Introduction to 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus
1 Timothy; 2 Timothy; Titus · Vern Peterman · Jul 3, 2011
1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926239355909

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to be looking at these books, 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus, oftentimes called pastoral epistles. Neither Timothy nor Titus were technically pastors. So it's somewhat of a misnomer in a certain respect. But they each were on assignment by Paul, delegated to carry out specific ministry until the assignment was complete. We could call them apostolic delegates. In other words, they weren't technically apostles in the official and full sense. They weren't pastors per se, but they were apostolic delegates. They were on assignment from Paul, who was indeed an apostle. It's interesting that a lot more has been revealed about Timothy than about Titus. We can easily summarize the reasons for this here, and you've got three bullets.

Timothy's beginnings in association with the Apostle Paul start in Acts 16 and continues in each chapter through Acts 20. So 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 is where we have Timothy showing up. Titus is not mentioned in Acts at all. Timothy is mentioned 19 times in Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, Philemon in Hebrews, sometimes as a co-author with Paul.

Several of them. Even the brief book of Philemon is written with Timothy shown as a co-author. Titus, on the other hand, is mentioned only in 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 2 Timothy, and Titus, a total of 13 times. Most of those times, his name shows up in 2 Corinthians. Timothy has two letters addressed to him in the New Testament, totaling ten chapters, whereas you have Titus, one letter of three chapters. So we know more about Timothy than we do about some of the apostles, interestingly enough.

And next week we're actually going to be taking a look for the whole class, class time, at the spiritual growth of Timothy. There's enough information there to work with that we can kind of track and see how did he start and How did the Lord grow him and how did Paul's assignments and choices and care for Timothy help bring him along spiritually? I think that's going to be very interesting to see as we have talked even in the elective before about spiritual growth. Taking a look at Timothy and saying, okay, what were the inputs to his spiritual growth?

So here's what we know about Timothy, and this is the short version. We could put more detail, but I think this gets the point across. First time we see Timothy is selected by Paul from among the believers in the cities of Galatia, where Paul had been on his first missionary journey, but was just beginning a second missionary journey. Let's take a look at that up on the screen. Here is Paul's first missionary journey.

He starts off ultimately from Antioch, goes through Cyprus, and then goes up and makes a loop through the cities in Galatia, in southern Galatia. That's the Roman province of Galatia. And then he loops back. As he loops back, he appoints elders. And then heads back to Antioch.

That's his first missionary journey. He travels along with whom? Who's the one that goes along with him on his first missionary journey? Barnabas. Barnabas, yes. So Barnabas goes on the first journey with him. Okay? So that's the first one. Now, then, let's see. Here we go.

Paul's second missionary journey, he starts off, and where does he begin the second journey? A little different. So he starts off in Jerusalem, right? Goes up to Antioch where he had begun his first journey, and then what does he do? He goes through the same cities that he had been in Galatia on his first journey. He goes through them a second time. And guess where he goes on his third journey? These same places. But on the beginning of his second journey, what you find is he goes to these cities here, Iconium and Lystra, and it's in those nearby cities, cities next to each other, where he picks up Timothy.

So Paul circumcised Timothy, whose mother, her name was Eunice, this comes from 2nd Timothy, was Jewish, but whose father was Greek. Now let's talk about this. His mother was Jewish and his father was Greek. What does that tell us? Well, the Jewishness is passed down through mom, supposedly. Alright, good. Anything else? It also has a Greek influence. So he's got Greek background. And so you got Jewish mother, Greek father. Paul circumcised him. What did that tell you? Well, you got that right. But let's ask something else.

What was the time when you circumcised a Jewish boy? Eight days, right? But he was a whole lot more than eight days old, right? So what apparently happened is he was born and the Greek father either at a minimum didn't care to see that this was done or maybe even opposed it.

And let's ask something else. What's a Jewish woman doing getting married to a Greek man? What's that? Jumping over the traces. Was that supposed to happen? The Greeks wouldn't have a problem with it, but the Jews should have a problem with it. And so this is actually a marriage that shouldn't have happened according to the Jewish law. So there was at some point in there some kind of negligence. So what's Paul doing is he's saying, look, Timothy, you're half Greek.

And this circumcision was not performed when you were eight days old as it should have been, but in order for you to have some validity out there when you go out among the Jews, because we're going to encounter Jews along the way, we need to circumcise you now. Right? Okay. And we'll revisit this theme if we have time here.

So here's Timothy accompanied Paul and or assisted him throughout the rest of the second missionary journey and through all but the last part of the third missionary journey. At some points, Paul would leave Timothy behind to continue ministry as Paul proceeded on to the next place of ministry. And sometimes it was because Paul was in hot water. And so Timothy could stay behind and continue ministry while Paul needed to get out of there.

So that could happen. The two letters to Timothy in his brief mention in Philemon and Hebrews, Timothy is said to have been released from prison, are the last we know of Timothy from scripture. There are some outside traditions, I'm not sure how reliable to to count them, but let's move on to Titus. Most of what's known about Titus is from these three letters that we mentioned, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and 2 Timothy, and a letter written directly to Titus. Paul seems to have placed Titus alone into the most difficult of circumstances and challenging of ministries. We're going to go into this more in detail later, but where did Paul send Titus when he wrote this letter of Titus to him? Where did he send him?

Now, what would be so challenging about Crete? What's the big deal with Crete? Well, there's some pretty derogatory statements about Cretans. Yeah. And what Paul does, rather than directly insult them, he quotes from a Cretan author to say these guys are shifty, shady characters. In Crete, it was considered to be a heroic thing to do, to deceive somebody, to befriend them and then to deceive them, especially if you could make money off of the deal. If somebody wanted a deception carried out, they would hire a Cretan. And there are written accounts of doing exactly that, where they would hire the Cretan to come in and carry out a fraud and deception in military or other terms. Yeah? So were they Arabic then, or Muslim, or what? No. No. But, it was, within that island, it was considered, you were looked up to If you could pull off a really great deception, guys would say, yeah, there you go.

Way to go guy. And, and, and the culture looked up to that as, as a very finely tuned art, the art of deception. So here, here's Titus who's supposed to go in and appoint elders. Men who are of men of integrity and honesty in this culture. Whoo! Good luck! Right? Yeah! I'm sure that's what Titus was wondering. Right?

So anyway, that's something we'll be taking a closer look at. But essentially it's like, you know, he's sending Titus into this area that's just full of deception. Towards Paul's last days, he sent Titus into Dalmatia Our modern day name for that is Kosovo, where we just had the NATO in for military activity a decade or so ago. Now, so here's Titus.

One curious point is that while Paul circumcised Timothy before taking him to the next stop in his journey, he did not circumcise Titus. Why do you think he? treated each one differently. Why circumcise Timothy? And matter of fact, it even sounds like he refused steadfastly to circumcise Titus. Why the apparently conflicted behavior? Titus wasn't Jewish. What's that? Was Titus Jewish? Titus was not Jewish. Timothy was, as we see, half Jewish. And as Carol pointed out, it's typically seen as the mother is the one through whom the Jewishness is passed on. So yeah, you're right about that. Let's take a look at page two.

So when were these books written? As we look at the book of Acts, in round numbers, Acts goes from about 30 AD to about 60 AD. Several years after that, when Paul is released, is when it appears that he wrote 1st Timothy and Titus, and we have here 63-66 AD. Timothy was being sent to Ephesus to deal with the false teachers, and Titus decreed to appoint elders. Let's look at one other thing.

What was the first contact with Ephesus from a Christian? When did that happen? Who made the first contact with Ephesus with introducing the Christian gospel? The Apostle Paul did, right? On his second journey. Remember the first one, he just made a loop through Galatia, didn't go as far as Ephesus. But on the second journey, Paul then went into Ephesus, right?

So here's Paul and he goes there again and in Acts 20 he talks to the elders from Ephesus. And then the next contact that we know of with Ephesus is when Paul sends Timothy. That would be the next apostolic contact. After Paul sending Timothy and writing 1 Timothy, what's the next we hear of Ephesus in the Bible? Well, at Acts 20 he had already talked about, you know, I spent three years here and I'm not going to see your face again. So here's Paul had been there. Timothy had been there.

When's the next place we hear about Ephesus in the Bible? Okay, the letter to the Ephesians was written right at the end of the time of Acts and before he wrote 1 Timothy. Revelation. Message to Revelation, there's the seven churches, Ephesus is the first of the seven churches, right?

So that's the next time that we hear about Ephesus, and it's amazing to compare. Ephesus, as far as we know, seems to be the city apart from Jerusalem that has the most ongoing apostolic contact. from anything that's recorded. Very interesting. Decade after decade of apostolic contact. Basically something like half a century. Okay. Second Timothy, the last book that we have by Paul, was written about 67 AD, shortly before Paul's death. Why would we say shortly before Paul's death? Second Timothy was shortly before his death. Why? Why would we think that? Passing the banner, good. And what other clues do we have? What did he say?

I have fought the good fight. I finished, I'm just about done. Right? I'm just about done. Yeah, being poured out as a drink offering. I'm just about through. Yeah. So we have several indicators there that he's very near the end. Yeah. It's also right before 70 A.D. before the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul died before that. Yeah. Yeah.

So this is getting to be his last days. We don't know, but it may have been the last thing he wrote. Possibly. Right? Now, what these books have in common, we show this in the middle of page 2, here are quotes from 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. Each of them, at least once, gets called my son or my child. Is Paul being derogatory? Is he being, you know, patternizing?

What's the reason for that? He was a spiritual son. Yeah, a spiritual son. That's what he's referring to. He's not patting him on the head and treating him in some, you know, patternizing, condescending fashion. But what sense do you get when he writes this? A spiritual son. Do you get any other sense when you look at a true child in the face? My beloved son, my son, my true child? father-son relationship, a good father-son relationship. Yeah, he is deeply connected to them, he's not just saying, that a boy, you know, but he's actually deeply connected to them, he cares about them as his own.

So that's another thing, as you look at these letters, excuse me, as you look at the letters There might be an inclination to think, well, this is just some sort of technical assignment, just like you might give to somebody who's on a business trip or something. But this goes more deep than that. Yes.

And I think also Paul was probably kind of a hard guy to get along with. I mean, he was so zealous and so goal-oriented. Yeah, Paul was just really driven. Imagine, he'd go into a town and he wouldn't go around and beat the bushes for funds, right? So you can imagine, here's Paul. He comes into a town and he says, OK, Timothy.

You know how to make tents? No. Well, you're going to learn. Here, let me tell you about being identified with Christ while we sew these pieces together here. He even used a tent maker's term when he wrote to Timothy, as we'll find out. What's translated, you know, rightly dividing, that word means to cut the tent pieces along the pattern line. So that when you put the pieces together, there's no gaps or flaps. So, yeah. What? I just sort of have a question about the spiritual father part. Yes. Wouldn't he be more of a brother than to put himself sort of in the fatherly position? No one is called father. Ah, okay.

Notice that he calls them a son and has an endearing thing of that sort. But does he introduce himself with the title father as he talks to them? Not really. So he's talking about son as a closeness of relationship. He's talking about a son in terms of being the one that introduced them to the faith.

But he's not asking for the title father. Plus there's a spiritual fatherhood there. He's not looking for titles. He's not looking for that sort of thing. But he is looking for relationship. And that's something that we're going to see as we go farther along.

Here's one of the interesting things. Nobody in the whole New Testament gets called pastor as a title except for Christ. So real interesting. He gets called the chief shepherd. That's the word translated, pastor. So there can be relationship without title. And I think that's what Christ was pointing to. He was going around accumulating titles. Does that help? Yeah. Yes?

In many places it addressed the spirituality of his parents. What was Timothy's background? Here's one of the things we're going to see, and it will come as we study in the letter. It is mentioned that both his mother and his grandmother, Timothy's mother and his grandmother, Mother Eunice, Grandmother Lois, a couple of names you probably recognize, taught him the Old Testament scriptures. And we will read about that as we proceed through our study. Does that answer your question? Yeah, at least for now. We're going to get a little bit more detail on that and what the outcome of that is. So here's Timothy.

Imagine his mother being married to a Greek was not something that was supposed to happen. But interestingly enough, both the grandmother and the mother cared enough to pass along to him the Old Testament Scriptures. And so that gave him a head start. He had background in the Old Testament Scriptures while apparently not, like Paul, a dogged obedience to every detail of the Old Testament law. So he had understanding that would help him to pick things up quickly without having all the meticulous care for and concern for every detail of the law.

Okay, next part here. In addition to these enduring names, Paul also writes to each of them about the qualifications of elders. 1 Timothy 3, 1-7 and Titus 1, 5-9. So as he writes to these men, he uses an expression with each of them at least once in each letter that he uses with no others.

1 Timothy 1.15, it's a trustworthy statement. Deserving full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners among whom I am foremost of all He writes it's a trustworthy statement Basically five times What we have here in the fifth instance in Titus is this is a trustworthy statement actually in the Greek They're all the same And and that is faithful the word or faithful to saying is actually the the literal meaning of the original language there Can you think of a reason that Paul would use this expression with these two men, but not others? He didn't write to any of the churches he didn't write to Philemon with this is a faithful saint Yeah, well these were his They were working for him, basically.

So he was giving them particular instruction because of their role. Good point. Let's think, as he's uniquely training them up and giving them guidance, why would this kind of term, faithful the word, or this is a trustworthy statement, why would that sort of thing be helpful to point out at particular points? I think part of it comes from their Greek upbringing as well and the fact that they were not enmeshed in the Gospels and in the Old Testament. So what they heard and what they had practiced and lived in their life may have been not to the degree that Paul had as a Pharisee and as a teacher. So he needed to give them some particular direction and instruction. Well, they particularly.

Now, in any field of knowledge, there are some fundamental principles that you want to make sure you pass along. In engineering school, there were two things you had to remember. Force is equal to mass times acceleration, and you can't push on a rope. In business school, they said, OK, we got the four P's of marketing, you know, and they did product price and place and promotion.

Right. So so you got these basic principles. He's doing that with these guys, too. He's saying, look, here are the basic principles you guys need to, you know, if anything counts, this counts. Right. So he's given these are the tools and the principles that you'll have to work with.

And so as he's setting these guys out into these challenging ministries, you imagine going into a place like Ephesus, here's something like a quarter million people, and this place is just pagan mayhem. I mean, it's just a mess. And then you come into a place like that, you've got people renting out little boys, and you've got people that are trick dice players, and you've got people doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Yeah, it's just nuts. And in a place like that, you come in there and you're supposed to set things straight, right? Good luck. Huge job, yes.

Unless he was really young. I don't know what Titus, it doesn't say much about Titus as far as his age, but he was there several times due to the fact that Timothy was so young. Yes, yeah, we get the impression from Timothy he was pretty young. And by the way, what's interesting is by this time Timothy was approaching 40 when he says he's young. for what it's worth.

So he's giving them basic tools as they go out into very challenging and difficult ministry. Something else here, we have a listing that starts in the middle of page three and rolls over into the next page. What do you see in This pattern of 1 Timothy 1.10 has this word pair, sound teaching. The next one, sound doctrine, sound words, sound words.

What do you think he's trying to get across? What they're missing today. Okay, foundational, what they're missing today. What's he, what's he, I mean, it's like he's hammering this thing home. Sound words, sound doctrine, sound teaching. What's his point? Yeah. Here is this term, sound words, what we point out here, this word sound, translated sound, it's the Greek word from which we get our English word hygiene. It has to do with health. So he's saying when you go in there, you've got, to kind of put a paraphrase, you've got healthy doctrine and you've got sick doctrine. And he says between the two, which one do you pick? You pick the healthy doctrine, right? And he hammers it home in 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. He continues it on with Titus, and with Titus he does it a lot, and there's only three chapters.

Sound in the faith. Sound doctrine. Sound in faith. Continues hammering these things home. What's going to be so important about that word pair? Sound doctrine. Sound teaching. About that word sound. What's going to be so important as they step into Ephesus? As they step into Crete? They're going to need to stand. What are the guys in Crete going to want to do? I mean, we talked about their culture. The guys in Crete, what are they going to want to do? Deceit, yeah, I mean that's the summary word for what they're going to try to do. Deception is what they major in. That's their specialty. So he says sound words. Yes.

You know, after the death of Christ, you've got all the false teachings there. You had all the gods. You had the Roman Pantheism. You had drugs and alcohol. Anything you wanted. Pharmacia. Religious buffet. Yeah. And the Romans didn't care how you mixed it up. They really didn't. As long as you do your kind of cursory, you know, yeah, Caesar's a great guy. They don't care what, you know, match anything. You know, five different religions, two, nineteen, they don't care. It's all fine with them. So the idea of there being sound, solid doctrine, not mixed up with all this stuff, and not doing a mix and match, that's what Paul keeps harping on.

Whether it's Titus going into this deceptive and syncretistic environment at Ephesus, excuse me, Timothy going into that environment, or Titus going into the credence, yes? It's also, I just thought, it's interesting to think that Paul was taught by Jesus. We have a very correct teaching hierarchy here. It's not like one seminary where you have people that are taught by numerous different people all the way down. So this was probably a message that Paul got from Christ himself.

Remember to emphasize this point. Now we've got an interesting contrast. He writes to Timothy three times, twice in 1 Timothy and once in 2 Timothy. Timothy, I charge you. And interestingly enough, he doesn't just put it that way. He says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. Why would he be so emphatic and repetitive with Timothy, but not Titus?

Hmm. We've so far looked at things that they have in common. This is an interesting difference. As you read that, especially if he doesn't just say, I charge you, do this. I charge you, say that. He says, I charge you, and he says, in the presence of God and Jesus Christ. Sometimes with variations on those words.

But why does Timothy need to hear this? And what does Paul mean by it? Okay? But obviously you want Titus to tell the truth and emphasize sound doctrine. Sure. And, I mean, it's not that he doesn't care so much about Titus, is it? But why would he repeatedly, Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God?

That's very interesting. Hmm. Let me ask this question. If it's dated, does that imply a need? No. Yes? No? What's that? I was thinking about the verse in 2 Timothy, where he's teaching Timothy to teach others to teach others. Right. Okay. With Timothy, one of the things that you see is more of a handing off of the baton. And it's written more that way than it is with Titus. With Titus, it more explicitly is about the character of the people in Crete and what you've got to deal with. With Titus, there's an interesting difference in the relationship.

You get more of this sense of, I'm passing the baton to you. And I think that these words, I charge you, come along with that. He says, Timothy, I charge you, why? It's because I know you're the guy I'm going to be handing things off to. And I want you to grasp the sense of importance of what I'm passing on to you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus.

And I want you to use a term, passing the baton. I can remember, well it's been a while, but, you know, running track and, you know, you want to get the baton and not just, oh boy, we dropped it and run back and get it. You want to make sure you got the grip on this thing. And so here's Paul, he's wanting to pass things on to Timothy, and there's much more of that sense of, I'm passing the baton to you, take it. Take it. Don't drop it. Don't fumble it. Take it just like it is and continue on. anxious and maybe a little bit reserved and shy.

And for this kind of guy to take over for Paul, who's the exact opposite, that might have been quite a contrast. Yeah, Paul, five shipwrecks and you just shake it off. You get stoned and you just kind of get up and brush the rocks off. Timothy, as we'll read through it, you get a sense of, oh, here's a guy, maybe a little timid, you know, he kind of needs to be really firmly set, and look, this is the way to go, because Paul's not there to watch everything. But what he has seen before is there's some indication this Timothy guy needs a little bit more guidance and direct connection to what Paul's saying.

Compared to like the eldest son in a family, they kind of were the chosen son and the other sons were sons, but they weren't the major sons. Yeah, and that could be a part of sort of the handoff. Now, it is possible that There are other aspects of Paul's relationship with Titus that don't show up in just the three chapters that we have. But very clearly with Timothy, there is a concern for, you know, the handoff to Timothy and that Timothy would continue on with what Paul's given them. And so that comes across real clearly. If that was true of Titus at all, it doesn't seem to come across in the same way in the letter written to Titus in the three chapters that we've got.

So anyway, we'll be looking at these three books between now and the end of the year. What's the particular value in us reading these things How many of you are planning on being apostolic delegates sometime soon? Yeah, probably none of us. So what's the value in reading these? What's the value in studying them and taking a look at them? Why is this particularly helpful? AOL where they had this big article written by a pastor who was listing all the different places in scripture where it talked about that and how it was a cultural thing, justifying all those different things.

He was not teaching sound doctrine. And it's really interesting to see this, that the emphasis, again, is on what Christ taught and what Christ did, and you can't deviate from that. It's a simple and sound doctrine. And you can't make it complex and you can't deviate from that.

And a lot of people argue with Christ is the only way, but there's all kinds of ways to heaven, right? Ultimately, you can get people who say just about anything about the Bible. And you can find it. If they say they're Christians, you guys go to seminary and get doctorate degrees and they come out and say all sorts of things. But is that THE faith? Is that sound doctrine? Is that sound teaching? With the implication spiritually healthy?

And the answer is no. Because there is only one intended meaning. There is one set of teachings of the apostles. And it didn't include what people try to justify. Popular appeal, yeah. So you'll have whole denominations where it'll be a minority that will object. They're just reading, you know, 200 Methodist pastors decide they're going to stand against the denomination's decision to conduct gay marriages.

So, yeah. And this is the right way, it should happen this way, and you can use a lot of reasoning and a lot of philosophies and a lot of things to justify your position because it seems right. And so, it's no different than that. Any other reasons you can think of while it would be good for us to study these books?

There are varying degrees of importance. We need to be able to stand and we need to be able to love what is the truth so that we can be able to explain it. Here is in 1 Timothy, excuse me, in Titus chapter 1 verse 9. An elder must be able to refute what is false and stand on what is true. Does that have any value to the rest of us? Well, certainly, yeah.

Knowing what's true and what's false definitely matters, right? The focus on what's healthy. It says that there's sickly stuff out there, right? And the emphasis on what's healthy isn't just for the pastors and apostolic delegates, but is to be carried out into the people in the church, okay? So yes, those things do definitely matter. It does make a difference. Let's ask this question. Is there anything about the identification truths in these books? As we'll discover, the answer is yes. I see faces showing up in the glass there, so I better close it up here. Okay?

Lord, we do thank you as we As we look at these books, as we begin to see what you have inspired word for word, as we'll even see in 2 Timothy, God breached for our benefit. We look forward to a very beneficial time. We look forward to a time that's spiritually profitable. And we give you thanks for what you've revealed because you love us so very much. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.