1 Timothy: Stop Wasting Your Time

I have to be careful when I am teaching from apostle Paul's epistles because I enjoy tracing the events of the early Church, and can get distracted from the message therein. There are clues in all of the epistles that, when tied in with the book of Acts, gives us a good timeline as to the events.

For example, in this letter (1 Timothy 1), Paul mentions leaving Timothy behind to look after certain doctrinal matters in Ephesus while he headed off to Macedonia. This was when Paul felt in the Spirit that he had to go to Jerusalem and hoped to go on to Spain. However, as he traveled through Macedonia, on his way to Jerusalem, the Spirit revealed he would be arrested and end up in Rome.

We can also see here that Paul left Timothy with a significant responsibility in this huge area of ministry in Ephesus. Paul had charged him with the responsibility of keeping people fixed on what was important:

When I was leaving for Macedonia, I asked you to stay on in Ephesus and warn certain people there to stop spreading their false teachings. You needed to warn them to stop wasting their time on senseless stories and endless lists of ancestors. Such things only cause arguments. They don’t help anyone to do God’s work that can only be done by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3-4)

Of course, in the midst of this great work that was taking place in Asia Minor, the enemy was present to spread seeds of distraction and division. Here Paul named two things that people were wasting their time on: senseless stories and endless lists of ancestors. Paul made his point firm: these things do nothing to help anyone do God's work that can only be done by faith. I think we need a few Timothy's to rise up today with the same mission.

Let's face it, the enemy has done a pretty good job at dividing and distracting us over useless things. I am not a Catholic and I do not look to the Pope as my spiritual leader but I understand what he was saying the other week. He said that the Church was being distracted by issues of sin instead of pursuing our mission.

What is our mission? To make disciples. How are we making disciples when we are out waiving placards against homosexuality and abortion? Do we not understand that if we carried out our mission, to make disciples, that homosexuality and abortion would not be an issue?

The world cannot understand spiritual matters. The world cannot understand why homosexuality is wrong. The world cannot understand why unborn children are a gift of God, precious and deserving full protection. They cannot understand these things because they do not have Jesus. They can only understand, we can only understand, by the Spirit of God. So we need to be involved in their salvation not their condemnation.

I am not saying that we should not tell them about sin but if that is all we do then they are lost. Paul charged Timothy with the responsibility of pointing out what was wrong because the things they were involved in only caused arguments and division. Timothy was given that authority. We need the anointed of God to rise up and tell us to stop it; there are more important matters to deal with. We need to set aside what divides us and lift up what unites us. We need to be united in the Spirit. We need to be unified in our mission, of making disciples.

Paul told Timothy what to teach the Body but we will look at that tomorrow. Today it is enough to think on this matter and how it applies to us. What is it that we are occupied with that is of no help in doing God's work? What useless or senseless thing are we distracted with? What is part of us that is not part of faith? What are we allowing to divide us and stall the advancement of Jesus'mission? Do we need a Timothy to bring us correction? Are we just playing church, acting as philosophers, not understanding our place or purpose, becoming a block to salvation instead of an agent of the Spirit?

God, speak to us the truth, no matter how much it hurts.

Throwing Pearls To The Swine

You and I both know there is a lot of crazy stuff on the Internet. It is almost laughable that people will scoff at our belief in Jesus, in a omnipotent God, in the Creator of all things, and yet believe the stars can tell them what their day will be like. There is also the strong belief that man is responsible for his own salvation. This in the face of the fact of man's history of violence and destruction. People still deny the truth of our slavery to all the wrong things, even the though we have kept a good record of all these things we have done.

It is important in a world of instant information that we get our facts from a reliable source. In an instant I can find the best banana bread recipe, how to fix my toilet, the latest Olympic medal standings and the meaning of John 3:16. It's amazing but not all sources are based on truth and fact and that is extremely important to understand. There are a lot of opinions and half truths kicking around the internet.

This was Paul's concern even in his day, that those who were young in their faith would be led astray by fine sounding words and arguments. He expressed this to the Colossians:

I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. (Colossians 2:4)

There are a lot of people who love to debate and, as far as the world is concerned, they are good at it. They are great at arguing, especially when they are not willing to allow us to use the Bible are our authorized source. But that's where we make our mistake: We try to present Jesus as some kind of history project. We present him in the same way that a Muslim presents Mohammed or someone speaks of Gandhi. The presentation of Jesus is ineffective if we are just trying to use fine-sounding arguments:

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)

We keep using words and leaving out the power. Jesus is not a dead historical figure but a present, powerful Saviour who changes and transforms lives. By his authority we heal the sick, bring sight to the blind, cause the lame to walk, cast out demons. Or at least we should, but we don't do much of it these days because we keep leaving aside the very real power that is Jesus, King and Lord over all creation. But even when we do use this power in us, the resurrection power, it doesn't mean we don't use any words:

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

“No eye has seen,
    no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
    what God has prepared for those who love him” —

but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:6-10)

Therein lies my point. We cannot present Jesus as this world presents things and we cannot argue with the supposed wise-men of this age. Jesus is not a formula or a methodology as the world understands it and actual understanding comes via the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It is by the anointing of the Spirit that we know and understand Jesus:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Presenting Jesus to a person without the Spirit is fine because we do it in the power of the Holy Spirit, with signs and wonders, through a demonstration of God's power via words of knowledge into a person's life. However, we do not argue Jesus to a person without the Spirit because it is throwing pearls "before swine". They just trample those pearls into the mud because they cannot understand the value of them. People need to know Jesus beyond words, they need to see him manifested based on the Word of God.

Elegant words and fine-sounding arguments can be taught in Bible Schools and through formal education but the power of which Paul speaks only comes through the Spirit in us. We need to spend more time learning about the Spirit and how to make ourselves open to him. We need to learn to surrender ourselves so he can work through us. We need to stop with our human effort to save the world and become free agents of the Holy Spirit, spreading the power of God to the darkest regions of this world. The wisdom of this world cannot match the wisdom of our God, so it is time to set aside the pretty words, stop listening to the logic of this world and present Jesus through the Spirit in us.