Category: Biblical Commentary

Paul’s First Command To Timothy: Pray

Prayer is our most unused tool in the church.

Our prayers become formulaic, everyone has to sound like they are praying, with all the “Father Gods” and “Lords” and King James English and breathy tones. We know what it sounds like to pray, so we do our best to sound like that.

If your voice changes when you pray, you’re probably praying for the audience.

On top of that, most of our prayers are only concerned with physical things, and mostly with our health. If it weren’t for getting sick, I don’t know that most Christians would ever pray.

As a pastor, it’s very important that you pray right. People will follow your example whether you want them to or not.

By “right,” I of course mean biblically. You don’t have to measure up to my standard. You should measure up to God’s.

How you pray will impact your life; how you live will impact your prayers.

Our prayers should reflect the new life in Christ made available in the Gospel. We should have new concerns, things that are higher than this earth, things that would come out of the mouth of a citizen of heaven.

If we are made new spiritual creations in Christ Jesus, you would think our primary concerns would be for spiritual things.

You would think so, but no casual glance at Christianity reflects this.

We pray as if we are merely physical people and all our concerns are physical. New jobs, new cars, knee problems, cancer treatments, kid’s taking tests, etc.

Certainly these things are real concerns and we are told we can pray about all things. Nothing wrong with praying about these things. Did you hear me?! There’s nothing wrong with praying about these things.

BUT DON’T FORGET THE SPIRITUAL COMPONENT WHICH IS FAR GREATER!

When people want me to pray for their cancer treatments or desire for a new job, I will always include something along the lines of “help them learn whatever they can through this experience and lead them to spiritual growth.” I even go so far as to say, “If them having cancer draws them closer to you, then let them have cancer. If healing them will draw them closer; then heal them.” You’ll be amazed at how fewer people will ask you to pray for all their issues!

Raise people’s vision higher. Remind them of our spiritual selves that will live for eternity.

Before Paul tells Timothy anything directly related to how to be a leader in a church, he says:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, (1 Timothy 2:1-3)

The first thing Paul brings up is prayer! Primarily prayer for people, and especially for people in positions of authority.

Why the focus on praying for people, particularly those in authority?

Because Paul wants us to shut up.

The church should not be marked with political wrangling and theorizing and bashing on authority. The world does that. Those are the world’s people dealing with the world’s concerns. They have nothing else. For after all these things do the Gentiles (the unsaved nations) seek.

Christians are different. The world can have the world. The world is dead to me (Galatians 6:14).

We wrestle not against flesh and blood. Donald Trump is not your enemy. Joe Biden is not your enemy. Satan is. Don’t be fooled. Pray for all these people, as most of them are caught in Satan’s grip. Pray for their souls.

If you viewed your political enemies as souls who will spend eternity somewhere, and spent more time praying for them than bashing them, I imagine your heart would be softened. I imagine that would lead to a quiet and peaceable life.

Praying constantly for the spiritual help of everyone around you will make you quiet, peaceful, godly, and dignified.

People red in the face angry, screaming and carrying on, is not a mark of one who is born from above. Of one who has been placed into the body of the Prince of Peace. Of one who has the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, PEACE).

Our prayers should raise us above the fray.

Oh yes, I know, here’s where That One Guy says, “Don’t be so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good.”

Never in the history of humanity has anyone ever been too heavenly minded. Jesus Christ, who actually came from heaven to earth, and then went back to heaven, was the most perfectly heavenly minded person ever and He had quite the impact down here.

Don’t buy into that stupid line.

You will never in a million years be too heavenly minded. That is in fact one of our main problems in life: we are too earthly minded. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life consume us. Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Etc.

Being excessively heavenly minded is exactly what we should be and it’s desperately what people in our church need to see in their pastor.

If you were heavenly minded your prayers would reflect it. Pray for people. This is where Paul starts with Timothy.

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If you’d like to hear more of what I think the Bible says to pastors that will annoy people, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!

Pastoral Ministry is Warfare

Paul calls Timothy’s ministry “warfare.” I love this (1 Timothy 1:18).

The word means military service, your tour of duty. I’ve heard many pastors who retired or left the ministry talk about their time in it. Certainly sounds like guys returning from the battlefield to swap war stories. I know I have mine.

Ministry isn’t easy and there are many battles to be fought. The first battle is with your own sin, pride, and various other things that can take you down.

That’s why Paul tells Timothy right after this to “hold faith and a good conscience” (1:19). Stick with the faith, you’re not done, the just shall live by faith. A good conscience, which is informed by Scripture and empowered by the Holy Spirit, will keep you from veering from it.

Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. When you lose grip on faith, sin happens. When sin happens, the spiritually mature person’s conscience will alert them.

If you veer from the faith and your conscience is spoiled or hardened, you will make shipwreck of your faith and your ministry will be a disaster.

Paul mentions Hymeneaus and Alexander in verse 20. These two guys did leave the faith and lost their good conscience. Paul handed them over to Satan.

This is the second battle the pastor will face: Battling idiots in the church. False teachers, deceivers, and just plain old ignorant fools are making a mess of the church. The pastor’s overseer and protector job is largely concerned with these people.

One of the hardest parts of being a pastor for me was seeing my own battle with sin, and yet having to discipline someone in the church for their sin and the division they were causing in the church because of it.

“Who am I to do this?”

Part of this was my fault for not taking my sin seriously enough to knock it off. Part of it was insecurity, sometimes brought on by a bad conscience. I knew my sin. I knew the rationalizations my flesh made with it. What if they find out? What if they do ask me “Who are you to tell me” when they actually might have a point?

I hated church discipline situations. Having the awkward conversations that had to be confronted. Hated every second of it.

In hindsight, I could have been better at keeping the faith and a good conscience. If I had done that, I imagine I would have approached these battles with more confidence in the Lord. I kind of have to say though, that my recurring battles with sin did keep me humble and I think that helped in some of these situations.

But that’s probably just more self-justifications.

Ministry is war. If yours isn’t, you either have a perfect church or you’re not paying attention to yourself and your sin, or to people in your church.

I know some happy pastors who don’t view their ministry as warfare. They seem to have zero self-awareness and confront no one on anything ever.

You can indeed have a non-warfare ministry if you desire one. It won’t help anyone and don’t be shocked if false teaching overtakes your church at some point.

And, just so we don’t forget: we wrestle not against flesh and blood. The weapons of our warfare are not physical but spiritual.

There’s another realm of warfare going on too. I felt it several times during my 21 years in ministry warfare. There was definitely something bigger going on. Too many coincidental things to be merely coincidental.

If you’re not feeling the slings and arrows in ministry, you’re probably not doing much spiritual ministry. If you are feeling the battle, congrats! Good job. It means you’re probably doing something right.

At all points of the battle, before, during, or after, hold fast to the faith and a good conscience. Do battle with your own sin and pride.

Don’t shipwreck yourself or others.

Fight the fight!

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If you’d like to hear more details about my depressing experiences pastoring my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!

Good Preaching Annoys Bad Sinners

I am working my way through the Pastoral Epistles one post at a time. The next section is 1 Timothy 1:8-11, which says that the law is to be used correctly. People who don’t have sound doctrine will always say weird things about the law.

Legalists add to it and constantly bash people into the ground over scruples, most of which can be seen. There’s always an external something you’re supposed to do to conform, and if you don’t show that external thing they pounce on you.

Some go the other way and stretch grace and love so far that it leads to lasciviousness. They find ways to eliminate all law, and often endeavor to explain how we can do all the things the law says we can’t and that God is cool with this.

Both are wrong.

Paul said the law is not made for a righteous person, but for a long list of sinner types. Read the list sometime. It’s in 1 Timothy 1:9-10. He lists 14 sinful types of people and then adds “and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.”

I imagine that includes a lot of stuff.

I’ve often heard people whine that doctrine is impractical and irrelevant; it just gets in the way of unity. It’s just arguing about theories of the atonement or theories of the trinity and other issues that have nothing to do with, like, real life, man.

This is incredibly stupid.

The reason people don’t like doctrine is because sound doctrine always leads to sound behavior. When you’re taught right; you act right. People enjoy their sin, that’s why there’s so much bad doctrine in the church today.

Sound doctrine, according to 1 Timothy 1:11, is in accordance with the Gospel.

There are many warped gospels in the church: Easy Believism, the Health and Wealth Gospel, Universalism, Fatalistic Calvinism, etc. All of these exist because people don’t have right doctrine because they would rather sin and get away with it.

One of the main jobs of a pastor is the preaching of the Word. This preaching should be according to sound doctrine, which will put you at odds with sinners and the sins they enjoy.

Many pastors cave here. They feel the desire to preserve or manufacture unity trumps the teaching of sound doctrine. Some cave because they know their church can’t afford to lose more donors. Some don’t mention right doctrine and wrong sins because they themselves are in bondage to sins.

There are many reasons for preaching bad doctrine and none of those reasons are good.

There is one reason to preach sound doctrine and that’s because God says to do it! I suggest you go ahead and do that regardless of how many people it bothers or how much humility or repentance it might require in you.

People like to sin. If you preach against sin, people will not like you. Tough. Deal with it. It’s the job. If you’re not willing to do that, then get a different job.

Make sure you’re doing it in love though! Some pastors turn into massive jerks here. Speak the truth in love. The desired outcome is the salvation of souls and the edification of believers, not an uber-powerful pastor who slams everyone around.

If you’re not willing to preach the truth in love, then get a different job.

Sound doctrine is what people need. In order to help them get it, the pastor has to have it. Sound doctrine is always shown by righteous living, which is why the qualifications for church leadership are all based on righteous living.

This is a big deal. Get this right.

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom” that shrunk my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!

A Loving Ministry Will Kill You

1 Timothy 1:5
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Paul charged Timothy to keep the church in Ephesus faithful to the apostle’s doctrine (1:3-4). He was to do this by avoiding other doctrines, myths, and endless genealogies.

The whole point of the charge given to Timothy is love.

Love is a big deal with God.

This probably has something to do with the fact that God is love. Could be.

Unfortunately, we’ve totally destroyed the word love. I have no idea what you think love means.

1 Corinthians 13 is the best biblical definition of love, but it’s long. Has a lot of verses. So maybe the ultimate best definition of love in the Bible is this: Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends. Or perhaps: God demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The ultimate expression of love is the Gospel itself. That God the Creator died for His rebellious creation. Amazing love how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me?

Having all the right doctrine along with the ability to avoid evil impulses in your ministry is all good, but if there’s no love, you’ll have problems.

This harks back to 1 Corinthians 13: if you have all knowledge and yet no love, it profits you nothing. Knowledge puffs up, it’s what it does. Knowledge needs love.

Love rejoices in the truth. Therefore, one must conclude that love sometimes hurts. Only a loving father corrects his son.

This love is no joke. Proving you love someone by saying you do is not the deal. This love is to come from a PURE heart, GOOD conscience, and SINCERE faith.

All those words mean the same thing: undiluted, genuine, true and honest by any examination.

You can’t play at love.

If a pastor does not love the people under his charge, he will not feed or protect them. There are many hirelings in the church today, pastors who are in it for the money, power, prestige, the challenge of growing an institution, or for who knows what fleshly reason.

The only reason for anyone to be a pastor is to give yourself away serving others. You do this through the proper understanding and teaching of God’s Word. This will first of all change your life, and then spread to change lives around you.

If you’re not approaching your ministry with love, your doctrine will suffer and the people under your care will suffer.

There are pastors in the ministry for wrong reasons. They don’t love the people, oh they say they do, they do showy things to make it appear as though they love, but most are getting selfish gain for their public displays. I’ve heard many pastors bad-mouth the people in their churches or mock them when they aren’t around.

There are a lot of these guys.

Timothy was not supposed to be one of those guys.

If you don’t love the people, if you’re not willing to sacrifice yourself and what you have for them, if you’re not willing to get paid less, or not have days off, it’s possible you don’t love the people.

I know, I know, there should be healthy boundaries etc. From a human and business perspective, of course. Duh.

From the standpoint of your Savior who gave Himself for you, maybe not. The Apostle Paul said, “I die daily.” He didn’t say, “I die daily, I mean, except for my days off. I mean we all need sabbaticals and days off. Oh and I better be compensated fairly for that too. Holiday pay right?”

I’m sure this is dangerous advice and causes pastors to burn out and destroy their mental health.

Oh well. Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. We’re too soft in our day. We’re also too busy doing tons of stuff that no church or pastor should be doing. Busy work is what’s burning people out, not actual ministry and teaching the Word.

Get your priorities right. Cut the junk that is not edifying people. Give yourself away. Take up your cross and deny yourself. Whoever loses His life for Jesus’ sake will find it. Stop being a wuss. Instead, get biblical perspectives and priorities and give yourself over to your Commander and Shepherd who gave His life for you.

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom” that shrunk my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!

Preach Biblical Doctrine. That’s it. Just Biblical Doctrine. Period.

1 Timothy 1:3-4

As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

According to Paul, Timothy’s main job as a shepherd of the church at Ephesus was to continue teaching the apostle’s doctrine. If a church/pastor is not going to teach biblical doctrine, what will they teach?

Paul says your other options are “different doctrine,” “myths,” and “endless genealogies.”

“Different doctrine” seems pretty straight forward! It’s just other stuff you’re teaching that has nothing to do with the Bible. Notice he didn’t even say “false doctrine.” There are other things you can teach that are true and fine, just aren’t supposed to be taught in the church.

In other words, a guy could get up and teach about how to pay off your mortgage efficiently, or change the oil in your car, or any number of other things. If you want to do that, do it on your own time. The purpose of the church is to teach biblical doctrine as revealed by the apostles. Period. That’s it. Nothing else.

“Myths” are stories, fictional accounts, words that are designed to entertain rather than instruct from Scripture. Perhaps showing modern day movie clips as sermon illustrations would fit in, I don’t know, who’s to say? Me, that’s who. Don’t do that.

Also beware of your sermon illustrations you get off the internet or from a book. So many of these illustrations are not true. They are fiction. When frogs are placed in pots of water, as the water heats up the frog will indeed try to get out. How dumb do you think they are? All living things have a desire to stay living. They don’t just sit there and get boiled to death. Sheesh. Look up some stuff.

People charged with detecting counterfeit dollars don’t just sit and stare at real dollars all day so they can identify fake ones. Nope, they study what counterfeiters are up to, learn their tricks, and watch out for that.

Eagles don’t fly above storm clouds. Eagles are birds. In storms eagles act like birds. What do birds do in storms? They sit around and wait. That’s what eagles do. Stop telling people to soar above the storms like the eagles, man. No eagle does that.

I could go on. Any sermon illustration that is popular should immediately make you skeptical. It’s fake. It’s not real, I can almost guarantee it.

Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal to tell a false story to make a spiritual point. If you are standing in front of a church you are required to speak truth. Only speak what is true. Check your sources.

“Endless genealogies” could mean several things. Some think this is a Jewish thing where they look at the genealogical records in the OT and celebrate the awesomeness of their family or tribe, turning these records into reason to be superior to others.

Some think it has to do with things like dating historical events. Like Bishop Usher coming up with the exact time the earth was created (October 22, 4004 BC if you’re wondering).

I have no idea what this term really means. What I do know is this: Don’t be talking about your past as though it were the barometer of your present state. Whether we’re talking family or church tradition or strictly biblical genealogies, doesn’t matter. Past performance is no indicator of present conditions or future results.

All these things, different doctrines, myths, endless genealogies, all have the same effect: endless arguing and questions.

One thing that drove me nuts after 21 years of pastoring was the amount of stupid arguments I had to be in all the time. I started very few of these, but there were people who came into the church with axes to grind, people who were not dedicated to the truth of Scripture, but caught up on some stupid opinion of theirs based on an obscure verse or variant doctrine whose origin remains unknown.

I actually had a guy in our church who argued about genealogies all the time. Once at an evening basketball game for men our church put on, he took himself out of the game to sit by me on the bench and immediately launched into his genealogy argument on me.

I never in my life started an argument about genealogies; I’m nailing this part of the Pastoral Epistles. But that doesn’t mean I was never in an argument about genealogies!

People like to argue. Gentiles seek wisdom, we like to sit around and pontificate and hear some new thing. Mars Hill in Acts 17 is still where many people hang out.

Learn to shun these conversations, maybe even the people after a while. Goodness. Drop it. Let it go. Endless arguing does no favors for anyone.

Preach biblical doctrine. That’s it. Any time you open your mouth before the church, biblical doctrine should be coming out of it. That’s it! Nothing else. I don’t care about the cute illustration you saw on the internet. I don’t care about your family tradition and Uncle Randy’s theory about “new wine.”

Don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Biblical doctrine. That’s it.

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom” that shrunk my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!

Pastors, Mentors, and Biblical Doctrine

Timothy was Paul’s “true child in the faith.” That is an awesome title. How cool would it have been to have Paul as your father in the faith?!

Many years I prayed for a mentor, someone who could help me in my ministry. Give me some godly counsel, insight, and help. Someone to bounce some ideas off.

I used to talk to my dad a lot about pastoral things. What to say at funerals. What was that thing you’re supposed to say at weddings about power vesting and stuff? What do you think Romans 7:17 means? We would call each other on Saturday nights and talk about our sermons for the next day, go over points, bounce stuff off each other. It was cool.

Then four years in, he died.

Then there was no one. No one showed up even after all my praying for someone to. I tried with a couple older guys. I was open with them, revealed some stuff, hoped they would be a mentor. Instead the used the information against me, stabbed me in the back, and left the church.

So that was nice.

Instead of a mentor I went to the Bible. I read the Bible over 40 times in my 21 years of ministry. I had nowhere else to go. This was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

I know pastors who had mentors, spiritual friendships, and counselors. A few of them seemed to really benefit from it. Probably most just became warped into their mentor’s image. They seemed unable to have a free thought and just followed the leading of Their Guy.

It’s a mixed bag. What I do know is that having Paul for a mentor would have been awesome!

Paul prepared Timothy to defend right doctrine. He starts with the charge to not let anyone mess up the doctrine he gave them.

Doctrine is the foundational teachings of the faith. Doctrine is essential to spiritual growth and certainly to healthy churches. Messing up doctrine goes hand in hand with messed up behavior. It’s a chicken and egg thing, but I know they go together.

Bad conduct will lead to misusing Scripture and teaching terrible things. Our guilt will make us justify sins, which will lead to more sin. Misusing Scripture will lower the standard, warp it into following human ideas and will create bad manners.

Doctrine and behavior go together.

Many churches have decided that doctrine is too divisive.

Yeah, no kidding. Truth has that tendency. Chucking doctrine for “unity” or seeker sensitivity might sound like a good idea, and might even work great in the short term, but the long term effects will be devastating.

Doctrine does divide, but not if all people in the church truly desire truth. Sound doctrine is the only safe foundation. Our spiritual leaders need to be instructed in sound doctrine and given the authority and conviction to teach and uphold it.

Unfortunately, if a church decides to do this, people will leave. They will go to another church that has the doctrine they are comfortable with. There are so many choices in the church culture. The church with sound doctrine will probably shrink, while all those who leave those churches flock to the ones with the warped doctrine that satisfies the flesh.

Cynical? You betch’ya, but that’s what I see happening.

Paul’s mentorship wasn’t just about making Timothy’s dreams come true like a life coach. It wasn’t about establishing an institution or making it “grow.” It was simply about knowing, teaching, and fighting for sound doctrine.

Imagine if our church leaders today were equipped for such a thing. Amazing things would happen. For instance, 86% of all churches would close down almost immediately.

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If you’d like to hear more of my accumulated pastoral “wisdom” that shrunk my church, I wrote a book. CLICK HERE to get a copy of it. There are 9 tips for how to not grow your church for only $3.50!