A Good Servant of Christ Jesus (Part 1 of 4)

Music playing I invite you to turn with me to 1 Timothy and to chapter 4. First Timothy chapter 4.

And you can follow as I read. First Timothy 4 verse 1. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we've set our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Command and teach these things, and let no one despise you for your youth. But set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Do not neglect the gift you have which was given you by prophecy when the counsel of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things. Immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

Amen. What I would like to do—I might as well tell you what I hope to do—is to consider verses 6 through to verse 16 and to think about it in terms of what it means to be a good servant or a good minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have gathered under the overall banner of reminding one another of these things, even as Paul does Timothy, so that we in turn might be reminded.

And I think it's important to say—and I think I probably say it every single year—that my responsibility, ours together, is not so much to inform you of things that you do not know as it is to turn to the Scriptures in such a way that we might remind ourselves of things that we must never forget. A few months ago, a friend introduced me to a series of novels, novels about ancient Rome, written by the author Robert Harris. I've found them to be very, very instructive and full of illustrative material.

I've enjoyed them, and am enjoying them, immensely. The central character, the voice of the books that I read, is a slave by the name of Tiro. And at one point in book three, he is granted his freedom. And when he inquires as to the reason that he has been granted freedom, he's told that he has been appreciated for three things—one, for his great loyalty, two, for his exemplary service, and three, for the soundness of his character.

And these characteristics, along with others, are to be part and parcel of the life of Timothy and of all the Timothys that follow in his line. Rather than trying to crash our way through the entire paragraph or two, I want us to take it in two parts. First of all, from verse 6 to verse 10, thinking primarily about the personal life of the good minister of Jesus.

It's somewhat arbitrary. It helped me. It may not help you. But anyway, you know, where he says there, Train yourself, in verse 7. And then, in verses 11–16, to think more in terms of the public life of the good servant or good minister of Jesus. For example, there in verse 12, he wants to make sure that he is a good example to the folks. Now, in coming to this, I think it's also helpful to say something about my approach in the thought that it may be helpful to all of us—not because this is the right approach but just because we know that when we come, for example, to a task like this, to say, We're going to deal with verse 6 to verse 16, there are a number of challenges that are represented in that.

And I felt that there were three dangers in particular that I needed to be alerted to. One was failing to say anything helpful about the context, failing to say something about the context. In other words, as it were, just simply isolating these particular verses from the totality of Paul's instruction, and particularly in this letter itself. And so, going back and reading it and rereading it again, when you turn to the beginning of the letter, you realize that Paul is immediately concerned that Timothy would be dealing with those who were tempted to be drawn away by the false teachers. And he says, I want you to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, not to get involved in myths and endless genealogies which just produce speculation and so on.

So that is his opening gambit to Timothy. This is a responsibility that you have there in Ephesus, and I want you to make sure that you're taking care of it. By the time we get to chapter 4—and we've read it all in the opening five verses—I don't know whether things have progressed or whether we're dealing with something entirely different, but you will see there that in this context, the concern that Paul has in relationship to these things is, if you like, a more grave concern. Here he's referring to those deceitful spirits and to the teachings of demons and to the insincerity of liars and those whose consciences are seared. So this is no marginal issue. This is a significant concern.

And I don't know, because I haven't thought it through, but I wonder if there isn't a progression in that people who, if you like, represented in chapter 1, are tempted to deviate from the gospel, caught up by all kinds of strange ideas and notions, speculative and mythological things—such individuals, once they are led astray, if they're not careful, then they become immediately susceptible to the deceitful, to the deceiving, and ultimately to the demonic, which actually opposes all that God has provided for the good of his own. And that is exactly what is happening here, as we see. So that was my first concern. I don't want to get tied up in the context, but I do need to make sure that I say something of it. The second concern I had was that I'd spend too much time saying something about it. And you may say to me, Well, you've already violated that as of now. But no, no, I could go on much further than that.

It wouldn't be helpful, but I could. And one of the ways in which we could do that is to get ourselves tied up in knots over the two words, one word really in Greek, these things. These things. If you put these things before the brothers… Now, let's be honest.

It's really possible for some of us to wax eloquent on these things and begin an entire series on something that we are pretty well clueless about. This phrase comes eight times in the course of this letter, and each time it comes we have to say, What are these things to which he refers? Do the these things here in verse 6 refer to the two previous verses, so as to provide correction for the deviation represented in the first three verses? Do they refer to the previous five verses? Do they refer to all the previous verses, and all the verses are going to come afterwards?

Are the these things of verse 6 the same as the these things of verse 11 and the same things as the these things of verse 15? Well, I've proved my point, haven't I? That's the warning.

You spend a long time fiddling around with that. And at the end of the day, what can you say? That in a sense that these things of Paul are all of Paul's things, and then specifically they relate to that which is in the immediate context. So, danger one, failing to say something about the context. Danger two, getting tied up in saying far too much and most of it being unhelpful. Danger number three that I noted was the danger that is represented in the second half of verse 10, which reads of God, he is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

All right? Now, when you study this passage, you know that you're going to have to deal with this. So you can either push it off to the end in the hope that you'll never finish your talk or may actually be taken home to glory before the next Sunday comes around, or you can just man up and do something with it. Because what it actually takes us to in its puzzle is back again into chapter 2, where Paul has said to Timothy that this God and Savior—1 Timothy 2 4—desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. And now, here, in verse 10, he is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. It sounds as if Paul is saying that in some vague, general sense, God saves everybody, but there is some special sense in which he saves believers.

But it can't possibly mean that, because God only saves those who believe. So what do you do? Let me tell you what to do. Quote Calvin and quote John Murray. Here we go.

Calvin. The apostles' meaning here is simply that no nation of the earth and no rank of society is excluded from salvation, since God wills to offer the gospel to all without exception. John Murray, we have found in Scripture that God himself expresses an ardent desire for the fulfillment of certain things which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass. This means that there is a will to the realization of what he has not decretively willed—a pleasure towards that which he has not been pleased to decree. And then he says, This is indeed mysterious. Thank you.

I can go with that. And why he has not brought to pass, in the exercise of his omnipotent power and grace, what is his ardent pleasure, lies hid in the sovereign counsel of his will. So those are the dangers that I identified and have now set to one side. We get to the heart of the matter of what's involved in being a good minister of Jesus Christ. I presume that you would like to be a good minister of Jesus Christ—not an average one, not a rotten one, but a good one, a good servant, a good minister.

I would like to be one. And so I'm keen to find out what Paul says is involved. Here's what he says. First of all, a good minister or servant of Christ Jesus is actually putting these things before the brethren. He is setting, if you like, the table for them in relationship to these truths which Paul is outlining. In the Authorized Version, it reads, He is putting the brethren in remembrance. In other words, he is pointing out the danger, and he is laying before the people what is true, so that they may be able to identify what is false, and they may do so by having such an awareness of what is true.

And the way that we'll be able to determine what is real and what is not real is by an understanding of what is true. And it's interesting and important, I think, to recognize that Paul encourages Timothy in this way not to take on, as it were, the false teachers, not to enter into a ministry of denunciation or of condemnation, but rather, to make sure that those who are under his care will be learning from him as he learns from Paul. Now, the first five verses are not ours to tackle. But having said that, we can't deal with verse 6 without saying something of the first five verses. It's surely of interest, I hope, and of importance, to note that the attack which comes from the evil one himself is essentially an attack on the doctrine of creation. That's what's happening here. It is a wrong perspective, if you like—a distorted perspective—in two particular areas—in the area of marriage and in the area of food.

Marriage and food. The goodness of God in creation was actually being denied, and the people were being tempted to listen to these persuasive lies, and so they needed to be reminded of what was actually true. Now, I wonder, am I on track when I say, Isn't it interesting that two thousand years on, the doctrine of creation is constantly under attack, undermined—people being deceived and confused and tempted to divert from course? And so, Timothy, you need to be absolutely clear on this, he says. You need to be clear about what it means that God has created… Everything that God has created is good, but the good world that God created is a fallen world as a result of sin. And therefore, Timothy, as a minister of the gospel, and you as a minister of the gospel, you're gonna have to be clear about what we're dealing with in terms of all of the pristine wonder of the created world of God, and then the world as we know it today spoiled by sin. There are obvious contemporary expressions of these distorted views of creation, and not least of all, in the realm of marriage. It's not the same issue as addressed here, but it is here. And as I sat thinking about it, I said, I wonder whether we have legitimacy in talking about this in terms of the homosexual question.

And I think we must. Marriage. Dismantled.

By deceitful lies. So I went to see if I was wrong, if anybody else thought the same thing. I was delighted to discover that John Stott, twenty-one years ago, wrote this paragraph. A flagrant current misuse of the creation argument is the claim that the practices of heterosexual and homosexual people are equally good because equally created.

But no. What God created was male and female with heterosexual marriage as the intended outcome. Isn't it interesting to see the degree to which, you know, vegetarianism and veganism and dietary issues have actually become religious things, become a credo, become a way of identifying oneself? We're a long way from Ephesus, but we're not so far away from the need to be the kind of servants who are prepared to put these things before the brothers—notice, before the brothers—in order to help one another out. Secondly, the good minister is the one, Paul says, who is being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that he's been following.

The word here is a word that simply means nourished by. So the servant of God is being nourished by the truth of God. And his ability to convey these truths is in account of the fact that he's being trained by the same truths that he conveys. Somebody said to me just yesterday, I made a discovery in my life quite a long time ago that I was going to have to listen to my own sermons, and therefore it would be my own sermons that would have the greatest impact on my life.

It's a staggering thing and an immense privilege, isn't it? That we prepare the meal for the people of God, but the preparation of heart and mind is, first of all, for ourselves to eat. That we then pass on to others that which we would not eat and benefit from ourselves. No, the good servant is nourished by these things.

You see, it's the personal nourishment that sustains the public ministry. The training to which he's referring is quite obviously not the training of the classroom. That is not to say we do not benefit from that.

Of course we do. But it is, I think, the training of the closet. The good servant of Christ Jesus is being trained in the words of the faith, the truths of the gospel, the things that they have been communicated to us and the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of God and the nature of humanity and what it means that God has provided in Christ the only Savior. And it's a training and a nourishing that never ends. I mean, you have your breakfast in the morning, but you're not regarding that as your breakfast for the rest of your life.

You shouldn't, I hope, not unless you're planning on dying just before lunchtime. No, the nourishment goes on. And hopefully, that which we are enjoying is increasingly precious to us. You're listening to Truth for Life. Today's message from Alistair Begg was originally presented to an auditorium full of pastors and church leaders who had gathered at Parkside Church for a conference. Alistair titled his message with a phrase from Paul's first letter to Timothy, a good servant of Christ Jesus. This message is just one part of a comprehensive eight-volume series called The Pastors Study.

And whether you're a pastor or a member of a local congregation, applying these biblical truths will strengthen local churches. If you have the Truth for Life mobile app, you'll be glad to know you can listen to all eight volumes of The Pastors Study immediately and for free, or you can listen or freely download the audio files at truthforlife.org. This daily program, along with all of our online teaching, is available to you free of charge, but it comes at a cost to Truth for Life. For this reason and more, we are deeply grateful to our truth partners and to anyone who financially supports this ministry.

Your giving makes this free access possible. When you give today, we want to invite you to request a creative book from pastor and author Tim Challies. The book is called Epic, an around-the-world journey through Christian history.

This is a collection of photographs. Each photograph is paired with a story that tells about Christian history. We'll send you a copy of the book along with our thanks when you give a one-time donation to support Truth for Life or when you become a monthly truth partner. You can do either one by visiting truthforlife.org or call this number 888-588-7884. This weekend, to complement the teaching you receive from your local church, remember you're invited to tune in and watch Alistair teach from the Pulpit at Parkside Church when the service is streamed live. To check Alistair's teaching schedule for this Sunday, go to truthforlife.org slash live. We're glad you've been able to join us for today's study. I'm Bob Lapine for Alistair Begg and all of us at Truth for Life. I hope you have a relaxing weekend and hope you can join us again Monday as we continue the pastor's study series. Today's program was furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.