Ishmael LaBiosa: Welcome to 40 Days Through the New Testament. This podcast is led by Pastor Rusty Small at Liberty Baptist Church in Appomattox, Virginia. Listen as he guides you through all 27 books of the New Testament in preparation for Easter. Get your Bible ready. Here's today's message. Well, today we look at 1st Timothy and 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy and Titus are often called the pastoral epistles. And the reason that's the case is because especially 1st Timothy and Titus have a great deal of instruction for the church. It will only be in 1st Timothy and Titus that we get instructions and qualifications for a pastor and only in 1st Timothy will we get qualifications for deacons. So nevertheless, these are called the Pastoral Epistles for 2 Timothy Titus, and they do give a great deal of instruction that is applicable to the church. It doesn't mean that 1 Timothy and Titus are the only places where we get instruction for the church, but indeed, there is important information that's here. Also, we ought to note that 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus are written, well, they're ascribed to people. Now, we ought to note that Paul sends Timothy to Ephesus. So in 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul is writing to Ephesus. In many ways, he's giving instruction to Timothy to send to Ephesus. And then in Titus, which we'll look at later, he is sending him to Crete. And so while they are addressed to people, Timothy and Titus, they are also, the instruction given to these men are going to the church at Ephesus and the church at Crete. Additionally, we ought to note that even though they're called by many people the pastoral epistles, Timothy and Titus are not pastors per se. They are apostolic representatives. Paul's like, I can't make it, so I'm sending you Timothy in my stead to share this message with the church. There's not a one-to-one correspondence. Another thing that may throw you off in 1 Timothy is the nature of false teaching because multiple times, actually right out of the gate, 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 3, He says, I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine. And then he says in verse four, or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies. So there's an interesting false teacher in view in first Timothy, they are Jewish teachers. Paul will say they wanna be teachers of the law. So they seem to be Jewish. But what are they doing? They're strangely enough looking at the genealogies of the Old Testament. Now there's a lot of things in the Old Testament, especially in regard to genealogies, that the Old Testament tells us a lot, but it's a lot it doesn't tell us. And so this was a rather common practice in Judaism. It has been labeled by scholars called the apocryphal effect. Now let me explain that to you. There's a lot of places. in the Bible where we wish we knew more about certain people. And so some rabbis, they just make it up. They say, well, we'll make up a story about this person or they'll imagine what it might be. And so evidently these false teachers were doing this. And Paul says this is endless speculation. Stop doing this. Furthermore, the Ephesus context, you know a little bit about it because you've read Ephesians was quite what we call syncretistic. And these folks were forbidding marriage. You'll read that and you read carefully. It says they were forbidding marriage and certain foods. And so they had like this ascetic strain. Like if you really want to be spiritual, don't get married. Don't eat certain foods. Listen to me. I know deep insight into these genealogies and I will give you special knowledge. And Paul says, no, you don't need all that. He says, that's the type of false teaching that needs to be rejected. You don't need secret knowledge. Christ has made himself plain to us. He is the one who has come. And so don't let people trick you into thinking these other things. Stay with sound teaching. Paul says the church needs good leaders and it is only in 1st Timothy Three, that we get qualifications for both pastors and deacons. Now in Titus, we'll also get qualifications for pastors, but notice, interestingly, that the term here is actually overseer. There are three terms for the office of pastor, elder, overseer, and pastor. Pastor's the least used term of the three terms, and you get qualifications here for. pastors, and then you also get qualifications for deacons here in 1st Timothy 3. You ought to give that a nice read. And what these are saying is this is the profile of the type of person that you want in those offices. Additionally, we get to notice that there's a pretty extended section on widows in It was actually in my own reading of 1 Timothy years ago when I was reading through it that I thought, well, you know, if I am ever a pastor of a church, I probably ought to make sure that the widows are taken care of. And this gives us an indication that maybe even though in Acts 6, which there are these seven men set apart to take care of the widows, they're not called deacons in Acts 6. but they look somewhat like deacons. And we do notice here that it appears that a deacon ministry is taking care of the widows. We ought to also read, and a lot of people don't read this as carefully as they probably should, is in the first century, listen carefully, not every widow was taken care of. You might be surprised by that. Actually, there's a bit of instruction here which shows that the earliest church did some triage. They basically said that if you're only going to take care of a widow if she's over 60 years of age, and if she's lived and is living a righteous life, all actually tells the younger widows, you need to be remarried. That would be the best thing for you. You've got a lot of life to live. And it seems that the widows who the church was taking care of kind of made a pledge to pray for the church and to use their time that they had because the church was taking care of them. for holy purposes and not to be using their free time to just run around and do all manner of other things. So all I want you to do when you read this passage is just kind of notice that the early church didn't just say come one, come all, everybody gets help. But what they did do is once they vetted, they really did give help. And I think that's a window into mercy ministries for us. Paul then talks near the end. about elders. He does say here in the text that you ought to be careful how you rebuke an elder and that an elder is worthy of his wages. And intermixed in all of this is a very pastoral, encouraging, sometimes kind of a forthright. Paul says, look, Timothy, you got to go in, you got to do this. You got to go in and work hard. at making sure the church is the type of place that it ought to be. So read through 1st Timothy pretty carefully. You're going to get a lot of instructions about pastors and deacons, about the early mercy ministry of the church, especially regarding widows. And you're also going to get insight into a kind of a first century false teaching that Paul says actually real spirituality is not seen in some type of secret knowledge and aesthetic practices, a real spiritual life is actually seen in a well-ordered, well-run, faithful church. He says that's really at the heart of real spirituality, being in the church, playing your role, having good leaders, teaching sound doctrine. That really shows that you're on the right path. The letter of 1st Timothy. Thank you for listening to this podcast, A Ministry of Liberty Baptist Church. We pray that this is an encouragement to study God's Word and that you will join us for the next episode.