Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

Bible Text: 1 Timothy 4:1-10 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Pillar of the Truth | Last week was a real joy, having Marvin Brubacher join us and speak to us about mentoring. Intentional mentoring is one of the most deliberate ways we can put Ephesians 4 into practice: building up the body of Christ as we speak the truth in love to one another. I trust you are still thinking about those two questions he asked us as the end of the message, and planning how to put them into practice.

Today, we’re going to pick up where we left off in 1 Timothy. You’ll remember that two weeks ago we asked the question “Why? Why does all of this instruction about the structure and organization of the truth matter?”

And the reason it matters is because the church is a pillar and buttress of the truth. We declare and defend the great truth of the gospel. And we need to be a strong and a healthy church so that we don’t collapse under the pressure of bearing witness to the gospel in a hostile world.

It’s like that bridge they’re working on over there across the river. It needs to be strong so that it can hold us up as we drive over it. And elders and deacons and the proper roles of men and women are kind of like the rebar. We might get away without them for a short time, but eventually the whole structure will fail.

What our passage today does is take this discussion and carry it forward at an individual level. A strong church is made up of strong Christians. And so each of us has a part to play in making the church strong. We need to be strong. We need to pursue our own godliness so that we can be a strong church together. And that’s where we’re headed today.

Not Everyone Will Make It

The passage opens up with a sobering reminder that not everybody is going to do this. Not everybody is going to make it. Not everybody is going to survive the relentless attacks on the gospel. Listen to these heartbreaking words from verse 1: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith.” Some are going to start off well, but never finish. They will leave the faith and leave the church.

And this will happen through false teaching. They will depart from the faith “by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared” (1 Timothy 4:1b-2). False teaching has been a constant theme in this letter, and we know that one of Timothy’s main jobs in Ephesus was to combat it. And once again we’re reminded of why and just how important it was for him to do this.

False teachers who have had their consciences seared, perhaps through years of hidden personal sin, will speak lies without batting an eye. And in so doing they will be become pawns of Satan to lead people astray from the truth. Because that’s what verse 1 says. These false teachers are ultimately spokesmen for the forces of darkness. “Deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.”

What Is This False Teaching?

Now what comes in to your mind when you hear these words? If you were asked to give an example of demonic false teaching, what would you suggest? We might be tempted to think about the rise of Satanism or the occult.

But one of the things that makes false teaching so dangerous is that it usually doesn’t look scary or spooky. In fact, much of the time, it looks sincere and genuine and even holy. Just look at what verse 3 says. What do these false teachers do? They “forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created.”

We know that with the coming of Jesus and the New Covenant, marriage is no longer a requirement for God’s people. Jesus was single, Paul was single, it’s very likely that Timothy was single, and we know from 1 Corinthians 7 that Paul encouraged people to consider the benefits of living the singl...

Passage: 2 Timothy 2:1-7 | Message By: Marvin Brubacher | Series: Various

Scripture: 1 Timothy 3:14-16 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Pillar of the Truth

Scripture: Ephesians 4:1-16 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Pillar of the Truth

Scripture: 1 Timothy 3:8-13 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Pillar of the Truth

Scripture: 1 Timothy 3:1-7 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Pillar of the Truth

“History follows the leader.” That’s a statement I read in a commercial for the Stanley cup playoffs several years ago. And it just arrested me, not because of any connection to hockey, but because of how true that statement is.

History really does follow the leader. You probably learned this in school as you learned about history. The big steps forward in history were steps made by leaders—courageous individuals who influenced others to follow them in new directions.

Biblical history is much the same. The storyline of the Bible, in many ways, is a storyline carried forward by leaders. Men like Moses and David and the judges and kings who led God’s people into the future God had for them. And in the New Testament we have the twelve Apostles whom Jesus chose to teach and lead His people in they fulfilled the Great Commission.

The letters to Timothy and Titus reinforce the importance of leadership. As the gospel spread and the church became established in numerous new locations, one of the Apostles’ priorities was to establish leadership within each of the new churches. In fact, when we get to Titus, we’ll see that his main job was to appoint leaders in each town there on Crete (Titus 1:5).

And when we think about Timothy in Ephesus, with this group of mavericks who were threatening to lead the church away form the truth, it’s not hard to see that the health of the church depended on strong, godly leadership. And that becomes clear as we arrive today at 1 Timothy chapter 3, and see how Timothy is given instruction on what kind of people should be selected and appointed to lead the Ephesian church.

Roadmap

Now our plan this morning is to get a big-picture view of this whole topic of church leadership. We’re going to talk about authority in the church and how these two offices of overseer and deacon work together. And that’s going to take most of our time this morning.

Next week, we’re going to go back to verses 1-7 and explore the qualifications for overseers in more depth. And then the following week we’re going to do the same with verses 8-13 and the requirements for deacons. And if you’re thinking, “Wow, that sounds detailed,” trust me: we’re barely going to scratch the surface here. There’s a lot here, and it’s all so good, and I’m really happy we get to explore it together.

Our Ultimate Leader

So today, like we said, we’re going to start by stepping back and thinking about leadership in the church in a big-picture way. And that requires us to think about who our ultimate leader is. Who is the person in charge around this place? Who leads us? And the answer should be, “the Lord Jesus.” “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (Matthew 28:18). “And he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). “The church submits to Christ” (Ephesians 5:24).

Jesus is the one we obey (Ephesians 6:5) and follow (John 10:2-4), and this truth is expressed anytime we speak about Him as “Lord.” We are acknowledging that He is in charge. We bow our knees to Him and submit to His leadership unconditionally. That’s a significant part of what it means to be a Christian and therefore what it means to be the church.

The Authority of the Congregation

Now the next question we want to ask is, “How does Jesus exercise His authority in the church? If He is our Lord, but He is in heaven, then how do we actually follow His leadership and submit to His authority?”

One answer is that Jesus exercises His authority over His people through His word. Whether it’s the law and the prophets that point to Jesus, or the gospels that tell of Jesus and His teaching, or the Apostles’ writings which unpack and explain and person and work and teaching of Jesus, the Bible is His book and He leads us through it. And like we talked about last week, submitting to Jesus means submitting to the Bible.

However, this is not the only way that Jesus leads us. It’s not just “me and my Bible.” We read, in Scripture, that Jesus exercises authority over His church through the church itself. The church is the representative of Jesus on earth. And Jesus has given a measure of His authority to His gathered people.

There is a well-known passage in Matthew chapter 18 that describes what you’re supposed to do if your brother sins against you. You’re supposed to go talk to him on your own, and if he doesn’t listen, then you go with one or two others. And now just hear these words from Matthew 18:17 onwards: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:17–20).

These verses deserve a lot of careful thought, but let’s just think of the broad strokes of what is being said here. First, Christians are expected to listen to the church. Second, without getting in to too much detail, this language of binding and loosing speaks to an exercise of authority. And so as the gathered church makes decisions in cases like this, they are acting with Heavenly authority. And third, the reason for this is that when the church assembles for the reasons described in this passage, and acts in accordance with Jesus’s revealed character, Jesus is there among them. 

This passage is Matthew 18 is one of the foundational passages in what we call “congregational church government.” This is something that is really important to us as Baptists. We believe that Jesus has invested His authority not in one person like a Pope or even a pastor, nor to a big organization like a denomination, but rather directly to the gathered church itself. Local churches are the ones who have been given the final responsibility and authority in these matters of membership and discipline.

The local assembled church also has final responsibility on matters of doctrine. In Galatians 1:8 Paul writes to the churches in Galatian and says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). If Paul himself, as an Apostle, began to teach different doctrine, who was ultimately responsible  to reject that and hold fast to the truth that had first been taught? The church. They are the final court of appeal.

And as we put this together we see the weighty truth that one of the ways the Lord Jesus Christ exercises His authority over His church is through His church itself.

The Authority of the Leadership

Now notice that I just said “one of the ways that Jesus exercises His authority.” Because the congregation is not the only expression of authority and leadership within the local church. As we’ve seen this morning, the New Testament also describes the important role of leadership within the churches.

We saw mention of these leaders last week in chapter 2 verse 12, which said, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Timothy 2:12). It doesn’t say, “I don’t permit anybody to exercise authority over anybody else.” And so the implication is that there are some men, the appointed leaders, who do exercise authority in the church.

Hebrews 13:17 is another Scripture which points us in this direction. It says this: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.”

And it’s this group of leaders who is introduced to us and described for us in 1 Timothy chapter 3:1 “The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1). These overseers were the ones who taught the church. We see that at the end of verse 2—that to be an overseer, you had to be able to teach.

And these overseers were the leaders who had authority in the church. We glimpse this in verses 4 & 5 where the overseers’ role is compared to a father’s role in the family, and if you can’t do the one, then you’re not able to do the other. And then you just consider the word “overseer”—someone who oversees—and it’s plain that these were real leaders with real responsibility for the church.

Overseer, Pastor, Elder

And this point becomes even more clear when we realize that “overseer” is not the only word used to describe this group of leaders in the church. The New Testament also uses the word “elder” to describe this group of leaders.

We can see this in Titus 1. In verses 5-6, Paul writes, “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach” (Titus 1:5–7). 

Did you catch there how the word “elder” and “overseer” were used interchangeably? “Appoint elders who are like this, because an overseer has to be like this.”

We see the same thing in Acts chapter 20. Verse 17 tells us that “…from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him” (Acts 20:17–18). And then down in verse 28 he says to these elders, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). 

The elders are the overseers. Two words for one group of leaders. And verse 28 also brings up a third word that’s used in reference to these leaders. Did you notice the reference there to “the flock”? That’s talking about sheep. Paul thinks about these guys as shepherds. And in fact the word “care for” in the original Greek is simply the word shepherd.

That’s why the New King James Version translates this verse, “Shepherd the church of God.” That’s really what it’s saying.

And do you know what another word for shepherd is? Pastor. Pastor is just the Latin word for shepherd. And it’s these elders or overseers who were tasked with pastoring the church. 

So we see that “overseer” and “elder” and “pastor” are three words that apply to one group of leaders.

One final Scripture pulls this all together for us, and that’s 1 Peter chapter 5. Listen to these first two verses: “So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight” (1 Peter 5:1–2). 

Did you catch all three words? Elder, shepherd, and oversight. Three words for one group of leaders.

So why use three words? Why not just one word? The reason is that each word captures an important aspect of this leadership role. “Overseer” points to the leadership and direction that they provide. “Shepherd” also speaks of leadership, because shepherds lead the sheep, but the word “shepherd” or “pastor” also brings in the ideas of protecting and feeding and nurturing the flock.

Finally, the word “elder” describes who this person must be: someone who is spiritually mature. That’s what this word is pointing to. It’s too bad that this word is so close to the English word “elderly,” because in the Greek language this is a totally different word than the word for “old man.” And this word “elder” was used by the Greeks for men as young as 30. You don’t need to know Greek to see that—you just need to look at verse 4 and see that this guy still has young children at home. So he’s not elderly the way we think about it.

It’s also important to note that there is no age requirement here in chapter 3 or in the similar list in Titus chapter 1. Age isn’t what mattered. What mattered, and what this word points to, is spiritual maturity. Like verse 6 says, “he must not be a recent convert” (1 Timothy 3:6). You needed spiritual maturity to lead the church.

And so taken all together, these three words describe this one position of church leadership reserved for tested men who exhibit maturity in their faith and who work together in a group to provide spiritual care and leadership for their congregation. And next week we’re going to come back and look at these qualifications for overseers in more detail.

Deacons

The week after that we’ll look at this second position spoken about in this passage, which is the office of deacon. The word “deacon” really just means “servant.” Deacons really make their first appearance in Acts chapter 6. They were the ones who took care of distributing food so that the apostles could focus on prayer and teaching the word (Acts 6:1-4). And this division of labour became a pattern which was practiced by the early churches: the pastors/elders/overseers provided spiritual leadership to the church, and the deacons freed them up to do that by taking care of the physical needs and practical administration in the church.

And that’s one of the reason why churches have allowed for female deacons, or deaconesses. Because being a deacon does not require teaching or having authority over other people. And we’ll talk more about these things in the following weeks.

Question 1: Two Authorities?

But there’s two big questions we’re going to ask this morning as we reflect on what we’ve seen already. The first question is this: how can the congregation have authority and the overseers or elders have authority? Who is in charge? Who follows whom?

This is a really important question, and a lot of churches trip up on this. It’s not uncommon to see power struggles between the congregation and the leadership.

But it doesn’t need to be that way. Let’s start by remembering that it’s not a strange idea for one organization to have two sources of authority that balance each other out. Here in Canada we have the Parliament and the Supreme Court, both of which work together to run our country. Most democracies have this, and it’s called the balance of power, because it makes sure that there’s not one group with all the authority.

And there’s some similarities between that idea and what we see in the church. According to those Scriptures we read this morning, the congregation is like the final court of appeal. If there’s a struggle between two Christians, it doesn’t go to the church right away, but eventually, if nothing else fixes it, the church—not just the church’s leaders--are the final authority.

And at any point the church can and must say “no,” even to their own leaders, if their leaders are leading them away from God’s truth. So we can say that the congregation is the authority in matters of membership and discipline and doctrine.

Now most Baptist churches, including this one, also believe that the congregation should be the ones who appoint their own leaders and vote on their own budget and decide on their own bylaws. Those are all areas which should fall under the authority of the congregation.

But in many other matters, such as the day-to-day operation of the church, the normal pattern is for the congregation to follow the leadership of their overseers. I’ve heard it put that the congregation has the emergency brake, but they trust their leaders with the steering wheel.

And that’s not a bad analogy, but I don’t like the suggestion that the congregation basically does nothing except press on the brake every once and a while. Because let’s not forget that the main job of the pastors, according to Ephesians 4:12, is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So the church isn’t just sitting there. The whole reason the pastors are leading them is so that they can all link arms and be moving forward in vital ministry together.

Question 2: What About Us?

Now there’s a second question for us this morning. If the New Testament routinely describes a team of elders or overseers or pastors, always in a group, then why do we only have one pastor here at EBC? Why is our board referred to as the “Board of Deacons,” not “Board of Elders” or “Overseers?” And beyond that, we have all kinds of people working and serving to care for the physical needs of our church and yet they aren’t called deacons. Why aren’t we doing what we read about here?

First of all, let me give a historical perspective to this. If we look back 150 years ago or so, we see that it was once very common for Baptist churches to be led by a team of pastors or elders or overseers. It was common for one of those men to be paid by the church so that he could do this work on a full-time basis, and usually he’d be the guy to preach every week, but they understood that he was just an elder or overseer like the rest of the team.

Just listen to these words from the Swedish Baptist Confession of 1861. This is one of the foundational documents for the Baptist movement that we are a part of. And here’s what it says about the church:

“We believe that a true Christian church is a union of believing and baptized Christians, who have covenanted to strive to keep all that Christ has commanded, to sustain public worship, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to choose among themselves shepherds or overseers, and deacons…”

Did you notice that shepherds and overseers were two words used to to speak about the same office? And did you notice that these words were used in the plural? “Shepherds or overseers.” This used to be the norm.

But over time a shift happened. The paid staff began to be more and more important, and eventually churches began to have only one pastor who worked with a group of deacons. By the time we got to the 20th Century, this had become the dominant leadership model for Baptist churches.

And sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didn’t. One man could easily hold way too much power and rule his church like a king. Or, one man could easily be pushed around by a congregation and not end up leading them at all.

And it’s really been in the last 30 years or so that a growing number of Baptist churches have been going back to the Scriptures and rediscovering the Bible’s teaching on these matters and moving back to this pattern of what we might call a “plurality of elders.” A group of pastors/elders/overseers, one or more of whom may happen to be paid to do this full-time, but they’re still just a part of the team that works together to shepherd the church.

Now maybe you’ve heard this all before. But maybe not. This might be the first you’ve ever heard of this. And maybe it all sounds kind of strange to you. You might need some time to think about this. But I hope you’ll agree with me that if this is how the Bible says we should be structured, then it would be good for us here at EBC to think very carefully about these things. And if we agree together that this is what the Bible teaches, then we want to move in this direction.

Now here’s the great thing. In so many ways, we already are doing this. Our board is called Deacons, but from the first day I came here I was so impressed at how they functioned like elders. A team working to lead and shepherd this church. And in many ways, all I’ve done is join that team. The name might not accurate, but so much of what’s important already is.

The same goes for the so many of you who work to serve this church by caring for practical needs and administration and so on. You’re not called deacons, but you’re already doing that kind of work.

So we are already a lot closer to what the Bible describes than you might think. We are already reaping the benefits of this beautiful leadership structure that Jesus has given to his church.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean we should be comfortable where we are. If we need to align ourselves more closely with Scripture, then wouldn’t we want to do that?

But what would this mean? What exactly will that look like? And I’m not going to tell you that I have all of the answers this morning. My job today and in the next two weeks is simply to teach these passages of Scripture for what they mean.

But as the board and I have thought about these things, we realized that the November 17 congregational meeting is coming up, and we’ve decided to set aside some time at that meeting to have a discussion about this. We’d love to take some more time to talk about this idea of elders and deacons in some more practical detail, and to hear your thoughts and your feedback, and to dream together of what it might look for us to align ourselves more closely with Scripture on this matter. 

So as you go home today or in the next two weeks, and questions come to mind, I’d encourage you to write them down and bring them to that November meeting. In fact, it would be great if you sent them to Dennis or myself before the meeting. And I’m looking forward to a fruitful discussion that evening.

But again, I just want to remind us that in so many ways we are here already.  I get to work with an amazing team. We are blessed by so many selfless servants. And as we end this morning, let’s not forget what this is all about. This is about the Lord Jesus, who died for His church and who nourishes and cherishes His church and who has given leaders to His church to bless and equip it (Ephesians 4:12). And He is our ultimate leader, the one we follow without question. 

And that’s something we can take with us into our week. We can think about the future, but today and tomorrow and every day this week we’ll have fresh opportunities to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ—in His word, and in His church.

Where is that going to be a struggle for you? Where will you find this difficult? As we close here today, would you ask Him for His help to bow your knee to Him and submit to His loving leadership anew in this next hours and days?

Adults in the room: do you remember what it was like to be a teenager, and to be at the height of what you thought “cool” was? Like when you had been working so hard to impress that group of people all year, and finally they invited you to hang out with them and you were just feeling on top of the world?

And then you bumped in to your dad or your mom or your little sister? And in that moment, surrounded by all of your peers, that family member was the most embarrassing object in the universe, and you just wished that you could pretend that you didn’t even know them.

But then do you remember when, 15 or 20 years later, you pulled out your high school yearbook and looked back at pictures of all those “cool” people you were hanging out with? And you realized that you had it all wrong. Your mom or your dad or even your little sister wasn’t the embarrassing one. It was those people you were trying so hard to impress. They were the embarrassing ones. And all these years later you don’t feel embarrassed of your family. You feel thankful for the ones who actually loved you and had your best interests in mind.

Christians often treat 1 Timothy chapter 2 the way teenagers treat their party-crashing parents. We’ve worked so hard and long to impress our culture and come across as normal and cool, and then this chapter of the Bible walks into the room and reminds us of how different from the “in” crowd we actually are. And over the years I’ve heard many people try to cover up or explain away this passage of Scripture with obvious embarrassment.

But the reality is that this is God’s word, and we have nothing to be ashamed of. Our world has a big problem with what our passage teaches, and they should be embarrassed of that. The only thing we should be embarrassed of is any attempt we’ve ever made to water down or ignore the truth to try to fit in with this world. This is God’s good and perfect and holy word, and we stand submissively before it as we receive what He has for us.

Review

So let’s review for a moment. If you were away last Sunday, we studied 1 Timothy 2:8, and introduced this whole topic of Biblical gender roles. We explored five key truths found in Scripture:

God created men and women.

He created men and women equal in value, worth, dignity, and in His image.

He created us different, and that these differences manifest themselves in differing roles and responsibilities in the church and in the home.

These differences are profoundly good news, especially for women.

These differences matter because they point to the gospel. Particularly in marriage, the differing roles between men and women are designed to be a living, breathing picture of the relationship between Jesus and His church.

If you missed last week and any of these statements sound strange or perplexing to you, I encourage you to go on our website this afternoon and read or listen to last week’s sermon, and then go back to this morning’s message again. Because they really fit together as two halves, and today won’t make quite as much sense until you’ve internalized the truths we looked at last week.

Now we looked at those five truths in order to understand the passage before us. Because what Paul is doing in verses 8-15 is taking the instructions from the first half of the passage and breaking them down along gender lines, giving specific applications for men and women within the framework of the Bible’s big teaching on gender roles.

So last week we considered verse 8 and what is says to men, and today we’re looking at verses 9-14 and seeing what they have to say to the women among us. And I want you to know that my goals this morning are very simple. First, I want us to see that these verses mean exactly what they say. Many people have tried to move the goalposts and invent all kinds of creative ways of interpreting the Bible to try to make these verses mean something totally opposite from what they say. But we don’t get to do that. We interpret this passage the same way we interpret any other passage in the New Testament letters, and when we do that we’ll see that they mean what they say.

My second goal is to help us see that what these verses say and mean is good news, especially for women. There’s nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of in these verses. These are the words of our loving God, and we should celebrate what we read here.

Adornment

So let’s jump in and consider verses 9 and 10. These two verses address dress. Just like anger and quarrelling for the men, dress and apparel was a concern for Paul when he thought about the Ephesian women.

Now this doesn’t mean that men can’t dress inappropriately, anymore than it means that women can’t get angry. But in Paul’s mind, as he thinks about the Ephesian church, and what has the potential to sabotage their worship gatherings, this is a concern for him. So he tells Timothy to tell the Ephesian women how they ought to adorn themselves.

Now that’s really countercultural for us today, isn’t it? One of the central tenants of feminism is that women are the only ones who get to define what it means to be a woman. Men don’t get a say on women’s issues. And even many Christians who are not feminists would hold that a man should never, ever say anything in public about how women should dress.

Well, the Apostle Paul didn’t get the memo. As a man, he tells Timothy—another man—how to teach the women in his church how to adorn themselves. And if we’re choosing sides, I’m with them.

So, verse 9 says that “women should adorn themselves with respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control.”

Do you notice the main command in this verse? “Women should adorn themselves.” It’s funny how we so often hear the negative things first, because the main command here is quite positive. Women should adorn themselves. Women should make themselves beautiful. 

And they should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control.

Just think about that word “respectable” for a moment. It’s telling us that women should care about how they look, and that they should dress in a way that earns the respect of others. That’s what it means to adorn yourself in respectable apparel. Dress, not to impress, but to earn respect, with sense of what’s appropriate when when to hold yourself back. Modesty and self-control.

Verse 9 goes on to tell us what this looks like with a negative picture. What does it look like to adorn yourself without modesty or self control? That would mean adorning yourself with “braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire.”

The first three things on this list might sound strange to us, but it helps to know that back then, only the very rich could afford gold or pearls. If you walked into church wearing those, you were basically saying “check out how rich I am.” The same actually went for braided hair. Before running water and ovens and refrigerators, only wealthy women with a crew of servants could actually afford the time to sit down and braid their hair, or, more likely, have their servants braid their hair for them.

Interestingly, there’s also some evidence from history of a group of wealthy influencers in Rome who would go over-the-top with hairstyles that would get more and more elaborate every few years. These different fashions changed often enough that historians can actually pinpoint specific time periods based on the way that women had their hair braided. Kind of like big bangs in the 80s.

And these fashions would spread throughout the empire, and ladies in Roman cities like Ephesus were tempted to try to keep up with the latest by mimicking their fashions. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?

And against these trends, Paul wants Christian women to be different. He wants them to be beautiful—to adorn themselves—but to do so in a way that earns godly respect. 

And the way to earn respect is to not dress in a way that gets the wrong kind of attention. Sensual attention through immodest clothing, or envy because of how rich you obviously are or how much you look like the latest celebrity influencer.

Instead, what should a woman really be known for? What should be her true adornment, that which people really remember her for? Verse 10. “…what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.” If you profess godliness—if you say you know Jesus and are growing to be like him—then this is what you should really be known for. This is where true beauty lies. In a life of good works. This is the kind of beauty that does not fade, and—far from fading—grows with age.

It goes without saying that these verses need to be heard by us today. Our world is little different from the Roman Empire. We have our own share of celebrity influencers whose reputations start and end with their appearance and who spend an inordinate amount of time and money on it. And I’m pretty sure that the temptation still exists to mimic this worldly system and dress in ways that attract all the wrong types of attention.

And sadly, we see this kind of thing in the Christian community. Just as one example, I’ve watched over my lifetime how Christian musicians are dressing in more and more sensual ways. Parents, just because your daughters are listening to Christian music doesn’t mean that they are getting a good example of how to dress like Christian girls.

I know that what I just said is unpopular, and culturally unacceptable, and that’s ok with me. Because we have God’s word in front of us, and it calls us to be different. Christian women should dress in a beautiful and respectable way, but ultimately, the goal here is that clothing—or the lack thereof—would not be a distraction from their true reputation and true source of beauty, which is a life of good works.

So that’s the big picture of what verses 9 and 10 are saying. But ladies, I think you know that there is still a lot of work to be done in applying these principles to the specifics of 2019. Because braiding your hair doesn’t mean the same thing today that it did in the 1st C. So what are the equivalent specifics that we should avoid? Our passage doesn’t give us those specifics, but it does give us guidelines. We should not be trying to mimic the world’s celebrities in the way we appear. Clothing should never deliberately draw attention to our wealth. Clothing should never deliberately draw attention to what is underneath our clothing. Our attire should not arrest people’s attention, but should earn their respect.

And in terms of getting more specific than that, ladies, it’s over to you. Find a woman who is nailing this and ask her the specific questions. 

But let’s not forget that the the big picture here is that you don’t need to choose between beauty and godliness, because in the end, they are two ways of describing the same reality.

Learning

So, that’s verses 9 and 10. Women should adorn themselves—they should be beautiful—in all the right ways. Now let’s look at verse 11, which tells us that women must learn.

Yes, you heard that right. That’s the big idea in verse 11. Just look at the first four words: “Let a woman learn.”

Isn’t it so interesting that we often blast past these words and get all upset about what comes after? And what we miss is how permissive and even shocking this command actually was when it was first given.

In many of the Jewish groups in that day, women were not allowed to learn. When they would gather in the synagogue to learn from the Torah, it was men only. And this same attitude was seen in many parts of the Greek and Roman culture of the day.

And in stark contrast to all of this, Paul opens the door wide and says “Let a woman learn.” Don’t exclude her. When the church gathers each week and has God’s word taught to them, the women should be there learning alongside of everybody else. These words were so liberating and honouring to the women of the Ephesian church.

Verse 11 goes on to say how they should be learning. “Quietly with all submissiveness.” And this is where people get upset. “What do you mean, quietly?”

Well, here’s a few comments to help with that. First of all, this word for “quiet,” in the original language, is not a word that means complete audible silence, like don’t cough. This same word is used in 2 Thessalonians 3:12 which says, “…such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Thessalonians 3:12).

Do you think people heard that and thought “man, that’s going to be tough. What if I need to sneeze?” Of course not. We get that this word points to a general pattern of doing what you’re supposed to be doing without disruption and distraction.

And isn’t that really the only way to learn? If you’re being loud and disruptive while someone is teaching, you’re not really learning. The same thing goes for this next word “submissiveness.” If you’re not learning in a submissive way, you’re not learning at all, whether you’re a man or a woman. If you don’t approach the sermon time each Sunday with a heart that is submitting to God and submitting to His word, then you’re not going to learn a thing.

So, once again, verse 11 is telling Timothy to open up every available opportunity for the women in his church to have full access to the best possible learning experience alongside of the men. 

Not Teaching

And when we understand verse 11 this way, it’s not hard to see why verse 12 was written. Paul has just made a huge statement of equality in verse 11, and you can easily imagine some people thinking, “If women are able to learn in the church right alongside of the men, then why wouldn’t they be able teach the church alongside of the men as well?” And verse 12 says that this should not happen.

Because verse 12 says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”

This is the verse that causes many modern readers of Scripture to blow their gaskets. 

I’m not sure how your gaskets are doing this morning. I do know that every single one of us in this room has been profoundly impacted by feminist ideology, whether we know it or not. And the idea that there would be an activity which can be performed by men and not women is just so, so different from everything our culture has been telling us for the past six decades.

But we need to remember what we learned last week. God has created us differently. And especially in the home and in the church, God has called men to carry the primary responsibility for leadership, protection and provision.

That’s what verse 12 is describing: church leadership. “Teaching” and “having authority” are two of the primary functions of those who are called to lead in the church, which we’re going to hear more about in chapter 3. And verse 12 is saying that it would be inappropriate for a woman to perform those functions.

In my prep this week I was tempted to go on all sorts of rabbit trails to try to help us understand why this is the case, why this prohibition is here. But then I realized that it’s all right here in verse 13. Look at how verse 13 begins—“For.” Because. The reason for this command is because of the way that we were made. “For [or because] Adam was formed first, then Eve.” 

Christ has made us one in Him in terms of our salvation (Galatians 3:27-29), but He has not overturned the created order. The leadership role given to men is still in effect. These roles play themselves out in the home, where God calls men to lead their wives, and these roles play themselves out in the church, where God calls qualified men to take up the responsibilities of teaching and authority.

Verses 13 and 14 are so important because they show us that this instruction in verse 12 was not a temporary thing just to deal with a particular issue in Ephesus. Instead, it’s rooted and grounded in the very fabric of how we were made.

And if we can try to set aside all of our cultural baggage for a few moments, we’ll find that our souls understand this. We know that God made us in different ways and that certain behaviours are appropriate as a result. We know that it’s right for a man to hold a door open for a woman and not the other way around. We know it’s right for a man to stand up on the bus and give his seat to a woman, and not the other way around. We know it’s right for a man to put on armour and go fight a battle to keep the women in his life safe, and not the other way around.

I planted trees for a summer and I remember the day one of the girls on my crew let me carry her bags for her as we walked off the block. She was an avowed feminist who said all the right feminist things, but I remember me and another guy saying “Here, let us carry those for you,” and she just softened, because these two men were treating her like a woman with honour and respect. And despite all of the messaging and indoctrination she had received, deep down she knew that this is how we were made and that it’s good when we live in accordance with it.

And deep down, we should know that it’s appropriate for men to carry the heavy burden of church leadership. Because that’s what we should think of when we hear “teaching” and “having authority.” These are not perks or privileges.

That same summer of planting trees, my foreman had a quad, and we were always tempted to be a little jealous as he zipped past us on that quad instead of having to walk with heavy bags on his back.

And if we think that teaching and having authority are like that quad, some special privilege that some people get to enjoy while the rest slog away on foot, then we’ve got this all backwards. Because teaching and heaving authority are not perks or privileges. They are heavy burdens. They are the bags full of trees.

I want to be careful of how much I say here because I don’t want to give the impression that I’m complaining about the work that I do, because I’m not. I love what I get to do. But it is war. And ladies, you should hear in verse 12 a call for men to go to war for you. God has assigned the responsibility of teaching and authority to qualified men who go to the front line and take the bullets so that you can find safety and protection and so that you can flourish.

This is God’s design. And it’s been Satan’s intention, from the beginning, to mess with this design. That’s what verse 14 points us towards. When Satan showed up in the garden, he didn’t ask to speak to the man of the house. He went right after Eve. Like verse 14 says, “and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Timothy 2:14). 

The implied idea here is that Adam was not deceived first. We should carry over that word “first” from verse 13. Eve was deceived first because Satan directly challenged God’s design when he went after her.

That’s important to understand, because some people have taken verse 14 to mean that women should not teach because they are more likely to be deceived then men. That’s not what this verse is saying, and it’s also just not true. This week I heard about a recent study which shows that women have an easier time spotting fake news on then men do. On that issue they are generally less gullible.

Instead, verses 13 and 14 are telling us to look at history. God makes Adam first. When God comes to the garden, he calls for Adam first, and gives him the heaviest curse (Genesis 3:9, 17-19). Satan is the one who challenges this pattern and usurps God’s design. And we must learn from these patterns as we understand the leadership roles in the church.

Is Jesus our Lord?

Now if you have your Bible open in front of you, you can see that there is still another verse in this passage—verse 15—which I’m not going to touch on this morning, because it needs a bit more time than I can give it today.

I’m actually going to write something about that verse for the blog this week. If you visit our website by Tuesday it should be up there.

But as we conclude here I want us to go back to verse 12 and look at those first four words. I think that this is where many of our struggles with this passage come down to. “I do not permit.” Those words just rub us the wrong way. They just sound so authoritative. And us modern individualists don’t like authority. We don’t like being told what to do.

And that’s our problem and we need to deal with it. We need to remember that Jesus is Lord. Lords, by definition, tell people what to do. And those people obey. And the risen Lord Jesus appointed His apostles as His official spokesmen. They speak for Him and we submit to our Lord Jesus by submitting to the teaching of the Apostles (Acts 2:42).

In 1 Corinthians 14, the Apostle Paul is teaching the Corinthian church about these very same matters—the role of women in the church—and he concludes that section by saying this: “Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Corinthians 14:36–38).

This is God’s word, and God’s people submit to it. Full stop.

And it’s not surprising that when people don’t submit to Jesus on this one particular issue, they have a really hard time submitting to Jesus on a whole host of other issues. Within our own denomination we have people saying that the Bible isn’t really clear about this whole matter of men’s and women’s roles in the church. And not surprisingly, they also say that the Bible is not really all that clear about creation and evolution and hell and baptism and you name it.

How convenient. Anywhere the Bible challenges our thinking and makes us uncomfortable, we just say it’s not really all that clear. And if we keep going down that path we will end up inventing our own religion. One that uses all the same words as Christianity, but at its heart, we’re the lord instead of Jesus.

Can you see how important this is? The authority of God’s word and therefore the very future of the church hinges on how we respond to our passage this morning.

But more closer to home, our own spiritual health depends on this. If God created us male and female with these roles and responsibilities in mind, then we will hit our stride in life and find our greatest levels of effectiveness when we line up our lives with God’s design.

So women of Emmanuel Baptist Church, do you know that your Creator loves you? Do you know that your Saviour loves you? Do you know that He is not like so many men in this world who use and abuse their strength and position for their own gain? Instead, He loves you and gave Himself up for you and nourishes and cherishes you (Ephesians 5:25-32). And in His great wisdom He has given you a place in the church. A place to learn and grow in beauty and wisdom and in knowledge and in good works.

This is not everything that God has to say to women. There’s a lot more that goes on in the church than just teaching and having authority, and as we go through this series we’re going to hear more about the vital ministries God calls women to. This passage today is not an excuse for you to be passive in the church. Just the opposite! We need you to be engaged in ministry to the fullest level of your potential. And that’s what this passage is ultimately all about.

Let’s Talk

Now as we close, just one more word. I’m sure that some of you have questions. “What about this situation, and how does this apply?” “What about women on the mission field?”, for example. If you have a question like that this morning, I want to encourage you to take a day or two to think about it. Make sure it’s a genuine question. Make sure that you’re not just tossing up a smokescreen to try to get around full submission to the Lord Jesus. Meditate on this passage as you reflect on your question. And then, let’s talk. You know how to get in touch with me. I would love the opportunity to help you figure things out.

And please, if you don’t like something I’ve said this morning, come talk to me instead of someone else. If you think I’m wrong, you’re not helping me any by telling other people. And if you’re wrong, you’re not helping yourself either. And this really applies on any Sunday. Let’s talk, with an open Bible before us and hearts fully submitted to the Lord Jesus and to His word.

You’ve probably noticed that you and I live in a very interesting time in history. A lot of things are actually going quite well around the world today. In the last four or five decades, poverty has declined at a significant rate, and less and less people are dying of hunger each year. Advances in technology and medical science are causing us to live longer and healthier than we ever have.

But there’s some other areas in which things aren’t going so well. Here in North America, the very foundations of our civilization seem to be up for grabs as our society continues to question everything that we’ve received from the generations before us.

A big example of this is gender. In the past, gender was seen to be a basic truth. Just like there was up and down, left and right, north and south, there were men and women, boys and girls. The uniqueness and the differences between the two genders were fundamental and foundational to how we understood ourselves and operated as a civilization.

But all of that is up for grabs these days. For the past few decades we’ve experienced several waves of the feminist movement questioning our understanding of gender, and what—if anything—makes men and women different from one another.

And more recently, gender itself has come under question. Far from being a fixed reality, gender is now seen to be just an expression of our individual experience. Gender is a spectrum, we’re told. And we’re hearing more and more stories of little boys and girls coming home from public school all upset because some freshly minted 22-year-old teacher, following government curriculum, taught them that just because they were born a boy or girl doesn’t mean that’s who they really are.

And into this modern world of ours, awash in gender fluidity, comes this letter from Paul to Timothy. And its not hard to notice that what we’ve read this morning, and what we’ll be studying over the next several weeks in fact, is significantly out of step with the culture that we live in today and have lived in for the past several decades. The passage we just read assumes that there are two genders, fixed and binary. It further assumes that these two genders are different from one another and have different responsibilities to fulfill.

Because that’s what’s going on in our passage. In verses 1-7 Paul gave Timothy generic instructions for what needs to happen in the church’s public prayer time. And in verses 8 and following he applies that teaching to the unique roles and responsibilities of men and women. In other words, we are not just a generic group of Christians. We are Christian men and Christian women, and the contours of our discipleship often look different from one another.

And it goes without saying that this is heresy according to our culture today. In fact, it’s hard for me to describe just how different this is from what is being taught and believed by more and more people around us today.

So what do we do with that? How should we respond? I think we have a couple of options. We can look at this passage of Scripture and say, “Well, that’s the way that they thought back then, but the Bible is an old book, and has all sorts of outdated cultural references, and this gender stuff is out of date and doesn’t really apply to us today. We’ve developed from then and we know so much better now.”

But this morning I want to help us see that if we take that option, we make a huge mistake. We make a huge mistake because these are the words of Paul the Apostle, someone who was personally appointed by the risen Lord Jesus to be one of his official spokesmen. Do we really think we know better than Jesus?

Another reason that option is a huge mistake is that this teaching about gender is not unique to a few selected passages, but is completely tied in with the whole big story of the Bible and God’s plan for us from the beginning.

And finally, rejecting this truth is a huge mistake because what we read here is not only true, but good. And not only true and good, but beautiful. If we really understood what this says and means, we would see that this is what we really want. And we would love it and celebrate it. And that’s the place I’m wanting to lead us to today as we study verse 8 and in the next couple of weeks as we study the rest of chapter 2—to a place of celebration and thankfulness for the way God made us.

So before we dig right in to our passage today, I think we need to step back and take a bigger look. I just mentioned that this is part of a bigger picture, and I think we need to get a glimpse of that bigger picture. We need to see a bit of the forest before we examine these trees. We need to step out of our culture’s story and step in to God’s story about who we are. And I think that after we do this, 1 Timothy chapter 2 is going to make so much more sense to us.

1. God Created Men and Women

So as we think about God’s big story, there’s five big truths we want to remember. The first is where it all started. God created man and woman. That is no longer obvious in our world today, so we need to remember this. Genesis 1 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

In other words, gender is God’s idea. It’s not just something we decide to define and express on our own. We receive our gender from the God who created us.

And let’s not forget how Genesis 1 concludes: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). If you are a man today, God made you to be a man, and that is very good. If you are a woman today, God made you to be a woman, and that is very good.

2. God Created us Equal

The second truth we need to remember is that God has created men and women equal in value, worth, dignity, as bearers of His image, and as members of His church.

We get this when we read the verses on either raised of Genesis 1:27. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:26-28).

From the beginning, both men and women bore the image of God. Both received the same general job description to fulfill the purposes of God for this world. Both received God's blessing. Men and women stand before God as equals.

Jesus demonstrated God's heart on this issue repeatedly. Jesus broke all the rules of his day by honouring women and speaking to them in public, which you weren’t supposed to do as a Jewish man. Just think about how the first witnesses to His resurrection were women. Jesus consistently treats men and women as equal sons and daughters of the King.

The Apostle Paul taught the exact same thing: “For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28)

When it comes to our salvation and membership in the body of Christ, we all get in at the same level. In both creation and salvation, men and women are fully equal in value, worth, dignity, and standing before God, and there should be no dispute about that.

3. God Created us Different

The third statement I want to make is that God has also created men and women to be unique from one another, and this uniqueness manifests itself in the different roles and responsibilities God has assigned to us.

We see this truth on display in Genesis chapter 2, where we discover that Adam was created first, and put in the garden of Eden “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). And God saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, and so He created Eve as a helper for him (Genesis 2:18).

These verses deserve hours of thought, but the simple point is that from the very beginning, there was a difference between Adam and Eve in terms of roles and primary responsibilities. Adam was created first and was the primary initiative taker. Eve was no less active than Adam, but her role consisted more in responding to Adam’s leadership as she helped him fulfill their mission.

More directly, Genesis teaches us that Adam had authority over his wife. This is manifested in the way that he names her, first giving her the name “Woman” and then “Eve” (Genesis 2:23, 3:20). Naming someone is an act of authority, and Adam does this twice with his wife.

Probably the biggest indication of Adam’s leadership role is seen in Genesis chapter 3. Eve sinned first. But who does God hold most responsible for the sin? Adam. According to the New Testament, who is the person through whom sin entered the world? Not Eve, but Adam (Genesis 3:17-19, Romans 5:12-14).

So from the beginning we see a difference in roles and responsibilities. We see leadership and authority. And these don’t get erased at any point in the story. The whole Bible consistently teaches that men are to bear the primary responsibility for leadership, protection, and provision, especially in the home and in the church. 

4. These Differences Are Good News

The story of Adam and Eve also points us towards a very crucial part of this arrangement, and our fourth big truth, which is that these different roles assigned to men and women are profoundly good news, especially for women.

Adam had authority over his wife, but what did that mean? It meant that he carried the primary responsibility for their sin. And when we look across all of Scripture, we see this this is what authority is about. Authority is not about privilege or being served by others, which is what we so often see in the world. Instead, authority is a responsibility God calls some to carry in order to serve and protect others through leadership.

So for example, 2 Samuel 5:12 says, “And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel” (2 Samuel 5:12). Why did God make David king and put Israel under his authority? For the same reason he put Eve under Adam’s authority. For their sake. So they could be safe. So they could flourish.

If we don’t understand this, when we read verses like Ephesians 5:22, which says “Wives, submit to your husbands,” or 1 Timothy 2:12, which says “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” we will think that those verses sound oppressive and terrifying.

But those passages will begin to sound liberating and wonderful when we understand that God is not withholding a privilege from women. Instead, He is extending to them a privilege. Because authority is not about who gets all the perks. Instead, authority is about who carries the heavy backpack. Authority means you shoulder the heavy responsibility of making sure decisions are made which benefit others, not yourself. Authority means you put on the bulletproof vest and go stand on the firing line. It means you go to the front door first when the burglar is trying to break in. It means you lay your life down to ensure that the other is able to be safe and flourish.

And when we have that mindset, we won’t be scared or embarrassed or even defensive when we approach passages like 1 Timothy chapter 2. Instead, we’ll celebrate what we read here, because we’ll see that the way God has made us is wonderful. It’s beautiful. It’s true. And it’s thoroughly good.

5. This Is About Jesus

The final and most important truth about gender is that our gender roles—especially in marriage—are about something so much bigger than us. Ephesians 5:22-33 tells us that the complementary roles between men and women in marriage are a deliberately-crafted living picture of the relationship between Jesus and the church. When we re-write the script on gender roles, we re-write the very script of the gospel. And that’s not something I ever want to be guilty of.

Who Should Pray

So now that we do have all of that in our mind, let’s come to verse 8 today and see how it fits in to where we’ve been so far in 1 Timothy.

You’ll remember that Timothy had a mission in Ephesus, which was to “charge certain people to not teach any different doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). And we saw last week that one of the big ways Timothy did this was by teaching the church to pray properly. He was to push back against the false teaching of ethnic pride by praying for the spread of the gospel to all peoples. That’s what verses 1-7 of chapter 2 were all about.

And verse 8 just continues this same train of thought. Notice that little word again: “I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray.” Just like in verse 1, this word means “therefore” and shows that we’re continuing what came before. In other words, verses 8-15 are explaining how to put verses 1-7 into practice.

So the first thing that verse 8 tells us is that the men should be taking the lead in the church’s public prayer. Why do I say that? Well, just compare verse 1 with verse 8. “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” (1 Timothy 2:1). “I desire then that in every place the men should pray…” (1 Timothy 2:8). It doesn’t just say “men should pray” or “when men pray.” Together, these verses say, “I want the church to pray, and therefore, the men should pray.” 

We know from 1 Corinthians 11:5 that women did pray in the church’s gatherings. But here in 1 Timothy Paul is highlighting the leadership role that qualified men should take in the church’s public worship gatherings. Men should be taking the lead in prayer.

How They Should Pray

And next, verse 8 tells us how they should be praying. “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling” (1 Timothy 2:8). 

When you hear that phrase “lifting holy hands,” what comes to mind? Maybe someone raising their hands during a worship song? That’s not a bad thing to do, but it’s not necessarily what this phrase is describing. This phrase is a reference to the worship at the temple, where the priests and other worshippers would raise their hands toward heaven when they prayed in order to focus their attention on God.

For example, Psalm 28 says, “Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.” (Psalm 28:2). You can see there how lifting your hands is a parallel phrase to praying.

And so when verse 8 says to lift holy hands, it’s basically saying to pray in a holy state. “Holy hands” is really a metaphor for a holy life. 

Consider this passage from Isaiah: “When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good…” (Isaiah 1:15–17). 

“Your hands are full of blood” means that they had committed murder. And sure, they probably washed the blood off of their hands, and maybe even used hand sanitizer, but God sees what they did. And when they lift up their hands to Him in prayer, all He sees is blood.

And so verse 8 is telling us that when we lift up our hands, they need to be holy. We can’t just sin and then waltz in to church to pray as if our sin is no big deal. We need to prepare ourselves for this ministry of prayer by pursing a holy life.

And as Paul thinks about a holy life, there’s two sins in particular that he is most concerned about. There’s two sins that men are prone to which need to put aside in order to pray in an acceptable way.

First, we need to lift holy hands without anger. Or, “wrath,” as the King James translates it. And it probably doesn’t take long for us to think of examples of men who have sinned in this way. How much damage has been caused in this world by angry men? Men, how much damage has been caused in your world through your anger?

We often excuse our anger, don’t we? We blame it on other people, or slough it off like it’s no big deal. But it is a big deal. Anger is a sin that Jesus died for. Anger is a sin that we need to repent of and put to death by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not hard to see the connection between anger and the word that comes after it. Anger very quickly leads to quarrelling or arguing. And this verse is telling us what we can’t stand up to pray, especially publicly, while we’re in the middle of an angry argument with someone.

I’ve seen this happen. I’ve been in a church where the pastor used the public prayer time to rebuke specific people in the congregation. It’s totally inappropriate, but it happens.

And in fact, it was a likely thing to happen in Ephesus. As we move through the letters to Timothy and Titus, we’ll see that arguing or quarrelling was standard practice for the false teachers. They were constantly stirring up division and trying to drag Timothy and Titus into pointless arguments.

And can you imagine what one of these guys might have done if they were in charge of leading the prayer in the service that morning? Or maybe on the other side—what Timothy or one of his allies might have done if they were leading in prayer but did so with the wrong attitude?

And in fact, as we read through these letters we find that anger and quarrelling were temptations Timothy and Titus had to be warned against. Even though they right and the false teachers were wrong, there was still always a temptation to engage the false teachers in a sinful way, with a sinful attitude. In other words, to be angry and quarrelsome. And as we read though these letters we’ll find out more about how they were to fight against this temptation (2 Timothy 2:22-24).

But the focus in today’s passage is more simply that anger and quarrelling are sins and have no place in the church. Like Robert Yarbrough wrote in his commentary on this verse, “Angry men passionate about being right are a primary threat to acceptable worship.” And as Timothy taught the church to pray, he had to teach the men—especially those who would pray in a formal, public, leadership setting—to do so as holy men who had prepared their lives for that ministry, and prayed without anger or quarrelling.

Review & Application

So in response to this truth, in response to verse 8, I want to ask: men, do you care about what kind of man you are? If you’ve been to one of our men’s breakfasts lately you’ll know we’ve been talking about what it means to be a man according to God’s definition and not the world’s definition. And our passage today adds a little bit more to that conversation.

Isn’t it true that, often, our world makes heroes out of angry men who are passionate about being right? There’s some lines of work where being quarrelsome is basically a job requirement. But it must not be so among us. We must be holy men who know how to pray and are winning the battle against our own impulses towards anger and quarrelling.

And I hope you heard that last phrase there. The absence of anger and quarrelling doesn’t mean that we are weaklings and pushovers who don’t care about the truth. Just the opposite. Anybody can get excited about something and lose his temper trying to defend it. It takes real strength to do what Timothy needed to do—to fight for the truth with all you’ve got while keeping your passions under control. That’s what a godly man does.

And men, let’s not miss the connection this passage makes between us and prayer. “I desire then that in every place the men should pray.” Yes, we know that both men and women are supposed to pray, and this is pointing towards public leadership in the worship services. But we still can’t miss that it is the men who were to pray in this way.

Men, let me ask you a convicting question. When you think of the phrase “prayer warrior,” what comes to mind? My guess is that most of us think about a woman. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But why not have some more equal representation there? I think that we need more prayer warriors who are men. More men who pray like this. Strong, self-controlled, holy, praying men. I want to be one of them. Who else? Men, would you ask God for the strength and commit yourself to becoming like that?

Let’s end by going back to the big idea we started off with of gender and gender roles. We’ve talked about the way that God has made male and female equally in His image, and different in terms of roles and responsibilities, especially in the home and in the church. But when we really understand these responsibilities from God’s perspective, we’ll understand that this is good news for all of us.

So as we think about all of that we need to ask ourselves, “Are we ok with the way God made us? We we agree with God who made us like this and then said it was very good? Do we trust that He knew what He was doing?”

I really believe this is where so many of our struggles with men’s and women’s roles come down to. We struggle to believe that God knew what was best when He made us. And we think that we know better, or that God could have done a better job if he had only asked us.

So we need to ask ourselves today and in these next few weeks, “Do we trust that God knows better than we do, and loves us more than we can imagine, and made us this way on purpose? And knowing this, will we turn from the false gods of individualism and self-expression and submit to the King who made us?”

One of the things I love about preaching is that it forces me to study the Bible in a really careful way. Many times I have gone into a week with certain assumptions about a passage, only to have those assumptions challenged by careful study.

That happened to me again this week. Up until last Monday, I thought that as chapter 1 concluded, Paul had basically wrapped up his instructions to Timothy regarding the false teachers at Ephesus. And then when he gets to chapter 2, he changes the subject and goes on to give Timothy some instructions regarding how the church was supposed to operate that had no real connection to what came before

But something never quite lined up about that. Because if chapter 2 is just describing how the church was supposed to operate, why does it only talk about prayer before moving on to the roles of men and women? Was that all the church was supposed to do—just get together and pray?

From the rest of the New Testament, we know that when the church gathered they sang together (Ephesians 5:19) and ate the Lord’s Supper together (1 Corinthians 11:17-34) and had God’s word preached to them (Acts 2:42, 2 Tim 4:2). So why does our passage only talk about prayer?

The answer is found in that very important word “then.” “First of all, then.” That word could be translated as “therefore.” “First of all, therefore.” And this word is so important because it shows us that what comes to us in chapter 2 is not a new train of thought. There’s no change of subject. It is completely connected to everything we’ve already heard in chapter 1.

“Command the false teachers to stop teaching different doctrine”—which is all of chapter 1—“and therefore, first of all, I urge that prayers be made for all people.”

So in other words, this teaching on prayer is one of the ways that Timothy pushes back against the false teachers. He stops them by teaching the church to pray like this.

So that’s why he just focuses on prayer in these first seven verses. There’s something about this teaching on prayer that was a push back against the false teachers. 

So the natural question is, what was it? What were the false teachers teaching, and how does this push back on them? 

Were the they telling people that they shouldn’t pray at all? And Timothy pushes back by just telling the church to pray?

That’s probably not the case. Instead, we can see where the battle lines were drawn by noticing a word that Paul uses four times in our passage today. It’s the word “all.” 

“…I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions…” (1 Timothy 2:1-2)

“This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3–4). 

“…Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all…” (1 Timothy 2:6). 

That word is the line in the sand. That’s where the battle was being fought.

So again, another natural question. “What kind of false teaching is going to be challenged by this word ‘all’? What were these guys really saying, and why would this word ‘all’ have been so confrontational?”

If we go back to chapter 1 we’ll find some clues. Verse 4 told us that the “different doctrine” these guys were teaching went hand-in-glove with “myths” and “endless genealogies” and “speculation.” And then in verse 7 we heard that these guys were trying to be teachers of the law. And as we studied those verses we saw that these elements point to a very Jewish type of false teaching.

We know from the rest of the New Testament that one of the most common false teachings in the early church came from a group of Jewish Christians who had a really hard time accepting that God was saving the Gentiles, and that He was doing it by faith alone. And some of these guys were saying, “No, no, you can’t be saved unless you convert to Judaism first” (Acts 15:1).

They were so used to being God’s chosen people. And they had forgotten that they had been chosen for the sake of the nations. Instead, they wanted to keep salvation to themselves and they treated the Gentiles like they were good for nothing. And this was so pervasive that it even impacted the Apostle Peter. Galatians chapter 2 talks about a time when he was trying to impress some of his friends from Jerusalem and so he wouldn’t even sit down and eat a meal with the Gentile Christians (Galatians 2:11-14).

And this is most likely what was going on at Ephesus. We know from Acts chapter 19 that there was a strong Jewish element in the Ephesian church (Acts 19:8-10). And we can see how this is what the endless genealogies were for. It was all about proving that you were of pure Hebrew stock. That’s what this misunderstanding of the law was about—trying to force people to conform to these Jewish practices. It was a deadly mix of legalism and ethnic pride.

And so Paul is intentionally pushing back against this when he tells Timothy that the church needs to pray for all people, because God is the saviour of all people. In other words, not just of the Hebrew people or those people who convert to Judaism. He’s the saviour of Jews and Gentiles. And the church needed to pray and work for the salvation of all groups of people.

So that’s what’s going on in chapter 2. It’s not that the church had forgotten to pray. It’s that the church needed to push back against the false teaching by intentionally praying for the salvation of all people.

“All Kinds of People.”

And this line of thinking is confirmed for us when we look at little bit deeper at this phrase “all people” which shows up in verse 1 and then a down again in verse 4. This phrase does not mean “all individual people alive on planet earth.” Instead, this phrase is best understood to mean “all kinds of people,” as in, Jewish people and Gentile people. And you can see how that fits in with the whole passage. Combat this ethnic pride by praying for all kinds of people. 

Now how do we know that this phrase means “all kinds of people”? Well, for starters, we can see how verse 1 moves into verse 2. Verse 1 says “pray for all people.” And then verse 2 lists off a kind of person that they should pray for: “kings and all who are in high positions.” It doesn’t list off individuals. Instead, it begins to list a group of people or a kind of person that they should pray for.

And in fact, this phrase “all people” is used several times in the New Testament to very clearly refer to “all kinds” of people instead of all people individually. I’ll give just one example. Acts 22:15 says that after Paul became a Christian, Ananias went and told him, “you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15). That word “everyone” is just a different way of translating the same words in our passage—“all people.” “You will be a witness for him to all people of what you have seen and heard.”

We know that Paul was not a witness to all individual people. He didn’t talk to every person alive. But he was a witness to all kinds of person. All different groups of people. Like, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and kings. (c.f. Colossians 3:11).

So that’s what this phrase means. And if that seems hard to wrap your head around, it’s probably because we’re here in North America where we tend to think very individualistically. When we hear the phrase “all people,” we think about all individual people. But you need to remember that this is not the way most of the world thinks, and this is not the way that the people in the Bible thought.

Most of the world, and the people in the Bible, don’t think of themselves as individuals first. They think of themselves as members of a group first. And the individual part comes later. So when they read “all people,” they’re going to think all groups of people. All kinds of people.

And again, this just emphasizes the big idea in our passage. When Paul urges prayer for all people, what he’s saying is “Don’t just pray for the people who are like you in your own little group. Pray for all people.”

This Group, Especially

So what do “kings and all who are in high positions” (1 Timothy 2:2) have to do with this? Why were people supposed to pray for that group of people?

The answer comes when we keep reading though verse 2 and to the end of verse 3. They were supposed to pray for this group of people, their political leaders, so “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:2b).

This word for “peaceful” is not the usual word for “peace.” In fact, this is the only time this specific word is used in the New Testament. And the basic sense of this word is “undisturbed.” The word for “quiet” is similar. It speaks to being tranquil and well-ordered. In other words, he’s basically telling them to pray that the government leaves them alone. That their political leaders will not put pressure on the church and interfere with them but give the Christians the freedom to live godly and dignified lives.

A dignified life is a respectable life. It means that other people are looking at us and having respect for us. And we’re supposed to pray that the government lets us live this kind of life. The kind of life that attracts the respect of others.

And why? Why should we pray for this? Verse 3 and 4 tell us that is is good and pleasing in the sight of God our Saviour who desires all people to be saved. In other words, he doesn’t just want to save us or people who are like us. He wants to save all kinds of people. Jews and Gentiles. Rich and poor. Slave and free. And our lives have a major role in attracting others to have faith in Jesus.

So as we pray for all people, we should especially pray for our government, that they will give us the freedom to live lives that attract all peoples to come and know Christ.

Do you see how this passage all fits together, and how it all pushes back against the false teaching that says God only cares about one particular group of people?

One Saviour

And finally, verses 5-7 deliver the final knockout blow to this false teaching by giving the ultimate reason we should pray like this. “There is one God,” verse 5 says. There are not different gods for each group of people. There’s one God. And “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 

That word “man” is the same word for “people” in verse 1 and 3. It’s not very politically correct, but it’s like he said, “pray for all men… God desires all men to be saved… there is one mediator between God and man.” He’s pointing to the fact that Jesus did not die for just one group of people. He is the saviour for us all. He “gave himself as a ransom for all,” like verse 6 says. All kinds of people. Just like Revelation 5:9 says: “for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

And when we put the whole passage together like this, we can finally understand why verse 7 says what it does. Because in verse 7 Paul mentions that God sent him to teach the Gentiles and then he says that he’s telling the truth and not lying. Obviously, his story had come under attack at one point. You can almost hear them saying, “God didn’t send Paul to the Gentiles. Salvation is for us, not for them.”

And the whole point of this passage is to say the salvation is for all kinds of people. And that’s why the church needed to pray for all people. That’s why they needed to especially pray for their government leaders, so that they might have the freedom to continue to live lives that attracted all kinds of people to believe in the gospel of Jesus. And we can have confidence as we pray like this, knowing that Jesus is the mediator for all people and died to ransom people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

Application: Ethnicity

So hopefully, by this point, we understand what this passage meant to Timothy and the church in Ephesus. But now we need to ask, “what does this passage mean for us?” What I hope we’re going to discover is that even though we live in a different place in the world and in a different spot in history, this passage has a lot to say to us today.

Let’s start with this question of ethnicity. Or ethnic pride. We maybe haven’t taken things as far as those false teachers did, but isn’t it true that we all tend to treat people who are different from us a little bit differently than people who are like us? And isn’t it true that, as Christians, we very easily act like God is our God more than he is their God, and that God likes the way we do things more than he likes the way they do things?

I think it’s so significant that this passage lined up with our missions moments earlier in the service. Because it’s helpful to remember that right now, there are Christians in Uganda. And there are many ways in which they are different from us. Their worship services look very different form ours. And God is their God just as much as He is our God.

Right now, there are Christians in Korea. There are many ways in which they are different from us. Their worship gatherings look very different from ours. And Jesus is their mediator just as much as He is our mediator. He represents them before the Father just as much as us.

And right here in Canada, more and more each year, come people from all different parts of the world, who are all different in various ways. And this passage calls us to remember that God desires for all people to be saved. Do we? Do we desire what God desires? And if so, what are we doing about it?

Application: Government

There’s a second way that this passage speaks to us today, and that’s in regard to our understanding of government. This passage tells us to pray for our government so that Christians can live peaceful, quiet, godly, dignified lives so that others will be attracted to the gospel.

It’s important that we remember that this is not telling us to pray that our government will operate like a Christian organization. And it’s not about praying that the government will give special privileges to Christians and do things to deliberately help out the church. The Roman government did none of those things! All it says is basically, “pray that the government leaves us alone so that we can do our thing without interference.”

And we need to acknowledge that we have this. God has answered this prayer in the affirmative for Canadian Christians. It’s true that in recent years, many Christians in Canada have grown concerned about the ways that the government seems to be stepping on our toes. We fear that our freedoms are under threat. And some of these fears are justified.

But I want to ask us this morning: what are we doing with the freedom we do have, today? Are we living warm and inviting lives, acting in a godly and dignified way so that other people are attracted to Jesus? And when people are drawn to our lives, do we actually tell them about Jesus, which is the whole point of why we live that way?

Let me ask this question another way: tomorrow, if it became illegal to share the gospel, would anybody even notice?

I want you to know that this question challenges me as much as anybody else. But it reminds us of what this is all about. This is why we pray for our government. We don’t need special treatment. We just want to be undisturbed as we live and share the gospel.

These are important questions to ask in the middle of an election campaign. And in this season, I trust that this passage draws our attention to what really matters. 

Application: Prayer

There’s a third and final way that this passage talks directly to us in 2019. And it’s on the matter of prayer. You’ll remember that this passage is not telling the Ephesians to pray. It assumes that they were already praying. The question is, what were they praying for? And this passage instructs the church to pray in alignment with the mission of God to save for Himself a people out of every tribe, language, nation and people.

In other words, we can put it very simply: our understanding of the mission of God will impact how we pray.

So, here’s a question. If people were to just listen to your prayers, what would they learn about the mission of God?

If people just listened to our prayers on a Sunday morning, what would they learn about the mission of God?

How much does our praying line up with God’s mission?

This fall we’ve begun to take a few minutes in each service to explain why we do a certain element of our service. And today, in the middle of the sermon, I want us to think about our prayer and share time. Each week we pray together and share requests with each other, and this is a powerful way to express our fellowship and act like the family that we really are.

But our passage today reminds us that, as a church family, we have a mission. And this mission is to glorify God by attracting people to the gospel. And so I want to encourage us today to make sure that our prayer time lines up with this mission.

It should be normal for us to share requests like, “I want to share Jesus with my neighbour. Please pray for courage for me.” Or, “I’ve been getting to know a new family that just moved in down the street. Let’s pray that they come to know Christ.” Our prayers should be saturated with the advance of the gospel.

Very often our prayers have to do with difficult things. Sickness or tragedy that impacts us or those we know. And it’s ok for us to pray for those things. But as we pray for those things, we need to remember God’s mission. And God’s mission is not to give each of us a comfortable life. God’s mission is to bring glory to Himself by saving a people from all nations and making them more like His Son Jesus.

So when we get sick, we pray along with Paul, whose desire was that “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). 

And when tragedy strikes, we pray that, through these events, God would help His people to reflect Him and bring glory to Him and draw others to trust in Jesus.

This is one of the most practical, hands-on ways for us to apply this passage as a church. When we gather to pray each week, let’s remember the mission. Let’s pray for the mission in everything that we pray for. Just like Jesus taught us: “Your kingdom come, your will be done” (Matt 6:10).

And we don’t have to wait for next week to do this. You’ve got six days between now and then to pray this way yourself. To pray for all people—your neighbours and the people who serve you coffee and your mayor and town council and premier and government and future government. Let’s pray the mission and then let’s live the mission for the glory of God.