recent survey showed that the majority of Americans thought that there was too much sex and violence on Television, at the same time the two highest rated shows are CSI and Desperate House Wives. You scoop fire into your lap you will get burned.
For just a minute think about what you have watched, read and listened to this week, how does it stack up? And I know that you can’t isolate yourself completely from the world. But if you were able to weigh on a scale the amount of garbage that you subject yourself to on a daily basis and then on the other side you placed the good stuff, the stuff that is right and good that you take in. Which way would the scale tip?
The scriptures are full of the things you should be doing, and as we’ve often noted if you spend all your time doing the dos, you won’t have time to do the don’ts. The slide that’s been up on the screen a couple of times this morning makes some suggestions about what our thought life should look like, did you catch it when it was up? True, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy think about these things. What do you think? A pretty good description about what goes on between your ears? It should be.
Instead of focusing on what you are supposed to avoid, what you are supposed to run from set your eyes on what you are supposed to follow. Those things that are right and good, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.
1 Timothy 6:12 Fight the good fight for what we believe. Hold tightly to the eternal life that God has given you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.
3) There are Times You Have to fight. Do you know there are people out there who don’t believe what you believe? There are people out there who will actually mock our beliefs. That’s a given, Jesus told us it would happen, Paul told us it would happen, Peter told us it would happen, James told us it would happen. We’d be foolish if we thought we would be immune.
And when we are confronted by people and situations like that we have a couple of options. Actually there are at least three options and we’ve looked at a couple of them so far. We can flee from them, just walk away. We can follow them and decide that maybe they are right and we are wrong, or we can fight.
But who or what are we supposed to fight? At the present it would appear that the church has decided that they should be fighting against homosexual marriages, parliament and the Supreme Court. We can see in the news from time to time how the church fights to keep prayer in school and the Ten Commandments in public buildings in the States and Christ in school Christmas presentations.
Is that what Paul was talking about when he said to fight the good fight. Was he telling us to fight for what we believe in society? I’m not so sure? Actually if that’s what he was saying then the early church did a dismal job and Jesus did a worse job. The only way the early church tried to make society better was by making individual people better. And if we look at history we discover that society changes when people change, not the other way around.
And so if this is not about fighting the big fight, the fight to keep society intact and marriage safe what are we supposed to be fighting? We are supposed to be fighting against evil in our own lives. We are supposed to be fighting against temptation and sin. We are supposed to be fighting to maintain moral purity. Not out there but in here, and it is a fight. You see the fight isn’t to keep trash off of television; the fight is to not watch the trash on television. The fight isn’t to protect marriage; the fight is to protect our marriages.
If Satan’s not picking on you it’s cause he doesn’t think you are worth picking on because you’re not doing anything for the kingdom. And if you don’t think maintaining a strong and vital relationship with God isn’t a struggle then maybe that’s because you’re not doing it.
And we need to be taking a stand and saying this is what the church is supposed to believe in. It’s amazing that we will criticize the liberal churches publicly about their stand in favor of same sex marriages but we never publicly denounce them for denying the deity of Christ, or the virgin birth or the resurrection. Those are things worth fighting about and taking a stand for.
So this week what are the things you are going to run from? What are the things that you are going to embrace and follow and what are the things you will be willing to fight for?
Hope you enjoyed this message, PowerPoint is avalaible upon request. Email me at denn@powerpoint4preaching or check out our website www.powerpoint4preaching.com
