WWUTT 563 My True Child In the Faith?

The Faith of Timothy and Spiritual Children in Christ

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, then you are a child of God. And as a child of God, you are to grow up in your faith, which takes a lot of time, love, and patience when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the book of 1 Timothy. Just started the study this week. If you're only joining us here in the middle of the week, I'm going to come back to verse 1 and read through verse 7.

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 confident assertions.

Timothy as a Spiritual Son and the Gospel at Lystra

Now, there's a lot here that we want to unpack, and I'm going to end up coming back to this section again next week. But let me approach this greeting once again, where Paul says to Timothy, my true child in the faith.

We talked about yesterday a little bit more about who Timothy is and his close association with the apostle Paul. Paul considered himself to be like a spiritual father to Timothy. It was because of his preaching the gospel at Lystra, which we read about in Acts 14, that Timothy's grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice came to be believers, because they were Jews.

So they knew the Jewish scriptures. And then when they heard Paul proclaiming the gospel and how Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of what the law and the prophets had talked about, they became believers in Christ, and therefore so did Timothy.

And so Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1 .5, I'm 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. So it was because of this gospel that Paul preached that Timothy became a believer.

And then Paul took Timothy under his wing and made him part of his missionary group, grew him in the faith. He became his most trusted missionary in the gospel. And whenever Paul sent Timothy to a place, that was actually a great honor.

If Paul himself couldn't be there, he would send his most trusted servant, and that was Timothy himself, his true child in the faith. As he said to the Philippians, I have no one like Timothy. And what he's going to do for you is out of sincerity.

Unlike these others who are preaching out of rivalry and conceit, Timothy has a genuine heart for you believers. And we're going to see that some more here, even as we go through chapter one in Paul's opening to Timothy and what he's leaving him there in Ephesus to do.

So Paul sees Timothy as a spiritual son. And I've heard John MacArthur talk about how all of us will eventually become mothers and fathers spiritually of spiritual children, those who have come to the faith in Christ because of the gospel that we shared with them.

So Timothy was that for Paul. And then you will not only have biological children, if the Lord has so blessed you to have kids, but you will have spiritual children as well. And likely your spiritual children will outnumber your biological children.

And if you have kids that you have led to the Lord, your own children to the Lord, they're not only your biological children, but also your spiritual children. I've known many singles in churches, those who have not had kids who have had terrific children's ministries and have led kids in the church to know the Lord, or they've probably even led adults to the Lord.

And those adults have even become their spiritual children. Jesus says to us in Mark 10, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time.

Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. So Jesus is saying here that it's not just in heaven that you receive this reward of many children and lands, a hundredfold of what you had left for the cause of Christ.

But you will even receive those things here in this life, in this earth. You will have hundreds of spiritual offspring. Those who have shared the gospel. And that doesn't mean you have to have hundreds of spiritual offspring because as we read about in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, that some receive a hundredfold, some 50 and some 30.

So some are blessed to have hundreds of spiritual children, but others maybe not so much. Doesn't mean that your ministry effort is somehow less than somebody who has seen thousands of people come to the Lord.

You think about men and women who have given their entire lives to the service of the gospel and how many thousands that they have seen come to know the Lord. Whereas maybe you've only seen a dozen in your lifetime.

Do not lose heart. That is great. It is a wonderful blessing that God has encouraged you in that work. For Jesus has said that for those who have much, much will be required of them. And when you get to heaven and you stand before the Lord in judgment and you only have your 30 to present before the Lord that you had led in Christ, hey, that's going to be enough.

That you're being judged for those 30 and not having to be judged for the thousands that others had been given that responsibility to lead. So it is a wonderful blessing that God has given us this work.

He has apportioned for us this work. He has prepared it for us in advance, as is talked about in Ephesians 2 .10. And praise God for that. That he has chosen the church as his instrument to share the gospel of Jesus Christ so that men and women all over the world from every tribe, tongue, and nation would turn from sin and worship God.

And he would be glorified in these people that he has rescued from sin and death and to himself. Praise the Lord that we get to be part of this divine work of grace. And so you will have many children that you will bring to Christ and you become a spiritual mother or a father to them.

And so this is what Timothy was to Paul. And you're not supposed to have favorite kids, but we kind of get the sense that Timothy was a favorite to the Apostle Paul. Timothy, my true child in the faith.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Grace, the unmerited favor that we've been given from God through his Son, Jesus Christ. Mercy, when what we deserved was death and destruction because of our rebellion against God, and yet he didn't destroy us, but gave us peace.

Peace from God the Father. When he gifted to us his Son who died for our sins and made peace between us and God. We have peace with God through the Son, Jesus Christ. His blood is shed blood on the cross for our sins, satisfied the wrath of God.

All of these things had been purposed by the Father and actualized in Jesus Christ. Grace, mercy, and peace. Paul shares in that grace, mercy, and peace. He extends it also to Timothy. It's like a reminder.

I mean, think of the things that Paul and his missionary brethren were going through. The persecutions that they were facing for their faith. Persecutions unlike you have probably experienced in your lifetime.

And yet, Paul is reminding Timothy that we have the grace of God. He has shown us mercy. We have peace with God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord. What can man do to us? So, as Paul is going to be encouraging Timothy in this pastoral work that he is going to do in Ephesus.

He is being reminded that we have grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father. The Creator of all. Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can remove those things from us. We are sealed by the very Spirit of God.

Now, the Spirit is not mentioned here in this introduction. Usually, Paul's introductions tend to be very Trinitarian. But here, the Spirit is kind of more of a background character. In fact, with Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, Paul mentions the Spirit less in those letters than he does in any of his other letters.

I don't really know why that is. Mostly because the Holy Spirit of God is kind of a background character. He has just chosen not to be one of the persons of the Trinity that acts on the forefront. He's a little bit more mysterious in his ways than the Father and the Son.

But nonetheless, undertones of the Spirit are all the way through this letter. By the very fact that this is Scripture. It is the Word of God. This is the Word of Christ that Paul is sharing with Timothy, divinely inspired by the Spirit of God.

So, he's there, even if he's not mentioned by name. Paul goes on here, verse 3. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus. So, remember, this is going on between Paul's first imprisonment in Rome and his second imprisonment.

So, sometime around 62 or 63 AD. And as he was going to Macedonia, he sent Timothy to Ephesus and told him to stay there. So then, as Paul is moving on, he sent this letter to Timothy reminding him that he's supposed to stay at Ephesus.

There had been some other times when Paul had sent Timothy to a place to report back to him some things that were going on. We saw this with the Corinthians, with the Thessalonians, with the Philippians.

But in this case, Paul wants Timothy to stay at Ephesus. The same sort of thing has happened here in the sense that Paul has received word about some things that are going on at Ephesus. This is 10 years after he planted that church there, which would have been about the early to mid 50s AD.

So, now we're in about the early 60s AD. So, he sent Timothy there to pastor the church. And loving Timothy so much and that church so much, he wants Timothy to stay there. So, this isn't just a report.

This is going to be a long-term missions work that Timothy is going to be doing there at Ephesus. Timothy is kind of the pastor of that church. John would eventually become the pastor of that church, probably sometime after Timothy had left.

So, at this particular time, Paul has heard that the church in Ephesus is starting to leave sound doctrine. Instead, they're teaching myths. You know, guys are just coming up with stuff that might even be tied to the gospel.

It might have some elements of the gospel in there. But they're taking the cool parts and kind of expanding it out into something that doesn't accord with godliness or their speculations. They're going beyond the text.

This was something that Paul directly confronted with the Corinthians when he said, do not go beyond what is written. So, some of these teachers at Ephesus were doing that very thing. They were teaching outside the text, making speculations and this endless genealogies reference.

So, they were, I mean, what gospel do you find in the genealogies? Unless you're going through the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1 or in Luke 3 or something like that. For the purpose of making the connection that Jesus Christ is the one who was prophesied about by the prophets.

Who had come to take away the sin of the world, would die on the cross for our sins. So, unless that's what you're talking about when you're mentioning genealogies. You know, it could be that some of these guys are saying that they're related to so-and-so and this person and this person.

And so, because they have this connection with this genealogy, that makes them more important than somebody else. Or I have another example of this. I'm going to wait until next week. We kind of explore the concept of endless genealogies a little bit more.

But the point being that the teachers at Ephesus were leaving sound doctrine. They were instead entertaining flights of fancy. You know, this sounds cooler. Some of this may have even been conspiracy theory to some degree.

This sounds neater than the gospel that we've heard over and over again. How can we kind of spice this up and make it a little bit more than what it's been for us over these 10 years that we've existed for a church?

And Paul is saying, no, if they're leaving sound doctrine like this, they're leaving godliness. They're going to lose godly behavior and training and character. Which we as Christians need to be built up in and growing in and maturing in.

And if they're not teaching sound doctrine, then they're leaving that pursuit of godliness, which he gets to a little bit later on in the letter toward the end. First Timothy 6, 3. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, then he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

First Timothy 6, 3 and 4 was what I was reading there. So that's where we get our definition of sound doctrine from, too. When we use that term sound doctrine, what does that mean? Well, it is teaching that flows from the sound words, the true words of our Lord Jesus Christ and accords with godliness.

So it's teaching that actually produces something. It changes our character and behavior to be more like Christ. When we commit ourselves to the gospel like that, when we are reminded of what God has done and is doing for us through Jesus Christ, the hope and promise that we have of this eternal kingdom, when we're glorifying God in all of these things, it's going to produce a change of behavior in us.

We become less and less like the world and more and more like heavenly citizens of that future kingdom. This is what the gospel produces in us. And when we leave the gospel, when we have abandoned the sound teaching of the gospel, when we're no longer growing as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, then we start letting the world in little by little.

And we start to look more like the world and less like Christians, less like followers of Jesus. And this is going on in a big way in the church today. The very same things that Paul was warning Timothy about and telling him that he's there in Ephesus for, to make sure that these guys are not deviating from the gospel into all these other kind of random things.

This very thing that Paul was telling or sending Timothy to Ephesus to do, that he left Timothy in Ephesus to do, stay there because this is going to be a long term work. It's these kinds of things that we're experiencing in the church now.

And just as Paul knew that this was going to be a long term work for Timothy, so it's a long term work in the church. Like we can observe churches that have left the gospel or they feel like they've graduated from the gospel.

Hey, we don't even need the gospel anymore. We've talked about it. We believe it. So now let's move into these other things. Folks, you never graduate from the gospel because, as I've pointed out already, it's the gospel that leads to godliness.

If you're not meditating on the gospel anymore, the good news that Jesus saves and is continuing to sanctify us. If you've left that message, then you're going to lose godliness. It's going to be less of the pursuit of God and more falling right back into the world again.

And so we see churches that are doing this, that are not as prominent in the good news of Christ anymore, the sound teaching that flows from the gospel. And instead, they've fallen into moralistic sermons or self-help sermons or legalistic sermons.

And they're imposing a burden on members of their congregation that they simply cannot carry, placing the onus of responsibility upon themselves to have to fix their lives. When it's our commitment to the gospel and Jesus Christ that submits to the Holy Spirit doing that work in our lives.

And again, this is a long-term labor. So, like I said, we observe these things happening in these churches, and we might even point it out sometimes. Oh, that church, look at what it is that they're doing.

But we can't just leave the work to pointing out the errors. It's going to be a long-term labor of love that they would turn from this sin and come back to the soundness of the gospel. Paul is telling Timothy here for those teachers that are there in the church in Ephesus, they're committed to the church.

Don't let them teach any different doctrine. He doesn't say remove those teachers. He just says rebuke them. Don't let them teach any different doctrine or devote themselves to these things or whatever.

There are some things in this church that need to be corrected. And Paul is confident that when Timothy brings this correction, that these elders are correctable. Now, he talks about some people a little bit later on in chapter one that he did have to remove from the church.

Hymenaeus and Alexander being those two names in chapter 20. Whom I have handed over to Satan, Paul says, that they may learn not to blaspheme. So these were guys that were incorrectable. And Paul had to remove them from the church so that they wouldn't continue to blaspheme the name of Christ and therefore lead his people astray.

And so I've heard Mark Devers say that when it comes to leading people in sound doctrine, you need to be ready to commit yourself to a church for like a generation. Forty years. Forty years of commitment to a church.

Which is what I'm committed to doing in First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas, unless the Lord tarries and decides to take me somewhere else. If this is where he wants me to be for the extent of my ministry, God willing, I will stay there and do it here in the middle of America, right here in Kansas.

There are probably places where in my flesh I would rather be warmer climates, for example. Especially when winter time hits in Kansas. But as I've heard Dr. MacArthur talk about and Mark Devers and many other faithful pastors who have been faithful to their church congregations for long periods of time, this work takes a long time.

It's not something that happens overnight where just immediately everybody's, boom, we're right into sound doctrine. Okay, we got rid of all the bad stuff. Now we're only focusing on the good stuff. All it takes is a different printed bulletin and now we're ready to go.

It's not that simple. I mean, you can throw away all the Joyce Meyer books, Rick Warren books, Joel Osteen books, Victoria Osteen books. Those things should happen now. Go find all those books, throw them in the dumpster.

Yes. Do that right now. Instant change is taking place because now those books are not in your church. But the change of the heart is what takes time. And I'm speaking from experience. That was the very first thing I did on the very first day of work when I was hired at First Southern Baptist Church.

I threw away all the Joyce Meyer books. I went through the church library and got rid of everything that was terrible. Did the hearts then transform immediately because I had done that? No. But work was moving in that direction to change those hearts.

And some folks were very resistant to it. They did not want that change. I want to go to a church that loves Joyce Meyer. So they would leave mine and go to another church. That's going to happen as well.

But that's part of growing those who are genuine in the faith, that those who are genuine might be revealed, as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 11. And it is the gospel of Christ that does this work, that changes hearts in this way.

Or that even will push out those hardened hearts that are not genuinely receptive to the gospel of Christ. The letter that Paul wrote to First Timothy is bookended by this call to sound doctrine, as I've kind of demonstrated here.

We talked about it in Chapter 1 and in Chapter 6. In the middle, you've got instructions on how men are supposed to behave, how women are supposed to behave. So the behavior change that is produced in people because of their commitment to sound doctrine, the structure of the church, how the church is supposed to operate, how it's supposed to care for its own.

And then we get to that call again in Chapter 6 to remain sound in the truth, in the true teaching of Jesus Christ. And everything that flows from that produces godly living in the heart of a believer, a desire to be like God and be transformed into citizens of his kingdom.

We are all children of God, adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. When I say all, I mean those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. And so just as I made a reference earlier on in the message to being spiritual children, raising children takes time.

You don't have mature young men and women right after you've given birth. It takes a couple of decades before you've got children who love the Lord in this way. And so let us be committed to our local churches that we might grow one another in the faith in this labor of love that takes time.

God will give you the patience because he has been patient with us. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you so much for the salvation that we've been given in Jesus Christ our Lord. And I pray that we would desire to be like you, that we would exhibit the traits of our Father in heaven.

We want to be more like our Savior Christ. We know the words from the Apostle Paul to the Philippians, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ. And so Lord, continue this work in us.

May we be patient as you do this work and also be patient with one another as we're all walking humbly with our God. And we pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .tt .com.