PASSING CHRISTIANITY DOWN
AN EXPOSITION OF FIRST TIMOTHY
Copyright 2004 by Bob Marcaurelle
freesermons@homeorchurchbiblestudy.com
First Timothy Sermon 1
A. The Faith Passed On (1:1-3)
PASS IT ON! PASS IT DOWN!
“Paul- an Apostle of Christ by the command of God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope. To Timothy my true son in the faith. Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” (1:1-2)
As I urged you when I went to Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command (a military word) certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer (3)
“You have often heard me teach. Now I want you to tell these same things to followers who can be trusted to tell others” (2 Tim. 2:2)**(NIV unless noted)
THE LAST YEARS OF PAUL (63-67)
Christianity is always one generation away from extinction. For Christianity to survive each generation must pass it on and pass it down, and be sure what it passes is true. Church history is like a river, the further it goes the more polluted it gets. That’s when God intervenes with revival which is always a return to the Bible.
The Book of Acts ends around AD 61 with Paul in prison. Tradition says he was released in AD 63 and was executed fours years later when Nero persecuted Christians in and around Rome. All we know of these four - five years we get from his planned trips mentioned in his prison letters, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus and his plans mentioned in other letters. One hope was to go to Spain (Rom. 15:24) and we can only hope that he made it, because there the waves of the great Atlantic lay at his feet, the same Atlantic that 1600 years later became the highway of the gospel to our blessed America in the Mayflower.
THE PASTORAL LETTERS
1. Paul’s Activities
Let out of prison Paul hit the missionary trail once more. He visited old churches, established new ones, put Timothy and Titus to work without him and wrote 1 and 2 Timothy to teach and encourage them. One new work was on the island of Crete where he landed years before on his trip to Rome. He sent Titus to work there. Now he and Timothy are in Ephesus, the center of Christianity in Asia Minor.
The “Seven Churches of the Revelation” (Rev. 1-3) are here and after the destruction of Jerusalem the highest population of Christians in the world would be here. This would be in the providence of God the heart land of Christianity and it was here the devil, ever on the prowl to hinder our faith, was doing his work. False teachers were perverting the Gospel and some good teachers were trading it in for petty teachings.
This was the time for the great champion of the faith to attack heresy (false teaching) as he had done all his life for Christ. But not this time, he sent Timothy, the representative of the future of Christianity, into the battle zone. For some reason Paul needed to go west to Macedonia (Modern Hungary and SW Russia), where Philippi was. He gave his companion Timothy, a young man probably still in his 20’s, the tough assignment of dealing with false teachers in the Church.
2. Paul’s Apostleship
Who was Paul to tell folks what is right and what is wrong? He was, “An apostle by the command of God and Jesus.” In Acts converts were taught from the beginning, “The doctrine (teachings) of the Apostles.” (Acts 2) The Bible says the church is “built on the foundation of the Apostles and the prophets.” (Eph. 2:20) Apostles were like the OT prophets who came with a word from God. They were the official spokesmen for the faith. Until the NT was written, the Apostles were the “Living Bibles” of the early church
Our foundation for truth and error, for what is right and what is wrong is what the Holy Spirit said and wrote through the blessed Apostles.
3. Paul’s Ambassador- Timothy
As an Apostle, Paul had authority over Timothy that Timothy fearfully (v.3) and humbly accepted. After he was in the warfare for awhile Paul wrote him two letters, 1 and 2 Timothy. We call them Pastoral Letters, but strictly speaking Timothy was not a pastor of a local church (Called pastors, bishops and elders- Acts 20:17-28). He was Paul’s ambassador sent to straighten out false teachers. This was a transitional procedure, a help to all the Apostles, and not intended to be a permanent part of the Church. But in the 100’s, after John, the last Apostle went to be with the Lord, the churches wrongly made men like Timothy “Bishops” who claimed to in the authoritative line of some Apostle. They ruled over pastors and churches and soon they all fought and bribed and politicked for first place until in the 400’s the Bishop of Rome, claiming the authority of the Apostle Peter, ruled over the Churches in the West. These men in this foul line became the Father “Papa” (Pope). How strange, since our Lord expressly told us to call no man “Father” in the church. Baptists believe this line of authority is not taught in the Word of God. Since the death of the Apostles the NT is our sole authority and there is no administrative position above the local church that has authority over it. The letters, written perhaps around AD 65 are pastoral in that they tell a pastor how to conduct himself as a man of God in the church and how to teach and treat those he shepherds.
4. Paul’s Assignment
From the Pastoral letters it seems God put it on Paul’s heart to pass Christianity down to younger servants who would carry it on the next generation.
An old astronomer made an exciting discovery and said to his young assistant, “Come here! There are some things I can only tell the world through you!” We thank God for these three letters, for in them Paul is passing things to them for the world to hear. The theme of chapter 1 is passing Christianity on.
Also he himself was to pass Christianity on to his generation as long as he lived. We see retirement ignored. Paul was nearing 65, that wonderful age when we can carry a card, “No job, no worries, no stress, no watch, no calendar, no appointments, no meetings, no deadlines and no money.” He walked right past retirement age without a second thought. In jail, at the close of Acts, he called himself and old man (Philemon 9). His body was worn out. He had lived out of doors ever since he met Jesus as His foreign missionary. He suffered from terrible chronic pain (2 Cor. 12). He had spent years in different jails; and had been shipwrecked and stoned and left for dead. Like our Lord he had been scourged with a Roman whip, something many stronger men died from. (See 2 Cor. 6)
Now, at long last, he was free. The shackles were broken and the jail door was thrown open. And what did he do, retire, buy a rocking chair and order satellite TV with 400 channels, and move to mountain cabin near Tarsus? No, he took his young companion Timothy and went back to work for the Lord.
Application: If anyone had a right to retire and enjoy his sunset years, it was Paul. But retirement is not to be a word in any Christian’s vocabulary. It’s OK, with God’s go-ahead, to leave the dog-eat-dog world of work, or to take a job with less stress, even if you are a Pastor. But it’s not OK for any child of God to stop passing Christianity on. The hardest service God asked of Abraham was when he was very old. He asked him to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. The greatest battle David ever fought was not with Goliath or any invading army. It was watching his son, Absalom die as a traitor. When I was in Seminary, they took a survey of who influenced us students the most. The winners were not parents or pastors, but grandparents. As the old song says, “Let none hear you idly saying/ There is nothing I can do/ While the souls of men are dying/ And the Master calls for you.
Mentoring young students! Volunteering for meals on wheels! Teaching reading skills! All these and more can be means of sharing Jesus with others.
We see the Reason Given (1:3) The reason is found in the military term “command” or charge, used of Paul’s appointment and Timothy’s instructions (v.1,3) They were both soldiers under orders from the Lord. And soldiers do not quit until their commanding officer tells them to. Whether we are an Apostle like Paul, a preacher like Timothy or a shoe salesman active in his church and world, we are in God’s army, we are under orders and retirement from witnessing and passing Christianity on is never over until we lay down our armor and put on our heavenly robe.
When aged Pastor George Truett was dying in a hospital, he struggled to the window, opened it, began to weep, and cried out “O, Dallas, my Dallas!” just as Jesus wept for Jerusalem. That is God’s assignment for us- to be faithful to the end.
CONCLUSION
1Timothy is a love letter. We will see next that Paul met Timothy 20 years before when he was stoned and left for dead on his First Missionary Journey (Acts 13-14). To pass Christianity on, Paul lost his friends, his health and eventually his life. But as great as the costs were, the benefits were better. It was out of one of the lowest periods in Paul’s life that he probably met Timothy. When we are faithful, good things happen. The devil had Paul’s body torn to shreds, but at that very time God gave him the son he never had. Little did Paul know the boy who watched his mother and grandmother nurse his wounds, would become his friend and companion. Isn’t it just like God to take a bad day and turn it into a good one? As Paul later looked at these old scars and then at the face of this boy, he would smile and say to himself, he is worth every one.
