God's House Rules #1 - Introducing 1 Timothy (1 Timothy 1:1-2) | Kofi Adu-Boahen

1 Timothy as the Church’s House Rules

First Timothy in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, two Corinthian letters, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, two Thessalonian letters, and then you'll hit First Timothy.

First Timothy chapter one. And we're going to read two passages, as you can see up there on screen. First Timothy chapter one, verses one and two. And then First Timothy chapter three, verses 14 through 16.

That's page 1051 and 1052 in the red Bibles that we give away. Oh, by the way, if you grabbed one of those and you don't have a Bible, that's our gift to you, so feel free to keep that. One Timothy chapter one, verses one and two.

One Timothy three, verses 14 through to 16. If you're able to do so, can I invite you to stand with me as we read these portions of God's Word? First Timothy chapter one, verses one and two. God's Word says to us this morning, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God, our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope.

To Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord. Chapter three, verses 14 through 16. I write these things to you, hoping to come to you soon.

But if I should be delayed, I have written so that you will know how God's people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

And most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great. He, being Christ, was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

Jesus said that heaven and earth will pass away, but his words, these words, will never pass away. Allow me to pray, ask for Lord's help, and we will get to work in God's Word this morning. Heavenly Father, we ask that as we begin this new study in your Word, we ask that your Word would give us clarity, your Word would give us insight.

We pray especially for the events of this week. Father, we put our total trust in you. You are our sovereign, and you are also the God who is in complete control. And you are good, which means that your plans for us, even if we don't see them immediately, are plans of good.

Help us to keep that in mind as your people. Help us that we would be those who commend the Lord Jesus in a tough and a difficult world. May we bear witness to who he is, even in a difficult time. Bless our time in your Word this morning as we come to it, and we ask in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. Please be seated. Growing up, my house had a fair few rules. Some of them, I'll be honest, I didn't really get the point of, and at 33, I still don't get the point of. My mom might be watching. Sorry, mom.

There were just some things in our house that honestly didn't make sense sometimes. But there were all the rules that, meh, they weren't such a big deal. I was just thinking about it this week. One of the rules we had in my house growing up was that whenever you came in, whenever you came from being outside, whatever was happening, you immediately went and found mom and dad, and you said hi.

I left home at 26, which I know to American context is weird. In the UK, it's not weird at all. But I left home at 26, up until I left home. When I would go to work, come home at the end of the day, it didn't matter where my parents were.

Found them and said, hey mom, hi dad, and usually kind of catch up on the day and what have you. But in our house, that was just a rule. You didn't just go out, do whatever you were doing, and then come home, just trundle off to your room.

That was just a rule in the house. And I'll be honest, that was one of the rules. I actually grew to like that rule. Even if it meant occasionally, if I came home and I was in trouble, okay, I'm coming home to an earful.

You know, it is what it is. It was just what was done in the Edinburgh household. I'd go to my friends' houses and they had different rules in their homes. Some of them, you entered the house, you took your shoes off because that's what you did.

Some of their houses, you didn't just go places, you asked, can I do this or can I do that? Other people, nah, you've been here once, we don't care. Reality is every house has rules by which it operates.

Even the absence of rules, think about this, the absence of rules in and of themselves, it's still a rule. You've just chosen not to have rules. We live in a society that views rules, laws, codes of conduct at best with suspicion and at worst with just complete outright rebellion.

I mean, there's a sense in which we shouldn't really be surprised. The Bible makes it clear to us that lawlessness, whether a sort of tacit, I don't like the rules or an out and out rejection of rules, it's kind of part of the fallen human nature.

1 John 3 .4, the Bible says that sin is lawlessness. Human nature trends towards lawlessness, but God's people, Bible makes us to understand, are not a lawless people. God's people know what God demands of them and in Christ, with the Spirit's help, they seek to live in light of that, out of gratitude for grace and a desire to honor the Lord.

And that's true both as individual Christians and as a people collectively. And it's as a people collectively that I want to think about in this series that we're starting this morning. How many Christians could say that they know what a church ought to be and how a church ought to live according to the Bible?

To put it another way, which is how we put it in this series, how many Christians could say that they know what God's house rules are? Not based on their feelings, not based on what they've been told, not based on what makes sense to them, but based on what God wants.

Ask the question again, how many Christians could say that they know what God's house rules are? Now, thankfully, God hasn't left us without guidance as to what his house rules are. There is an entire book of the Bible that is written, that is devoted to asking and answering the question of what are the rules for God's house, the church?

Did you catch that in the second passage that we read? The first Timothy chapter three, verse 15, Paul says of this letter, I have written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household.

Just in case we get confused about what a household or God's household is, he tells us, which is the church of God, the church of the living God, the pillar and the foundation of the truth. This morning, we're beginning a sermon series that as you can see on screen and in the worship guide in front of you is called God's House Rules.

We're going to take quite some time to march our way through the letter of first Timothy. Actually, we're going to be here till April of next year. So we're going to be here for a minute. And this morning, what I want to do is to kind of lay a foundation for our study.

We're going to need it because like I said, we're going to be here for a minute. In fact, I think that when you dig into any book of the Bible for the first time, you might want to take a minute before we just kind of jump into chapter one, verse one, and kind of lay a bit of a foundation, you know, set yourself up for success a little bit.

And so that's what we're going to do this morning. Now, before we dive in, maybe you're here and you're not sold on a series on first Timothy. Like, do I really need this? I'm not naive enough to think that everybody who comes is necessarily excited about everything I preach about.

So for a few moments, if I may, can I try and sell you on why we should probably study this letter? I mean, let me give you a few reasons why it might be a good idea for us to spend some time in first Timothy.

I've got four reasons in particular. Why should we study first Timothy? Well, first of all, Christians should know what a church is, what a church does, and what a church's priorities ought to be. Christians should know what a church is, what a church does, and what a church's priorities ought to be.

If you've been at Redeemer for a while, which some of you have been, you know that I have a burning concern in my heart about the state of the church. I'm extremely concerned about the doctrine of the church, and more importantly than just the doctrine of the church, its application, especially in the valley in which we find ourselves.

In the wider church, there is a lot of confusion about the identity and the mission of the church. And thankfully, like I said, this book is written to address that confusion. Confusion could happen, but it doesn't have to happen.

And I think that this letter goes a long way to helping us address that confusion. So number one, Christians should know what a church is, what a church does, and what a church's priorities ought to be.

But there's a second reason why I think studying this letter is important. Christians should understand what qualifies a man for leadership. We have seen in 2024, and I won't say an explosion because that's maybe exaggerating things, but we've seen story after story after story of men in Christian leadership who have found themselves out of Christian leadership across traditions.

It's not by accident that the letter that we're about to study is one of only two in the Bible that give us qualifications for Christian leadership. There's this letter, and the one that's two doors down from this one, the letter of Titus.

I put it to you that it is critical for churches to know the biblical standards for those who are called to vocational ministry, and I add that word vocational ministry because every Christian is in ministry.

Just some of us are called to full-time vocational ministry, and some of us are serving in more ad-hoc ways. But every church should know what those standards are. And more importantly, not only should we know what those standards are, we should be able to distinguish between biblical expectations for those in leadership and cultural expectations.

Because, can I put it to you that those two are not the same thing? That just because culturally we expect a Christian leader or minister to do certain things, that doesn't mean that biblically he's expected to.

And this letter is going to teach us that. In fact, we're going to spend quite some time on the section that deals with that because I think it's critical to do so. So, Christians should know what a church is, what a church does, and what a church's priorities ought to be.

Christians should understand what qualifies a man for leadership. Another reason that this letter is important, Christians should be concerned about the reputation of the church. Paul is going to say a lot in this letter to Timothy about how Christians ought to conduct themselves when it comes to the world around them.

I think that might just be just a little bit relevant. Not a whole lot maybe, but just a little bit relevant for the season in which we find ourselves. Christians should be concerned about the reputation of the church.

A final reason that I think studying this letter is important, reason number four, Christians should be on their guard against both legalism and looseness. Where does God's law fit for us as God's Christians?

How much freedom do we have as God's people? How does the good news of the gospel shape and motivate Christian life, Christian witness, and Christian ministry? All of these are questions that this letter will answer for us.

And so for these reasons, and there are many more I could give, I just simply chose these four. We're going to spend quite some time working our way through the letter of 1 Timothy. Have I convinced you that maybe this book might be worth a little bit of our time?

I hope I have. It was interesting as I was preparing this week, I came across this quote. It's from John Calvin in his commentary on 1 Timothy. Calvin wrote this commentary in 1555, so quite some time ago, but he said something that I think applies just as much in 2024.

He said, but there is nothing in them, referring to this 2 Timothy and Titus, he says there is nothing in them that is not highly applicable to our times and hardly anything that is necessary in the building of the church that may not be likewise drawn from them.

Again, he wrote that in 1555. If he could say that almost 500, well, more than 500 years ago, I wonder how true that would be in 2024. This is an incredibly relevant book. With that in mind, for the rest of our time this morning, I want to ask three key questions.

Three key questions that I think will set us up for success as we begin our study of this letter. Three key questions. And thankfully, you can also knock out the first two verses of this letter by answering these questions.

Paul’s Apostolic Authority and Assignment

So question number one, three key questions. Question number one, who wrote 1 Timothy? Who wrote 1 Timothy? Well, in one sense, this is a really easy answer. So look at chapter one, verse one, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God, our savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope.

The text says that Paul wrote it. That should end the discussion. The people of God for nearly 1800 years had zero argument that Paul wrote it. I say 1800 years because about 1800 years in theological liberalism kind of came in, people started with suspicion about basically everything in the Bible, including whether Paul wrote this.

But quite frankly, when you read the arguments, they don't make any sense. And the people who argue for this aren't usually people you should trust anyway. Trustworthy voices rightly understand that when the Bible says Paul wrote this, wait for it, Paul wrote this.

So Paul wrote this letter. But it's interesting how Paul describes himself in verse one. Because even in these simple words in verse one, there's a little bit fast to learn here. Notice two realities we learn about Paul from just this first verse.

Two realities. First of all, Paul was a voice with authority. Paul was a voice with authority. So again, look at 1 Timothy 1 .1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. That word apostle is a weighty one in the Bible.

It was the word for a personally appointed representative of someone in this case of the Lord Jesus. If we swap the word apostle for ambassador, that might help us understand this word a little better.

An ambassador of Christ's kingdom, one who represents the interests and the furtherance of Christ's kingdom in another place. Why is that important? It's important because what we are about to read and study in this letter for the next few months, what we read and study in this letter will not be up for discussion.

That Paul might be the messenger, but these are not purely Paul's words. These are not just things that Paul has come up with. These are Jesus's words, not just carefully worded opinions. And that's important because actually when you listen to Paul, Paul has an understanding of this, that whenever he's speaking, that he's not just speaking his own thoughts.

If you take your notes, 1 Corinthians 14, 37 and 38, Paul says, if anyone thinks he's a prophet or spiritual, he should recognize that what I write to you is the Lord's command. If anyone ignores this, he should be ignored.

Paul recognized that when he spoke, he spoke with a measure of authority. And in the context of Corinth, he's talking about their abuse of spiritual gifts. And he says that if you ignore what I have to say, it's not me that should be ignored.

It's you that should be ignored. We don't get to argue with the apostle on anything he says. And let's be clear, he's going to say some controversial things in this letter. He's going to say some things that are kind of heavy, but we don't get to argue with him because his words are Jesus's words.

Now, I mean, you have a choice with that. You can reject his words to your peril, to your own danger, or you can receive his words to the good of your soul. That choice lies with you. You know what you can't do though?

Ignore them. Once you hear them, you are accountable for how you respond to them. So Paul was a voice with Christ's authority, but there's another part to the identity of our author. Yes, he is a voice with Christ's authority, but he is also a voice on assignment.

He's a voice on assignment. Again, look at verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus, our hope. Paul's authority wasn't for the purpose of flexing his muscle and making people bend to his will.

No, Paul's authority was, to use a fancy term here, a delegated authority. It was an authority that was given to him, and it's an authority for a particular purpose. So in Acts chapter 26, Paul is recounting the story of his conversion.

And in Acts 26 15, he says, he's telling the story, he says, I asked, Paul speaking, who are you Lord? And the Lord replied, I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. But get up, stand and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.

I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins in a share among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

Paul was appointed by God to be an apostle for the purpose of proclaiming God's good news to those who were far from God, that those who did not know God would come to know him. And it's interesting that Paul functions in his ministry with that in the back of his mind, knowing that he is on an assignment and he knows whose assignment is from.

Again, look at verse one. He says, it's by the command of God, our savior and Jesus Christ, our hope. This assignment came from God, who is the author of salvation. In eternity past, he was the one who planned salvation.

And it comes from his son, who is our hope, who is the one who guarantees that the father's salvation will come to fruition. Can I pause here for a moment? It's interesting that Paul didn't view ministry as being about him or from him.

Catch this, Paul doesn't even view the ministry as primarily about the people he's serving. Not in the ultimate sense. Yes, there's a sense in which it's for the good of the people he's serving. But in the ultimate sense, Paul seems to understand that ministry is about our triune God, father, son, and spirit.

And it's about the salvation that God has brought about in the gospel. Paul understood that that was his mission. And by extension, that's the mission of all Christian ministry. And if that is true, that means that if you're here today and you're a believer, this is your assignment.

And the question becomes, I think the question this letter is going to pose to all of us. If this is our assignment, will we submit to it? So that's our author, our author, who wrote first Timothy, Paul, and he writes as an apostle on assignment.

Question number two, question number one, who wrote first Timothy? Question number two, who was first Timothy written to? Who was first Timothy written to? Well, first part of verse two, to Timothy, my true son in the faith.

Again, nice easy answer to this one. Timothy is the audience of this letter. But I want to dig in a little bit deeper into that for just a moment, because I think even there, there's a lot for us to learn.

First of all, let's ask the question, just real simple, who exactly is Timothy? Who exactly is Timothy? Well, we meet Timothy in Acts chapter 16. That's the first time that he pops up in the biblical record.

When we meet Timothy, we get a bit of information about him from Acts 16. I won't read it because of time, but in Acts chapter 16, we learn that his mother is Jewish and dad was Greek. The text also tells us that he was uncircumcised, which that's important.

That tells us that he, though he had a Jewish mother, he wasn't raised in the Jewish faith, at least religiously speaking. But somewhere along the line, both his mom called Eunice and his grandmother called Lois, both of them come to faith in Christ.

We know that because in the next letter, second Timothy chapter one, verse five, Paul says, I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and now I am convinced is in you also.

So somewhere along the line, mom and grandma both came to faith in Jesus and raised little Timothy in that faith. And I pause for a moment. There's something to be said for the living faith of parents.

Again, the point of the sermons, I'm not going to touch that too much, but there's something to be said for the faithfulness of parents. Paul meets Timothy and apparently he's impressed by him and he takes Timothy under his wing.

And starting with Paul's second missionary journey, which starts in Acts 16, Timothy becomes a valuable member of Paul's ministry team. In fact, listen to the various ways that Paul describes Timothy in a few different places.

So in Romans 16, he calls Timothy a fellow worker. Actually one of Paul's favorite words for those he ministers with was my fellow worker. In second Corinthians, in Colossians and in 1st Thessalonians, he calls him a brother.

In Philippians, he calls him a bond servant. In 1st Corinthians 4, he calls him a beloved and faithful child in the Lord. In this letter and in 2nd Timothy, he calls him a son. In 1st Corinthians chapter 16 and in 1st Thessalonians 3, he calls him, I love the way he describes this, he calls him co-equal in the Lord's work.

Timothy and Paul had one of the most intimate relationships in the New Testament. It was more than just a teacher and student relationship. It was more than a pastor and parishioner relationship. It was more than a mentor and mentee relationship.

It was more than a leader and follower relationship. When Paul says here in verse 2 that he considers Timothy his true son in the faith, that's because he really did view him as his son. That this was a father and son relationship and that's going to be important because it's going to color the way we read this letter.

This is not a boss sending a memo about an incomplete job. This is a father writing his son wanting his son to succeed. That's who Timothy is. But there's another question we need to deal with which is, what exactly is Timothy's role in this letter?

To put it another way, what exactly was Timothy's job? What exactly was Timothy's job? And here we need to do a little bit of cleaning up. There's a very common view about Timothy. It's extremely common actually.

And the view says that Timothy was a pastor. And look at verse 3 real quickly. We'll get there next week in more detail. But verse 3, he's in Ephesus. And so the common view that's out there is that Timothy is a pastor and that Ephesus is the church he pastors.

So one of my favorite study Bibles, the MacArthur study Bible, if you read his introduction on first Timothy, he says this quote, Paul often sent Timothy to churches as his representative and first Timothy finds him on another assignment.

This is the part that I might have a little quibble with, serving as pastor of the church at Ephesus. In fact, this view that Timothy's a pastor and this Ephesus is the church he's pastoring, this view is so popular that if you are a student of Scripture, you'll know that this letter, the next one, second Timothy, and the one after that, Titus, they're often called the pastoral letters.

Some of your Bibles may even have that as a sort of section introduction. Now, I imagine some of you are thinking, okay, Kofi, you're kind of nerding out. Get back to the real world. You're spinning for a sec.

No, I'm not actually. I think it's important to clear this up because here's where I think this can get dangerous. If you take the view that Timothy is a pastor and this is a book written primarily to a pastor, what ends up happening, and I've seen this as someone who teaches the Bible, there becomes an unspoken assumption, an unspoken belief that because this book is written to a pastor and maybe by extension to pastors, that guess what?

This book doesn't apply to me. It applies to pastors. As you might could tell, I'm not a fan of that assumption actually. In fact, I think it's an assumption that needs questioning. Unchecked assumptions in life and in studying the Bible especially, unchecked assumptions are a roadblock to understanding.

If you have some unchecked assumptions when you come to a portion of God's Word, those can actually hamper the way in which you study. If we're going to understand this letter, I mean if we're going to spend now and between now and mid-April in this letter, we might want to clear away any confusion that might exist.

I don't think Timothy was a pastor. I don't think that's what he's doing in Ephesus. I think there's two reasons why. First of all, think about how Timothy worked with Paul. Think about how Timothy worked with Paul.

Timothy traveled with Paul a lot. In fact, when Paul has his first imprisonment, which is more of a house arrest in Rome, Timothy is right there with him. Timothy is not someone who stays in places all too long.

He's a traveling minister. In fact, he travels with Paul so much that when Paul writes five of the letters of your New Testament, he mentions Timothy being with him. So 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, and the two Thessalonian letters, Paul says it's Paul and Timothy.

Another key point about how Timothy worked with Paul is that Timothy is often sent by Paul into difficult situations. So you read Philippians chapter 2, verses 19 to 22, Paul sends him to Philippi. Philippi is not a bad church by most New Testament standards, but there was a slight issue between two people in the church and Paul sends Timothy.

The church in Corinth, that was a very problematic church if you've read 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 4 .17, Paul says that he sent Timothy to them. The model church in lots of ways, the church in Thessalonica, Paul sends Timothy to them in 1 Timothy 3 .2.

And of course, we just read it here in 1 Timothy, he sends him to Ephesus. In all of those places, Timothy is not posted there permanently. So my question is, why is this the exception? I would argue that for those who say that Timothy was a pastor and that this was his church, you need to prove that assumption because the rest of the evidence says, no, he kind of parachutes in, he's a problems troubleshooter, that's probably the word I'm looking for.

He comes in, identifies problems, he puts the problems right, and then he goes back to ministering with Paul. So that's one big reason, just the way that Paul and Timothy's ministry worked together. But more than that, there's a very public tone to this letter.

Think about this with me for a moment. Did Timothy know that Paul was an apostle? Did he really need a reminder that Paul was an apostle? Think about it with me for a moment. Did he really need that? No.

His audience might need one though. If Timothy's in Ephesus and he's there on assignment, the people in Ephesus might need to know that, especially if there are problems, which next week we'll see there were problems.

Timothy would have remembered why he was there, right? I mean, it's very rare that you travel somewhere and then when you get there, you forget why you're there. The church at Ephesus might not have been in the know about why this guy just turned up or they might have questioned it.

Oh, one more thing. Flick with me to the end of the letter, so chapter six. I need to know it's something. Chapter six, verse 21, very last line of the letter. Paul always ends his letters with some kind of benediction or word of blessing.

Verse 76, 21, that very last line, he says, grace be with you all. If this is a letter to be led in private, why is Paul giving a public benediction? The letter assumes this is going to be read publicly.

As one scholar puts in, I'll put this up on screen so you can read it with me, the pastoral epistles are probably best understood as letters written to individual co-workers of Paul, Timothy, and Titus.

Yeah, I don't like the label pastoral epistles, but we'll get to that in a second. Nonetheless, they're best understood as letters written to individual co-workers of Paul, Titus, and Timothy, which were meant to be read to the congregations in which they were working.

So each letter closes with a benediction addressed to all. So yes, this letter is written to Timothy, but it's kind of, I'm writing, I heard one preacher put it like this and I thought it was helpful, I'm writing to you, but guess what, I'm writing through you.

Did you catch the distinction there? I'm writing to you, Timothy, but I'm not just writing for you, I'm writing with the assumption people are going to eavesdrop on our conversation, that people are going to read this piece of mail.

I know it's generally considered bad form to read somebody's mail, but this is one time where Paul wants, one time where Paul wants people to read this mail. Yeah, I'm writing it to you, but let's be clear, everyone needs to hear what you're saying here.

I put it to you, that this isn't splitting hairs, that actually this is a really important part of what this letter is designed to do. And actually, I'm going to say you'll miss the point of these letters, if you have this assumption, this is just private, this is inside ball for those who are in leadership.

You know what I mean when I use that phrase inside ball? This is just inside a conversation for those of us who, you know, this is shop talk. No, that's not Paul's assumption, I would argue. This letter is for all of God's people because all of God's people need the truths of this letter.

My friend, Steve Meister, who's preached here, he says that we should call these letters, the ecclesial epistles, the church letters. I think he might be onto something about that. That actually leads to the third major question this morning.

So I told you I had three major questions I wanted to deal with. Who wrote first Timothy? Well, Paul. Who was first Timothy written to? Well, the whole church by a Timothy. Question number three this morning, what's the central message of first Timothy?

The Church’s Conduct, False Teaching, Leadership, and Godliness

What's the central message of first Timothy? So again, look at verse two, we get Paul's classic reading in verse two. So Paul says to Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God, the Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord.

This is Paul's typical greeting as an expansion of the Jewish greeting of simply peace. But more than a greeting, when Paul says these words, he often says them because these words are meant to communicate Paul's desire for what this writing will do.

Paul is hoping that as he writes and as Timothy and the church hears these words, that God's grace would be more clearly seen, that God's mercy will be more celebrated, and that God's peace will be more cherished among them.

These are not throwaway words from Paul. These are actually really important words. But how would that happen through this letter? What's the central truth that holds this letter together as we have it before us this morning?

Well, to help us with that, I want to think about just two things real quickly. First of all, let's consider Paul's purpose in writing first Timothy. Paul's purpose in writing first Timothy. Lots of times we have to kind of surmise why he's writing, kind of figure out why from stuff he says, and this letter Paul makes it real easy.

We read it. So verse 15, first Timothy three, I write these things to you hoping to come to you soon, but if I should be delayed, I have written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.