First Timothy end lesson 1, start lesson 2

So we are in First Timothy class one, or lesson one. We've done the first seven questions. Question eight is, why does Paul call Timothy my son in the flesh? And before we answer that, let's put some information there. The word son here, the Greeks have two words for son. The word weos, which means adult son, and the word technon, which means a child, a born one. Here, it's technon, a born one. So he refers to Timothy as my own born one in the flesh. So he takes, maybe put it this way, Timothy is a legitimately born genuine son of Paul.

You keep referring flesh, it's faith, son of the faith. What am I doing? My own son in the faith. Oh yeah, my own son in the faith. And the word faith is what? Christian faith, right? Okay. So when he says, my own son in the faith, is he just being overdramatic about Timothy, that he might have led Timothy to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus, or is this a real thing?

What do you think? What do you mean by a real thing? Was he really his father? Like physical father-son? No. Well, that's the point. The point is that he wasn't his physical father, but he definitely was his spiritual father. And from the viewpoint of God's word, that's more significant than being a physical father. You know, I've always looked at the guys that led me to Christ as my fathers, you know.

Because what was Timothy up to that time? He was, he was a disciple. And he was a disciple because of his mom and his grandma teaching him the Old Testament. And so when Paul comes along, he teaches him the work of the cross. And through that process, Timothy gets born again. Well, Paul was his spiritual father.

I think a lot of times we don't view how important it is when you have somebody in your life that you were involved in the Lord saving them, that you really are their father. You really do have a responsibility to them, to nurture them and grow them up. I remember with Sharm Sherman, who used to be the, before the Lord took him home, he was the head of Campus Crusades AIA basketball team, and he used to come to our Tuesday study, and he came in one day and he was all excited because they'd played a game, the way that worked, that they would play in September against the big college teams. And after, whether they won or lost, but they never won, whether they won or lost, then their team would evangelize the audience and the opposing team players. And so he was all excited, because they had, I don't know, 30 or 40 people from wherever they were the week before come to Christ. And I said, well, what happens then? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you pack up and go to the next town. What about these?

These babies that just got born into Christ, do you take care of them? He said, well, we try to direct them to a church. I said, Sharm, you're their father. You have a responsibility to make sure that they're gonna grow up the way they should. Most evangelists, you know, They're interested in nickels and noses. How many did we get? But they stop right there.

If you're the spiritual father of somebody, you have a responsibility to him. And Paul is articulating his responsibility to Timothy. I want to ask a question about the practicality of that for the evangelist. So we know we've got the verse on watering, planting the seed and watering Paul and Apollos.

We know that there are different phases of that. And we know that practically speaking, there's not always the opportunity to take alongside these young believers and progress them. Oftentimes, like in these evangelical settings, they happen outside of a local church. There's not a place for them to go for them to continue to nourish. And so the evangelist points them into a local church in order to help them get nourished further.

And that might be because they attended a conference in Georgia and learned of the gospel there, but they're going back to California. How does that work in your mind? I've always thought that even if I don't live or they don't live in the same environment, they're my responsibility. Where they go to church, what they're taught and what they understand is at the direction of what I put in the conversation. If they go from a grace environment, like let's say they got saved under grace circumstances in a conference in Georgia and they're going home and their whole family goes to a strict Reformed church, do I just let that go? Well, do you think that Paul brought Timothy to the faith and therefore became his father because he was the evangelist to Timothy? Yeah, I do. You do? I have a couple thoughts on this. First of all, I'm reading a book right now by Lewis Perry Chaffer called True Evangelism, and he deals with some of these things, and really good.

So I've been learning a little bit along those lines as well. But I think one of the things that we see right here is that Paul wasn't able to be with Timothy all of the time. But he wrote him a letter. He wrote him two letters, right? Which is kind of interesting to see. There's more than one way to skin a cat, maybe, in terms of spiritual fatherhood and sonship or whatever.

But the other thing, this is pretty personal, because like with Timothy, I was raised in the biblical doctrine and stuff, but I didn't understand grace until a missionary family came to Canada and taught us about the grace gospel. And then, of course, the Lord took them down to Colorado.

So there was a lot of distance between us for a lot of years, but there was always connection. And I think for us as spiritual children, there's always a hunger to reach out and stay connected, too. So it's kind of a... It becomes almost a two-way street of growth where children reach out to their spiritual parents and spiritual parents reach out to their spiritual children and growth happens through that.

But I mean, for us, it's been a long distance thing with McCulley's. And we really do see them as spiritual parents, because they're the ones who taught us the gospel of grace. We'd never seen it clearly before that, really. But I mean, we Zoom, we phone call, we email, we text, and lots of cool stuff that happens there. Yeah, and JD, I think that's really what the gist of it is. You can't ensconce everybody in the right church, because they may not be in the same environment that you're in.

But you can call them, you can write them, and you can walk beside them for the rest of their life. And it's interesting that the parallel passage in 2 Timothy, he calls him, my beloved son. Not just son in the faith, but he adds the beloved piece to it as well. And I think that that's where the core is, is that there's a new kindred spirit of love in the same Christ that you both are in union with, and so you do have a desire to know how they're growing. There's also a hungry heart issue there, too. All those that come to the Lord underneath maybe your teaching, they may go different directions, even after having understood that. But, you know, Timothy was a hungry heart, and he had to have been, right? And I like the point, Miles, that you mentioned, that it's a relationship.

So it's not just the father always checking in on the son, but it's the son saying, hey, father, what's going on with this? How do I manage this situation? How do I think about this doctrinally? So anyway, just some thoughts there. Well, and I think the father has to be knowledgeable, and he has to be approachable.

You know, and so I think if you think about anybody that God puts in your life, either as that you're involved in their salvation or involved in their spiritual growth, they're there for life. They really are. It's like I read your letter from the Hansons the other day. There are people in their life that are there for life. You know, they might all be Laotians, but they're there. And there's contact there all the time.

And I think Paul, writing to Timothy, one of the great things for us to get out of this is how important it is that God isn't going to overload you with people where you have to spend all your waking hours contacting people. It's not like that. He will put the people in your life that should be there, and you will walk with them and talk with them. And then maybe another one will show up. Just occurred to me another kind of practicality of how some of this works out.

You may have been led to the Lord by a person and never had an opportunity to really get to know them, but along the line, a spiritual parent of that same nature enlightens you to, or helps you see in the Scripture, the gospel of grace, like Miles was talking about. And so, there are people like yourself that I refer to in that same way. And you may have multiple fathers that take you in at certain aspects of the Christian faith, in certain areas of the Christian faith.

It may not happen the day you get saved, but it's interesting how the Lord desires to have that older, younger, maybe not always age-wise, but older in the faith and younger in the faith, to bring you along, even if it's only for a time. That person may not be there for whatever reason, but the Lord, that's how He designed the body of Christ, right? The Church is meant to bring the younger along. We talked a lot about the roles of that in Titus. But it's just interesting to see how delicately the Lord places people in our lives that fill these roles, even if it's not just one person at the very beginning of your salvation.

You know, Mike, what came to mind, it's in 1 Corinthians 4.14, so this is Paul again writing, I do not write these things to shame you, but to abonish you as my beloved children.

For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I exhort you to be imitators of me. For this reason, I have sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ." So, a lot of manners, but not many fathers. No, that's true. You know what else? One other thing, and then we'll move on.

What I've noticed in my life is that You might be a person who got saved by someone who's reasonably knowledgeable about the salvation truths or birth truths, but isn't very savvy about the spiritual growth truths. And as you go along, you go past them.

And that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing. And it isn't that the student now becomes a teacher, but I think the Lord puts in your life different people and different times. down the road who, whether this is the guy that led me or a woman that led me to Christ, and they don't really understand what this next person is all about, but that's the next person that has come. And you have to recognize that and realize they've been put there for your spiritual advancement. And I think it's that way. That's the fellowship within the body of Christ that's so important, you know? And they show up, and if you didn't have them, you would get to the level of understanding of what your spiritual father did, and then you would stop. There's nothing like being a plank. And I think that's relevant.

A lot of times, if you're the son, you begin to grow together. You have such an intimacy with this person that led you to Christ that your life goes over to dependence on the Holy Spirit to teach you both. And you spend a lot of time back and forth talking about different things. Do you turn your mic on or off?

The only thing I'm trying to answer is why the Lord put you as a mentor for me in the Identification Church. I have no idea. Well, sometimes you are put in a guy's life as a catfish. Years of getting the Identification Church, I had to be, you know, why the Lord? Well, I mean, at about 18 years old, you have to go to Paris Island with the Marines. And your drill instructor doesn't love you.

All right, the last three questions kind of go together. The words of the salutation, grace, mercy, peace, deserve careful extension. So let's talk about grace. Now, we all know. And I was laughing, because last night in that paper of Jacqueline's, she had Macaulay's definition of grace in there. It was great.

Probably the greatest word in the New Testament is the word grace. You agree with that? You say it one more time? The greatest word in the New Testament is the word grace. And the reason I say that is because grace is the thing that shows that love is active. You see that? In other words, I think it's a greater word than the word love, because grace is the life system under which you live.

The simple definition of grace from the ancient Greeks is that someone does a favor for somebody else with absolutely no expectations of return, but they do it to a friend. From a biblical standpoint, the grace extended is to the enemy. When the Lord Jesus died, he died for those who hated him. And grace is extended to them freely with no expectation of return.

Well, they'd really, you could say, well, God so loved the world. Yeah, he did. And that motivated him. But he was motivated under this umbrella or operating system of grace. Does that make sense? You all right with that? Yeah, totally. That's awesome.

So the next word is, let's compare grace with mercy. I know the old definition that grace is, I get what I don't deserve, and mercy is, I don't get what I do deserve. That's pretty inane. What I wrote down was that I'm not a big fan of French, but sometimes he's pretty cool. While charis, the word grace, has reference to the sins of men and is that glorious attribute of God which these sins call out and display, his free gift for their forgiveness, mercy has a special and immediate regard to the misery which is the consequence of their sins, being the tender scene of this misery displaying itself in the effort which only the continued perverseness of man can hinder or defeat, to arrange and entirely remove it. Mercy is what arranges and entirely removes the consequences of your sin. This is interesting. In the divine mind and in the order of our salvation as conceived therein, mercy precedes grace.

God so loved the world with a pitying love. That's what Prince says. I just hate that word. Herein was the mercy that he gave his only begotten son. Here is the grace that the world might through him be saved. And then he ends up by saying, but in the order of the manifestation of God's purpose in salvation, grace must go before and make way for mercy. You all right with that? Or is that really complicated? So you're saying grace must make way for mercy. Yeah. Okay. So grace comes first. That's what he, that's what Trench is saying. I think I agree with him. Yes.

You know, He says, the word mercy is not found in the apostolic salutations of any of Paul's letters except to Timothy. The Nestle text of the letter to Titus does not include it. Last comment I have, go ahead. I was just going to say that that Titus passage that we finished up with a few weeks ago, 3-5, he saved us not on the basis of deeds, which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy.

Yeah. That's interesting because, and I didn't think of this until I read it, he says that, Trench says, If one may hazard a guess as to what prompted Paul to wish mercy to Timothy rather than Titus, it may be a subtle indication of the apostle's anxiety as to Timothy's administrative capacity." In other words, you know, and we'll see it when Courtney gets up. He probably won't get up today.

Timothy wanted to go with Paul and continue on the journey. And Paul said, no, you're the head of the church in Ephesus, and you've got to stay there, and I'm commanding you to do that. And he's encouraging Timothy, but he's saying, yeah, you're young, and a lot of the people in the church are a lot older than you, and you don't really yet understand the administration of it. But you'll be fine, because that's where you need to be. In other words, you're not going to come with me.

So he knew that Timothy, I think because he was a pretty young guy and he had a quiet temperament, I think people, as we'll see as we go through his letters, people tried to bowl him over. And he was always trying to be gracious as he could. But one of the incredible things about Paul is He's so gracious, but when it comes to sin, he is just, you know, Yosemite Sam, out come both guns and here we go. This is not going to happen. This is not relevant to the body of Christ. Miles Stanford was like that, meek and mild man. You know, very careful. But boy, when he wrote a polemic paper, it was like, hold on to your genes, because you're going to get an examination, and he's not going to be polite about it.

So last thing is, what's peace all about here? It's the regular word for peace, reine. And it means that which has been bound together again after having been separated. And that's what it means. It means to bind together that which has been separated.

I have to laugh. I'm watching, not with great interest, but I'm watching, like the demonstration yesterday, I think it was, that the Palestinian groups want to cease fire. They don't want peace. They want to cease fire. You know why? Because they're getting their butts kicked. They're losing, so they want them to stop shooting them. And I'm thinking, well, you started it. What do you expect?

A peacemaker is one who tries to bind together what had been separated. Well, if you look at the mindset using them as an example, their mindsets are totally different. The whole Arab mindset in the Middle East is to wipe out Israel. They want them off the map. interesting thought come to mind there because I for whatever reason my mind jumped to Aaron and a bone graft you know he wants those two pieces to come come together and I realized that's that's exactly the image God gave us when he separated out of Adam you know, part of his bone, his side or whatever, and it brings them back together.

That's peace. And I realize that's exactly what our peace with God is. We've been united to Him as a bride to her husband. And those two, that coming together is peace. Oh, that's really good. I like that. Of course, I've got to go to Merriam-Webster. Oh, of course. That's spiritual. Very spiritual.

Just out of curiosity, if they have the same kind of binding, and mainly free from war, all these different things, but a couple of them. Freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions. and then harmony and personal relationships. But then I also looked at Zodiaty's one, which I like the end definition, which was supposedly related to this Timothy passage. It talks about peace, but that God's peace is independent of outside conditions and is the fruit of an objective, real salvation with God. It isn't the binding like you're saying, but it's God's peace is independent of outside conditions. I like that. I have a source even better than that one. My source is William Shakespeare. In Hamlet, he writes, the times are out of joint. Oh, cursed spite that I was ever born to set them right.

That is, when things become disjointed, separated, there is no feeling of tranquility, comfort, or well-being. And we've been talking about that for the last couple of days, about how in the environment that we live in and people we run into, how there is, and this is a good, there's no feeling of tranquility, comfort, or well-being in their life. And it's the fake it till you make it mindset, or I'm doing okay, or something's gonna happen in the future that's gonna give me peace. I had a woman come up to me about two months ago and say, I don't have any peace. And I said, well, let's talk about it. You call me. I don't think she's ready to hear it. She hasn't called me, so she must not be ready. That's the problem. There's no peace outside of Christ. There's none.

I usually equate peace and rest together. Yeah. And usually they come together using a lot of verses, peace and rest. And I think it's God's peace and rest that are apart from the world. Yeah. You know, the world does not offer you any peace or rest. God does. Yeah, it's interesting.

There's so many guys I've known in my life and still know that don't sleep at night. And it's because up here, There's no peace and no rest. They just can't go to sleep because their mind is going like this all the time. It never shuts down. Always searching for peace, never finding it. They used to call it a nervous breakdown.

We call it sin. Yeah. We have to watch out, we've gone from Merriam-Webster to Shakespeare, I think I'm going to be quoting Beatles verses from the 60s, for peace, love, and yeah. I was in a barbershop about a year ago, and on the wall was that John Lennon song, what the heck was the name of it, he did it by himself.

And I'd never read the words. And I sat there. I was cutting my hair, reading the words. By the time I got to the end of it, I was like, that's the most depressing thing I've ever read. Imagine all the lonely people. Yeah. It's maldegraded down to Beatles verses, yes. Yeah.

So anyway, to finish up, Peace is the result of binding together things that have become separated. What the sanctifying grace and remedy and remedial mercy of God are operative in the life and ministry of Timothy, then that pleasant, satisfying feeling of tranquility, comfort, and well-being obtains. I think as you spend your life walking beside people, that's really what the problem is. They'll say it in different ways, but I don't have any peace. Or what about this? Or what about that?

And in all, you find that in just hanging out with your brother and talking to him, Binding together is what you're doing. You're trying to put them more bound together with what we call the doctrine, what it really is, is a greater intimacy with the Lord Jesus.

That's really, because he's the one who's the source of peace. And it's not just, intellectual apprehension of facts. It's knowing him and finding out through the knowing him that he has cleared everything away from his side of the ledger to allow you to come to him.

There's no barrier, nothing left. He's done it all. And so you can just go in and sit down and rest and he's your life. I managed to make it all the way. You are up next week, Gordon. So let's close. Father, how we thank you again for the things that we talked about this morning. We thank you for your grace, your mercy, and your peace, which is all personified in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we might know him and grow in him all the time for the purpose that we can rest. We thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.