“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, 2 To Timothy, my true child in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” (1 Timothy 1:1–2 (ESV)
The following excerpt is by Pastor J. Ligon Duncan. He preached the message entitled Encouraging Disciples June 13, 2004 when he served as Sr. Minister at First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS, He currently serves as Chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, MS where he continues to teach in the department of Systematic Theology. The biblical text is I Timothy 1:1-2.
If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to I Timothy, chapter 1. This is the first of three letters often referred to as Paul’s pastoral epistles, or pastoral letters. They are written to individuals, but they’re meant for congregations. And they’re not simply meant for the original individual and the original congregation to whom they are addressed: they are meant for us. Because as the Apostle Paul tells us, all Scripture is given by inspiration and is profitable for reproof and correction and training in righteousness, and so Paul is not simply sharing his opinions in these letters, he is telling us God’s word for the church today. And so, we’re going to be looking at especially what these letters teach us about the church.
What is the church supposed to be like? We all have our opinions. You may have some things that you would like First Presbyterian to be different than are. You may be here at First Presbyterian because you didn’t like another church and the way it was, and you found certain things here to your liking.
Oh, we’re not talking about matters of taste or matters of opinion. We’re talking about matters of the principles of God’s Word. And so, we’re going to be asking some questions about what the church should be like. Does the Bible say anything about how the church should be? Does God say anywhere what the church ought to be and do? Yes! All through the Bible God is telling us these things, but especially here in these pastoral epistles. God directs His word through Paul to the pastors of these local congregations that were in existence within thirty years of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and He gives to us timeless principles which are just as applicable to us today for how the church is to be and do.
The pastoral epistles give us both a description and a prescription of the pattern and the life of the local church. They give us a description of what it would have been like to have been in a local Christian congregation in the days of the Apostle Paul. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be part of a congregation pastored by Paul, or pastored by a pastor who had been sent to that congregation through Paul’s missionary work? Well, you get a good description of what it would have been like here, but you get more than a description. Paul is not just tickling your historical interest here. He’s not just giving you some interesting information. He’s actually instructing you how it is supposed to be.
Let me demonstrate that for you by asking you to look back to II Thessalonians, chapter 3, verse 14. You should be able to look back across your page, or maybe just turn one page or so back in your Bibles from I Timothy. In II Thessalonians 3:14, Paul says this to the Christians in Thessalonica: “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that man and do not associate with him, so that he may be put to shame.”
Now look, every preacher has wished that he could write a letter like that! But we can’t! But Paul can, because he’s an apostle. Jesus called Paul to his office. Jesus invested Paul with his authority. Jesus told Paul how he wanted his church to be, and so Paul gets to say, ‘Now, take special note of what I’ve written to you. And if anybody doesn’t like it or disagrees, that’s fine. Just kick them out of the church.’ Now, he’s not being mean. He’s making it clear that the church belongs to God, and therefore, the church is going to be done the way that God wants the church to be done, not according to human opinion.
You see this as well, if you turn back a little bit further to I Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 13, where he congratulates the Christians in Thessalonica for their attitude to the message that he is bringing. In I Thessalonians 2:13, he says “For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is: the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.”
In other words, Paul is saying, “We thank God that when you heard our message you recognized that this was not our opinion, this was not of our making. This was God’s word, and you received it that way.”
Now Paul in I Timothy, and II Timothy and Titus is not writing his “Best-Seller on Helpful Hints for a Healthy Church.” This is not the wisdom culled from years of pastoring to give you tips on how to be better Christians in the local congregation. No. This is God’s word for how it is supposed to be in the local church. Let’s bear that in mind as we turn to I Timothy 1:1-2. Before we read God’s word, let’s look to Him in prayer and ask for His blessing on the reading and preaching of His word.
Lord God, since You created the church, You alone can tell us how it is supposed to be. Grant that as we come under the hearing of the word, we would submit all our opinions to Your holy Bible. Grant that we would hear with faith and understanding, and get for Yourself glory, even in our hearing and harkening to the word of God. We ask it through our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Amen.
This is the word of God:
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope, to Timothy: my true child in the faith. Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen. And thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired and inerrant Word. May He write its eternal truth upon our hearts.
If you enter into a Christian bookstore just about anywhere, chances are there is going to be a large section on “How to Do Church.” Seems like every successful pastor of a large church feels obligated at some point to write the story of how he did it. “How I grew my church from three to 38,312, and how you can do it, too, in five easy steps.” They’re everywhere! Models for how we ought to do church. I don’t want to make fun, there are lots of good common-sense ideas to be found in many of those books. I’ve read a few myself, from time to time. But it seems to me that when you look at the church today, especially in our part of the world, the United States, there are in fact three basic models of approaching how to do and be the church.
There is what we might call the Liberal Model; there is what we might call the Modern Evangelical Model; and then there’s a third model—and I’ll not title that until we’ve explained the other two. You see these models, all three of them, here in Jackson. If you’ve looked around at the churches, you would find examples of churches that fit into one of these three models if you visited Jackson.
The Liberal Model says that the Gospel needs to be rethought in contemporary terms if we are going to be able to effectively reach out to our culture. The Liberal Model says, “Look, the Gospel as it was written 2,000 years ago is just not very appealing to modern men and women. It needs to be updated, it needs to be rethought, it needs to be reformulated. We need to take away certain parts that are offensive to the modern mind and intellect, and we need to bring it up to date.”
The idea is that the key to the vitality of the church is an updated message that will really meet the needs of people around us, and will really grab their attention and attract them to the church. And you can find churches in Jackson, around Mississippi and around the United States that essentially bought into that model: that in order for the church to meet this culture, the message needs to be updated.
The leaders of this congregation took a stand against that very model of church life. They said, “No, we believe the Bible message. We don’t believe that it needs to be updated. And we’re not going to affiliate with folks who believe that that message needs to be changed.” It was an act of faith, and it was an act of courage.
But you can find that particular model just about everywhere in the United States.
The second model I call the Modern Evangelical Model. It’s evangelical because, with us, these friends would agree that the Gospel does not need to be updated. The Gospel is just fine. It’s true. It’s historical. It needs to be understood and proclaimed. But these Modern Evangelical brothers and sisters who would agree with us on the Gospel message also believe that our methods need to change. They would say, “the Gospel message is fine, but the old methods aren’t working anymore. The message is great, but we’re going to need to update our methods if we’re going to be able to reach the lost.”
The third model is the Biblical Model. The biblical view believes that God’s message and method always accomplish what He intends. The biblical view of the church says that the crucial task of the church is not to update the Gospel or to find new methods that work, but to always be striving to be faithful in believing and living out both God’s message and His method.
Those are the three views, basically. Everything that you see out there can be dropped into one or more of these categories in terms of church life today. And I want you to see the Apostle Paul here, in I Timothy and Titus and II Timothy, calling us to both God’s message and God’s method. Let me say that one more way. Liberalism says that the Gospel won’t work unless the message is changed. Modern Evangelicalism says that the Gospel won’t work unless our methods are changed. The Bible says that the Gospel works, and that God has given us both the method and the message to build the church.
Think of it. In Galatians, Paul defends the message. Remember what he says in Galatians, chapter one? If someone else, even someone who claims to be a messenger from God, comes and tells you a different Gospel than the one that I have preached, let him be eternally accursed. In fact, Paul says, “even if I were to come back to you and tell you, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve improved the Gospel a little bit, here’s the new improved version’— “he says, ‘reject me!’”
Because God authored the Gospel, it doesn’t change. So, he’s defending the message in the book of Galatians, but here in I Timothy, and then later in Titus and II Timothy, he’s defending the method. Paul is concerned both about what we believe and how we live together as Christians. And in this book, he gives us instructions on how to live in the local congregation in accordance with His method and message.
How would evaluate the church you’re currently attending? Is it a Liberal Church, a Modern Evangelical Church, or a Biblical Church? It is no less a matter of life and death and obedience to the One, True God and His Word.
May the Lord’s truth and grace be found here. Have a blessed day in the Lord.
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 