Now if you would take your Bibles in hand once again and turn with me in our ongoing examination of Paul’s letter to Timothy to 1 Timothy chapter 4. First Timothy chapter 4 at the eleventh verse through to the end of the chapter. We saw last time, beginning in verse 6 of this chapter, Paul has turned aside from his more general instructions to Timothy on how to lead the church in Ephesus in order to offer him some direct, personal exhortations about the conduct of his own ministry. And those exhortations continue on in the passage now before us in verses 11 through 16. If you’ll look at verse 16, you’ll see the main point of this whole section aptly summed up for us. Verse 16, here is the summary of which 11 through 15 are the component parts – “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.”
“Your own Christian walk with God, Timothy, along with your preaching ministry to others, requires your constant vigilance and care. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in these things. A carefully cultivated routine of spiritual discipline in private that is nevertheless wedded to an incompetent or careless ministry in public, simply will not do. Equally, a doctrinally accurate, rhetorically impressive preaching ministry in public joined to a private life of secret sin or spiritual indifference and mediocrity, that won’t do either. No, you must exercise the same unceasing attention and watchcare over yourself and over your preaching and teaching. You must not allow yourself to drift or slacken off or dumb down in either sphere of your life – not in private before God nor in public before others. That is the task. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.”
And notice Paul’s reason for this weighty exhortation. Look at verse 16. The stakes are high and the promise is rich. Verse 16 – “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.” Faithfully walking the path of perseverance for every Christian is essential for salvation. You must persevere to the end. And that path of perseverance always requires that we live out our faith in Jesus in godly conduct in the context of our several vocations as well as in our homes and in our private lives. Now that means, of course, that for a pastor, perseverance to the end requires fidelity both in his private life and in his public ministry. His own salvation, Paul says, depends on his perseverance in holiness in both spheres.
But not his own salvation only, but verse 16 says, “you will save both yourself and your hearers.” Every true pastor feels a pressing burden for the salvation of his hearers. He longs for conversions under his ministry. He wants his ministry to be God’s instrument in bringing people to faith in Jesus and then enabling those who do profess faith in Jesus to stay the course and cross the finish line at last. He wants to save not only himself but also his hearers too. And Paul is telling us here in no uncertain terms that the minister’s own faithfulness in his private walk with God and in his public preaching and teaching to others is the instrument that God is ordinarily pleased to use to accomplish all of that.
You may remember the words of Robert Murray McCheyne written to a student training for the Gospel ministry. They capture Paul’s point here perfectly. He told this young trainee pastor to “Study universal holiness of life. Your sermons,” he said, “last but an hour or two, but your life preaches all the week. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hands of God.” That’s Paul’s message here, isn’t it? “A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hands of God.” “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.”
And so this is a serious call to holiness and diligence in Christian service. But how are we to do this? How are we to rise to this challenge? What did it look like for Timothy to keep a close watch on himself and on the teaching? Answering that question is the point of verses 11 through 15. They are, as it were, the exposition of which verse 16 is the summary. And if you look at verses 11 through 15, you’ll see that Paul directs Timothy’s attention, our attention, to three areas in particular. In verses 11 through 15, Paul is expanding on three themes that are all summed up finally in verse 16. So look at the text please. First of all, he says we must keep a close watch on our public ministry. Then secondly, we must keep a close watch on our personal example. And thirdly, we must keep a close watch on our persistent labor. Our public ministry, our personal example, our persistent labor.
Before we read the text and examine those three headings, let’s pause and pray and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
Our God and Father, we are so grateful that the Spirit of God makes the reading but especially the preaching of Your Word an effectual means unto salvation. We ask now simply that the Spirit would do exactly that as Your Word is read and proclaimed in our midst today, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
First Timothy chapter 4 at the sixth verse. This is the Word of God:
“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 have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
Command and teach these things. 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 council 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.
Well think with me in the first place about Paul’s exhortation to Timothy concerning his public ministry. So verse 16 is the summary, remember – “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.” And in verse 11, you’ll notice Paul starts by focusing on the issue of Timothy’s teaching, his public ministry. Look at verse 11. “Command and teach these things.” Now if you were to scan through this letter, you would see Paul using that phrase, “these things,” eight times over, twice in the section before us, as a way to sum up all of his instructions to Timothy for the good order and the spiritual health of the church in Ephesus where Timothy serves.
And in this case, verse 11, virtually repeats what Paul already says in verse 6. “If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus.” But this time now in verse 11, the accent falls not just on the content of “these things,” but on the authority with which Timothy is to proclaim them. More than simply putting them before the brothers, Timothy is to “command and teach these things.” He is not merely to present Paul’s agenda to the Ephesians, you know, like a court stenographer who reads back a transcript of proceedings merely reporting dispassionately, woodenly the bare facts of what someone else said. No, he is to command and to teach these things. The Christian Gospel, you see, is not sage advice. It’s not even wise counsel. It is mandatory truth. And all people everywhere, you and me, we are commanded by God to repent and believe that Gospel. “So Timothy, command and teach these things.”
And if you look now down at verse 13, Paul gets even more granular about the content of Paul’s public ministry. Verse 13, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” Notice carefully the three parts of what we now can call Timothy’s pulpit ministry. First, he is to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture. In 1 Thessalonians 5:27, Colossians 4:16, Paul gives a general command not addressed to anyone in particular, that the church in Thessalonica and in Colossae read his letters aloud to the congregation, presumably in the context of Lord’s Day worship. But so far as I am aware, this is the only place in the whole Bible where we are told whose job it is particularly to read the Word of God aloud in public worship. We do have several examples in other places of public reading taking place. Think about Ezra, the scribe, and his Levite assistants reading the Torah and explaining its message to the returned exiles in Nehemiah chapter 8. Or think about Jesus in the synagogue in Luke chapter 4 in Capernaum, reading from the scroll of Isaiah.
But when you ask the question, “Who, according to the Word of God, ought to read the Scriptures in the regular course of public worship to the gathered congregation of the people of God, it ought to settle the matter for us that the only time an individual is specifically commanded to do this it is to Timothy in his role as a pastor of the church in Ephesus that the instruction comes. It is part of the public ministry of the Word, committed to the elders of the church, and in particular to the teaching elder, the pastor, to read the Bible in public worship. And notice that Timothy is to “devote himself” to this. This is his work, and he is to prize it. He is not to give it away; he is to devote himself to it. That means he must read, and it means what he reads and how he reads really matters.
We’re sometimes tempted to think of preaching as the exclusive instrument of blessing and instruction when we gather for Lord’s Day worship, but that’s not Paul’s view. Timothy is to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture. In Question 89, the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “How is the Word made effectual to salvation?” So, “How does the Bible savingly impact, change human hearts and lives?” That’s the question. And the answer is, “The Spirit of God maketh the reading but especially the preaching of the Word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.” Now did you catch what the catechism is saying? It reflects Paul’s teaching here precisely. Yes, “The Spirit of God maketh especially the preaching of the Word effectual unto salvation.” That’s true. But the Spirit of God also makes the mere reading itself a means of salvation.
“If God saves people by His Word, Timothy, then public reading of the Word is a weighty, authoritative pastoral act that you read the Word, Timothy, and how you read the Word really matters. Devote yourself to public reading. This belongs to your office and your calling as an elder in the church of Jesus Christ. It is not a preliminary exercise to be gotten over with before the main event of preaching. And neither may it be delegated out casually to just anyone in the church, so that in perhaps some fit of democratic spirit everybody feels like they get to have a turn. No, the Spirit of God maketh the reading of the Word effectual. The public reading of Scripture is a means of grace, and it is your job, Timothy, to give special attention to it. Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.”
And then, notice “Having read the Scriptures, I want you, Timothy, to devote yourself,” verse 13, “to exhortation to teaching.” The same verb, “devote yourself,” governs the reading, the exhorting, and the teaching. So these three things belong together. They are bound together. Preach what you read. That’s what Paul is saying. Exhort and teach. Explain, apply, labor to give clarity to the understanding and to press the truth home upon the conscience from the text to the congregation.
That’s really what we mean when we talk about expository preaching, isn’t it? It’s not the pastor’s task to tell stories. He is not to be an entertainer or a standup comedian or a life coach. He is not to stand in the pulpit and deliver an engaging Ted Talk or a learned, academic lecture. He is to exhort and teach from what he has read in the holy Scriptures. That is his great work. He is not merely to take some random truths that he has found in the text of God’s Word and then stitch together a message based on whatever happens to have struck him from the passage that he read. That’s not expository preaching. No, Timothy is to let the text he has read be the master, and he is to submit his mind and his message to the contours and the divisions and the language and the logic and the priorities and the proportions of the text so that the congregation will always know that what they are hearing isn’t Timothy’s opinion, Timothy’s agenda, Timothy’s hobby horse. It must be the Word of God that he preaches and nothing else. “The Spirit of God maketh the reading and especially the preaching of the Word an effectual means.” “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” It is the Word that works.
You ought to be sitting, whenever you listen to a preacher, you should be sitting, saying, “Cut out the fluff and give me the Word. I want the Word. The Word is what will do the job in my heart. The Word is what will nourish my soul. Give me the Word.” Faithful preaching is the servant of the Word. The Word is never the servant of the preacher. And so that’s the first thing to see – the pastor’s public ministry.
Now remember that in verse 16 we said that was the summary statement and 11 through 15 explain verse 16. Paul told Timothy to keep a close watch not only on the teaching but first of all on himself. “Keep a close watch on yourself and the teaching.” And we’ve just seen in verses 11 and verse 13 Paul dealing with the question of teaching. Now notice with me what he has to say to Timothy about keeping watch on himself. First the pastor’s public ministry, now the pastor’s personal example. Look at verse 12. Look at verse 12. “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”
Now that word for “youth” – “Let no one despise you for your youth” – was typically reserved for young people not generally older than thirty years of age. So it’s safe to guess that Timothy is in his late 20s. He’s not older than about thirty years of age. And Paul knows Timothy really well. He calls him, “My son in the faith.” He knows Timothy, he knows his weaknesses, and he knows the Ephesians – Paul spent three years there; longer than anywhere else in his ministry. He planted the church; he knows the Ephesians very well. And he knows that Timothy will be feeling his comparative youth keenly, especially since he’s just told him in verse 11 to command and teach with authority the Word of God.That’s daunting for anyone, but particularly for a young man of Timothy’s temperament. Self-consciousness can paralyze ministerial faithfulness, and so Paul now says to him, “Let no one despise you for your youth.”
But please don’t miss the all important second part of this verse. He doesn’t say, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but instead, Timothy, I want you to stick out your chin and raise your voice and stamp your feet and throw a temper tantrum and demand that people respect your office because you are in charge now, and so you get in there, Timothy, and you show them who’s boss!” That’s not what Paul says to Timothy. How does Timothy stop the good old boys in Ephesus who’ve been used to getting their own way all this time? How does he stop them from pushing him around? Is he to give as good as he gets? Is he to become a more skilled political player of the game than they are? What does Paul say? “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”
This is such an important word for our times, isn’t it? There is a trend, I have to say, especially prevalent among young men in our present cultural moment right now, that sees intemperate, crass, even indecent speech, particularly online speech, as justifiable because they say we are living in a social emergency and we need to wake people up to the crisis with shock tactics. And so the more poisonous the invective, the more aggressive and outrageous the statement, the more clicks and likes and retweets it gets. And the more and more normal, even celebrated, this kind of public discourse becomes. But look again at our text. Paul tells young Timothy not to trust his wounded ego when people look down on him and belittle him and wound him. Don’t clap back. Don’t fight fire with fire.
How do you stop people from looking down on you? That’s a point I think we all need to be reminded of. How do you answer judgmentalism and condescension and belittling behavior in others? What does the text say? Verse 12, “Set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” Let God’s people hear in your words and see in your deeds a godly example. Paul seems here to be moving from the outside, in. Speech, then conduct, then love, then faith, then purity. From outward words and deeds to the deep motive and frame and set of the heart. “Set the believers an example in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity.”
I often tell people who come to see me to talk about broken relationships that the only heart they have any levers to pull in order to directly affect is their own. You really can’t change other people. “They despise you for your youth, Timothy? Get it into your thick skull now, would you, that you can’t change them. But you can do you. You can deal with you. You can be godly in the face of their ungodliness. So set them an example. If you want to save yourself and your hearers too, set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” A holy life, in all its gentleness and all its strength, a holy life is very often the instrument in the hand of God in bringing other people to repentance and to new faithfulness.
Paul makes the same point again, doesn’t he, if you look down at verse 15. Look there with me please. Verse 15 – live and serve, he says, in such a way “that all may see your progress.” The progress in view here isn’t mainly professional. He’s not saying, “I want you to work hard at the business of ministry. Really throw yourself into the nuts and bolts of the work, Timothy, and over time everyone will begin to see how much better you’re getting at preaching and pastoring and leading meetings, and then they’ll cut you some slack.” That’s not what he’s saying. No, the progress in view is progress along the path of Christian perseverance and practical godliness, expressed certainly in his public ministry but also in his private walk with God.
He’s saying to Timothy, “In other words, live and work in such a way that everybody in Ephesus can see in your life, Timothy, what God can do. So when you preach to them, they look at you and see the evidence of the truth you are proclaiming, working itself out in your day to day. Show them what God can do by His Word and Spirit in the human heart. You, preacher, are to be God’s visual aide, so live and serve so that if anyone ever wonders what sanctification the slow, painful, grinding progress along the road of Christlikeness should look like, they need only consider your progress over the years since you began your ministry in Ephesus, for all the evidence they could ever need to encourage them that God can do it in their hearts too.”
Elders of First Presbyterian Church, brother pastors, men aspiring to the Gospel ministry, trainees for office in this church, if you want to save yourselves and others, if you want to make an eternal difference to the flock of God, you must set an example and so live and serve that all may see your progress. A holy minister, a holy elder, a holy preacher, a holy Bible study leader, a holy deacon, a holy Sunday school teacher is an awful weapon in the hand of God. “
Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save yourself and your hearers.” How? First, by attending to your public ministry, and then by attending to our personal example. And now thirdly, we save ourselves and our hearers, we keep a close watch on our ourselves, by attending to our persistent labor. Look at verse 14. Verse 14. “Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.” Paul is reminding fearful young Timothy of his ordination. And there are three parts of his ordination we should notice. First, there is the gift of God that equipped Timothy for the work. Secondly, there is the prophetic Word of God that confirmed Timothy’s calling. And then thirdly, there is the concurrence and the ordaining action of the counsel of elders, literally the presbytery in Greek, that set him apart and consecrated him to the work by the laying on of their hands.
Now we don’t know precisely what the gift was that Paul mentions here given to Timothy, though we can be sure that it related in some way to the fulfillment of the task and the work to which Timothy was being called. But the point is, he was empowered by the grace and enabling of the Holy Spirit for the task. Brothers and sisters, never forget that if God intends to put you into His service in any capacity, He will equip you for it. John Owen once said that “Gifts make no man a minister, but no man may be a minister without gifts.” All these exhortations to Timothy really rest on this foundation, and it is vital that we see that if we are not to crumble under the weight of the responsibility that Paul puts on all of us, especially those of us who serve in ordained ministry. He wants Timothy to remember that God has equipped him and God therefore will sustain him by the gifts and enabling of the Holy Spirit for all the work that He gives him to do. “Timothy, you are not up to this, but praise God He is with you, His hand is on you, He will gift you, He will strengthen you, He will equip you, He will use you.” This is a call we can only hope to fulfill not in our own strength, but by the supply and blessing of Jesus Christ, by His Word and Spirit.
So, brothers in ministry, fellow elders, anyone serving in the cause of Christ in any capacity, you must look to Christ who will supply you the gifts and the grace you need for the faithfulness to which you are called. A Gospel servant who runs on empty will not run for long. A Gospel servant who runs on empty will not run for long.
Notice too that in Timothy’s case there was a direct prophetic word that confirmed his call to ministry. Now we, none of us, have access to that kind of new, direct revelation today, but we do still have access to the prophetic Word in the holy Scriptures. And actually if you talk to many ministers and elders, they will tell you that very often the Holy Spirit worked in their lives by some particular text of Scripture or other to bring special comfort and clarity to their minds and hearts as they sought to discern the will of the Lord for their lives. God uses His Word to confirm our calling. And then finally, notice that the true and ultimate confirmation of God’s call in Timothy’s life was the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, the counsel of elders. The church formally recognized and agreed and concurred and set Timothy apart for the work in the act of ordination by the laying on of hands.
Now why is Paul telling Timothy all of this? Well he’s writing, seeking to put steel in his spine and strength in his steps so that Timothy will press on. “Do not forget, Timothy, God has called you. Christ has equipped you. The elders have ordained you, so don’t you now shrink back out of fear or fail to press on because of laziness or indifference. Do not neglect the gift of God that is in you.”
When I was in art school as an undergraduate, I was making art all day every day, filling sketchbooks constantly. And I was getting expert training from gifted professors so that my skills were constantly being honed and sharpened. But it’s not thirty years later and I’ve not been using those skills every day, and so what’s the result? Well I’m not making paintings, I’m not filling sketchbooks constantly, I’m not drawing, I’m not painting – the result, of course, is that my skills have gotten rusty. If you don’t use it, you lose it! Do not neglect the gift that is in you. If God has called you and equipped you, you’ve been set apart for service, you need to use the gifts and fulfill the ministry the Lord has entrusted to you. Those gifts are not for you to squander. They are to be employed in your Master’s service with all the strength He gives you till your work is done.
And as we close, don’t you love the language of verse 15? “Practice these things, immerse yourselves in them, that all may see your progress.” “Practice these things” – that is, make an ongoing, constant determination to do these things without ceasing, without fail. Make these things your habit, your instinct, your default behavior so that muscle memory always pushes you toward the Word of God and toward the throne of God and toward the Son of God and toward likeness to Him. Make this stuff your life. That’s what he’s saying.
And the phrase, “immerse yourselves in them,” really translates the Greek that simply means, “be in them.” Be in them. Make them, these things, everything I’m teaching you, the call to godliness and the call to service, make these things the environment and the habitat of your whole Christian life. Listen, if Christian service is merely a job you do, a task to be performed, a box to be ticked and then set aside till you get on with the stuff that you really care about, you cannot be faithful in it. Not that way. Ministry isn’t a job; it’s not a task. It is a call from God that rests on your life. It’s integrated into who you are as a human being. Be in them. Your whole self is wrapped up in the faithful prosecution of your calling. “So Timothy, if you want to save yourself and others, if you want to see people coming to Christ, and those who come to Christ growing in Christ, these things – your public ministry, your personal example – these things must become the ocean you swim in, the oxygen you breathe, the whole world you inhabit.”
So, people of First Presbyterian Church, as you pray for your pastors and elders, would you please pray for our public ministries and for our personal examples, that there would be no discrepancy between them, that we would be holy men, through and through, holy in our hearts alone with God and not just for show in public. We began, you remember, with a quote from Robert Murray McCheyne – “A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.” Let me close with one more, also from McCheyne, that I think reflects the total teaching of this passage. He said, “My people’s greatest need is my own personal holiness.” “My people’s greatest need is my own personal holiness.” I rather suspect he has 1 Timothy 4:16 in mind when he said that. “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in these things, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” If you long, I hope you do, if you long for the saving power of God to rest on the ministry of this church in all its various forms and facets, if you long for the power of God to rest on the ministry of this church, pray that God would give us holy elders, holy pastors, holy preachers, and may the Lord make it so. Let’s do that now together, shall we? Let’s pray.
O God, we bow before You. We tremble at the challenge of these verses. I tremble under the weight of them – a call to holiness that is wedded to usefulness. Help us, every one of us in our several stations, to recognize that calling in our own lives, that if we are to be useful, we must be holy. Help us then, as we see our sin, to repent and to flee to Christ. We are so grateful that there is a fountain open for sin and uncleanness in the wounds of Jesus, that if we come to Him, no matter our sin and failure, He will wash us clean. And more, He has grace that we might grow in likeness to Him. O, give us, Lord Jesus, that grace anew today. We would honor You and please You by keeping a close watch on ourselves as well as on our labors in Your service, that we may save both ourselves and those to whom we minister. For we ask it in Your name, Lord Jesus, amen.