First Timothy lesson 8

So yeah, we're beginning Lesson 8, 1 Timothy, to correct the typo there, not 1 Tom. So we're going to start with the verses. We're reading verses 18 through 20. Anyone want to read it to us? This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith among those are Arminius and Alexandria who I have handed over to Satan so that they will be taught not to blaspheme. Did I go too far? No, that's perfect. Thanks, Mike. Yeah, that was exactly right. Yeah, I didn't intentionally give you those names. Those are fun names to pronounce.

But yeah, so these are the verses we're going to be looking at here. Paul returns to To this this chart or this command entrusted to Timothy and just offhand here. We'll get to these words Maybe towards the end of today, but fight the good fight It's a it's an interesting passage because often when I talk to people about grace, you know And that this life is not it's not I who live but Christ who lives in me and they'll often go to this one for whatever reason it stands out in their minds and say But aren't we supposed to fight the good fight? And it just, you know, it has this, it's kind of this rallying call. It's kind of something like, and you can almost take it as applying to the self-life, but we've got to do it. We've got to do something. So we'll get to that.

We'll talk about what is the good fight that we're to fight. But I just found that interesting, because they generally won't know the context around that phrase, but they'll know that there's a phrase somewhere in the Bible that says, but we're supposed to fight the good fight, which sounds worksy, taken out of context, right?

But let's start with question number one. So what does the word command mean here, and in verse 5 and verse 3? So the opening phrase, this command I entrust to you. So now Mike's given us a hint there, and in verse 5 and verse 3. So we'll talk about that here in a second. But any thoughts on that? What does the word command mean? It was for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore keep standing firm. and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. OK, so the command to stand firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

Cool. It's a position that's already been given. A position that we, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Any other thoughts? Anyone look at the word behind that? It's one of those fun. Paringalia. Yeah. Paringalia. How do you? So let's look at what Paul's referring to by this. And that'll help open it up a little bit. Because the word is command. Pretty straightforward. It's a good translation. Very clear. But I think the significant question here is, what is Paul referring to by this command? Because he uses that. Now, he's referring to some command. He doesn't tell us what it is here, but what is it?

And that's where verses 5 and 3 are significant. So look back at chapter 1, verse 3, and then verse 5. And now, this is where I wish the translators had just been consistent in their translation. It's the exact same word. And he says, So this is the NASB.

As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines. And we've been over this because we've been in this chapter for a while. King James there has thou mightiest charge. Okay, charge is there instead of you may instructive, you might charge. And that's the verb, the verb form of the exact same word. So it's herring yellow, something like that. And it just means to command.

So he says, Timothy, as I urged you upon my departure, remain on at Ephesus so that you might command certain men not to teach strange doctrines. And then look down in verse 5, where he says, but the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. King James there switches to commandment. Now, the end of the commandment.

So here, this is the exact same noun as we have in verse 18. So this is the noun command. So the goal of our command is love from a pure heart. When we get to verse 18, and Paul says, this command I entrust to you, Timothy, I think he's referring back to the command that he introduced back in verses 3 and 5.

And everything in between there is sort of outlining how Timothy is supposed to go about this and why. So what is that command? How would we maybe summarize that, that we covered back in verses 3 and 4, and we spent a fair bit of time here? What was Timothy supposed to do? I think one of the things here is that Timothy referred to as Timothy, he's supposed to speak up. And then the role that he has, and the verse is coming up, Paul verifies the role that he does have and where it came from.

In that role, you can't be silent. You have to confront issues that are doctrinally unsound. And not in an aggressive manner, but in a manner that gets across the idea that whatever the issue is, that this is not going to be taught in the Church at Ephesus.

You know, a firmness about it. Yeah. Definite, we're not going there. Yeah. The command is also two-fold. It's not only to speak, but it's also to give correct doctrine. Yes. The command is to get rid of these guys, or confront the guys who are bringing strange doctrine, but the more important part is to give proper instruction. So, it's kind of a two-fold command. Yeah. Speak up and stop these guys. I urge you, don't even listen to the early verses. Don't even listen. Don't give them a second of your attention, but then instruct them in what is true. Yeah.

That's very good. Yeah. I think I've got in mind here now, we've been looking at some letters between Miles Stanford and Darrell Bock. And of course, on Wednesday nights, we've been studying through that Pauline dispensationalism, where he goes after Darrell Bock and Blazing's book about progressive dispensationalism. In that book, Miles doesn't pull any punches.

It's very critical and rightfully so. But in these letters between the two of them, it's very personal. It's just amazing to see just how friendly they were towards one another and there's a lot of love. And so we're extended to one another, and I think that that really demonstrates the character of Christ that Paul is encouraging in Timothy here, where he says that the goal of our instruction is love, right? Paul's not instructing him to go and attack these guys and just tear them down and destroy them, but correct them out of a loving attitude.

It's critical that this be done. We have to have right doctrine in the church, but you can be loving in doing that. Paul is returning back to now in verse 18. But he's reminding him here of the basis for it. So yeah, I think that's correct. The command could be summed up as Paul instructing Timothy to stop the false teachers in Ephesus, stop that in its tracks. We're going to come back to that topic here in a second. But we just want to take a quick look at why question number two here.

Paul uses the word technon for the word son. Why? So in that phrase there, this command, I entrust you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with. So we just want to look at that little phrase where he addresses him as son. So any thoughts on that? We have dealt with this previously a little bit, because in verse 2 he says to Timothy, my true child in the faith.

So, does anyone know what the word teknon, the Greek word teknon, refers to? Yes, Cheryl. It means little born ones. Little born ones, yeah. Young in the faith. Yes, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it comes from a root word that literally means to give birth to, like to bear a child. It's a kind of a birth term. So what do we say?

Did Paul lead Timothy to Christ? Was Paul Timothy's spiritual father? Do we know that? I think he was. So, yeah. Any other thoughts? Is that where he gets that phrase from? Zodiatis, and for that word for this 1 Timothy 1.18, generally a pupil, disciple, or the spiritual child of someone. Right, right. Yeah.

So, I mean, it could have the sense that, and I mean, I've had this with people who who didn't lead me to Christ in terms of justification, but are still very much spiritually fathers to me. So I think it can have that sense. But I do think that there's a very high likelihood, at least, that Paul led Timothy to Christ. There's, we can read in Acts 16 about, Acts 16 1 through 3 is where Timothy first comes up. You can have a glance at that if you're interested here.

This is Paul's second missionary journey, and the purpose of it was to return to the cities that they'd been to on the first journey, and to encourage the believers there. And so Acts 16 says, Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra, and a disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. And he was well spoken of by the brethren who were in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted this man to go with him, and so forth.

So that's kind of where Timothy joined up with the ministry. So these are cities that Paul had been to on the first missionary journey, cities where they ran into a lot of trouble. They really got chased out of town here. But they left believers behind. This is in the southern Galatian region, actually, Lystra and Derbe. You can kind of keep the Book of Galatians in mind a little bit.

That's the region that Timothy was born in and coming from, and he actually came from a mixed Jewish-Gentile family. Well, formerly Jewish-Gentile, now Christian, and an unbelievably unbelieving Greek father. And so Paul was well acquainted with Timothy's family, his mom and his grandma, and they were believers, and Timothy was a believer. So we would assume that Paul led them to Christ on the first missionary journey, whether Timothy accepted Christ at that time.

Maybe, maybe not, probably, or maybe his mom and grandma led him to faith after Paul left town. But he was a young man, not a child. I mean, sometimes you hear Paul talking about his mother and grandmother, and you think of him as a little guy. But the second missionary journey was only removed from the first missionary journey by a year or a couple of years or so, at most.

So Timothy was a young man, and Paul Paul recognized something in Timothy that he really wanted to have on his team. What I noticed is that in verse 18, he gives a command to Timothy, which is grown up, you're in charge, and he's going to talk about it. But then in the very next phrase, he talks about Timothy being a technon.

I think that's probably some of what you see with Daryl Bach and Miles Stanford, that there's no slippage on the doctrine, but there's an affection there. that probably is appealing to, like, Timothy. He knows that he's not being called on the carpet when he's happening, as Paul is in love teaching him. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing.

Timothy was still relatively young at this point in time. I didn't have this in my notes, but the second missionary journey was right around 50 AD, and this letter was probably about 10 years later. So depending on how young he was when he first joined the team, by this point 10 years had passed, he was still a relatively young guy. And of course we know that later on, You know, Paul, in chapter four, Paul says, let no one look down on you for your youthfulness. So Timothy had to be encouraged in this. I think it can be a hard thing as a young guy to come into a local body where everybody's got a lot of seniority and to have to be in a leadership position.

We'll talk about that here in a second, I think, on question three here, but what's kind of interesting, if you look at it, I kind of discovered this. I had no idea how old Daryl Bach was, but he was probably in his early 30s when he wrote Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church. By then, Miles, in 1990, how old was Miles then? So significantly the senior of Daryl Bach. We'll talk about that in a minute here, but here Timothy is the junior and he has to address those who are his seniors who are slipping into false doctrine and he's got to correct that. So you can see how that would be a challenging situation, right? Okay, so let's look at question number three.

These instructions were in accordance with prophecies received by Paul regarding Timothy. How do we know this? So that's kind of the point of this verse here, where Paul is exhorting him, this command, I entrust to you in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you. So that means in accordance with, I don't even know if I checked this, I just assumed this was the word kata. Yeah, it is. Which means consistent with.

So what I'm commanding you is consistent with these prophecies that were made or given by the Holy Spirit concerning you, Timothy. So how do we know that? So Paul actually records the details of this event two times in 1st and 2nd Timothy. So Paul talks about it in chapter 4, 1st Timothy 4, 14. where he says, so he kind of returns to this theme again in chapter four.

He says, do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. That's NASB. That's just the word for elders. So this, this, uh, this spiritual gift, it was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance and the laying on of the hands of the elders. So we see here that, um, a spiritual gift was bestowed on Timothy through, or dia, that's the Greek word there, by means of, or through the agency of prophetic utterance, which was accomplished by the laying on of hands.

So that's, we see that in verse four, but then if we go over to 2 Timothy 1.6, You want to see this because Paul there says, for this reason, I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. So Paul there includes himself in the elders spoken of in chapter 4 of 1st Timothy. So Paul was personally involved in that occasion when the elders laid their hands on Timothy and when prophetic words were given regarding his ministry.

So that's where we get the idea. I've answered the question for you now. Sorry, I should have thrown that open. But that's kind of where we get the idea that Paul was involved in this. I kind of answered it because I wanted to sort of ask the follow-up question more openly.

What is this prophecy and laying on of hands all about? What is that? The good fight of faith. The good fight of faith? OK, explain that a little bit. Well, faith is foundational. We're saved by grace through faith, and that comes through the Word of God. So it's foundational. I think everybody has to go through that. And what that fight is, is a fight to understand God's peace, God's rest, which is outside of ourselves. Yeah. It's all of God.

So what was done for, given to Timothy in this event that Paul is describing, has to do with the fact that Timothy has got a fight on his hands, you know? A loving fight, but it's a fight nonetheless that he's got to do. And so this kind of puts the steel in Timothy's bones, because you'll find it, Paul, like we showed there, Paul refers back to it with Timothy over and over. Don't forget, Timothy. Don't forget the things that we said to you when we laid our hands on you at the beginning of all this.

Now, I grew up in a background that's a little bit more on the charismatic, so if you know that, you know about laying on of hands, right? Now, in our church, it wasn't used for anything like healing or that sort of thing, generally speaking. A lot of times it was done at the outset of a ministry of some sort. So if someone was going out on a missions trip or someone was going out to work at camp or whatever, they'd often lay their hands on them.

Now, I don't know that there was a lot of knowledge about this, but they would go back to passages like this where the elders laid their hands on Timothy. So what's going on there and what is it all about and what's the correct understanding of that? Any thoughts on that? Do you want me to read what Weiss says about laying on hands?

I think we don't know a lot specifically about when and where these prophecies were made, but it's evident by the context that it had something to do with Paul's call and his readiness, his fitness for the job. that was prophesied about him. And I don't know exactly how that fully works, but it's in the context of his service to Ephesus. And there's a lot of conviction from Paul around these prophecies and Timothy's readiness or fitness for what he was going to battle against the error in Ephesus. So I think It had to do specifically with Ephesus and the role that he played at that particular point in time. I don't know the full history of Timothy throughout his life, of course, but at this particular point in time, there was conviction around these prophecies that had to do with his fitness for that service, that call, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. So it was demonstrable by his Activity? Willingness? What is it? I mean, they had to recognize that the people around him had to recognize that, oh, it looks like Timothy has been called out by the Lord to teach or to be a shepherd or whatever. And they're just confirming what God had already done.

And it looks like the Lord somehow made that very clear to Paul. You know, probably clearer to Paul than to Timothy. But I think in contemporary Christianity, there are people that are called to serve, and they're reluctant about it. Where it looks like Timothy was reluctant to some degree about it, and Paul was encouraging him. Yeah, Tim and Timothy.

I think that's good. It's kind of an interesting concept is laying on of hands. Like I said, for a more charismatic background, it's almost more like, you know, energy kind of stuff, right? You know, almost new age. Yeah, like we're going to all, you know, touch one another and that'll, you know, oh, it's kind of, but there's something in the laying on of hands. This is what we say.

He says that the laying on of hands is a symbol of identification. He says the laying on of hands speaks of identification. Here it was the outward act and ceremony symbolizing the fact that Timothy was now to be identified with the elders in the common work of the ministry of the word. He became one of them and one with them. And I thought that was very helpful. And if you think about the concept of laying on of hands, even Old Testament, Place your hand on the head of the lamb.

Why? To identify yourself with it, so that when it dies, it dies as your substitute. Right? The equivalence, I think, is like with baptism. Yeah. Baptism, an outward symbol of what happens inward, or it's just a proclamation. This is now a demonstration of them. Yeah, you're part of us, or we're commissioning you, too. Yeah. And it's not the force be with you. No. Go ahead.

I was just gonna say, they didn't have PowerPoint to make announcements for promotions. Yeah, you know, and if you think about it, Especially with young Timothy, he had to go and perform this ministry, carry out this ministry. How critical was it for him to know that, okay, Paul and the other elders have personally identified me with their ministry, is really what it is. It is not identifying him necessarily as something special, but really identifying him with them.

So Timothy is coming under Paul's authority, you could say. And what's interesting is that the very first job he has as a minister is to correct documents of some guys that are coming in. And so he's got to confront them. Yeah, that's right. He was hoping it was just going to be, you know, I get to sit in the front row. I won't take the time for it now because I really want to get into some other things here, but if you take your time later, look at Acts chapter 13, verses 1 through 4, where Paul and Barnabas themselves are commissioned.

And what you'll notice is that both, it is very clear to say there, that there were prophets and teachers present. So again, you have prophecy, the gift of prophecy involved. Now this, remember this is, early church, and we can talk about whether prophecy is given today and so forth. We've done that other times, but in this point, for sure, there were prophets, and they received a word from the Holy Spirit about Paul and Barnabas, that they should be sent out. And again, they laid their hands on them and sent them out on the first missionary journey. And so you have something kind of parallel happening with Timothy, where they received prophetic words from the Holy Spirit, which requires that there were gifted prophets present, and then sent them out. And so this was not just the elders determining that, hey, we really should do this.

This was the Holy Spirit giving them his very word. So you can imagine how important that was for Timothy to realize that the Holy Spirit, through Paul, or one of the other prophets there, revealed this to the body, and the elders then commissioned me for this work. So do you think Timothy was aware, himself personally, that God had called him to be a shepherd? Or was it the people around him that knew it and came and said, hey, look? Yeah. That's a good question. That's a really good question. Yeah. I think it was the people around him. In case we take a vote on this? Okay. Yeah.

So, and what you'll find there is actually in Acts 13 verse 4, it says, so being sent out by the Holy Spirit. It was actually the Holy Spirit who was doing the sending, not even the local elders at Antioch. So, that's pretty significant. And I think there's a parallel with Timothy, that Timothy was able to say, you know, the Holy Spirit gave his prophetic word and the elders, you know, laid their hands on me, but it was the Holy Spirit who really commissioned me to this work, you know. So, I wanted to, well, we might have to, we got like, what, three minutes left?

In question four, when we talk about what is the good fight, it says, the words, here, the prophecies previously made concerning you that by them you might fight the good fight and literally that's in order that in them and that is in their sphere or possibly in their power so that's why I say these prophetic words given by the Holy Spirit were what gave Timothy the backbone, you could say, to carry out what he had to do. He was relying, depending on the words that had been given by the Holy Spirit. Darby says, this conflict, to be successful, would require that the faith be tenaciously held. faith in this passage is, as one has said, the doctrine of Christianity, that which God has revealed, received with certainty as such, as the truth. And so Timothy had to engage in this within the local body with fellow believers, fellow brothers, who he had to come alongside and say, you know, sorry guys, I love you, but what you're teaching here is wrong, it's incorrect. And so it required that the faith, the content of Christian doctrine be tenaciously held, as Darby said. So kind of the question that I was mulling around in my head, this is kind of the one I'm curious to get to today, so we'll do it in the last like minute here.

Why does Paul have to exhort Timothy so much to deal with false doctrine? Why is it so repetitive that Paul has to kind of encourage him this way? And we talked about this earlier on about his age being younger and so forth. But I kind of have a question here. Do you think there's a risk when young men like Timothy are put into leadership positions in the church? And what is that and why? Any thoughts on that? One of the qualifications of elders are not to lay hands on anyone early. That's one of the qualifications. Somebody who's not new in the word or young in the faith, you don't want that because it's spiritual growth. If you're a babe in Christ, throw him into a battle, that's not what you want to do.

If we talked about Daryl Bach, would Miles Stanford have laid hands on Daryl Bach? I don't think so. No, no. That's right. And for a lot of reasons. One, and the biggest reason being is that he couldn't, the doctrine that he was writing about and propagating was not biblically sound. Yeah. And he wouldn't listen. That's right.

You can read those letters, and it's back and forth, very cordial, but he never budges. I think it's a young man coming up. You know, he can jump all over the place, but he's got to know to listen and to check it out for himself. He's got to be a Berean, otherwise he'll go off on a tangent. Yes. Also going back here, maybe you're touching on the timeframes. How long had Timothy been under the counsel of Paul? Was that years, 10 years? Yeah, just rough numbers.

If you kind of look at some of the New Testament chronologies and stuff, this is between the first missionary journey and the second, which was very back to back. In fact, they kind of, I think they sort of went in reverse order. I'd have to double check that, but it seems like it gets back to Galatia very quickly. So it's like early in the second journey.

So there's maybe a gap of two to three years between when Timothy came to faith and when Paul first kind of brought him on board. But here this letter is written to Timothy, you know, about 10, 12 years later. So still, in many respects, a young believer, we kind of consider those first 10 years fairly elementary years. But again, how much personal time did Timothy spend with Paul?

Exactly. All three years in the desert with the Lord. That has an effect on you and kind of spurred that spiritual growth, I think. In that time, Paul would have the ability to evaluate Timothy. Exactly. And Paul expected growth out of babyhood within the first five years. When he refers to the Corinthians, he's like, you guys are still babies. So he didn't expect 20, 30 years to get to maturity. Of course, maturity is lifelong, but you know what I mean. I often think that how cool it would have been to be a Timothy, and how would you learn? Well, we've got to walk from this town to that town. It's going to take four days, so we've got to walk four days. And then when we get there, we're going to go to work, and then we're going to walk to the next town. Yeah.

So my last comment is just in thinking of that, and referring back to Daryl Bach and all of that, I thought about this. about the age, let me think, he was mid-30s when he published his Progressive Dispensationalism Doctrine. I'm not much older than that.

Now, I would not have the audacity to, I mean that sounds a little arrogant, but to change Dispensationalism and just change a whole new theology If you went to Dallas Seminary and sat around with those guys, you would. But if you had a doctorate bestowed on you by the faculty and had the hands of the Dallas faculty laid on you, all of a sudden you can write what you want to write.

That risk is very real for young men in the faith to get very big-headed about their theology. They need to be under the elders, even in their ministry. That's the warning. Lay hands on no young. You really have to go through that. But again, I think in this with timothy had evaluated him and said and by the holy spirit at that yeah you know realized that timothy was up for the fight yeah and he continued then he continued throughout his ministry to exhort and encourage and continue that way so all right we better close in prayer heavenly father we thank you um for uh the wealth of uh of wisdom that is in your word, even just contained in one little verse like this. And so we pray that you would continue to work these things into our hearts, and that you would teach us your wisdom, and that we would learn to walk according to it as we trust you and the truth of your word. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.