Third Presbyterian Sunday Morning Bible Study - January 17, 2021

Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on 1 Timothy 4:6-16.

Roger Dangerfield used to complain that he didn’t get no respect.  I don’t know about you, but as a kid living in Lambert’s Point I didn’t get no respect.  Oh, I had to respect my elders, but that respect wasn’t returned.  Did you get respect when you were a kid?  We had all of those things that respect required of us.  Mind your teachers.  Come right home after school.  Behave your self.  All of these instructions went in one ear and out the other.  There were more important things to take care of.  Like, seeing who could spit the farthest.  Punching other guys on the arm for no apparent reason.  Letting one leg of your nickers drop to the top of your socks like Spanky MacFarland in the the Our Gang movies.  Or, trying to get the attention of Dottie Hinkle, the third grade equivalent to Betty Grable.  These were much more important than being respectful because they were part of what every boy has to go through.  Kind of like a “rite of passage” thing.  Included in this “rite of passage” was sneaking behind the wood shed and smoking coffee or corn silk in a genuine corn cob pipe you got on a school trip to Williamsburg or knowing the batting averages of the starting line up for the Norfolk Tars.  

Every guy has had to deal with this “rite of passage” thing.  If he does everything right, hair will start growing on his upper lip when he is about thirteen and all of the sudden he can’t say a complete sentence without his voice breaking and squeaking.  Just when you are starting to impress Dottie Hinkle with your new low voice, a jarring squeak comes out and that low manly voice becomes a nasally tenor.

Growing up is so hard to do.  How did you dream things would be like when you finally grew up?  The way I had imagined it, the changes would start out small and build until you got to the good stuff.  First, I could cross 27th street without getting Grandmomma’s permission.  At sixteen I would drive around in a convertible and have all the girls breathlessly wait for me to ask them for a date.  I would take a girl to Burroughs and buy her fries AND a coke.  You hit your twenties and you never think you’ll grow old.  Growing old in the movies meant the hair at your temples will get grey or you grow a mustache or you wear reading glasses. When did you ever see James Stewart get fat, bald and have a bladder problem? 

You can’t understand why older people won’t listen to you.  Why they won’t respect your ideas?  Why can’t you be accepted as an equal?  You have gone through this painful experience of growing up and now nothing seems to have changed.  In today’s study, Paul gives Timothy some practical advice on handling being the young guy in a bunch of senior citizens.  We might even find that some of Paul’s advice is good for us today.

1 Timothy 4:6 If you put these instructions before your the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed.  7 Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives tales. 

Last week we found Paul preparing to send Timothy to the church in Ephesus.  Why?  A heresy was taking root there.  Now, Paul is sending Timothy out to an established church that is on the wrong track, but Paul isn’t going to send Timothy unprepared.  So, what is Paul going to do? He’s going give Timothy instructions on what to do.  What is Timothy told to do with these instructions?  Put them before the brothers and sisters. What does that mean? When Paul tells Timothy to “put” these instructions before the people, the word used is the word for “suggest” or “advise.”  In other words, Paul is telling Timothy to pass these instruction on to the congregation in Ephesus, but not to do it in an aggressive way that won’t tick them off.  Use gentle persuasion. Why isn’t Paul telling Timothy to demand that the congregation follow these instructions? Timothy is the new guy on the block - the young guy with no history. And Christians, even back then, were a little leery of following the advice of a wet behind the ears upstart. Paul is really telling Timothy and us that people will be more likely to follow your advise if you aren’t dogmatic. But, present the teaching as if you were reminding them of something they already knew, and suggest that they will discover in their own hearts what is right. Not because you are a know it all and are talking down to them. This is an illustration of attracting bees with honey instruction.

If Timothy is going to give these instructions the way Paul suggests, then Timothy has to be prepared.  What is the best preparation that he could do?  Be nourished on the word of faith and sound teaching.  So, Timothy is to continue to feed on the words of faith.  In other words, Timothy hasn’t learned everything yet.  None of us will never hit a time when we have learned all there is about our faith.  As I grow older, there is one truth that stands out.  The older I get, the more I find that I don’t know as much as I think I do.  I go back and read lessons I gave twenty years or thirty years ago and am amazed at what I missed in the scriptures then. That’s what Paul is telling Timothy.  If he is going to teach these people, he has to be open to see that he has more to learn, too.

Paul tells Timothy that while there are things he has to look for, there are also things to look out for.  What should he look out for?  Profane myths and old wives tales.  I’m sure glad there aren’t any old wives reading this or I might be in BIG trouble.  What are profane myths?  In Paul’s day, they were the Greek and Roman myths about made up gods and goddesses and how they control everything from watering your daisies to winning a war.  For Paul, these were stories made up by men explaining things that happen which do not include the architect of the universe, God.  Anything that attributes the actions of the true God to the comic versions of their little gods is profane.  Do we have profane myths today?  How about ground hog’s day?  If the ground hog comes out of his hole and see’s his shadow then there is going to be bad weather coming for six more weeks.  To Paul this would be a profane myth because it is something that man made up to try to control the future.  Paul’s goal is to let Timothy know that not challenging these myths encourages them.  It’s not hard to see that Paul is specifically addressing the Gnosticism heresy invading the church in Ephesus. 

I Timothy 4:7b Train yourself  in godliness, 8 for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the the present life and the life to come.  9 The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.  10 For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who velieve.. 11 These are the things you must insist on and teach.

How should Timothy train himself?  In godliness.  What do you think Paul meant by godliness?  Basically, living a religious life - a godly life.  A long time ago, you might have said piety.  Anyway you say it, what is meant is not only believing in Christ, but, putting those beliefs into action. 

Paul acknowledges that to be a godly person isn’t easy.  What does Paul use as an example of training yourself?  Physical training like athletes engage in. It takes work if you want to be an athlete.  It takes a lot of gym time.  These men and women who take part in the Olympics spend an unbelievable amount of time getting their body ready for the games.  When you were in school, did you like gym?  Why?  For a lot of kids, taking gym was embarrassing.  There were always good athletes in the class who could climb the rope right up to the ceiling while you were stumbling over the ropes wrapped around your legs.  

In Paul’s day, especially in Greece, sports were almost as important as they are now.  In Greece every town had a gymnasium and Greek boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen were expected to be working out there as the main part of their education.  Notice, that it was only the Greek boys who took gym, so the gals got a pass. Paul isn’t putting down the importance of being in shape. What he is saying is that your godliness is more important than being physically fit.  Will you always be in the same shape you were in when you were twenty? Even the greatest athletes can’t stay in shape forever.  Have you noticed that as we get older, we start losing muscle as well as hair?  No matter how much physical training we did when we were young, at some point age takes over and we start losing some of our strength and reflexes.  Eventually, death will end all physical training. So, physical training has only a short time to effect our lives. On the other hand, spiritual training develops  man’s body, mind and spirit and it goes past the point of death right into eternity.  You see, Christianity is not being an athlete on the playing field for only a small period of time, but being godly for the long haul for all of eternity.  In the ninth verse, Paul confirms the importance of training yourself in godliness when he tells Timothy, “That’s the truth, and you can take it to the bank.”

The runner sees the ribbon stretched across the finish line and that is his goal - to get there before anybody else.  What is the goal of the Christian?  It isn’t to get to the end and be the only person left standing.  It is to lead everybody everywhere to that same finish line.  Is it hard being a Christian? Sure it is, but the results far out weigh the work it takes. Our goal isn’t winning a gold metal. It is having a saving knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. Paul says that we as Christians have our hope set on a living God.  This hope isn’t some kind of a “pie in the sky” thing.  It is a life lived in the assurance that God means what he says and he will keep his promises to us.

1 Timothy 4:12 Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.  13 Until I arrive, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching.

Paul tells Timothy he might be despised because he is what?  Young.  As we get older, do young people get on your nerves?  They seem to think they have all of the answers without the experience to understand the questions. Maybe one of the problems we older folks have is that we have been there and when we were young thought we were like Mary Poppins, perfect in every way.  As the years passed, we saw those perfections go up in smoke, one by one.

So, one of the problems that Timothy faced was that he was comparatively young.  If you had to guess, how old do you think Timothy was when Paul sent him to Ephesus?  At this point in his life, Timothy isn’t a teen.  After all, he has been with Paul for about fifteen years, so he must have been at least 30 years old and maybe as old as 35.  Of course at my age anybody younger than 70 is a kid.  Back then in the Greek culture, a person was still considered a young man if he was still of military age which was up to the age of forty.  In Paul’s day, elders in the church were generally over 50.  So, compared to the elders in the church at Ephesus, Timothy was just a kid.  Now it is hard for a young guy to be in charge of men old enough to be his father.  When I worked at the shipyard, I was trained by men twenty or thirty years older than me.  They patiently taught me what I needed to know.  When I was twenty eight I was promoted to being their boss.  It was very difficult for me because I had gained a lot of respect for them and appreciated all of the knowledge they possessed and had generously passed on to me.  But I now needed to be the one in charge and give orders, but I also knew that those orders had to be given showing respect for all the years they had put in and the help they had given me.

That is the position that Timothy was in and Paul had been there and knew what Timothy faced.  In those days wisdom was supposed to come with age.  Young people were considered kind of naive and really not challenged yet.  But there was another side of the age problem.  While a young guy has to respect his elders, the elders need to respect the young guy, too.  That is what Paul means when he says that no one should despise his youth.  Despise seems kind of a harsh word to use.  Paul is really saying that respect is a two way street.  Both young people and older people have a contribution to make and each has to respect that contribution. 

So how does a young guy get the respect of us who are far superior due to the years we have lived?  Paul tells the young Timothy that if he wants to be respected, he has to set an example in five areas.  What are they?

(1) Speech.  Talk with the authority of God.  In other words, you are speaking for God so don’t be dopey.  Be thoughtful and understand that what you say to others lets them see God acting in their lives.

(2) Conduct.  What is conduct? The way you act defines who you are.  Making sure that the things you do reflect the values you claim you have.  What’s the old saying about actions?  Actions speak louder than words?  You have to walk the walk if the talk is to be believed. 

(3) Love.  What is love? Cupid using your heart for target practice? Paul isn’t talking about your first love, sweet heart love, when your heart skips a beat and you stammer worse than King George in The King’s Speech. Paul is speaking of agape love.  Agape love can’t be defined in one or two words.  If a man has agape love then no matter what other people do to him or say about him, he will always seek only the best for them.  There is no revenge, no bitterness, no jealousy or no hatred in his heart.  Ordinarily, sweet heart love isn’t something we can help.  When we find the right person, we just know it.  It is an instinctive thing.  It is a thing of the heart and we can’t help ourselves.  Agape love is not a thing of the heart - it’s a thing of the will.  It is the setting aside of ourselves to the point that we forget about ourselves and  care for other people regardless of whether they like us or hate us.  The other person’s attitude about us doesn’t figure into our love for him.

(4) Faith.  All Christians have faith or they wouldn’t be a Christian.  Faith is a given.  So why list faith?  Perhaps loyalty is meant here.  A loyalty that pledges our self to Christ no matter what it may cost us.  It isn’t hard being a Tides fan when they are winning.  The hard part is being a fan when they are losing.  Paul tells Timothy that Christians have to be loyal to Jesus even when things aren’t going the way you want them to go.

(5) Purity.  How pure is pure enough?  This means being totally committed to the standards that Christ laid down.  Christians should have a standard of honesty and honor, self control, discipline and consideration that far surpasses what the world will settle for.  The simple fact is that the world will never have any use for Christianity unless Christianity can prove that it can produce better men and women than the world’s systems will.   

To be credible to anyone whether they are older or younger requires that we prove we mean what we say and say what we mean.  To this end Paul gives Timothy a “to do” list.  A good coach will correct the mistakes that the player made and give him instructions on how to avoid those mistakes in the future.  Paul has told Timothy what to watch out for, and now he going to give him some explicit direction about what has to be done to strengthen the unity of the church.  What are they?

(1) Public reading of scriptures.  This means reading and discussing scripture aloud in a way that people will understand the meaning of the scripture.  As much as ministers might cringe at the thought, we don’t sit in the pews to hear their opinions about the border wall, clean energy or getting fat.  We are there to hear God’s opinion about living the life we should.  As Christians, our lives are to be Bible centered not world centered.

(2) Exhorting.  What in the world is exhorting?  That means preaching, challenging, encouraging and inspiring others to be good Christians.  Generally, this is what a sermon is all about.  The sermon should always end in Christian action.  It should be like asking, “You have heard it and now what are you going to do about it?”  The Christian message has to be given as a call for something to be done.  Christianity is truth, but it is truth in action.

(3) Teaching.  Is the Bible an easy book to read and understand?  If it were, there wouldn’t be so many translations and commentaries.  Somebody has to explain what was said thousands of years ago in the  context in which the words were written or spoken.  It doesn’t do much good to exhort somebody to be a good Christian if he doesn’t know what being a good Christian is.  That is where teaching comes in.  Teaching educates us to understand, appreciate and adopt the scripture as a vital part of our life.  A church cannot weather the tsunamis of a secular society without a strong teaching ministry.  To sum up teaching, it is explaining in ways that everybody can understand the goodness and love of God through Jesus Christ.

Do we incorporate these things in our Sunday service?  Do we read scripture in public?  Yes.  Do we have exhortation?  Yes.  Do we have teaching?  Yes.  What is set forth are the essential duties that church leaders have to recognize and incorporate in their ministry.  And there are no short cuts.  We are just told to work hard at it.

I Timothy 4:14 Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophesy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders.  15 Put these things into practice, devote yourselves to them, so that all may see your progress.  16 Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.

Although being a church leader takes a lot of work, it is still what? A gift. Paul reminds Timothy about the time when the elders laid their hands on him.  We have a name for this laying on of hands.  What do we call it?  Ordination.  We ordain ministers, elders and deacons.  Why do we have an ordination?  Why don’t we just say, “We’re going to appoint you an elder.” and get on with it?  Ordination and the laying on of hands is the public acknowledgment that God has given gifts to the person to be used to God’s glory.  Nobody is ever ordained to serve himself.  He is ordained and set apart for a special job by the church.  Without the church, his commission means nothing.  All of the really important work of the church is carried out by these people who have been called out for service.  In this service they always need to remember why they were called and focus on the job they have taken on.  It is easy to fall into the trap of considering their own importance and start to feel that they have to be served rather than they are there to serve others.  That is why it is so important that the person constantly reminds himself or herself why they accepted the mission in the first place.  Paul reminds Timothy that he didn’t take on this job because he woke up one morning and said, “I think it is about time I was a big deal in the church.”  The commission came from the other leaders who were led by the direction of God to give him the responsibility of leadership.

So you were told to behave your self when you left home to go to school.  And you in turn passed on that same instruction to your kids when they went to school.  That “rite of passage” came and went and how you imagined your life didn’t work out as you thought. You miss having to ask Grandmomma if you can cross 27th street.  The flashy convertible has become a sedate Buick.  You had to beg girls to give you the time of day much less date you.  Burroughs was torn down and became a MacDonalds.  All of the things that you thought would never change and you could be a part of when you grew older are all gone - changed in the twinkling of an eye.

I guess, what is so important about these verses, is that good instructions never wear out.  Before long, the young whipper snapper becomes the “take no prisoner” senior citizen.  And it goes on and on, the older generations teaching the younger generations the lessons they learned when they were the young whipper snappers.

Prayer: Grant us Lord the will to discipline our faith, to work as hard at love and compassion as we do at doing the fun things and to make us humble in spirit and gracious in your service.  Amen.