Well, it's been interesting talking with people about the auditorium and about the Family Center and some of the different dynamics. I've been surprised how many people have said, oh, I'm going to kind of miss... I'm ready to slap them, you know. And very few people were able to quantify their feelings, but there's just something that they kind of enjoyed, a lot of people. But a couple people did respond to a recent Connection Card question. We have been meeting in the Family Center for the last seven weeks. What congregational dynamics have you observed during this time?" And this person writes, these are exciting times, double underline. How wonderful to be pushed out of our comfort zones and to see God working and growing our family. Moving forward is a wonderful thing. So there's some sense of sort of movement in the midst of all the chaos. Here's another person, something about meeting where most of the kids programs also take place brings a feeling of more togetherness? Like I'm not sure how to express it but kids crawling up on the catwalk and looking down over while we're singing and you know there's something that they liked about that. The kids, back to the quote, the kids have had some opportunities to observe slash join in the worship time and the change brings more awareness of others. I kind of interpreted that as maybe someone who doesn't have kids in those classes and yet they were able to see where the kids are at, have a sense of what goes on in some of the other parts of the building on a Sunday morning, and they thought that was a healthy thing. So, I appreciated someone who took some extra time to sort of think through that a little bit and process through some of those emotions and feelings. Our text this morning will be 1 Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4. One of my earliest memories, I was five or six years old at the time, I was going fishing with my dad. And that wasn't unusual, I did that on a number of occasions, but this particular occasion was memorable. For whatever reason, my mom was bringing me to the lake to meet my dad. And I don't remember what caused that type of a dynamic or if dad had other errands to run or what. But we were going to a lake that we went to often. It's now called Seymour Lake and I caught a big catfish there one year and so a lot of great memories from there and a familiar place to us as a family. And on this particular occasion, my mom was taking me. And the last couple times my dad and I had gone to this lake, we had parked further away. Used to drive right up next to the shore of the lake and unload our stuff. But the last few times I'd gone with my dad, we parked further away and walked in. And as we did, dad pointed out, he said, the little roadway went over a culvert. And you could see, if you peeled back some of the brush, you could see that it had been quite eroded. And it had become quite narrow across that section of the road, this little back trail. And so he said, we'll park out here and just walk in. So I had that backdrop. My mom did not. She was used to just driving in. And so I begin to protest as we get closer. We were supposed to park back here, Mom. And Mom's like, look, I've been here how many times, OK? Be quiet. And I become more insistent. I'm crying. I'm throwing a little fit in the back seat. Much to my mom's displeasure, at which point she simply tuned me out. So we get there to the edge of the lake, and my dad turns around with this strange look of horror and anger at my mom. What are you doing? How did you get back here? And she's like, well, I came the same way I always do, right? And he didn't say anything. He just said, like, follow me. And we walk back up the path, and he peels back all the overgrown grass. And there's like an inch to spare on either side of my mom's tires over this culvert here. And my mom understood. The light bulb sort of went on. I got no respect as a six-year-old, as a six-year-old kid, right? My words meant nothing, and rightfully so. But the issue of respect is an interesting one, isn't it? How do you earn respect? How do you command the right to be heard? I'll date myself a little bit, but a couple of figures from the 80s. Rodney Dangerfield. Right? I get no respect. He made a whole comic shtick out of that, you know, and he had the look to go along with it, right? You know, there was a reason why nobody respected him, right? I mean, he gave off the sense that he didn't know anything and he was stumbling and bumbling through life. And then, here's a blast from the past, E.F. Hutton. Right? You remember those commercials out of the 80s? He was a very well-known financial guru of the time, and when E.F. Hutton talks, people listen. That was the tagline of these commercials. So you have that polarity between Rodney Dangerfield and E.F. Hutton, and most of us will probably find ourselves somewhere in between. I just need to think about the issue of respect. Well, this is an issue that's raised here in this text, so I want to read 1 Timothy 4, beginning in verse 11. Hear the word of the Lord. 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. May God add his blessing to the reading of his word. So Timothy had been left there in Ephesus, been put in charge, and he was to carry out a set of responsibilities. He was to teach and to warn and correct, but Timothy had a problem. First of all, Timothy was of a timid disposition. Right? We can see in this passage, we can see in other passages that Timothy was a bit on the anxious side. He was maybe a bit of a worrier. He was maybe a bit melancholy, second-guessing himself all the time. Paul's kind of constantly saying, hey, you know, get out there. Come on. Don't shrink away. Timothy did not have the disposition of Paul, who seemed to be sort of this weathered warrior figure, very strong in character. As a matter of fact, Timothy even had seemingly some physical weaknesses. Paul is encouraging him to have a little wine for his stomach's sake. He had maybe a nervous stomach. Okay, we don't know all that was going on, but Timothy had that sort of going on. And the other issue that's actually specifically addressed here in this text, the other problem, was that Timothy was young. Now, the reality is he was probably 35. Doesn't sound that old to us, right? But the term was used to describe those who were of military age. And that brought you up to the age of 40, those who would serve in active military service. So Timothy's in his mid-30s, not necessarily a kid, but in terms of a teacher or a rabbi or a spiritual leader, he was a kid. He was very young. And so perhaps Timothy's already feeling this, right, in his own gut. as he embraces this responsibility, as he's trying to challenge and confront people who are older than him, more experienced than him. And Paul's identifying the dynamic as well, the issue of respect. Timothy might be like a six-year-old trying to get his mom's attention, right? How is this going to work? Now, I would suggest to you as we think about the context here that Timothy didn't want respect for some prideful reason. Hey, you respect me. I have this position. No, the whole sense here is that Timothy wanted and needed respect because he needed to be heard. He was bringing them a very important message. Right? Context. Verses 1-5, false teachers. These people were teaching salvation through human effort. No longer teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Christ put forward on our behalf, but they were teaching human righteousness as the the grounds of salvation. So, that was the problem. In verses 6 and following, Timothy was to step in and to confront this as a very serious concern. The purity of the church, the health of the church, they must remain rooted and grounded in the Gospel. So, Timothy needed respect. He needed to be respected. He needed to be heard. Not for the sake of being heard, but because the Gospel needed to be heard. God's Word needed to be heard. De Jesus' book, again, is the translation in the Hawaiian Pidgin English. We'll sometimes reference it to get a bit of perspective on a text. And I want to read verse 12 here from De Jesus' book. "'Hey, Timothy, go teach all this stuff, and tell the people to do them. Don't let nobody give you attitude just because you're more young than them. Don't let nobody give you attitude. That's the sense. Don't let anyone look down on you. Don't let anyone despise you. Don't let anyone think little of you or dismiss you out of hand. I found myself thinking about that this week. You're either respected or you're not, right? How do you control what someone else thinks of you? Paul says, don't let anyone think little of you. Well, that's a great sentiment, Paul, but what do I do? I can't control my age, right? I can't change my temperament. I can't change my physical constitution. How do I not let people look down at me? How do I command respect? Now, Timothy, we have a very unique situation here. Timothy is a pastor. He's been given an authority position in the church, and so we could go a number of different ways as we look at this text. Perhaps the primary application is, how do we guard against false teaching? We could talk about the role of a pastor as it relates to false teaching. We could talk about the priorities of the church and how the church guards against false teaching, how the church keeps the Gospel in the forefront. Those would all be perhaps the most straightforward way of dealing with this text. But I'm struggling this week to think in terms of application. How do we resonate with what's going on here in this text? And I think there is this issue of respect. We should want to be respected. We should seek to live a credible life. And I'm going to point you to a couple of passages here at the outset. This is not just an issue for Timothy. Now Timothy, again, his circumstances are very unique. His role was very unique. But I think this issue of Commanding respect is an important one. We are all gospel messengers. We have all been entrusted with the Word of God and given a commission to take the Word of God to the nations to make disciples. The issue of credibility is one that we must all answer. So I'm going to first take you to 1 Peter 2. You know this passage, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So Peter says, keep your conduct in such a way that even though they hate you and they hate your message, that they can't deny your life. They can't deny the beauty and the selflessness of your conduct. And that at the end of the day, that'll win them over. The next passage, Titus chapter two, this one's written specifically to slaves, or we might even say employees. Some of you employees feel like slaves sometimes, right? In the ancient world, this would be more of kind of the vocational setting, okay? Bond servants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything. They are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. So, again, here's a context that you ought to live in such a way That the gospel is presented in beauty. That your life, your character, your integrity affirms and draws attention to and brings credibility to your message. So again, very specific setting for Timothy here, but I think there's a great template here. As Paul talks with Timothy, there's a great template here to think about how we can command respect, how we can live in such a way as to be credible. So number one, see what we can learn from Timothy this morning. Number one, live an exemplary life. Specifically here in 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. So don't let anyone look down on you, Timothy. He just got finished saying, command and teach these things. So he's to have a verbal ministry. And don't let anyone be able to undermine your character, live in such a way that no one's able to argue with you, okay? So live in an exemplary way. It gets into a number of different areas here. First of all, speech. What are your speech patterns? Are your speech patterns such that people see something attractive in the gospel? Are you a complainer? Are you one who talks negatively about people when they're not around? Certainly the element of truthfulness. Are your speech patterns such that people would be given to trust what you say when it comes to important things, right? To the gospel. Are you known as a truthful person? So all these things in speech, in conduct, or in life, How about your financial dealings? How about your business ethics? How you conduct yourself in the workplace? Are you a hard worker? In love. Again, the idea here of self-sacrificing behavior. So it's not just Again, love as an emotion, but love as a choice, love as an action, agape love. Are you noted for sacrificing of your own time and your own comforts for the good of others? A true love is that a man would lay down his life for a friend, right? This would be the greatest demonstration of love. Is that type of love characteristic of your life? Are you making sacrifices for the good of others? Timothy was to model the God. This is the gospel, right? This is God's love for us. Are people seeing the gospel lived out in our lives in the way we treat one another? And faith? Is that an example in faith? This isn't speaking of, sometimes the word is used to describe the content of our faith, the gospel or the scriptures, but this is talking about a lifestyle of faith, an aspect of character. So are you a person who lives by your feelings, what your gut tells you, your sense of a certain situation and how you should respond, or are you a person who lives on the basis of faith? You do what God has instructed in His word, even if it doesn't make sense. I remember having a guy in my office a number of years ago, alcoholic background, And he was applying for a job, and there on the job it says, have you ever been in a residential treatment program for alcohol or other substance abuse? And he had been, been in a residential program. And he said, if I answer yes on this, then I won't get the job. I said, that's not true. You have no idea how that employer will respond. But you need to do the right thing, and you need to trust that God can handle the situation, right? That's living by faith. It goes against everything in how I would go about things and how I think things ought to work and how I ought to secure this job, but I trust that God's way is best. Timothy was to be an example in that type of orientation. And also an example, impurity. Primarily there, sexual purity, nature of your relationship with people of the opposite sex. You're flirtatious. You have a sense of healthy boundaries in that domain. Timothy was to be an example, to be distinct in that aspect of his life. I don't know how many of you are tracking such things, but the Detroit Lions hired a new general manager this week. Many years of futility, right, as a franchise. Bob Quinn, I believe, was the guy's name. I don't know much about his specific qualifications. He's quite young in many regards. He doesn't have any full-time experience as a general manager in any other professional franchises. So it seems from just that standpoint, perhaps seems like an odd choice. He was chosen for one reason, I think, and one reason only, and that is that he was the director of player personnel for the New England Patriots, who happened to be and have been for a long time a very successful franchise. And so the Lions basically said, we need a little bit of what they're You know, we need to drink a little bit of what they're drinking, right? We need somebody who brings that to the table. And it's this aspect of imitation, right? That's what we're talking about here. To conduct yourself in such a way that other people want to have what you have. One of the ways in which Timothy was to command respect, to win people over to a hearing, right? By living an exemplary life. Number two, do what you're supposed to do even when you don't want to. Do what you're supposed to do even when you don't want to. There's a mark of maturity that will earn you respect. Notice verse 13, "'Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.'" So Timothy had some specific responsibilities he was to carry out. They were in this domain of preaching and teaching. He was to read the Scriptures, which, by the way, people didn't have their own copy. So the reading of the Scriptures was so important for the health of the church that the Scriptures continued to be proclaimed. And by the way, I would suggest to you would be God's design for us to not only read the Scriptures, but to hear the Scriptures. In the last few years, in just my daily Bible reading, I've been reading through the Bible in a year, and I read it aloud, so that I not only read it with my eyes, but I hear it with my ears. And there's something in that exchange, right? Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." I mean, over and over and over and over again, we have reference to listening to the ears. So Timothy was to read the Scriptures and he was to engage in exhortation. He was to call people to respond. He was to push them towards application. And then the word for teaching there, the end of verse 13, would be more of a systematic type of word. Not just kind of picking out a verse here, and let's see, okay, here's another verse. But really helping to work through the Scriptures and giving the people a good understanding of the Scriptures and how they fit together and teach in a systematic way. Now, verse 14, we see that this was tied into Timothy's giftedness. These were his abilities, were in this domain. And notice what Paul says, do not neglect the gift you have. Again, it's another one of those hints that sometimes Timothy wasn't real comfortable with his calling. Sometimes Timothy did not want to do what he was supposed to do. And I've got news for you, sometimes I don't want to do what I'm supposed to do. I say that as a pastor, that sometimes I wish I could stay in bed on Sunday mornings. Light laughter among the crowd. I'm serious. I mean, I'm serious. There's times when I dread, for whatever reason, whether it's what's going on in my own soul, or a feeling of just complete inadequacy. to try to explain what I hardly understand myself. There's meetings I don't want to go to because I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix it. One of my other, you're getting my top five traumatic incidences as a kid, okay? This driving into the lake with my mom and... The other one I've shared with you before, I had offered to help somebody at church with a project or something, and then a better offer came along from my friends, and I ended up not going to help. And my dad caught wind of it. I've never seen my dad so angry. My dad's a duty guy. I mean, you do what you say you're going to do. And I got raked over the coals, and he said, you're going to call them and apologize to them. And I said, I'll talk to them tomorrow. He said, you'll talk to them now. I just walk over to the phone. I wish I had a cordless phone. I stand there in front of my dad. My dad's over my shoulder. There's nothing I wanted to do less than make that phone call. Sherry was saying last night, she says this every once in a while in a very nice way, I don't like to iron. That was it. On with the rest of the evening. You know, as a kid, your parents help you decide what you should do and what you will do and what's the right thing to do. There comes a point as an adult where you have to make those decisions for yourself. I don't want to do this, but it's the right thing to do. It's a mark of maturity. It's one of the things that Timothy could do to We command respect. And I don't know what it is for you as you think about your own context. We know that based on 1 Corinthians 12, Timothy's not the only one with a spiritual gift, right? Every believer has been gifted by the Spirit with a gift for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. Okay, so Timothy had a unique set of gifts. You might not have Timothy's gifts, okay, that's fine, but we all have been gifted and we are called upon to use our gifts for the good of the church. Certainly one of the ways in which we command respect is when we do hard things. We do what we're supposed to do even when we don't want to do it. Number three, do your work with excellence. Do your work with excellence. The terminology here is very interesting. Verse 15, rather. Practice these things. Immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. Notice again here, Paul still has the congregation in view. And what the congregation thinks of Timothy, right? And how Timothy can make an impression upon them. to command their respect. This is all in view. It's not just Timothy, but it's Timothy within the context of the church. And he says, practice these things. Which is a word that speaks of intentionality, consistency. It's only used one other time in Acts 4 and it's in a negative context and it's translated as plot. A person who plots. who strategizes for evil. Timothy was to be strategizing and planning and being intentional and purposeful and planning ahead and working hard for good. To grow in his ministry abilities. And then this word for immersing himself in them. It's a very simple word. It's the word to be. To be present. You ever had a conversation with somebody who wasn't really there? Maybe you were the one who had been in a conversation and you weren't there, maybe wishing you were somewhere else. This is part of what Paul's saying or the way he's expressing it to Timothy. You need to be hardworking, be diligent, planning ahead, strategizing, and you need to be in the moment. You need to be fully present in what you're doing. When I was at Cedarville, President Dixon in his Southern drawl used to say, everything we do ought to have quality stamped all over it. I heard it once, I heard it about a million times in my four years. And that was a mantra and it manifested itself in a lot of different ways. that we ought to be given to doing things well, to being all in, and earn respect from your employer, from your children. Boy, there's a big one. Kids know when parents aren't all in, when parents are going through the motions, when parents aren't authentic in their own faith, right? You wanna influence, you gotta be all in. Finally, our time is gone, but number four, stick with it over time. This text closes, 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. I talked a little bit last week about Jim White, who was a coach in McFarland, Southern California, poor Hispanic community, large correctional facility right there in the middle of town. I mean, it was not exactly a tourist destination. People got out of there as quick as they could at the first opportunity and Jim white ended up building a cross-country team from the ground up a very successful team And he got offered many different offers to go a lot of different places more affluent jobs but for 23 years he stayed in McFarland and left an incredible legacy and changing the direction of a generation of students that graduated from that high school. You don't make an impact, you don't exercise influence overnight. It requires a measure of consistency. Paul says to Timothy in another place, preach the word with great patience. in season and out of season. It doesn't happen in one fell swoop. And it's part of the, just the sad part of our culture. We live in a culture that doesn't really encourage consistency, right? Some of that can't be helped. Job requirements often have us on the move and shifting us all over the place. And some of those things are just, that's just the way they are. But we ought to strive, I believe, to maintain and cultivate enduring relationships where we have an opportunity over time to make an impact, to exercise influence. And certainly this is one of the things that was to be true of Timothy. One of the ways in which he would carry out an effective ministry was they might not listen to you right now, But just be patient. Continue to teach. Continue to instruct. Persist in this. And you see the results here. You see how Paul captures this so powerfully in that final phrase. For by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. You can't help but think here of what's really at stake for Timothy. It was the salvation of souls. Timothy wasn't saving anyone. He wasn't accomplishing the work of redemption. That had already been accomplished in Christ. But Timothy had been entrusted, the church had been entrusted with the Gospel. And no one gets saved apart from the Gospel. No one gets saved apart from Christ. And all the talk of human effort and salvation through some other means, was an unthinkable distortion of the gospel. As Timothy carried out his task faithfully and kept the church on track, the result would be the salvation of many souls. This is no small thing. Each of us are ambassadors of the gospel, commissioned by Christ to take His good news to the world. And we must live in such a way as to command a hearing, to command respect.