Sermon Tone Analysis

I Timothy 1:1-11, 18-20

 

*Introduction*

            My friend has been a pastor for many years.

He has held all kinds of leadership positions in the conference and is a man highly respected by many people.

He looks like a person who, as far as his Christian faith is concerned, has it all together.

Yet, I know that there are times when he gets discouraged, when he needs a word of challenge and encouragement.

When we read the Bible, we may think of Timothy as such a person.

He was highly respected.

He co-authored some of the letters of Paul.

He was sent by Paul to teach and establish faith in the various churches.

Paul first met Timothy in Lystra when he was there to deliver the message from the Jerusalem council that Gentiles did not have to be circumcised or follow all the Jewish law in order to be followers of Christ.

Timothy was the son of a Jewish woman and a Greek man.

He was well spoken of in the faith community in Lystra and so he was chosen to accompany Paul on this journey of good news.

He continued to work with Paul for many years afterwards and we hear his name together with such notables as Silas.

If you look up all the occurrences of his name in the NT, you get a very good impression of him and his abilities as a Christian leader.

Yet, like most of us, he also needed to be guided in his faith and also needed a word of encouragement from time to time.

It is because Paul wanted to encourage him in his ministry that he wrote I & II Timothy.

In these books, there are many instructions about Christian leadership, but also many practical lessons about what it means to live like a Christian.

Over the next while, we will take some time to examine I Timothy in order to be encouraged in our faith.

Please turn to I Timothy 1 and join me in a learning adventure.

Read text I

Timothy 1:1-11, 18-20.

Paul, the apostle, who was an apostle by God's command addressed Timothy with the normal greeting which occurred in letters of that time, including specific Christian elements such as grace, mercy and peace.

In the beginning of the letter, we get a hint as to the reason for the letter and that is to encourage him to stay in Ephesus in order to teach the believers there because there were some problems.

Recently, I have been reading Revelation 2,3 in my devotions.

These chapters are about the messages of Jesus to the churches of Asia Minor.

It is quite disturbing to read these letters to the churches.

It is disturbing to realize that if a church is faithful, it has God's approval, but if it is not faithful, it comes under God's condemnation.

As I was reading these letters, I began to wonder about our church.

What would Jesus say about us?

Since God has such a deep concern that his church be faithful, the writing of I Timothy is an important letter to read because in it, Timothy is told to correct false teachers.

Are we being true to God? Are we faithful as individuals?

Are we faithful as a church?

Are we holding to God's truth?

As we read I Timothy 1, we discover the dangers of false teachers and also the strategy which will help us be faithful.

*I.

Detours And Garden Paths*

            When Carla and I were traveling one time, we came upon a construction area.

In order to get by, it was necessary to take a detour.

Once we were on the detour, it was not very well marked and we were not sure if we were still going the right way.

If we would have missed one sign, we would have gotten thoroughly lost.

Detours from the main path create a problem when we are trying to get to our destination.

Sometimes, people talk about being "led down the garden path" which means that someone is taking them off the right way and onto a path which leads away from where they want to go.

Spiritually, there are also detours and garden paths, which get us off the right path.

The other day, I was reading an article in Faith Today, the EFC magazine.

The article was about Christians participating in Yoga and in Martial Arts programs.

The question being asked was, is this something that is OK or is it a detour from the path of faith?

There were some significant warnings issued about such participation because of the non-Christian spiritual background of these activities.

Jesus indicates in Matthew 13:25-40 that the enemy will come and sow weeds among the wheat, so the presence of false and dangerous teachings was present at that time and is still a concern today.

*/A.

The False Way/*

What was the situation to which Paul was writing?

It is hard to know what specific false teachings there were, but Paul gives three descriptions of these false ways which help us understand that they exist.

He talks first of all about false doctrines.

One of the translations of this word is novelties.

Sometimes people get tired of the old and tried and true and are open to something new, something that is a little more exciting than what they have always had.

Yet not everything that is new and appears exciting is good.

Some of it is a detour, a false doctrine.

Another phrase he uses is the phrase, myths and endless genealogies.

There were a lot of things written following the time of Christ and some of them came from circles that looked an awful lot like Christianity, but weren't.

There is a book called The Revelation of Ezra.

In it we read, "If the first day of January comes on the Lord's Day, it makes a warm winter, a wet spring, a windy autumn, good crops, abundance of cattle, sufficient honey…" The writing seems to have a connection to the Biblical person, Ezra, but the content sounds more like a horoscope.

Another writing is called The Apocalypse of Adam.

It begins, "Listen to my words, my son Seth.

When God created me out of earth along with Eve your mother, I used to go about with her in a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which we had come."

Sounds kind of strange, and these were the kinds of myths and endless genealogies which existed at that time and were drawing people away from the truth of God.

Another phrase he uses is the phrase "They want to be teachers of the law."

But Paul warns, that they do not have a good grasp of the purpose of the law or really understand what they are doing.

It is evident that there were false teachers and the interesting thing is that they were not necessarily people who had come from somewhere else and infiltrated the church, it seems that they were people within the church who were taking detours and leading people down the garden path.

The same dangers exist today.

The source of false teaching comes from many sources.

There is the influence of society around us.

There is the influence of other religions whose practices can sometimes influence the church.

The article about Yoga illustrates such dangers.

There is also influence from groups which claim to identify with Christ but they are not.

Most of these dangers are outside the church and I think we have some understanding of their error and of the danger of them.

Those who are in the church are usually well warned about such false teachers.

The real danger is often from false teachings which arise within a church.

When people whom we know and who discover a teaching which is just slightly different, influence us with their teaching, we are dangerously led down the garden path.

Some of those errors which make themselves known are legalism, doctrinal errors and moral compromises.

*/B.

The Dangers/*

            Why do we have to be so aware of these false teachings?

Paul identifies the dangers of them.

He indicates that false teachings promote controversies instead of God's work.

When an issue causes us to stir up controversy instead of getting on with God's work, it is a detour because it takes our focus off what is really important.

A second danger he mentions is that they "wander away."

One time when I was at Spruce Woods, even before it was a provincial park, we had been wandering around on the Spirit Sands.

On the eastern edge, we noticed Ox Bow Lake, which was where we were camping and it looked like it was close by.

Instead of going back by the path we knew, we decided to walk through the bush to our camp site.

What a mistake that was.

The bush was much thicker than we had expected.

The trip was longer, more difficult and more dangerous than taking the path.

We were in danger because we wandered off the path.

The same thing happens, Paul says, to those who get into false teaching.

They wander from the path of truth onto paths that can get one into serious trouble.

On November 10, 1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald ran into a severe storm on Lake Superior and she was lost together with her entire crew of 29 men.

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald lies broken in 2 pieces in 530 feet of water 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan - shipwrecked, never to rise, never to float again.

People who wander into false teaching put themselves into similar danger.

Paul says that they have "shipwrecked their faith."