Timothy's Thoughts

S omeone made the observation that if you want people to discuss something in a classroom setting you have to assume that they will answer your questions. I wish I could remember who said it, so I could give them credit, but what this person was saying is that when you ask a question and follow it with silence, the people in the class are beginning to feel guilty because they know that someone in the class is supposed to fill that silence. The longer you wait, the more they try to come up with an answer and eventually one or more of them will give you an answer to the question. I’ve been in Sunday school classes where the teacher didn’t follow this advice. You’re sitting there listening to the lesson and the teacher asks a question. It takes you a little time to process the question. Then it takes you more time to consider the answer. Finally, you have an answer to the question, but by this time, the teacher has already moved on. With hardly enough time for you to open your mouth, he...

O ne of my cousins sent me a link to a video as an example of how grace isn’t fair. The video is of a woman who had been out of church for many years talking about going to church and hearing the parable of the vineyard workers. She also tells how she taught this parable to VBS kids that you might find useful if you ever have the opportunity to teach this parable. For some reason, I watched this video several times. I’m not sure why. I think it might be because some of what the woman says doesn’t seem to sit right with me. I’m not sure that I agree with her take on the parable. Before I go into that, I’ll let you watch the video: Grace Is Not Attractive from The Work Of The People on Vimeo . One of the things I see here is the difference between what we often think of as fair and what true justice is. By definition, to be fair and to be just are essentially the same thing, but when we teach fairness to kids we often do so in terms of equal treatment. We might ask little Billy, “...

“…If you were the only sinner in human history, nothing about Calvary would have changed.” – Denison I saw this quote on Facebook. It looks about like what you might see on a church sign. I tend to pick church sign sayings apart. This particular saying looks good, but it is true? In a word, no. What I believe this person was trying to say is that if you were the only sinner, Christ would have died for you anyway. There’s actually strong Biblical basis for that. II Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” It’s really a hypothetical situation we’re talking about, so since it isn’t God’s will that any perish, we could say that he would have sent his Son to die for one sinner, if that’s all there was. But that’s not what the quote says. The quote says that “nothing about Calvary would have changed.” There is a great deal about ...

I watched a video interview with Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, in which the interviewer asked him about churches that are getting away from denominational distinctions. But Mike mentioned that he had noticed that many of these churches are forming “networks or associations of churches” that replace the denomination. I find this a particularly interesting statement because many of the churches that have chosen to remove the denominational marking off their church sign are Baptist or were at one time, but Baptists have been functioning under an associational structure for centuries. The church I’m a member of is a member of three associations, the Baptist Missionary Association (BMA) of America, the BMA of Texas, and the Tarrant County BMA. The largest Baptist association is the Southern Baptist Convention. Even many of the churches that call themselves Independent Baptists are associated in some way, though my understanding is that in that case it is generally the pastor who is ...

W hen people talk about the role of women in the church—in particular in leadership positions—we frequently hear them mention Deborah. The argument is that since Deborah was a judge then women can be preachers. I don’t want to take anything away from Deborah because she is a very important figure in the history of the Jews, but I don’t believe we can extrapolate from what Deborah did that what Paul said with the inspiration of God is wrong. The Bible never says that everything Deborah did was right or was what God saw as ideal. It just says that is the way it was. Many who invoke the name of Deborah do so outside the context of her story, saying only that Deborah was a judge. In Judges 4 (That in itself should tell us to be careful. The judges all had questionable natures.) we find Deborah under a palm tree, where the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. Clearly she was a respected woman, but in the narrative we see that this wasn’t supposed to be Deborah’s story at all. S...

T oday is Good Friday. This is the day that many people celebrate as the day Jesus died. We know they’re wrong because of Matthew 12:40, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” They’re off by one day. The only way for Jesus to be in the grave three days and three nights and then to rise on Sunday is for him to have died on Thursday. But I can’t help but wonder, why did Jesus use the phrase “heart of the earth” instead of saying, “the grave?” What is the heart of the earth? Some people have taken this to mean that this is referring to the center of the earth and a great deal of the theory that Paradise and Hades were once together in the center of the earth hangs on this. I’m still not convinced one way or the other on that theory. I realize there are many verses that refer to the dead going down, but then we look at Elijah, who was taken up in a chariot of fire. For now, I’m...

T oday is Black Thursday, or at least it is the day we remember one Black Thursday nearly two thousand years ago. It was on this day that Jesus hung on the cross and died for the sins of the world. As he died, the sky became black and the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom, forever opening the door for us to communicated directly with God. Of all the Black Thursdays that have ever been, there has never been a Thursday more black than the Thursday that Jesus died. And yet, as we look back on the blackness of that Thursday, we see the brightest light of all piercing the darkness. Three days and three nights, the Bible tells us, Jesus lay in the heart of the earth, buried in a tomb hewn from the hard rock of earth itself, covered with a large stone and guarded by armed soldiers. Thursday, Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, and then came Sunday. Jesus, the one true Passover lamb paid our debt, protected us from the angel of death, and the he rose...

I ronic though it may seem, when I think of faith, I can’t help but think of Richard Dawkins as one of the greatest examples of a man of faith. Dawkins, despite the total lack of evidence that it is even possible for one species to evolve into another, continues to preach the message that evolution is the only possible way that man could come into existence. At one point, he even said that he believes that it is more likely that some alien race populated Earth with the seeds of life than that a God created the Universe. He writes book after book, preaching his message to anyone who will read it. There isn’t much of what he says that I can agree with, but I can’t help but admire his faith. I don’t have the kind of faith Richard Dawkins does. I don’t have much use for blind faith. You see, I’m from Missouri—you’ll have to show me. I think a lot of people have the idea that the faith God asks for is more like the faith Richard Dawkins has. They think that God calls us to believe he exis...

H ow do we know that heaven is real? Not long ago, I wrote a review of the book Heaven is For Real . Since that time, that review has been one of the most frequently visited posts on my blog. In a way, that doesn’t surprise me, and yet there’s something disturbing about that. Heaven is For Real is about the near death experience of a young boy and the things he talked about afterward. As far as the doctors are concerned, his heart never stopped, so he never actually died, but in the weeks following his illness he talked about going to heaven. My assessment of the book is that he probably did talk about those things, but I didn’t see anything there that I wouldn’t have expected him to have seen or heard in Sunday school. But here’s what I find disturbing: People will turn to books like this and other accounts of near death experiences before they will accept what the Bible has to say. How do we know that heaven is real? God told us it is real in his Word. Think about this: Which i...

I bought Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath the other day. I heard about it through Michael Hyatt. Within each book is a unique code that allows the owner to take a talent assessment online. The assessment takes about thirty minutes to complete and then then the website will tell you which five of thirty-four different talents you are strongest in. I’ve taken similar assessments in the past—spiritual gift assessments, Meyers-Briggs, etc.—so I was curious to see what this one said that was different. This one seems most similar to the spiritual gift assessments, in that it attempts to find those things that you’re good at so you can focus your attention on those things instead of trying to overcome weaknesses that are actually just part of who you are as a person. I’m not sure if I can say this one is better than the spiritual gift assessments I’ve seen, but it is certainly more honest. The spiritual gift assessments tend to pull one word gift names from the Bible and then expand thos...

W here are the words to express all I would like to tell you about my trip to the 2011 meeting of the Baptist Missionary Association of America (BMAA)? I’ve posted a few videos online that I hoped would provide some of the people who have never attended an associational meeting a glimpse of what happens at these meetings, but the videos I posted can hardly do it justice. Lifeword and the BMAA Missions Department will be posting better quality videos in the coming days, but even with the excellent quality Lifeword always has in their videos, I don’t believe they can capture the spirit of the meeting. This is partly because so much of what makes these meetings special happens outside of the scheduled sessions of the meeting. I’ve been attending BMAA meetings since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I missed a few during my high school and college years and I don’t think my parents started going until I was about one or two. I was three at the first meeting I remember attending, so I have...

I saiah 44 describes the process of making an idol. A smith spends long hours shaping metal or a carpenter spends time carving wood. Then in Isaiah 44:19 it says, “And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, ‘I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh and eaten it. And shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?’” We laugh at this poor man who cut down a tree, used part of it to cook with and then out of the same tree made something to bow down to. We know that a lump of wood can’t hear us. But people are still making their own gods today. President Obama is a black man. We know this to be true because we’ve seen him on television. Some of us have seen him in person. Now, suppose someone came to you and said, “I believe the President is a white man.” We would conclude that this person is either crazy or he is talking about so...

P aul deal with the issue of slaves and masters in I Timothy 6 . He says that servants are to honor their masters so that God’s doctrine isn’t blasphemed. When we work for someone, they should be glad they have Christians working for them, not sorry they hired us. But he also says servants shouldn’t despise their believing masters. Fortunately, slavery is outlawed in America, so I don’t think we would see a situation with believing masters, but in Paul’s day it was a way of life. The economy was such that if the Christians had suddenly turn their slave free, they would have gone broke and the slaves probably wouldn’t have a way to make a living either. Paul begins to write about people who suppose that “gain is godliness.” He tells Timothy to withdraw from such people. There have always been people who equate wealth with godliness because they see it as verification that what they are doing is pleasing to God. Paul turns that around and says, “Godliness with contentment is great ga...

W e looked at verse 22 yesterday, but it is worth looking at Timothy 5:22-252 together. What I find interesting is that in 22 Paul is talking about sin that Timothy is supposed to keep himself from and in 24 and 25 he is talking about sin, but verse 23 seems out of place. “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thy frequent infirmities.” Paul appears to be prescribing a medicinal aid for Timothy, then returning to his previous thought. But is that the case or are they somehow connected? I’m not sure, but they may be more connected than they look at first. Paul has just told Timothy to keep himself pure, then he tells him to drink wine instead of water. Today, we think of water as being clean and pure, but in those days they didn’t have our water treatment facilities. The alcohol in wine killed the impurities. So when we get to 24 and it says that some men’s sins are open before judgment and some are after, we can think of water and wine. Water do...

I Timothy 5:17-22 deals specifically with the subject of preachers, or at least leaders in the church. Paul has just finished talking about older people and now we see the word elder again, but in context it appears to be the church leadership he is talking about instead of just old people. Some churches pull this term out and go so far as to elect a board of elders. There’s nothing in the Bible that indicates that a board of elders was ever elected by the early churches. That’s not to say that it is wrong for a church to do so now, but this passage isn’t suggesting it. The elders here appear to be those that teach and preach doctrine. It certainly applies to preachers and given the leadership role they hold, it might also be used to help us understand how we should treat Sunday school teachers. An elder is worthy of double honor. Some have taken this to mean that a preacher ought to be paid twice as much as the wealthiest person in the congregation. Part of the argument for this i...

P astoring a church would be easy if the preacher didn’t have to deal with people. I was talking to someone about that the other day. There are a lot of preachers who retire, but they go right on preaching. Once you’ve done it a while, the preaching is second nature, but these retired preachers don’t have to deal with the people issues so much. In I Timothy 5:1-16 Paul gets off in to how to deal with people. First, treat elders with respect. Don’t rebuke him, but give him the same kind of respect you should give your father. The elder women as mothers. The younger men and women should be treated like brothers and sisters. A church isn’t a business and it shouldn’t operate like one. A church is like a family. The pastor isn’t in charge; the pastor is to lead. Second, take care of the widows. It’s natural for a church to have widows. Men often die before their wives. It is the church’s responsibility to take care of these women, but Paul makes a distinction between the widows who rea...

W e’ve often heard the phrase “let no man despise thy you” but I Timothy 4:12-16 says more than that. The opposite of letting people despise his youth that Paul gives Timothy is to be an example. We often pull this verse out when we want to tell young people that they can have a place of service too, but I think it may be telling us more than that. It would be wrong to assume that people would despise Timothy’s youth simply because he was young. It may be instead that they would despise his youth because he was immature. I look at some of the teenagers I know and some of them are very immature. That is to be expected, since they are teenagers, but some of them grow up into their twenties and even thirties with no indication that they are ever going to take on the responsibilities of life. I look at other teenagers and you can already see that they have it together. They aren’t waiting until they are officially crowned adults before they take responsibility for their own lives and be...

P aul warns Timothy in I Timothy 4:1-11 that some would leave the faith and listen to spirits and devils instead. There are a lot of people who put a great deal of emphasis on what they feel the Holy Spirit is leading them to do. While that sounds spiritual and close to God, the problem is that many of these people can’t tell the difference between what the Holy Spirit is telling them to do and what some other spirit is telling them to do. The Holy Spirit isn’t the only spirit that can influence people and some spirits have lead people astray. Notice what Paul says some of these spirits are leading people to do, “forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving.” There are some denominations that will not allow the leaders of their churches to marry. That doctrine is of Satan and not of God. As for eating various kinds of meats, Paul says that it’s all good if we’ve been saved. Paul tells Timothy to put the brethren i...

C hapter 3 of I Timothy ( I Timothy 3 ) deals with the qualifications of pastors and deacons. Just prior to this, Paul wrote about some differences between men and women, so in context it is safe to assume that when he begins with the statement, “This is a true saying: If a man desire the office of bishop, he desireth a good work,” Paul is still using the word man to refer to the male gender, not to refer to any human. In looking at the preceding chapters, we have already seen that Paul is calling for men to lead in the church, so we need not discuss that women are not to be preachers more than that. Aside from the differences between the qualifications of a pastor and that of a deacon, such as pastors aren’t to drink wine while deacons can drink in moderation, we can summarize these two lists by saying that when considering a man for either of those positions we should examine his personal life. If he doesn’t rule his own house well, we shouldn’t be surprised when he can’t lead the...

A lot of people don’t like I Timothy 2:12-15 because it begins, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” Of course, there’s a lot of discussion about whether this passage is referring to a woman teaching any man or just her husband. And we might also ask whether a woman should be teaching at all. Based on other passages, we know that this isn’t talking about women not teaching at all. In Titus 2, Paul instructs the older women to teach the younger women, so it is clear that women are to teach. The issue people find the most sticky has to do with who women aren’t to teach and just what we mean by teaching. At the very least, women aren’t to teach or usurp authority over their husbands, but does that mean that she can’t tell her husband anything for fear she might teach him something? That would be silly. Given the context, I think this passage has more to do with authoritative teaching within the church. It has a similar context...

I n I Timothy 1:18-I Timothy 2:11 Paul writes concerning not getting away from holding faith and a good conscience. He warns Timothy of the potential of becoming shipwrecked in that way and give the example of Hymenaeus and Alexander. But rather than allowing himself to become shipwrecked also, Paul tells Timothy how to avoid it. His first instruction is prayer be made for all men. He mentions supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks. These are all types of what we would call prayer. Paul makes special mention of government leaders. When we pray it doesn’t always seem like we’re doing that much, but prayer should be a priority. It should come first. Prayer for all men will help us to have a quiet and peaceable life, but it is clearly something God wants us to do. Paul points out that God wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. If for no other reason, we should be praying for other people because God wants them to be saved. I don’t th...

A s Paul continues his first letter to Timothy ( I Timothy 1:12-17 ) he marvels at how the Lord put him in the ministry. We don’t think about that enough. We’re all in the same boat. It’s easy for us to think that we’re something special because we’re actually doing the work that God has called us to do while other people aren’t doing what they should. But we read what Paul is saying here and he is amazed that God would count him faithful and put him in the ministry. Think about this. If you owned a business and you found out that one of your employees was taking money from the cash register, would you trust that employee to carry your money to the bank? Would you even let that employee do anything other than maybe stock shelves? It isn’t likely. And yet, God has take those of us who have sinned against him and are worthy of punishment, and he has put us in the ministry. Look at what happened with the angels. Those who sinned were thrown out of heaven. God could have used the faithfu...