-How do people know you’re a Christian? Is it just because you walk into some building 1 a week? Another way of asking this is does this weekly gathering change anything else about your life, or is this all there is? 

-What we’ve been seeing throughout this book is the reality that there has to be something different about your life, God calls us to live a transformed life that is continually growing more like Jesus. In this text, Paul gives us some markers of what a transformed life is supposed to look like.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1053)

1. Good Leaders (5:17-25)

-This verse connects back to 1Tim. 3 where we learned about leaders in the church. All churches are supposed to set aside a group of qualified men to lead the church under the rule of Jesus Christ. I say that intentionally because I think we tend to miss that the church is a theonomy with a monarch named Jesus! Unlike our representative democracy, the church serves under the oversight of Jesus, not a human. 

-But of those elders who are chosen by God and affirmed by the congregation, some of those who serve as elders are worthy of a double honor. What does it require to receive a double honor, and what does it mean to receive a double honor? 

-Notice what Paul says: the focus is on those who work hard at preaching and teaching. Some people argue that this means there are 2 different kinds of elders: ruling elders and teaching elders. I don’t think that’s what Paul is saying, I think he’s saying that of the elders, there are some who work hard at preaching and teaching, who should thus receive a double honor. But what is that double honor?

-Double honor: some say it means they should receive a double salary, most believe (and I agree) that it’s referring to respect and finances. See 2 Thess. 3. Here Paul talks about his practice – he could have expected payment from them, after all he had labored among them! But he decided to be bi-vocational to set an example to the rest of the church.

-Some churches continue this practice today, that’s a fine thing if someone is able and willing to do that, the difficulty is as a church grows it can be hard to have the time required to invest in the congregation God has brought together. That’s why it’s common for churches to have at least 1 pastor who labors in preaching and teaching for the church. Micah and I are, in essence, freed up to invest our time in preparing for the various events and activities in our church body. If we had to work somewhere else to provide for our families, we wouldn’t be as freed to spend time with and for you! We’re literally able to meet with you any time of day!

-And Paul bases this thought on a couple previous passages of Scripture (which is a good practice! If you can’t base your argument on the Bible, it may not be a great argument). But they’re very interesting, the first is from Deut. 25:4 and refers to way an ox would be used to separate out the wheat while it was laying in the field. In order to make the most profit, some people would put a muzzle on it to prevent it from stooping its’ head down to eat some of it. Paul’s using this analogy to say that someone who works in preaching and teaching should be expected to be paid from his preaching and teaching, otherwise it would be like muzzling him.

-What’s fascinating is the second quote! It’s not unique to quote the OT as he did, that happens all the time, what’s unique is Paul is quoting Jesus (which also isn’t that unique) but he specifically quotes the Gospel of Luke and explicitly calls it Scripture! Friends, this is a BIG deal! This means Paul had access to Luke’s Gospel, which he considered on par with the rest of the Old Testament. This contradicts basically every other liberal proposal to the writing of God’s Word. If you ever read The da Vinci Code (fascinating thriller that was terrible at history), they argued that the Bible came about because of a power play that was settled at the Council of Nicea. WRONG! The Bible was settled by God, humans just affirmed what God had already done as people were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 

-The place Paul quotes from is when Jesus appoints and sends his 72 disciples out in pairs, they’re supposed to look for people who will be willing to take them in, because the worker is worthy of receiving wages from his work. Paul picks that idea up and continues it for elder/pastors. This is a helpful picture of how we’re supposed to interpret and apply Scripture today. Jesus wasn’t specifically focusing on pastors and elders with His words, but Paul was able to take those principles and apply it to the church. Similarly for us, we carefully study what the Bible says and what it means in its own context before jumping to how we should apply it to our lives today.

-Continuing on what elders should look like, they must be men of good character who have proven it over a long period of time, and because of that the church is supposed to not allow someone’s accusation against an elder to stand unless they are following Jesus’s commands in Matt. 18. 

-Most of the time, we don’t hear about church discipline because it stops at the second step. Notice as well the power Jesus gives to the church, which goes completely contradictory to our individualistic culture: the church is given the keys to the kingdom! Do you realize how significant this is? The church determines who is a part of the church and who is not, this is one of the reasons I emphasize membership so much, Jesus has told us that we (as the church) are supposed to help people understand who is “in” and who is “out”. This reality really hit me over the past year: part of the reason I have assurance in my faith is because of you all! I’ll be honest, if it was just up to me to white knuckle it and push through on my own, I wouldn’t make it, I’m not strong enough and my faith is too weak. But put me together with a group of people (a church) who are working towards the same goal, and we have a much better chance of making it.

-Notice that there’s 2 sides to this reality: binding and loosing, accepting and rejecting, this gets us to the situations where people are sinning:

-(20) The flip side of not accepting an accusation is finding someone who is sinning, and that needs to be dealt with.

-The whole #ChurchToo movement falls under this, where people were trying to cover up and hide what was going on. Friends, I hate to share this, but the church unfortunately isn’t immune from abuse, and that breaks my heart, and much more importantly breaks the heart of God. The church must never try to cover over or hide sin. The church is supposed to be the 1 human institution where we expose sin to the light and deal with it in the ways God commands.

-Last week I shared my issues with the Billy Graham rule, but this is where we also need to live a life of complete purity where an accusation couldn’t even be made! What levels of accountability to do you have in your life to prevent any level of accusation? Are you living properly with all the people you come into contact with? 

-Letter from the 2^nd century description of the church. Notice particularly: “they have a common table, but not a common bed.” Meaning they lived with all purity toward each other.

-(21) This next part is brought about with as much power and influence as Paul can muster! God, and Christ, and the “elect angels” (vs. demons): serve faithfully, love faithfully, shepherd faithfully for EVERYONE. Favoritism isn’t the way of the Lord. That being said, there will be people you’re closer to! Jesus had the crowds, the 72, the 12, and the 3, increasing levels of closeness with each of them. Just acknowledge that we are ALL the body of Christ, we ALL need to be committed to each other.

-If you look down at the footnote for 22 it says the literal translation is “do not be too quick to lay hands on” or as the ESV says “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands.” Which, as you know, means we have to mention LOTR!

-Laying hands on is the way the Bible talks about setting someone apart, that’s why we’ll do it as people move away, or if they go on a mission trip.

-One of the things that an elder is involved in is entering into broken and sinful situations, and there’s a pattern where those sins can suddenly become temptations for you. Don’t give in! Pray against them! It’s the same thing in preaching, whenever something about marriage comes up, I can guarantee Cara and I are going to have a conflict that week!

-Some debate about the pure, is it in relation to the sins, or the next part? Apparently Timothy tried to live such a holy life that he abstained from any wine. Yet wine has medicinal purposes, and Paul was encouraging Timothy to take his medicine (remember, Paul has previous prohibitions against drunkenness but not drinking).

-Just a couple verses ago, Paul had talked about the need to publicly rebuke sin (rebuke as far as the knowledge and impact of it go), but for others it doesn’t surface until you dig a little deeper. This is part of the reason Paul says to not be quick in appointing elders, you need to get to know them (even if they were elders at a previous church!)

-But the same thing can be said about good works, which means we should continue doing good works regardless of how many people see them. This connects to Paul’s command that Timothy keep himself pure. The question is will he continue being faithful in the good works, even if no one is aware of his faithfulness? And for us today: will we continue in good works even if no one else sees them?

• Faithful Slaves (6:1-2)

-One of the major accusations toward the Bible today is on the issue of slavery. Some people will take verses like these as supportive of slavery (and unfortunately it was used as justification for slavery in the past). But this is where we need to look a little broader than just our country/culture, and need to understand some historical context a little better. This is intentionally going to be brief, I’ve talked about this before, and if you have more questions about slavery in the Bible, please reach out to me! I have a number of resources I can send your way.

-First: Jesus didn’t set about to start a revolution; he worked to bring salvation. A revolution was an outworking of the gospel message, but it wasn’t the focus. The primary problem in the world isn’t human slavery (although that is problem!), the primary problem is that people are slaves to sin, which leads to spiritual death!

-Second, slavery is just as alive today as it was in the 1^st century (if not more so!) According to one survey, there are almost 50 million people who live in slavery today, and today’s slavery is far more severe than what people faced in the 1^st century. Part of our issue is we judge this culture based on our culture’s morality (which has been profoundly influenced by Christianity), without taking the time to understand what was taking place back then. Some slaves were educated, some willingly sold themselves into slavery as a way to provide for their family. Yes, some were mistreated and abused, but as we’ve seen in our culture it doesn’t take slavery to see mistreatment and abuse. 

-So how are Christian slaves to act? Faithfully (have you heard that anywhere else as we’ve gone through this book?)

-Friends, even ungodly authority is supposed to be respected. Even ungodly authority! We know that someday they will stand before God and give an account for their actions on earth, and so will we. The difference is if we’re claiming to follow God, we’re supposed to represent Him to others! 

-Additionally, Paul says that if the master is a believer, that doesn’t get you off the hook. You still need to respect and honor them, and even more than you would an unbelieving master because your work furthers God’s aims to build and establish His church, His kingdom, on earth.

-Another component to this that I think is worth mentioning is the fact the slaves are both mentioned in this letter and given a sacred job to do! Most 1^st century letters would have been exclusively focused on those with power and influence; slaves wouldn’t have even been “worthy” of receiving a mention.

-What this is pointing out is even the lowly can join in God’s mission to seek and save the lost! You don’t need influence, you don’t need money, you don’t need power, in fact in God’s kingdom, those things tend to get in the way! Which is what Paul talks about next:

• Follow The Teaching (6:3-10)

-Paul begins this section reminding Timothy that he is supposed to train the church to implement everything Paul’s been saying! This isn’t an optional add on

-We just talked today in our Strands of Unity class about how we ensure what we’re teaching and thinking aligns with “the sound teaching,” if you missed it, it’s not too late to join us next week!

-Warning against someone teaching false doctrine, which is anything that is opposed to the teaching of Jesus, or godliness. Friends, one of the markers of true Christianity (as opposed to heresy) is what it leads to! If godliness is the outcome, it’s correct!

-In contradiction to this, the false teacher is conceited, knows nothing, and instead only wants to fight and argue with others. There are some things that are worth fighting over, but false teachers want to fight about pointless things. And in contrast to true teaching, what’s the outworking of this teaching? 

-Envy, quarreling, slander, evil suspicions, and constant disagreement. These people use Christianese to benefit themselves instead of looking to serve others. Paul picks up this same idea in 2 Tim. 3, people who want to keep up appearances but refuse to admit that the Holy Spirit is the only way you can have life change. They hold everyone else to a certain standard of living without asking anyone to change their hearts. 

-And friends, this is the biggest difference between a true Christian and a fake Christian. A true Christian is someone who knows and trusts that your growth only happens because of God working in you. You can’t force it or manipulate it or fake it! It takes you daily dying to yourself and completely trusting yourself to the Lord to follow after Jesus. There are practices you can do: read the Bible, pray, but you don’t have to be a Christian to do those things. We can plant and water, but apart from the Holy Spirit there will be no growth.

-Back to godliness in 6, one of the characteristics of a Christian is contentment! Paul talks about that idea in Philippians, where he says I can do all things through a verse taken out of context! Just kidding, it’s through Christ, and it’s because he’s learned the secret to being content, it’s trusting God to provide everything you need, because God has provided for you up to this point. And He’ll continue to provide for you, which means we should be content with what God provides. And the bar Paul places is fairly low, isn’t it? Food and clothing, maybe add shelter in there and what else do you really need?

-Notice who falls into temptations: those who want to be rich, not those who are rich. If your desire is to be rich, you’ll give anything else to pursue that one thing, nothing else matters. Which is the plot of more books and movies than I can keep track of! And even someone who is poor can have an improper desire to be rich!

-Money isn’t the problem, it’s what we do with money. And money does have a unique pull on the human heart, doesn’t it? We all end up playing the comparison game instead of the contented game (which is what Paul is calling out). He’s saying if we love money, it leads to all sorts of destruction in our lives.

-Church, whatever your state in life, this text is calling us to be faithful and content. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, God wants us to be content with whatever He gives us. Additionally, everything God gives us is meant to be a blessing to those around us, especially to those who are fellow believers. Money is a tool that can be used to help or hurt your walk with Jesus, it’s a tool that can be used to help or hurt those around you. How do you use the money God has given to you? 

-When John D. Rockafeller died (richest man in the world at the time) someone asked his aide how much he left behind, he answered “He left it all behind.”

-There are some things we can take with us: friends, love, God’s Word, but money isn’t one of them.