Overview of the Pastoral Epistles, 1 Timothy 1:1-7

The speaker starts by acknowledging the presence of Wayne Lee, who used to be in their class and used to sing for them. They mention a service for someone named Bill, and how some people watched it online. They then discuss the pastoral epistles, specifically 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus. These letters were written to give instructions to church leaders and warn about heresies infiltrating the churches. The speaker explains that the pastoral epistles were written between Paul's imprisonments and were meant to deepen the ties between the churches and the Apostle Paul. They mention that the area of Asia Minor got its name from Paul's missionary journeys. The speaker then briefly talks about Paul's conversion and his role as an Apostle. They explain the structure of the pastoral epistles and the similarities they have with other epistles written by Paul. They mention that Paul is writing alone, leaving Timothy in Ephesus to deal with the dysfunction in the church there, and leaving Titus All right. Good morning. Well, that's pretty weak, but it sounds pretty good. We're glad you're here and glad that Wayne Lee is here, too. Wayne used to be in this class and used to leave singing for us every time we need you. We don't have a song leader anymore, so we don't need you to come back and help us, but good to see you. The service for Bill was good. Some of you mentioned you saw it online. I got a text message from the pastor who followed Bill in Clearwater, Florida. He actually grew up in the church, but he's one of Bill's boys. He and his wife were in Europe and watched it online. And so, isn't that amazing? It's just absolutely amazing. It blows my mind if we can do that kind of thing, but it was a sweet service, and the Lord blessed us a lot of years. He was an excellent man of God. He gave us enough nice things about Bill, but it was a sweet time, and many of y'all were there with thanks for that. He'll be missed. It's a hard time in a lot of ways, but a sweet time, because I had never preached on that passage before, but Karen, his daughter Karen, told me that that was his favorite passage of scripture. I said, okay, we'll get you dragged in. I thought it was an awful good biography of Bill Anderson. It was a good time. Well, we're going to start into the pastoral epistles today, and unless Jack finds some of them I don't know about, we're going to do 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus. I'm not going to make it through where I want to be today, but it's okay, because I'll be back next Sunday. It's such a good thing about going week by week, and first and worst is if we don't get where we wanted to go one week, we will pick it up next week, but I realized as I was getting ready for this that I need to give you an overview. Jack always does the overviews, and he left that with me this time, and I'm studying 1st Timothy, and also we haven't introduced the pastoral epistles, and so they are unique. They're written to individuals, pastors, rather than to the church itself, but for instance, 1st Timothy is written about the church at Ephesus, but written to Timothy, and so Paul was giving instructions to Timothy on how he had to deal with the heresies that were already infiltrating in Ephesus. By the way, if you want to know the outcome of heresies, just go to Revelation and read what happened to Ephesus. They were having heresies back in Paul's day, and when the book of Revelation was written, this is the church that the Lord said he had left to first love. So heresy never draws us closer to God, it always takes us more away from God, and so that was the problem that was existing in Ephesus, and indeed in most of the churches, and they were written between—these pastoral epistles were written somewhere between his first imprisonment in Rome and his second imprisonment, which concluded with his martyrdom. And so he wrote 1st Timothy during that first imprisonment, and between the two imprisonments—following 1st Timothy—during the two imprisonments, he wrote 1st Timothy in Titus, and in his second imprisonment, he wrote 2nd Timothy, and then was martyred after that. This is somewhere around 65, 66 AD for the second imprisonment, 61 to 63, the first imprisonment, and so it was a time where a lot of things were going on, a lot of heresy was coming, making inroads, and these pastoral epistles were written to give instructions to the church leaders and adding authority to the leaders that were there so that they would have the authority of the Apostle Paul to lead, and he's instructing them in how they are to lead in their assignment with the churches. And so they were giving instructions to the church leaders and encouraging the leadership to take strong stands, and then to warn the churches about the inroads that heresy was making in the young churches, and then to also tie the Apostle Paul to these churches. I think I've told you before, but Jackie and I are probably more curious than most of you are about things, but I always wondered, how did the Asia Minor get its name? I know that's a big burden on your heart, but I just thought, how do we call it, because even secular historians call it Asia Minor. Later on, we have Asia Major, but how did Asia Minor, and by the way, it was never called Asia Minor until 400 A.D., so 400 years after the sign of Christ and Paul, it was called Asia Minor. And the interesting thing is, to me, that Asia Minor is the area of the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul, that's how it got its name. So Paul is connected to all of these churches, and part of the writing of the pastorals is to be sure to deepen the ties that the churches have with the Apostle Paul. Now, we learn quite a bit about the Apostle Paul in the pastorals. In 1 Timothy 1, that we will look at here this morning, if I get through with the overview, if I don't, we'll be back after we go wherever we get to, but in 1 Timothy, Paul is identified as an Apostle. Titus identifies him as a servant of God and as an Apostle. Paul did not ever want Timothy to think that he had assumed the title of being an Apostle. He said, God, I'm an Apostle by the command of God, and when you say something is the command of God, it means you can't challenge it. I mean, it's done, God did it, so get used to it. So it was an Apostleship that was placed upon him by Almighty God, and when he was saved, in Acts chapter 9, God told Ananias that he was to go to see the Apostle Paul, who was Saul of Tarsus. This strikes me as being a little funny. Paul, Saul of Tarsus, has come to Damascus to arrest and to terminate, if needed, the Christians in Damascus. And so he gets saved on the road to Damascus, and now God sends a message to Ananias, and says, Ananias, I want you to go to this certain place where there is a man named Saul there that I want you to speak to. Now, Ananias knew who Saul was. I think he might have said something like this. You're kidding. You want me to go talk to him, knowing what he came here to do? Well, sometimes God's ways are strange, and sometimes, you know, one of the marks of real maturity is that you do what God tells you to, even if it doesn't make any sense. And Ananias, thank God, was grateful to what God told him to do, and he got to Saul, he was able to help him receive his sight, and the interesting thing is that Scripture says that Paul immediately began to preach Christ. And that's his theme, that's his song, that's his emphasis throughout all his ministry, he's always focused on Jesus Christ. Each of the apostles, or structure of the epistles in the pastoral, the three epistles, are basically the same. They have a salutation that tells you about the writer and who the recipients are, and there's a greeting. Then there's a message. There is an appropriate message to be delivered. And then there's a final salutation that mentions the—one thing he does here that's unique, he throws in, in the first of it, he mentions grace and mercy and peace. Now, it's interesting that he's never, in his epistles, mentioned peace in the greeting. But I have an idea that that was probably because he knew what Timothy was going to get into when he got to Ephesus, and he was going to have everything but peace when he got to Ephesus. It was a dysfunctional church that was in the middle of dealing with heresy, and so he mentions that, and that peace is a big part of what God was going to do, because peace is the result of the reaction of grace and mercy. You have grace and mercy, you have peace. And so it's a logical step that he's mentioned. Now, there's a lot of similarities in the pastoral themes with the other epistles of Paul. Paul wrote probably 13 of the books in the New Testament, and so there's some similarities in the pastoral. For instance, when he encouraged Timothy to fight the good fight, that athletic admonition is repeated in 1 Corinthians 9 and Philippians 3. So they're consistent with what Paul has been teaching all along. When he told Timothy to stir up the Holy Spirit, that was the, in 2 Timothy chapter 1, it reflected the life of the Spirit and the post-suffering with Christ that we read about in Romans chapter 8. His classic description of the Scripture in 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17, all Scriptures given by inspiration of God and so on, is the same as the emphasis in Romans chapter 15. So both of these texts reveal that the Scripture is a source of encouragement and a source of instruction for believers. Now, he's by himself in this writing. He has left Titus in Crete, created there to strengthen the churches and to appoint elders. And probably I ought to pause just for a moment on the idea of him appointing elders. Remember, these are first century churches. And it's the same kind of thing we ran into when we were in Kenya. Some of you all were with us in Kenya in 1991. One of the problems that we had in Kenya was that people were getting saved so fast, the churches didn't have any pastors, and the ones who were becoming pastors were neophytes. We even found that the chairman of the association in Mombasa, not only was the chairman of the Baptist Association in Mombasa, Kenya, but he also snuck some idols into his tent and was doing some pagan worship of naturalism. He was a new convert. So when you have an area where you have a lot of new converts and new churches, and right now these are not only new churches, they're the church that hasn't really been developed. And so it would be natural for the Apostle Paul to say that if we're going to be successful in planting churches, we're going to have to also plant pastors in those churches. And so that's what he was doing in Crete. He was naming pastors, training pastors, mentoring the pastors. And so he had left Timothy in Ephesus to deal with the dysfunction and chaos that was taking place in Ephesus. And he proceeded to Macedonia where he turned around and wrote a letter back to Timothy that we're studying now. Now, Timothy was a remarkable individual. His background, but he was a native of Lystra. Now, Lystra was on the edge of nowhere. I mean, you're just, you know, just way out there in the boonies. But it was a Roman colony. And the importance of Lystra, really the only importance is that there was a Roman garrison there. And so they were there to keep control of all the craziness that was going on in the world around them at that time. So Lystra had some importance. Timothy was from Lystra. He's referred to as Timothy or Timotheus sometime in the New Testament. That's made up of two Greek words, which mean that which is dear to God. That's what the word Timothy means. Timothy was dear to God. He was dear to the Apostle Paul. He was dear to the local churches. It's likely that when Paul was in Lystra, he stayed in Timothy's home. Now, the reason I say that is that he was well acquainted with the godliness of Timothy's mother and his grandmother. And so he had been up close and personal with the family of Timothy. And Eunice, his mother, and Lloyd, his grandmother, made a big impact upon young Timothy. And he was a remarkable young man who I'm sure Paul thought, maybe I could turn my ministry over to him when he got through with me. And in fact, the way he treated Timothy made it likely that that would happen. And indeed, that happened in a large part of the later life of the Apostle Paul. He must have thought, this has got to be the guy that's going to take my place. He poured his soul into young Timothy, and Timothy became Paul's most dependable partner in ministry. Now, Timothy, he was a child of a victimary. His mother was a Jewish, and his father's grief sort of died at 16-1. Paul circumcised, had Timothy circumcised, because he was going to be especially assigned to the Romans, to the Jews, I'm sorry. And he knew that he would be more effective, since his mother was Jewish, it would be viewed with some suspicion if he would come ministering to the Jews that had not been circumcised as a Jew. And so it was to help him be more effective in his evangelistic ministry, but that took place early on in his relationship with the Apostle Paul. He was ordained by a council of elders in Derbe and Lystra. Now, if you want to know where Derbe and Lystra are, you will love this. It's between Antioch of Syria and Iconium. I know that helps you. But these were two stops on his missionary journey, and so that's where we first meet Timothy on Paul's missionary journey, second missionary journey, I believe, and there, that's where he was ordained. Now, Paul attacked a lot of significance and importance to the ordination of Timothy, because he mentions it in 1 Timothy 4, 14, and 2 Timothy 1, 6, so it was important to him that he had been ordained. But from that time on, Timothy was Paul's constant companion. He ran errands and did ministry with and for the Apostle Paul all over the place. He was Paul's emissary to Macedonia, according to Acts 19. He was there when the collection to the churches that the Macedonian churches had taken up for the Jewish churches, a church in Jerusalem. He was with Paul in Corinth when he wrote his letter to Rome. He was Paul's emissary to Corinth when there was trouble in that chaotic and unruly church. He was with Paul when he wrote 2 Corinthians. It was Timothy whom Paul sent to see how things were doing in Thessalonica. He was with Paul when he wrote his letter to the church at Thessalonica. He was with Paul in prison when he wrote to Philippi. He was with Paul when he wrote to the church at Colossae and Philemon. And when Paul had a difficult job to do, Timothy was his go-to guy. I mean, it was a constant relationship between Paul and Timothy. And that's why when you read the pastorals, especially, though it's true throughout his writings, Paul's voice is always filled with emotion and affection when he speaks to Timothy. He was his blood brother, his son in the ministry, mentoring him in the ministry. And so, we're dealing with a very important person, the Apostle Paul, because in 2 Timothy, when Paul is all by himself except Luke, he asks that they send Timothy. He asks for Timothy in his last days, he says, Come see me soon, he says, in the last of 2 Timothy. I mean, these were really close, close friends, like Phil Anderson and Jimmy Draper. That's the way that relationship was. When he was planning to send him to Philippi, he said that, I have no one else like-minded who will genuinely care about your interest, but you know his proven character because he has served with me in the gospel ministry like a son with a father. He called him, in 1 Corinthians, my dearly loved and faithful child in the Lord. Writing to Thessalonians, he says, We sent Timothy, our brother and God's co-worker in the gospel of Christ. God sent Timothy, Paul sent Timothy, God instructed and sent Timothy to Corinth, to Macedonia, to Philippi, to Ephesus. And so, we're talking about when Paul wanted something done or wanted companionship, he always asked for Timothy. It's a very important thing. And when he writes here to Timothy, he's really encouraging him to be not even aggressive in dealing with the problem of Pharisee. Pharisee never brings peace. Pharisee never brings one closer to God. It always destroys the fellowship of churches and destroys the confidence of believers. There's nothing good about heresy. It's a danger. You just cannot allow heresy to continue. And there was such a great need for it now in the area to deal with heresy. It's interesting that Paul had two plans for how to deal with heresy. It was not to attack the heretics. It was to proclaim the gospel. That's the first thing. And secondly, it was to confront the heretics with a consistent Christian witness. I've said to you many times over the years, what we believe ought to make a difference in how we live. And the greatest way to disprove heresy is to tell the truth and live a life that confirms what you said. And what Paul is dealing with, which is something that every church even today deals with, you had a lot of believers in Paul's time whose lives contradicted their witness. Yes, I wonder what you remember about your life. Do you remember the picture of Ackley, a carpoon in the world on his shoulders? There was a carpoon advertising something about the strength of whatever the product was. And I remember that a real skinny weakling was going to sell something about this wrong thing. And the implication of the ad or the comment was that his own life destroyed his ability to sell that product to someone else. That was happening in the churches that were dealing with Paul and Timothy and those that sent out with Paul and for Paul. You had Crescens and you had Titus and others that were out there. They were dealing with the problem of heresy and at the same time with inconsistent living on the part of believers. The quickest way for the world to turn away from God is to live a Godless life. I think I told you, surely you have heard it, Mahatma Gandhi was praying in New York City. And when he went back to India, he said, I would be a Christian today if it were not for Christians. There is no way that we can overestimate the value of living a consistent life as a believer. It doesn't mean we preach and pray around how spiritual we are. No, it just means that we're true to what we say we believe. And Billy Graham once said that he thought at least half of church members were lost. Now, why would he say that? Well, on our fifth day, 15 million Southern Baptists have less than 4 million in attendance in church. On our fifth day, it goes down from there. Now, I'm not saying that somebody doesn't go to church, they're not saved. God's the one who determines whether someone is genuine in their faith or not. I can tell you this, the Lord has clearly told us that we need each other. And he placed us in a family called the family of God. And he placed us in churches that are the people of God, gathering to worship God. And if we just find faith, there's got to be something wrong with our faith. Now, what we're facing today, nothing's new, is there? This is what it was back in Paul's day. And so, now remember that this counsel that he is giving is for believers in the first generation churches, infant churches, brand new churches, leading to maybe not as good and as steady and as solid as they ought to be, like isolated in a sea of paganism and dangerous heresies and distortions and dangers on every side, and church members were only a short way away from their heathen background and origins. I mean, it was tough. And Paul says, we have got not only to live consistently, we have to have correct doctrine, we have to teach them the truth of the gospel of Christ. And the churches were surrounding with the beginnings of Gnosticism, which is a kind of ascetic heresy, had so many tentacles and so many directions. Gnosticism, for one, believed that all matter was evil. So, they conclude that if we have a world that has evil, then God must have created evil. And so, they couldn't believe that God actually created the world. And so, instead of God being someone that they wanted to work, they had a lot of emanations, people representing God, people that sort of stood in God's place. And this is part of all the heresies. If you had things that Jesus, for instance, didn't have a body. He wasn't, he just, he just, like a ghost, he didn't have a body. Body would be sinful, Jesus wouldn't be sinful. I mean, there's so many screwy things coming out of it. This is just running rampant across the entire world at that time. It shouldn't be surprising that in 400 years, when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion, that the Roman Catholic Church began. Now, I'm not attacking the Catholics, but they believe a work of salvation. I've known some great Catholic friends that are Christians. I believe they're genuinely saved. But it was a political organization from the very beginning. And the Pope became dominant over all the political entities of the world at that time. And so, it's not surprising when you have all the heresies that rattle around there about Christ didn't really have a body. He just, it was just like a ghost, and God couldn't have been evil. Because the crazy thing, it wouldn't, it couldn't be surprising that when we talk about Christianity becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, we're not talking about the New Testament Christianity Paul was talking about. A lot had changed. And so, he just, Paul really felt like we had to get it right doctrinally, but also we had to live right. And that's why in the history of Baptists, in fact, the history of this church, one of the statements that Virginia Reed made in her history of this church was that early on, they practiced great discipline. I hope that was an interesting statement. They practiced church discipline. What on earth is that? Well, that means they call people to give account of what they've done. We have church covenants that hung on the wall in our churches, and you violated the church covenant if you could be disciplined. Interesting, go back and read that. You never read the church covenant. The old lines just say about the church covenant of the 20th century, and it talks about not only will we not drink, we will not sell alcoholics. Now they don't have preachers arguing it's okay to drink. We have a generation of preachers coming up that feel like this social drinking is appropriate. Wouldn't that, you know, social drinking sounds like I'm going to send you to hell. Could send somebody to hell. Oh, if they're eating meat, as soon as my brother, I won't eat meat. Let's just assume that there's absolutely nothing wrong. I think it's a little idiotic, but nothing wrong with taking a drink. But it may not be that way with somebody else. How many homes have been destroyed because of alcohol? How many individuals have been killed by drunk drivers? How much abuse has taken place under the influence? And when Daniel preached, some of you heard me preach last week on Daniel 5, when he said that Nebuchadnezzar brought the vessels from the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had brought from Jerusalem, and they brought them to Babylon, and it says that he had a banquet for a thousand of his nobles, and whoever invited their wives or their concubines, and he drank wine in those vessels. The word drank there is a word that meant he drank until he was under the influence of the wine. Now, I'll tell you a quick reason why I don't drink. Never have tasted it. I don't drink because one drink impairs your ability to respond in a normal way to anything. And if I'm going to be true to the Lord Jesus Christ, I don't want to put anything in my body that makes it a little difficult for me to make rational decisions. Second reason is, there are too many people who give you lift after lift. I can talk to you about a dear friend who was married to a preacher in Kansas City. Dr. Colagello drank a little wine every night before he went to bed because he wasn't able to sleep. He ended up being an alcoholic, having a fair divorce from his wife. There's just a lot of things. You know, we need to realize that we are the best Christian somebody knows, and somebody's looking at you and looking at me and watching everything we do. And Paul is making a point here. You can't argue against heresy if you're living like the devil. It makes sense, but that's really what he's hitting here in this passage. Now, I don't want to get hung up there. Jack may comment further on it as we go through these epistles. But when we come to 2 Timothy, now we're still doing an overview. We haven't even gotten our text yet. If we don't get to it, we'll get it next week. Paul's mood in 2 Timothy is markedly different from 1 Timothy. He's been arrested again. He's already had a preliminary hearing. He fully expects to die soon, according to 2 Timothy 4, 6 to 8. He was very lonely, and most of his close friends had been sent away. And he, in the fourth chapter of 2 Timothy, he says, Make every effort to come to me soon. He's writing to Timothy now. Because Demas has forsaken me, deserted me. He's gone to Thessalonica. Crescent has gone to Galatia. Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Bring Mark with you, for he is useful for my ministry. And I have sent Tychicus to Ephesus. He's a lonely man. He's by himself. Only Luke is there. Thank God Luke was there. But he was lonely. And he reached out to Timothy. Again, that's the relationship that they had. When Paul was lonely, he reached out to Timothy. Once you have a friend like that, you can talk to somebody. You'd know who to call. Oh, Timothy was his go-to guy. Paul's focus in this is on Timothy. This is a personal word of Paul to his cherished friend and co-worker. He appealed to Timothy to maintain the loyalty to the teachings he had received from Paul and from the Lord Jesus. Paul's teachers were still there, but his task was to pass on the gospel truth and the faithful believers who were there. No doubt that Timothy provided Paul with a great deal of encouragement and support. In spite of Paul's imprisonment, he was not discouraged. He proclaimed in 1 Timothy 2.9 that the word of God is not bound. He was in prison. Paul talked about that this morning. But he did that as his ministry. God gave him that assignment. And when you come down to the end of Philippians and Paul is concluding and says, the saints in Caesar's household salute you. Who were those saints? The Praetorian Guard. Few of them were chained to Paul every day that he witnessed to. People out of Caesar's household working for Caesar. Paul's ministry was effective. And there was a group of people, a secret force in Caesar's palace working for God. And it was an amazing thing to see that even though Paul was in prison, he said, this is my assignment. Why me? What in the world am I going to do? He just went to work sharing the gospel. And that's what he wanted Timothy to do. He wanted him to go. And he told Titus and Crete and Timothy and Estes to go to these churches to help to mentor and train their leaders and deal with the heretics that had begun to infiltrate the churches. And the best way to do that, proclaim the truth and live a gospel life. That's the answer. Now, there's 60 logical principles that you'll find throughout these pastoral principles. A pastoral epistle. The first is the Trinity or the Godhead. Paul declares that God is alive and he expects moral actions from his believers. He described God as one eternal, immortal, invisible creator. He described God as worthy of praise and gratitude from all believers. He is the sovereign ruler of this universe and holds the entire course of all history in his hand. And he speaks of God, the Father, being our savior and Jesus being our savior. It's a little rare for him to emphasize God as being our savior, but we need to be reminded, don't ever forget this, three persons in the Godhead. They're not three gods. They're three persons within one God. And so when Jesus does something, God does it. The Holy Spirit does it. When the Holy Spirit does something, Jesus and God do it. But what one says, they all say. And so he, Paul, focuses many times referring one thing to God, one thing to Jesus. That's the same thing. Jesus is God. God is Jesus. So that's one of the first things. He deeply believed that God was in charge of this entire course of history and that is shown in the pastoral. Second, the gospel. The scripture of the gospel is not unique to the pastoral. He calls the gospel the faith, the truth, sound and healthy teaching, godliness. But he deals with the gospel. He deals with the Christian life. He underscores the importance and value of personal holiness in the lives of believers. He deals with eschatology. Paul saw the apostasy of the present time as a precursor to the end. And that's very evident in the pastoral. He talked about church policy. Now, do you all know what policy means? I don't want to assume that you do. Policy means how a church, how they do business, how a church functions. That's the policy of the church. We believe in congregational policy. That means that we don't believe that the pastor can tell us what to do and we just say, okay, move on. No, no. We all move together and we all have a vote. Pastor has one vote. A lot of influence, obviously. One vote. Every one of us do. We believe in congregational policy. So it deals with that. He saw the church as a family that was organized to minister to each other and to those outside the church. In the family of God, all of us are brothers and sisters in Christ. And he urges the church to care for each other and for the poor. Leaders in the church were known as overseers or elders. Paul gave Timothy and Titus directions to direct doctrinal and lifestyle challenges that were in the church of that day. And neither Paul nor Titus were, they were not permanent resident pastors. Their specific responsibilities are not clearly stated in the pastoral, but they were there. But church and its policy, how you do church. And did you know there's no order of service in the New Testament? Why do we do this, do that? And then, you know, well, there are guidelines that are given to us in the New Testament for how we worship, but there's no order of service. But you know, did our pastor preach it after somebody makes an announcement? I want to preach after they just acquired the soloist that's rung the bell in front of the people sitting in the midnight. I'd rather try to calm down a bunch of fanatics than resurrect the dead. And I want to get up there when the pulpit is hot. Well, that's different. We're doing it different now. And that's OK. There is no order of service. Do I wish they'd go back and let him preach after the special? Of course. But as Carolann reminds me, that's not my responsibility anymore. So I'm happy being a church member. I learned to be a church member in Nashville. I never knew how to do anything but pastor. And I learned to be a church member. And so I met this person, Brother Bill, and I told him, John, before he brings you a call now, we'll do anything you want us to do. We won't do anything you don't want us to do. And we kept that promise. And so, but church policy, he deals with how should a church function? Well, it ought to function in unity, it ought to function in love, it ought to function ministering to each other, ministering to the poor. We're told how to do various things. We just haven't been having order of service. So who knows what will be the order of service next? Salvation is big in the pastoral sense. Paul saw the universal problem of sin and God's desire to redeem humanity from sin's power and penalty. And so he refers to God and Jesus as Savior. Believers are described as saved, reborn, renewed, justified. Paul clearly, emphatically declares salvation is by God's grace alone, apart from any work on man's part. Salvation is the sixth thing. So you're going to find these six things running throughout all of these epistles. Now then, verse one. In about 10 minutes, we'll go through that over with and then we'll cross that next week. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of our God and Savior and of Christ Jesus, our Pope. God, our Savior, Christ Jesus, our Hope. Interesting. To Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord. He introduces himself by name and points out that he is an apostle by God's command. And as I said, the word indicates that means it's beyond dispute. He was not one of the original apostles. But Paul made him apostle with the back of his throat and he did that job very well. He frequently mentions Timothy as his son. That likely means that he mentored Timothy. He helped train him. He was one of his boys. That's like we had at the service, Bruce McCoy. Some of you know Bruce McCoy. I met him when he was pastoring in St. Louis. Wow, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, somewhere in there. But he was raised under Bill Anderson. And he'll tell you, I'm one of Bill's boys. Well, is he Bill's son? No. But Bill mentored him and left him an example. And he still believes where he is today is because of what Bill Anderson poured into his life. Well, that's what I think he simply means when he talks about my true son in the faith. True son is what you would expect. Just mean he's the legitimate one. He's a genuine son. He's not a fake. He's not a phony. He's the real deal. That's what he is talking about. And it's important that he calls God our Savior and Jesus Christ our hope. But that tells us that this is not just for an elite group of believers. It is our Savior. It's important. Timothy was part of that hour. He also included every one of us. We're all sinners, saved for grace. God and Jesus Christ are our only hope and our only Savior. But here, they don't just give us salvation and hope. God and Jesus don't just give us salvation and hope. They are salvation and hope. The difference in Christianity and every other so-called religion in the world is that ours is not about basic beliefs that do all the work in our lives. God himself comes into our lives. And our faith, while grounded in the truth of the Word of God, is placed upon the very presence of God and Jesus Christ alone in our hearts. And that's what separates Christianity. Well, in the pastoral service, Paul called God the Father our Savior. But he also called Jesus our Savior. And that little word, our, is really important. He is our Savior. He is our hope. Timothy is his true son in faith. Paul's greeting grace, mercy, and peace is the threefold greeting that is not used in any other epistle of Paul. He adds peace, which makes sense because they're dealing with dysfunction in the churches because of heresy. And so, it's going to be hard work to deal with them. But God says, I'm going to give you peace. What are you doing? That's an important thing. It refers to the grace of God that he offers to his own descendants. That's grace, mercy, the working of grace, and Jesus is also grace and mercy. And it can't be bought or earned. It comes only from God through Jesus Christ. Verse 3, he departs to Macedonia but left Timothy in Ephesus to deal with those who were teaching heresy that had arisen from the church. And in verses 18 and 20, he mentions two of the ringleaders. And he mentions Himanias and Alexander, the two who blasphemed God for teaching the heresy. So, he names them and he wants them to deal with these guys. You talk about church discipline, get rid of them. Have nothing to do with them. Now, there's one other thing unusual about 1 Timothy. That is, in his readings, he nearly always has an expression of gratitude. It's not there in 1 Timothy. And it's not there in Galatians, in the church of Galatians. And the reason is, there wasn't anything he wanted to be grateful for about what was happening in Ephesus. I mean, it was dysfunctional. It was chaotic. Use any word you want. It was in a mess. He's telling Timothy, you need to deal with it. Here's where you start. These are the two guys that are causing trouble, now take charge and deal with them. He warns Paul, verse 4, not to allow any weakness in dealing with myths and endless theologies. These empty philosophies pull believers away from the doctrines that Paul had taught. And in Titus 3.9, Paul instructs them to avoid foolish debates, genealogies, quarrels, and disputes about the law because they're untrustable and worthless. 1 Timothy 4.7 declares, but have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Rather, train yourself in godliness. After charging Timothy to preach the word in 2 Timothy 4 and 5, he spoke about a time when people will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn away to myths. So he's warning them of the dangers of all of this silly talking about myths and various things besides the gospel. The church has kept wanting to add something to the gospel. I told you before, Manly Beeson said, the greatest heresy is the one that sounds the most like the truth. Heresy is dangerous because it sounds good. Not everything that sounds good is good, and he's telling me you need to deal with it. So, verses 5 through 7, and we'll stop with those, Paul is now presenting two goals that he has to dealing with these heresies. First, he wanted true love to develop in the Ephesian church, and secondly, he wanted to keep the church from discussing useless and empty heresies. The false teachers had abandoned a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith, and instead they advocated useless and empty talk that resulted in unholy living. He describes them as teachers of the law, but they really pretended to be wise when they weren't wise and didn't even understand what they were talking about. And so, he wants to keep the church in these discussions that are not fruitful. And we will start there. Well, let me add one thing. In Matthew 5, 17, Jesus says, don't think I've come to abolish the law of prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. It's important for Timothy to understand the real purpose of the law. The law was instituted for the man who intently breaks the law. It was not made for the man who had been saved and justified by Christ's death on the cross, and false teachers were leading believers to enticing them to make a new substitution for the gospel in their faith. Okay. Verse 8. We'll start there next week, and have a good week. Father, we praise you. Bless us, walk with us, and walk through us. Use us for your glory. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.