Timothy's Thoughts

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...