The Power of a Letter

Introduction

Open and read letter

Dear Fanny  It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend. A. Lincoln.

Let me invite you to take a moment and reflect on your experience over the last few moment. I imagine that as I began to read that letter you probably tried to place the name that the letter was addressed to. Do I know anyone named “Fanny”? Should I be able to remember someone with that name? Then as the letter continued you began to sense that this was a personal message filled with deep loss and condolences. There also seemed to be wisdom in the words as they were full of empathy from the experience of the author. So then you began to wonder who the author might be. And when the letter reached it’s closing, all sorts of colors started rushing in to paint a fuller picture.

“A. Lincoln”… I know that name…it must be President Abraham Lincoln, who is famous for leading our country through the Civil War so this must be a letter of condolense around this time. Plus, if you know much of Abraham Lincoln’s story you know how he was able to pen words with such wisdom and empathy. He himself experienced great loss in his lifetime and he never took the loss of any soldier lightly.

Tension

The reason that I wanted you to experience the message of this letter is to put you in the frame of mind to understand a different letter. We are beginning our Summer series today in the book of 1 Timothy which we have sub-titled “Behavior in the household of God”. The book of 1 Timothy is a letter, made up of many of the same things we found in the letter we just read.

It too was written BY a particular person, to a particular person, in a particular place with a particular message. Understanding these “particulars” is an essential part of being able to discover what God wants to say to us through the book of 1 Timothy.

And this is not only useful for the book of 1 Timothy, as most of the book of New Testament are letters like this one. If we were to go back to our Bible bookshelf that we introduced a few weeks ago we can see the top shelves there contain the many Old Testament books in their various genre’s in the order that we have them in our English Bibles. And there on the far right side of the shelf we see the beginning of the New Testament which starts with the Gospels. If we were to include the next shelf, on the next slide, we will find the rest of the New Testament also gathered to gether in helpful genre’s.

The 4 Gospels are the biographies of Jesus while he was living here on earth. They are certainly historical in nature as they tell us the story of Jesus.

The book of Acts, which is a shortened way of saying the “Acts of the Apostles”. This book is dedicated to the history of the early Christian Church and you can plot most of the rest of the New Testament in the timeline given to us in this book. This is a book that we are going to go back to many times over the summer to get context for the letter of 1 Timothy.

After that we see the rest of the books called “Epistles” which is a fancy word for “letter”. It is from the compound Greek word ἐπιστολή, epistolē, meaning literally "I send a message"

You can see that there are 13 letters that are attributed to the Apostle Paul, including the ones to Timothy, and then there are 9 of them attributed to various other authors. Revelations is unique in that is an apocalyptic book, meaning it address the end times, but it still claims to be a letter written to 7 churches.

So training your brain to understand how to read a Biblical letter is a valuable exercise. Especially as we saw how our understanding of the letter from Abraham Lincoln increased as more of the “particulars” were revealed...but it is important to remember that there is more happening here in these letters than anything Abraham Lincoln could have written, because these letters are found in the Word of God.

Last week we took a look at a foundation verse on the significance of God’s Word that is found in 2 Timothy 3:16 and says

2 Timothy 3:16 ESV

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

And we said how this verse validates the study of both the Old and the New Testaments, as “All Scripture is breathed out by God”. Because the Old Testament that Timothy learned as a child was able to make him wise to the salvation that is only found through faith in Jesus Christ - which is what we find in the New Testament.

One of the unique aspects of this significant verse is that in it Paul uses a word that is not found any where else in Scripture. In fact, this word is not used in any of the ancient Greek Texts that we have - and we have quite a few. As far as we can tell the Apostle Paul just made this word up.

It is the word “θεόπνευστος” (theo-neustros) and it is a compound word made up from two words. Theos - meaning God as in “Theology” and Pneustros meaning “breath”…think “nostrils”. So in order to accurately communicate God’s involvement in the writing of these many “Scriptures” the Apostle Paul coined the phrase “breathed out by God”. So while these letters may be attributed to particular authors, they are each inspired by or “breathed out” by God himself.

So as we study this book, we have these two things to hold in tension with one another. We hold the fact that there are “particulars” involved in this letter that help us to better to understand the message against the overarching truth of God’s word that tells us that every one of those “particulars” is given to us by the very breath of God.

So unlike the letter from Abraham Lincoln, which we might appreciate as words of wisdom from a distant time and place, the breath of God in these letters make them something that transcends time in such a way that there are things that we can, or more appropriatly, we must apply to our lives right here and right now.

So keeping that focus in view, lets introduce ourselves to the particulars of this letter, and pray that God would breathe his truth into our hearts in such a way that we can discover and accurately apply what He would have us learn from this letter.

So open our Bibles up the to the book of 1 Timothy, page 991 in the Bibles in chairs. I’ll pray for us and we will begin this process of discovering what God has breathed out for us in 1 Timothy.

Truth

Unlike the way we address our letters today, in the ancient world a letter began with the announcement of who was writing the letter and then who the letter was to. So beginning with verse 1 we read:

1 Timothy 1:1 ESV

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,

So this is...

A Letter from…Paul

I have to confess that I feel a little silly introducing the “Apostle Paul” to us this morning. All I could think of was all the boys faces on the sandlot when the new kid in town didn’t know who Babe Ruth was. ‘Your killing me smalls”.

I mean who doesn’t know who the Apostle Paul is!? Just look at all the letters that Paul wrote in the New Testament and we know how significant he was to the early church. People knew Paul, but there are significant reasons why he introduced himself in this way.

First of all....

1. He says he is An Apostle of Christ Jesus

You might notice that the word “Apostle” sounds a lot like “Epistle” and that is because they share the same Greek root word for “to send”. When we read of the 12 friends of Jesus in the Gospels they are always referred to as “The Disciples” which means to follow. But after Jesus rose from the dead he sent them out to make disciples. This turned them into the Apostles.

But Paul was not a part of this first group, he never knew Jesus personally when he walked the earth - he met him in a very different way.

2. He says he was Commanded by God

While the other Disciples were called by Jesus, Paul was commanded. We are going to get into more of the details of this encounter in two weeks, but in essence Paul began as an enemy of the early Christian Church until Jesus personally met him on the road to Damascus. Jesus knocked him off his horse:

Acts 9:4–6 ESV

4 And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

“told” This was not an “come follow me” invitation, it was a command. And then when in the city Saul, also called Paul, was met by a disciple of Jesus who was sent to give Paul his instructions

Acts 9:15 ESV

15 But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

Paul was sent. There were, and are, many disciples of Jesus Christ but the authority found in the position of Apostle was limited to only a few men, and Paul was one of these men.

And this is something that is important for us to be aware of. You see this “letter” or “Epistle” was not written to be just a private communication - like Abraham Lincoln’s letter was. To some degree we were reading someone else’s mail there...

but this letter was meant to give Timothy both the instructions and the authority to see these instructions be carried out in the local Church. It was not Timothy who needed to know these things about Paul, but anyone that Timothy might need to show this letter to in order to verify his claim of being there on the Apostle’s behalf.

So Paul was an Apostle, commanded by God and thirdly

3. He says This God is our Savior and Hope

In his typical style, Paul took every opportunity - even the greeting of a letter - to proclaim the Gospel. The good news that Salvation has come for all men through the sending of Jesus the Christ to die and rise again. Paul never sees himself from any other vantage point then a messenger of this Gospel.

And of course so much more could be said about Paul, but hopefully this is enough to get us oriented to who is writing this letter.

After answering who particularly wrote the letter, we should ask ourselves what we know about who this letter was written to.

A Letter to... Timothy?

1 Timothy 1:2 ESV

2 To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Right away we get a bit of a taste for the relationship between Timothy and Paul don’t we? They had a type of “Father-son” relationship that was clearly significant to Paul. If you wanna turn to Acts 16, (p924 in the chair Bibles) we can read about how the relationship between these two men began.

Acts 16:1–5 ESV

1 Paul came also to Derbe and to Lystra. A disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. 2 He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. 3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in numbers daily.

Do you see how this historical background helps us to better understand Paul’s assertion that Timothy was his “true child in the faith”.

It is interesting to note that the “decision” that Paul is taking around and encouraging the Church with is the decision that Gentiles do not need to undergo the ceremony of circumcision in order to become a Christian…and yet on his journey to deliver this declaration of authority from the Apostles and Elders of the Church and he meets this well spoken of young man named Timothy whose father was a Gentile and he circumcised him.

I would think Timothy would have a few question at this point, don’t you?

Paul had not changed his mind on the value of circumcision, it was still not a salvation issue, but because he desired Timothy to accompany him in reaching out to the Jewish population he knew that this “elective” ceremony would open up ministry opportunities for Timothy. And so Timothy followed Paul into this…and then into so much more.

He became Paul’s disciple, his co laborer and his friend. He ministered with Paul in Berea (Acts 17:14) in Athens (17:15) in Corinth (18:5, 2 Cor 2:19) in Jerusalem (Acts 20:4) in a Roman Prison (Phil 2:19-23) and in Philippi (Phil 2:19-23). Not mention how many times he is mentioned in Paul’s letters...in His letter to the Philippians Paul says this:

Philippians 2:19–23 ESV

19 I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. 20 For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. 21 For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. 22 But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. 23 I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me,

And this is how much Paul trusted young Timothy, he often sent him along to cities as his representative. We read how he wants to send him to Philippi here, but he also sent him to Corinth, Thessalonica and to Ephesus...which is where this letter of 1 Timothy finds him.

On each of these assignments Timothy encounters different cultural dynamics but at it’s core his mission is always the same…the communicate the good news of the “Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So this letter was written by Paul, written to Timothy and lastly we will look at what this letter is about. Obviously we will be spending the rest of the summer on this topic, but one of the things that is unique to this letter is that right in the middle of the letter the Apostle Paul spells out for Timothy exactly what this letter is all about. He says that this letter is a…

A Letter about…behavior (in the household of God)

Specifically, behavior in the household of God. He says...

1 Timothy 3:14–15 ESV

14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

I remember conversations with several of you when we went through the Old Testament. I remember agreeing with you when we studied the Law and all the requirements involved in the sacrifices and we were both like wow, I am sure glad we don’t have to offer sacrifices today like God’s people did back in the Old Testament. That system was just a place holder until the perfect sacrifice came. When Jesus came He became the ultimate sacrifice for us we live in the freedom of His sacrifice once and for all.

But sometimes we forget that we were NOT simply freed by the blood of Jesus, we were purchased by it.

We are not our own we were bought for a price, a very high price. (1 Cor 6:19-20) So coming to Jesus isn’t a matter of being freed up to live your life the way you wanna live it - everyone starts life out that way. Coming to Jesus is realizing that…that life is not a life worth living. That living life in conflict with the one who designed our life is no way to live. That is life that Jesus died to save us from…so tat we can flourish in the life that God designed for us.

All of that is just to say that even though we cannot earn our salvation through our behavior, once we have been saved there are expectations for our behavior. Expectations that our behavior will hold up the truth that Jesus Christ is both our Savior and our LORD.

We are real comfortable with the “saved” part but the LORD part gets a little fuzzy. LORD meaning He is our sovereign King, our ultimate authority, our benevolent master who loves us enough to expect our behavior to rightly reflect Him.

This is especially true when it comes to the brothers and sisters in Christ who come together to make up the Church! So Paul lays down expectations for how “one is to behave”. The contents of 1 Timothy are not just for Timothy, they are to instruct his church and by extension every church on how we are to behave in the household of God. That all behavior will point all people to Jesus!

Gospel Application

So that is exciting isn’t it! We all love to step back and take a look at our behavior…

understand that we are not talking about the behavior of a good citizen or well mannered individual, although there may be cross -over, but we are talking here about what it means to a Child of God. To grow in our understanding of all that Jesus has done for us and follow Him into wherever He would lead. We left that old life for a reason…it wasn’t heading anywhere good!

Listen to the next verse:

1 Timothy 3:16 ESV

16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

As we look into this book of 1 Timothy, every “behavior in the household of God” is aimed at holding up the truth about Jesus and declaring his love, grace, mercy and peace to a world that desperately needs him.

Landing

Are you ready to look at our behavior together Church? It’s gonna be a ride. 1 Timothy is only 6 chapters long, so let me encourage you work ahead and read just one chapter per week. Read it several times through and mark down thoughts, ideas or question that you might have and hopefully by the time the summer ends you will have such a better understading of this letter and the behaviors that God will use to make us a better Church together.

One of the ways in which we come together as the household of God is to celebrate communion together.