Timothy: The Pastor's Primer

Chapter four of First Timothy begins with dramatic and intriguing words. The apostle says:

Last week Ron Ritchie and I were at Indiana University. We had a great time of Christian fellowship on a beautiful campus in the midst of all the fall colors. Besides the students, some of the townspeople had come up to our meetings, and among them was a young pastor by the name of Lou who showed up for every meeting. He was very spiritually hungry. He sat down and talked with me at great length, telling me some of the problems he was facing. He seemed to welcome the opportunity to share with an older, more experienced Christian. (Obviously, I am too young-looking to inspire that kind of confidence, but Ron Ritchie, with his grey hair and beard, awakened that sense of desire in this young man!)

I feel a great affinity to the section of the Apostle Paul's first letter to Timothy which we will be looking at this morning. I came to Palo Alto at the age of thirty-two, fresh out of seminary, not yet dry behind the ears, to work with men who were older than I. Many of these men had been Christians longer than I, some of them had national status as Christian leaders, yet I was expected not only to minister the Scriptures before them but at times to work with them and even to correct some of the things that were being taught or viewpoints that were held.

In Chapter 5 of Paul's first letter to Timothy, the apostle addresses certain continuing problems in the church at Ephesus. Timothy will have to deal with various classes and people in the congregation; he will have to face problems of discipline -- even discipline of elders, as we will see in the latter half of this chapter.

In this section from First Timothy 5 the Apostle Paul again turns to admonitions and instructions concerning the elders of a church. Many of you will never be elders, so you are already thinking, "This is not for me; it's boring stuff." But remember that, in these passages, the apostle is dealing with the divinely-given machinery for the proper functioning of a church.

At the time the Apostle Paul wrote his first letter to Timothy, half the population of the Roman Empire -- about sixty million people -- were slaves. Many of them had been taken as prisoners of war by the Roman legions. Some were taken away out of their own countries, while others were kept captive within their own lands. Some slaves were highly educated, literate men and women. A few of them became secretaries to leading Romans and others, but most of them were illiterate, as were many of the Romans.

Last week a man in Brooklyn, New York, whose work was replacing light bulbs in a New York skyscraper, bought a one-dollar lottery ticket and with it won five million dollars. It would be interesting to know how many of you are saying to yourselves, "Why can't I get lucky like that?" Some of you may be saying, "What a pity! I hope nothing like that ever happens to me." The passage from First Timothy 6, which we will be looking at this morning, will help us decide which group we belong in.

We have come to the last of our studies in First Timothy. This is a very moving passage in which the Apostle Paul addresses young Timothy, left all alone in this great city of Ephesus, a challenging, demanding and dangerous responsibility, to be the apostolic representative to the churches of the city. If you have ever felt left alone with a great responsibility and hardly anybody to lean on, you know exactly how Timothy felt. Paul wrote these letters to encourage him; and the Spirit of God has preserved them because they are an encouragement to us who have to face difficulty and demand in our world today.

We come to this second letter to Timothy with quickened anticipation, realizing that these are the last recorded words of the Apostle Paul. Tradition tells us that shortly after this letter was written, Paul was taken out on the Ostian Way, outside the city of Rome, and there on an April morning he was beheaded.

During the presentation on the work of the Christian Service Brigade this morning, it struck me that the beautiful thing about the work of these men with young boys is that they are passing the torch of faith on to another generation. It is always encouraging to see that happening. That is the way a new and upcoming generation learns values, principles and guidelines that will steady it and hold it in the midst of the swirling maelstroms of unbelief and immorality it has to face.