Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

As we begin what will no doubt be a multiple year study in the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus), I want you to notice a key phrase that is at the beginning of verse 2.

LIterally:

“Timothy, true child in the faith...”

I want to talk to you about what it means to be a true child in the Faith.

Just as the supreme joy for any parent is to give birth to a physical child who is all that the parents heart could ever hope for and to see that child mature and grow and develop and become fully the person that you he or she would become; the supreme joy for a spiritual parent is to be able to say about someone that are a genuine child in the faith.

And for Paul to so designate Timothy sets Timothy aside in a very special way.

He was Paul’s very genuine reflection.

He was a true child of the Apostle in terms of his spiritual life.

He was all that any discipler could ever hope for, could ever pray for.

He was what Paul could have wished him to be in every sense.

He was the child of Paul’s ministry.

And it is to this marvelous man that this Epistle and the 2 Epistle are written.

This epistle itself deals with many great subjects, subjects which are needful for Timothy to know in his ministry to the church.

It deals with, for example, error in the church and how that error is to be confronted.

It deals with the proper pattern for church leadership.

The importance of sound Theology and the centrality of teaching is a major theme.

The call for godliness and holiness in living and ministry, the proper attitudes and of men and women in the Church.

How to deal with discipline in the church.

Hoe to confront issues in the church.

These are themes that are dealt with in 1 Timothy, also 2 Timothy and also in Titus.

Now, lets look at a little bit of the introduction itself.

I.

The Format

It is a standard format.

Suppose I need to remind you that when the NT writers wrote their epistles they did not invent some new format, they used the existing Greco-Roman format for letters and that format you see here.

That is the author and his identification and then it is always followed by the recipient.

So it is the standard format.

It is a very simple format and it never really varies in Paul’s letters.

It is first and foremost, and you need to keep this mind when you study the Scripture, it is the first and foremost from one man to another man.

While we look at it as a book in the Bible and its reaching far beyond its original destination in the life of Timothy, we must go bak to the realization that it began as a single man’s passionate call to another man in ministry that needed to be applied to the situation in existence.

And so we go back to that and that is how we understand what a nook in the Bible means.

If we try to interpret it only in a contemporary setting, we are at a loss to its significance.

So we go back and ask what was happening in the life of Paul, what was happening in the life of Timothy.

What was going on in the Church at Ephesus where Timothy was then working and what was it that caused this letter to be written the way that it was written?

And out of that we draw those things which are applicable to our own understanding.

II.

The Father (vs. 1)

A. Paul’s Character (vs.

1a)

A familiar name to any student of the NT, Paul, a favorite name among Cilicians and Paul was from Tarsus a city Cilicia.

It means little or small and it may have been an indication that at his birth he was small and it may be an indication that even then when the letter was written he was small and a man not of particularly striking stature not of particularly marked appearance, for which he was criticized.

The Greek word that is used there for “presence” is the word “παρουσία” and it refers to him and it would be an indication of his weak and unimpressive rather sickly and small stature.

So he may have been small from the very beginning.

But his name Paul sort of loses that initial significance and he becomes to us a man of tremendous stature, a man of comprehensive capability, a man uniquely used by God in the history of redemption, a man who stands head and shoulders above all men.

No matter what he was physically, spiritually he is to us a giant and the very name Paul when you sat it sort of belongs in massive granite block letters.

And so it is Paul who also was name Saul.

And it was not uncommon for people in that particular culture to have both a Green name, Paul, and Jewish name, Saul, especially because he was a Jew.

His father was a Jew and though he was born in a Greek-Roman environment outside of the land of Israel, born in Tarsus, born in a city which was a part of the Roman Empire, he became when he was born a citizen of Rome by birth, born in a city which was a part of the Roman Empire, he became a citizen on Rome at birth, his father being a Roman citizen.

So it was natural for him to have a Jewish name because he was of the tribe of Benjamin and the most prominent person in the tribe of Benjamin was Saul, so he was given that name, but it was also Paul and that the name to identify him with the Greek-Roman culture into which he was born.

He was called Saul, by the way, in the book of Acts until the 13th and the 9th verse where he first begins to embark on his ministry to the Gentiles.

Then that time on, he is never call Saul again.

Now his background is very easy to identify, and I only want to do this briefly.

In other words, he was fully Jewish not only in terms of his physiology, but also in terms of his commitment.

He was Zealous for Judaism.

As touching the law, he became a Pharisee.

His relationship to the law was not one of looseness of indifference, he was an avid legalistic Pharisee.

In terms of zeal for his Pharisaic Judaistic religion, he was so zealous that he persecuted the Church which he saw as a threat to Judaism.

In terms of the righteousness which is in the law he was outwardly blameless.

He conformed his life to the law in a Pharisaic interpretation, he was zealous for that to the point where he fought against and actually slaughtered those who were in his own mind a threat to Judaism.

We find this demonstrated in the 7th chapter of the book of Acts.

And you remember there the record of the stoning of Stephen.

Of course the Jews were angry at the message that he had preached and they were gnashing on him with their teeth and they began to stone him.

And in the process, verse 58, they cast him out of the city, stoned him and witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet.

Acts 7

Now, that is really our Paul’s, Saul at the time, introduction into the picture.

He was so zealous for the elimination of Christianity which he sees as a threat to existing Pharisaic Judaism.

He was not an innocent bystander, he was part of it.

And also at that time there was a great persecution against the Church which was at Jerusalem and they were all scattered abroad.

So here is Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a man commited to a Pharisaic interpretation of the law, a man so zealous of his judaism that he was slaughtering people who were not following properly in the path that he thought was the path of righteousness.

He was breathing out threatenings and slaughters against the church, the Scripture says, and making Havoc.

This man, as we find him later on in the book of Acts in chapter 9, was on his way to Damascus to carry out further persecution when he was stopped in his tracks, blinded by Christ Himself, saved, called to the ministry and baptized.

And then because of the work of the Father in his heart, Paul said these words:

The word “rubbish” or “dung” there is the word “σκύβαλον” this is the lone usage of the word in the NT and literally speaks of things that are useless and undesirable that is subject to disposal.

This word can literally, and I think the AV nails it here, speak of excrement or dung, manure.

Paul took everything that at one time he considered to be the greatest part of him and then after Christ counted all of it as a pile of dung.

But notice verse 8 where Paul says “so that”; that is hina clause in Greek, a clause of purpose.

Paul says that I counted it all as dung the purpose of being able to gain Christ.

One of the key Doctrinal points that Paul learned very early is that you cannot have religion and Christ.

He said that he left those things so that he way have Christ.

The things that made Paul head and shoulders about everyone else, everything that made him something special, he counted as worthless to have Christ.

And may I just pause briefly to say this, that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the the Gospel of Abandonment on our parts on order to have Christ.

You here see a comparison of contraries, and an intimation that every one who would obtain the righteousness of Christ must renounce his own.

But it must be said—and let the apostle say it with all authority—that the secret beneath this severe discipline, the secret to severing all else as rubbish, is to savor Christ as gain

In order to attain this knowledge of Christ, it was necessary for Paul to declare spiritual bankruptcy.

All the things he formerly had counted as assets—his ethnic heritage, his educational background, his ecclesiastical pedigree, his ethical standards—all these things had to be written off as liabilities (Phil.

3:4–7).

Furthermore, compared to the superlative joy of knowing Christ, Paul calculated that his religious achievements added up to nothing more than a filthy pile of refuse

So, we see Paul’s Character.

B. Paul’s Calling (vs.

1b)

The text goes to say:

He is an Apostle.

“ἀπόστολος” in the Greek and means someone who fulfills the role of being a special messenger.

He was an envoy or ambassador, someone who goes on a mission bearing the credentials of the one who sent him.

Just as Paul opens up many of his letter, he reminds Timothy of his call and his message; that he is the special messenger Jesus Christ.

In the more restricted and common usage of the word “apostle” refers to an “apostle of Jesus Christ”.

This would include the original twelve (with the deletion of Judas and the addition of Matthias after Judas’ defection) and Paul.

An important distinction must be made is relation to the Apostle and the apostle of the Church.

Ephphroditus (Phil 3:25), Andronicus and Junius () and James the Lord’s brother () all go by the same Greek word that is used for Paul here, ἀπόστολος, but they are what would be call in , “messengers of the churches”.