WWUTT 562 By Command of God?

Timothy came to salvation in Jesus Christ because he was taught the

Word of God. And you came to salvation that same way because you were told the Word of God and you believed it when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. As we resume our study of the book of 1 Timothy, I'm going to come back again to our opening chapter verse 1 and reading through about verse 7 here.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

The aim of our charge is love, that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make their confident assertions.

So we're introduced to the author of the letter with the very opening word, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God.

So Paul is saying that he became an apostle not because he was invited to be and he accepted that invitation, but because God commanded him to be an apostle and he obeyed.

This was the Damascus Road experience that we read about in Acts chapter 9. Paul on his way to Damascus at that time called

Saul because that was his Hebrew name. Paul was his Greek name, Saul his Hebrew name. When Paul became an apostle to the

Gentiles, he started going by Paul so that they would not immediately be put off by him carrying a

Hebrew name. So Paul is on the Damascus Road. He's on his way to capture some more

Christians and bring them back bound in chains to stand trial. And it's on his way to Damascus that Christ appears to him and says,

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul's response was, who are you,

Lord? He knows this is the Lord speaking, but he did not know the Lord Jesus Christ.

And why would the Lord say, why are you persecuting me? Well, because Christ has such fellowship with his believers that for any of us to be persecuted, it's the same as if Christ himself was being persecuted.

And so likewise, we should share in the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we read about persecution or observe someone being persecuted for the faith, the whole church goes through that.

We should grieve with them and pray with them. Well, Paul didn't understand that concept, and so he had to ask the

Lord who he was. And Jesus said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city and you will be told what to do.

And at that point, what did Paul say? You know, doesn't sound like something I really want to be a part of.

Sorry, I think I'm going to go resume what it was that I was going to go do when I was headed to Damascus.

Let's round up a few more Christians, because I don't believe that you're actually God. You know, that's not how

Paul responded. He obeyed. He went to the city and waited to be told what to do next.

And Paul was stricken with blindness, so he had to be guided. And there in Damascus was a man named

Ananias. And the Lord called to him and said, Rise and go to the street called

Straight. And at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he is praying.

And he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias. Come in and lay hands on him so that he might regain his sight.

But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.

And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name.

As if Ananias is telling Jesus something he didn't already know. But the Lord said to him,

Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the

Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

These were the things that God commanded of Paul. And he did it by the command of God, not because he decided it sounded like the best game in town.

And so he was, you know, going to go with this Christian thing. They turn out to be the ones who are winning. So I'm going to give up my rock star status as a

Pharisee and instead enter into this persecution for the name of Christ. That sounds to me like a better deal.

Paul became an apostle because he was commanded to be. And he obeyed because the

Lord gave him a new heart to obey. As we read in Ezekiel 36, 26,

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove your cold heart of stone from your flesh.

And I will give you a heart of flesh, a softened heart. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Now, sometimes when I talk about this, how a prophet or an apostle was chosen by Christ to do something, as Paul says in Galatians one, that he was chosen for this work that he does before he was even born.

Jeremiah was told a very similar thing. Jeremiah chapter one, verse five, before I formed you in the womb,

I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

And sometimes when I mention these things, whether it's an example of Jeremiah or Paul in Galatians one, 15, somebody might say, well, right.

But that was a prophet or an apostle. Jesus specifically chose them or predestined them from the foundation of the world or before they were born.

But he doesn't do that with just any believer. But we read in first Thessalonians chapter one that he does.

First Thessalonians one, four, for we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit and with full conviction. And there are some that might argue with, oh, yeah, we know that you are chosen because you believed.

That's not what Paul said. We know you're chosen because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Because how is a person saved? They hear the gospel, they repent of their sin and they believe it.

It's Romans 10, 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. And so Paul knows they were chosen by God because they believed they didn't believe.

And therefore, now they're chosen. They were chosen prior to their belief. And it is their belief that confirms that God had chosen them from before the foundation of the world.

This is not just prophets and apostles that God has chosen. It's every believer in Christ.

By the command of God, you turn from sin and believed. Repent and believe are not suggestions.

They're not invitations, they're commands. Those who are the sheep of God will obey them.

And those who are not his sheep won't. Paul was a sheep.

He was chosen by God from the foundation of the world to be his apostle. And by the command of God, he became an apostle of Jesus Christ, just as God commanded light to come into existence by the word of his power.

So we come into saving faith the exact same way. God commands it and we repent and believe.

Now if a person does not repent and believe, it is because God had not commanded for them to become a follower of Christ.

There was the external calling, but there was not that effectual calling. There was the external calling in the sense that the gospel was proclaimed to them and they heard it.

But there wasn't the effectual calling in the sense that the Holy Spirit did not change their hearts, give them that new heart of flesh to be able to hear the gospel and respond to it.

They remained with a cold heart of stone and the gospel simply did not penetrate. But this is by the divine and sovereign will of God.

This is by his predestined plan from before the foundation of the world. That's his sovereignty.

His providence is then in the way that he works in every individual in time, the way that he is working through you right now to hear the word of God and understand it and believe it and apply it to your life.

That's the providence of God. His sovereignty is that he decreed these things before the foundation of the world.

And so Paul was one of those who was chosen by Christ, by the command of God, that he would be an apostle to the nation, standing before kings, which we saw that happen in the book of Acts, preaching to Gentiles and Jews both.

We also see that over the course of his ministry. And so since we know these things about Paul, surely

Timothy knew them. So why does Paul introduce himself at the start of this letter as an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God, our

Savior? Well, because Timothy is also a servant of God by the command of God, just as we read at the start of First Thessalonians.

So as Paul identifies himself that way, so Timothy would be all the more encouraged, enlivened, emboldened by this call of God upon his life to teach in the place where Paul had left him because it is it is the command of God that Timothy would do these things.

And in fact, Paul even refers to Timothy in this letter as a man of God. Who do we know was referred to as men of God in the scriptures, the prophets in the

Old Testament. So Paul is equating Timothy with the prophets of old as a man of God who has been entrusted with the gospel, the sound doctrine of our

Lord Jesus Christ, which you must teach in Ephesus and tell others not to teach any different doctrine.

So you are as much a man of God as any of the prophets that were commanded by God to preach to his people.

So Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God, our Savior and of Christ Jesus, our hope to Timothy, my true child in the face.

So here we've talked about Paul a little bit. Who is this guy, Timothy? Well, I talked about him a little bit yesterday.

Timothy was born in Lystra and Paul picked him up as a fellow missionary in Acts chapter 16.

Now, he had been through Lystra before, which we read about in chapter 14. And when he did ministry there, the first time he was even stoned, some would say to death and then came back to life.

And maybe Timothy knew about that. And because of Paul's preaching there the first time, that could have been the reason why

Timothy's mother and grandmother became believers. It says that at the start of chapter 16, there was a disciple there at Lystra named

Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer. But his father was a Greek.

He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the

Jews who were in those places. For they all knew that his father was a Greek. So Paul's feeling there was if Timothy wasn't circumcised, then there's a possibility that the

Jews wouldn't even listen to what it was that Timothy had to say, or he wouldn't even be allowed to enter the synagogue, which was oftentimes where Paul went when he entered into a new city, preached first to the

Jews and then went to the Gentiles. Well, if Timothy was known as a Gentile, if his father was well known and he would not have been received by the

Jews, therefore it would be better to circumcise Timothy. That way, Paul could say, no, he's he's circumcised.

And so the Jews would receive him as being converted. Paul didn't do this to Timothy so that he would be a better Christian.

He just did it so that the witness of the gospel that they were sharing with Jews and Gentiles alike wouldn't be hindered.

And so Timothy, who was well acquainted with the scriptures, became a fellow missionary with the apostle

Paul at that point and likely in his late teens, early twenties. And I mentioned at the time that Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, he was probably somewhere in his early thirties.

So that's kind of the time frame in which or the time that has passed between when

Paul took on Timothy and when he has left him here in Ephesus at the time of this particular letter.

We even know Timothy's mother's name and the faith of his grandmother.

According to what we read at the start of Second Timothy, Paul says, I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother,

Lois, and your mother, Eunice. And now I am sure dwells in you as well.

And then as we read later on in that same letter, as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

So remember, his mother was a Jew, so she knew the Jewish scriptures and had taught these things to Timothy.

And when they heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, the spirit gave them a heart to know that this

Christ who was being preached about was the fulfillment of everything that the prophets had talked about in the in the

Jewish scriptures. And so it was because Timothy had learned these things that upon hearing the gospel, his his heart was tilled.

It was ready to receive the truth of salvation from sins in Christ alone.

And so this was how Timothy became a believer in the faith by the influence of his mother and his grandmother, and then came into Paul's company and traveled with him and was his most beloved fellow minister in the faith.

As we looked at a couple of passages about that yesterday, the way Paul talks about him with the Philippians and with the with the

Corinthians, we also see Timothy as a co -writer with Paul in a lot of the letters that he wrote, not necessarily that he's the one that came up with those words, but Paul would dictate to him what to write down and then

Timothy wrote it down. And so you'll see at the start of the letter, like we like we read in first and second Thessalonians, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the

Thessalonians and God, the father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be to you. And, you know, that's the way he would start a letter by introducing everyone who was in that company of the letter being written.

And so Timothy was a scribe of Paul's in that sense. I imagine traveling around with the apostle

Paul. That's the kind of exposure to gospel ministry Timothy had at such a young age.

Remember that the apostle John is referred to as the beloved apostle. He was the the one whom

Jesus loved, as is talked about in John 21, 20. And so Timothy was probably that to Paul.

What the apostle John was to Jesus, Timothy was to Paul, the youngest of the entourage, the one that Paul kind of took under his wing, cared for him and loved him the most and thought of him as being a son in the faith.

That's the way he refers to Timothy, my true child in the faith. Verse two, grace, mercy and peace from God, the father and Christ Jesus, our

Lord. And as I also mentioned yesterday, Paul had sent Timothy to Ephesus to pastor the church there.

This church, the Ephesian church, being the one that Paul loved the most. He is the most endeared to this church, which we see the emotion that he shares with those

Ephesian elders there in Acts 20, which we looked at yesterday. Also, the loving language that Paul uses with the

Ephesians in the letter that we have in canon, he's sometimes just pours out his spirit so much that we have these long, vast run on sentences of deep theology that Paul is pouring out for this church that he loves so much.

So his favorite church, his favorite missionary, he puts the two of them together. Timothy, he sends to Ephesus and says in verse three,

I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

So he was sending Timothy to Ephesus and told him to stay there. Don't just go there to check up on him.

Like he he often sent Timothy to do in the other letters that we read about with the Thessalonians, with the

Corinthians. He sent Timothy there just to check up on them, to minister to them, some more to preach to them.

But then he was always supposed to come back to Paul. Well, in this case, Paul had sent Timothy to Ephesus and told him to stay there while Paul was going on to Macedonia.

And so then he writes this letter to Timothy and says, I'm reminding you again to stay at Ephesus. So so that Timothy doesn't get the impression again that he was just there to be there for a short time and then to report back to Paul.

Paul is saying, I don't I don't need your personal report. I need you to personally stay there and witness and minister to these

Ephesians because I've heard about some things that are going on in this church and your longstanding ministry is needed there, not just a report, but that they know that you are there with them caring for that flock in your commitment to this particular church.

So I urge you, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

We're going to talk about that a little bit further tomorrow when we continue this study of the book of First Timothy.

Let's conclude with prayer. Lord, we are so grateful to you for the salvation that we have.

Not only did you send your son to die for our sins on the cross, to rise again from the grave so that all who believe in him would inherit his eternal life and become co -heirs of his eternal kingdom.

Not only did you do these things for us, but you decreed our salvation from the very foundation of the world.

Before we had done anything good or bad, you had chosen us for this.

If we had been left up to ourselves, we would have chosen nothing but evil. The sinfulness that we had inherited from Adam.

But in Christ, we have inherited a new life, one that is eternal, imperishable, a hope and a promise that will last forever with our

God, with whom we will be celebrating and praising around your glorious throne forever and ever.

Amen. We praise you for this salvation that has been guaranteed to us in Christ, sealed by the shedding of his blood, that our hearts were transformed by your

Holy Spirit to hear your word and understand it and praise you for it and grow in it.

Our learning and our understanding even maturing because Christ is not just the author of our faith, but the perfecter of our faith as well.

And so we pray that we cling all the more to Christ, that we remember the words that we have been taught from your scriptures and how they make us wise for salvation.

And we take this gospel by which we have been saved to a world that is lost and dying and needs to hear the gospel so that they too would turn from their sin and believe in Jesus Christ and be saved.

Thank you for this effectual calling that you have placed in our hearts through your Holy Spirit.

May there be many others who come to know you as well. And thank you for including us in this divine work.