Thank you that we can enjoy you. Lord, thank you for the time that we've had so far to worship you. I pray that as we open your word that we would continue in worship, recognizing that you are worthy. Lord, guide us as we study your word that it would open our eyes and impact our hearts, that we would be challenged by it, that we would be changed by it, that as we head out from here, we wouldn't be the same as when we got here, but that we would love you more and seek you deeper. Thank you, Lord, for our time together. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. All right, how many of you, when you walked in, you found your spot, picked out a chair, and then examined it, and made sure that all the four legs, they weren't dented or bent or broken. You flipped it over and checked the underside. Did anybody do that this morning? Why not? Because you assumed, you trusted that it's a chair, right? Chairs are supposed to hold you up. You assumed that it was going to work right. Well, we are starting in on a new study. And as we begin, I want to lay a little bit of a foundation. And one of the first things that I have to acknowledge is what's called presuppositions. I assume certain things to be true. Now, just like with a chair, I could take the time and inspect it and check it over, and my presupposition would be validated, right? I assume that the chair will support me, and I have two options. I can just walk up and plop down in it. Oh, yep, sure enough, it supports me. or I can inspect it and go through every detail and verify, yes, it will support me, and then take a seat, right? Now, as a Christian, as a follower of Christ, I believe the Bible. I assume that it is true. I accept that this idea that God inspired the Bible. Can I validate that? Can I go through a process and look at that and seek to understand it and go through all the details? Yes, yes I can. We're not gonna take all the time to do that right now, nor every time that we open God's word, but I want to be accurate and truthful to admit, yes, I do have a presupposition. And here at this church, we assume that the Bible is true. if you would, on the next slide, we've got the part of the constitution of Cascade Bible Church says that we believe in the inspiration of the word of God. We believe that God gave us his word. We believe the Bible is the word of God. It is without error in the original manuscripts. It has been preserved by God in its verbal and complete inspiration. It is our supreme and final authority for all truth, for all time, and all people. And we've got two verses, or two passages of scripture that support that and help us understand it. First, it comes from 2 Timothy. We're gonna be looking at 1 Timothy, but those two kind of pair together very well. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, and then 2 Peter 1, or chapter 1, verses 20 and 21. And those two passages talk about this idea of God giving us his word. Now, I accept that. I believe that to be true. If that's the case, there are certain logical considerations that come as a result of that. If God, the God of the universe, gives us his word, certain things are true. First and foremost, I ought to read it, right? If God gave it to me, he wants me to know certain things, so I should take time to read it, to study it. That's why we have a bunch of different Bible studies and opportunities to do that. Sunday morning is a great example, but we also have Sunday school from nine, yeah, nine to 10 when we can study God's word. We've also got a men's discipleship Sunday evenings when the guys get together and if we've got questions and struggles and anything, we can talk about them and figure out from God's word how should we live. The ladies have a Bible study. Wednesday night, we're still going through the book of Revelation because God has given information And it is so vital for us to study it to understand what it is that God has given to us. If God gave it to us, Not only does it mean that we should study it, but there's certain things about it. We have this idea of inspiration, that it is from God. In that constitution it says that it is without error, that it is inspired in its verbal and complete inspiration. Now by that we mean that we believe that God gave every word of the Bible. That's why we study it in depth. We try and go back to the Greek and Hebrew as much as we can to study every word of it comes from God. And complete, all of it comes from God. We can't pick and choose and say, oh I like this part and I don't like that part. We have to take all of it. Now I'll admit, as we go into the book of 1 Timothy, there are certain things that are going to be challenging. They're difficult. There are some difficult concepts, there are some difficult theologies. Ones that I look at and I'm like, how am I going to preach this? How am I going to teach this? How am I going to live this? But if, as I presuppose, the Word of God comes from God, is inspired in its entirety, then I'm taking all of it. Whether I enjoy it or not, whether it's difficult or not, that's okay. I want all of the Word of God. Now, I've used this, one more thing, we also believe that in the authority of it, it is our supreme and final authority for all truth, for all time, and for all people. Authority is the commands and directives of scripture, and they extend to every facet of life. That's actually really comforting to me because even though some of those things are really difficult, there's also other things in life that are really, really difficult and hard. And the Bible has answers for those. And sometimes we have to dig deep and we have to search for them to be able to find what are those answers to all of the difficulties in life. But God gives us those and he gives us directives and instructions on how to live, how to implement what he wants from us. Now, I've thrown around this word inspiration several times. I want to define it briefly. Inspiration is Gunn's superintending of human authors so that, using their own individual personalities, they can pose and record it without error in the words of the autographs, that means the originals. what God wanted to reveal to man. The result of this process was the product of the 66 books of the Old and New Testament. Again, those passages that are quoted in our Constitution apply here. The idea of inspiration comes both through a means and a purpose. and the way in which God did that. So those ideas come from, again, 2 Timothy 3.16-17 and 2 Peter 1.20-21. So, all of that is just laying a foundation that as we approach God's word, we're gonna go into a single book study. Over the last month since we got here, we've been doing kind of topically, looking at different ideas surrounding Christmas. And it's great studies, good information, great things to identify, but we've kind of taken a broad, overarching sweep of large passages to pull out just a couple of things. Well, over the next several weeks, I was talking to a couple of folks and they were thinking I said six weeks. If I said that, I'm sorry, we're going more than six weeks. We are probably going to be in this, in the book of 1 Timothy until about April. So it's gonna be a while. If you're interested to know the breakdown that I've got for that, there is a handout that I think Paul gave several people as they were coming in. There should be more on the back table. On the back of that handout lists the breakdown of the book of 1 Timothy. We're gonna take our time. We're gonna dig into it and go slowly through the entirety of the book. As we do that, I think that we're gonna find a lot of interesting things, challenging things, difficult things, valuable things that we can pull from what God gave Paul, the apostle, to write to Timothy, a young man who was trying to live for the Lord, trying to do the right thing. We're gonna dig in on some of that and understand more of what God has for us to know. Now, based on the presupposition that I said, that I believe that God inspired the Word of God and gave it to us, that every word of it is true, that all of it collectively is true, what do we know about 1 Timothy? Well, you probably have your Bibles. Break them open. 1 Timothy 1, verses 1 and 2. And I said, we're gonna be taking our time, we're gonna go through the book of 1 Timothy, and it may take a lot of weeks. We're only looking at two verses today. 1 Timothy 1, verses 1 and 2. It says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, according to the commandment of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I said we're going to only look at these two verses. There's actually a whole lot more in these that we're not even going to touch yet. So I would encourage you, read through it, study it, take some time to identify those ideas. But, first thing that we need to ask ourselves when we begin a study, when we begin looking at a book of the Bible, Who's the author? It's a simple question. There are actually four questions that we need to identify about the book that we're getting ready to study. The very first one is, who's the author? Now there are two ways that we could go about doing that. We start off, the reason that I said I have a presupposition that the Bible is true is the first way is, what does it say? Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, is writing this. Okay, that's pretty simple. I acknowledge that that's a presupposition. I assume the Bible is true. Are there other ways that we can validate that yes, in fact, Paul is the author? Yeah, there are. There are some really good ones. There are internal evidences that support this argument. You start digging into the way that it's written, the things that it says. Inside of it itself, it matches with other things that are clearly Pauline writing. You can dig through the words that he uses, the phrases that he uses, the way that he puts them together. All of that fits with an early to mid-first century writing letter of this style. It fits with everything that we know about poem. So that would be one way, the internal arguments. There's also external arguments of how do we understand that this really is. External evidences support Pauline authorship because by the middle of the second century, it was widely, almost universally accepted that Paul the apostle had written this. And so not only from what it says do we understand that it's from Paul, but also we call them the early church fathers. Historical records identify that this, yes, it was written by the Apostle Paul, accepted as that. So there are lots of ways. We're not gonna dig into all of those, but any time that you approach scripture, I encourage you, dig into some of that. Be aware there are a lot of arguments because there are tons of people who don't want to accept that the Bible did come from God. Because if you acknowledge that it came from God, then you also have to acknowledge that when it tells you to do something, you are expected to do that. And a lot of people don't want to do that. I understand it, but the fact of the matter is you can validate that yes, in fact, this was written by Paul in the first century to somebody. We're going to get to who that is in a little bit. It's obvious. It says to Timothy, but we're going to get to that in a minute. Another thing that you need to identify beyond the recipient is the context of writing. So when was it written? Why was it written? Where was it written from? Where was it written to? All of those kinds of things are very important questions to begin to understand. There's a phrase in dealing with scriptural understanding that context is king. it is vitally important that we consider the context of whatever we're studying. You know, sometimes a lot of people like to take one verse out of context and make it try and say something that it doesn't say, and we have to be very careful about that. And so we look at the book of 1 Timothy, and we realize that this is a letter written from one person to another person. Which means that we have to be careful, there are certain directives and commands that are not given to you or to me specifically. We can draw understanding from it, we can learn from it, we get principles, we get ideas. And because it is God's inspired word intended for our development, there is another passage, actually, later, Paul talks to Timothy and says that all of scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That's that 2 Timothy 3 verse that we've mentioned a couple of times. Do it. 316, yes, thank you. And so, we have those four things from all of scripture. It is profitable for those things. But we have to understand that it may or may not be directly to you. Particularly when you get to the Old Testament, God makes a promise to Israel and we are not Israel. God makes a promise to a specific person, we are not that specific person, but what can we understand about those ideas and concepts? So, context of the writing is very important. So one of the things that comes up is what is the time of the writing of 1 Timothy? Does anybody know or have a guess? Okay, why do you say 62 AD? Okay, no, that's a great answer. Sometimes, identifying when one of these books is written can be very challenging. There's a lot that goes into it because it doesn't specifically say, I, Paul, wrote this in the year of our Lord, 60 AD, to you, Timothy, to whatever. So we have to understand some of those things. And a good study Bible is going to have some information at the beginning of the book to help you answer these questions. If you don't have a study Bible, if you have just a regular, the text itself, there are lots of great resources. Again, there are people who want to try and degrade the idea of inspiration, and so they'll say, well, it wasn't really written by Paul, it was written some 250 years later, because if God didn't inspire it, then I'm not bound to obey it. The fact of the matter though, as I said, there is plenty of evidence both inside and outside that it was written by Paul. And so what do we know about Paul? We know that he was alive in the early first century and that he was executed approximately 68 AD. There's some variance on that due to different dating methods and the Romans had good records and the You know, different historians had all kinds of records, so we're not gonna dig into exactly what day was Paul executed, but we know that he died at some point in late 60s AD. So if Paul's the author and he died at that point, that gives us an end date of the latest that it could be written. Now, 2nd Timothy obviously comes after 1st Timothy, so it had to have been, 1st Timothy had to have been written prior to that. What else do we know? Timothy was written to Timothy. Where do we first see Timothy come on the scene? Does anybody know? I have it written down, so I don't have it memorized, but does anybody know? Yes, on his, I believe his third missionary journey in Acts chapter 16. And so that gives us the earliest, because that's when Paul meets Timothy, so that's the earliest that it could be. So it's somewhere in that range. We know that from inside what the Bible says. Outside of that, as I mentioned, by the 2nd century, pretty much everybody affirmed that Paul had written it and that Paul was a historical individual, that Timothy was a historical individual, and that they were able to nail it down to approximately 62 to 64 AD. Again, part of that depends on your dating method because The date, 60s AD, didn't actually come around until several centuries later, but that's a whole separate discussion. So, we know the approximate time of the writing. In general, it is somewhere near Paul's Roman imprisonment. That's at the end of the book of Acts. If you're here for Sunday school, we've been studying through the life of Paul and his journeys and everything, and he ends up going to Rome and is a prisoner there for two years. That's where we ended this morning, I think, is that he was there for two years. And so it's somewhere in that range, probably when he gets released from that Roman imprisonment, because just because the book of Acts ends doesn't mean that Paul was done. He had a lot of things that he still wanted to do, and God gave him an opportunity to continue serving him. And so Paul continues his journeys, and he continues writing. We have what are called the prison epistles that Paul writes during that time, but then after that, Paul probably wrote 1 Timothy as he got back out on the road and was traveling and sharing and getting things going again, because he expresses certain things that he hopes to happen, that he's intending to do during that time. We find in 2nd Timothy, which is way down the line, but we find in 2nd Timothy that Paul is back in prison. And in fact, Paul is pretty sure he's about to be executed. And so 1st Timothy is sometime probably between the release from Roman imprisonment and his recapture and finally his execution. So it's somewhere, like I said, about that 62 to 64 AD timeframe. It is written, at a time in which Paul has a lot of high hopes and expectations. It's not like some of his prison epistles where he's like, I don't know what God's gonna do, I don't know if I'm gonna be released, or like I said, 2 Timothy, Paul's about to be executed, and he knows it. But at this point, he is hopeful, he's excited, he's looking forward to what God has in store for him and for Timothy. So, we've identified three of the four things. You identify the author, identify the recipient, the context, and the purpose. I guess we need to dig into that idea of the recipient a little bit. Who is Timothy? What do you know about, I'll open this one up a little bit. What do you know about Timothy? Okay, his mother was Jewish and his father was a Greek. Okay, why do you say that? Okay. That was a normal practice for Jews to memorize big passages of the Old Testament, yes. Scripture memorization is important, yeah. Paul references a lot of those. Anyway, anything else that we know about Timothy? Okay, he was a young man. Linda? Okay, Paul was placing him in Ephesus to be a pastor, to be a leader of the church there. He was, yes, circumcised as an adult. We will learn, we can learn a lot of different things about who Timothy is. The first time that he shows up on the scene is actually in the book of Acts. So go ahead and turn there with me. Acts chapter 16. So, on a mini side note, like I said, it's important to identify both the author and the recipient. We're not gonna take the time to dig into who is Paul, because he's famous. You guys probably, I assume, know a lot about Paul. If you're not sure, I would point you to Acts chapters 9 and 22. and Galatians chapter 1 give a lot of details and information about Paul in a very short span. That's Acts chapters 9 and 22 and then Galatians chapter 1. We're not going to take the time to dig into those because I expect most of you know who Paul is fairly well. Timothy shows up a lot, and so we're not gonna hit all of the different passages, but we don't have a single block that just gives us all the information. But we have several small ones, so we're gonna be turning to several of those and get an idea of who this young man, who worked with Paul, who traveled around with Paul, who he was and what was going on with him. So you should by now be in Acts chapter 16. I'm gonna read verses one through four. And he, that's Paul, during one of his missionary journeys, he came also to Derbe and to Lystra. And behold, a certain disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. And he was well spoken of by the brethren who were in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted this man to go with him, and he took him and circumcised him, because the Jews who were in those parts, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. Now while they were passing through the cities, they were delivering the decrees which had been decided upon by the apostles and the elders who were in Jerusalem for them to observe. So, what do we learn about Timothy from that passage? He had a good reputation. He was known. He wasn't unknown. He wasn't just this random individual. People in the area knew of him, and they knew that he was a student, a follower of Christ, a disciple, someone who wanted to learn and was trying to learn. Someone had already pointed out that his mother was a believer, but his father was a Greek. Anything else that we learned about him? Okay, he was circumcised. Yeah. One of the challenging things about understanding who Timothy is, is there was some division and some arguments about, well, do Christians have to follow the Jewish law or not, or how does that all work? And here, we see that Paul encouraged Timothy to be circumcised. And there was some good reason for that and what all was going on. And so Timothy apparently was humble enough to say, you know what, my rights, my privileges, because Paul in other places says you don't have to. That's not something that you must do to be saved. And yet Timothy says, you know what, my rights, my privileges, I'm gonna lay them aside so that I don't cause people not to come to Christ. It's a pretty big principle, pretty big idea that we can learn from who Timothy is and just his humility, his willingness to do that. In 1 Timothy, we're gonna eventually get to where we find that he is a youth. One of the things that Paul encourages Timothy is don't let people despise you because of your youth, because you're young. So that one was mentioned. We'll also go to 2 Timothy, real quick. 2 Timothy 1. I believe that most of these are listed on the handouts, so if you've got those, they should be listed. If not, by all means, take notes, write them down. There are many more, but we're not gonna dig into all of those. In 2 Timothy 1. Verses three through six. Paul, again, is writing to a young man by the name of Timothy. I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience, the way my forefathers did, as I constantly remember you in my prayers night and day. Real quick, one thing that we learn about Timothy is that he and Paul were very close and Paul prayed for him constantly, continuously, night and day. Longing to see you, even as I recall your tears, so that I may be filled with joy. Paul wants to see Timothy, but he remembers that Timothy was tearful about Paul, probably Paul going into prison. Like I said, 2 Timothy is written when Paul knows he's about to be executed. And so Paul's saying, hey, I want to be with you, Timothy, and I realize that you wanted to be with me as well. For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and I am sure it is in you as well. For this reason I remind you, kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. Not only was Timothy's mom a believer, but his grandmother as well. And that heritage was there in Timothy's life. Now, one interesting thing that we can recognize from that or draw from that is his father was not a believer, but his mother and his grandmother were. And you know, just in a practical way, sometimes there are situations that are difficult. We're surrounded by people who aren't followers of Christ. And yet one person can make such an influence. A mother, a grandmother can reach their kids or their grandchildren with the gospel of Christ and see amazing things happen with them. Because what do we find out later about Timothy? Not only was he well looked on as we saw back in Acts, not only was he passionate about who Christ was, he apparently left and left everything just like the disciples did and began following along with Paul and helping him on missionary journeys. We didn't look at him, but if you continue through the book of Acts over and over and over again between chapters 16 and 20, Timothy's name pops up again and again as either he's traveling with Paul or Paul leaves him or sends him somewhere. So Timothy, this young man who is a follower of Christ, is a useful individual, useful partner with Paul as he goes to different places and is sent on different missions on behalf of Paul. He was also a co-writer and a co-worker with Paul. We're not gonna look him up, but there are in Romans, in 2 Corinthians, in Philippians, in Colossians, in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, and, oh, I typo'd, I have Romans listed twice. Timothy is mentioned as an individual that was part of writing to these various churches and individuals. So Timothy is a co-writer and a co-worker with Paul during all of this stuff that's going on. He was sent on behalf of Paul. Someone already mentioned that he was left there at Ephesus to be the pastor to help out that church. And Paul sent him there intentionally to do certain things, but Paul was looking forward to having Timothy with him again and being able to serve together and do different things. We've got one more passage that I want to go to real quick in Hebrews chapter 13. The book of Hebrews is an amazing book. There's tons and tons of things in it, and we are only catching just a minor, minuscule little bit right at the very end. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 23. the author of Hebrews, wants to share some good news with his reader. And what does he say? Take notice, our brother Timothy has been released, with whom, if he comes soon, I shall see you. Apparently, throughout his life, at some point, Timothy ended up in prison, just like Paul had. So, what kind of a picture does this paint of who Timothy is? He's a young man who is passionate about God, loved Jesus, wanted to share, was willing to travel, gave up all kinds of things, even his own freedom, so that he could travel around with Paul. He served in ministry in a wide variety of different roles and was a faithful servant. We didn't look at all of them, but there are a lot of other places where Paul recognizes that many people walked away and left, and yet it seems that Timothy never did that. So he was faithful throughout all of it. So that's who Timothy is. We've looked at Paul very briefly. There's a lot more that we could study on him. We've looked at Timothy. We've looked at the time of writing, the context. What else do we need to understand about the book of 1 Timothy as we begin to dive into it? Well, I said that there are four things. The last one is identify the purpose of writing. Now this one has a lot of different options and a lot of different ideas of what it could be. So why do you think that Paul wrote the book of 1 Timothy? If you were here on Wednesday, I had the handouts back there. I'm not sure who was able to grab them and who wasn't. But in that, I encouraged those who had the opportunity to go ahead and write down a few ideas after having read through the book of 1 Timothy, which if you haven't read all the way through it, I would encourage you this week. It only takes about 15 minutes. to read the entire book of 1 Timothy. So if you can carve out 15 minutes either one day or maybe every day, reading it over and over is a good idea as well. But if you read through the entire thing, you should be able to identify a few key ideas or verses or concepts that came up. If you did that or just from your own memory of past, what are some things, some ideas that might be key? Is anybody willing to share some of those that they either already knew or that they've studied this week? Okay. One of the keys of 1 Timothy is instructions to overseers and leaders within the church. Okay, that's a good one. Okay, warnings about false teachers, and Paul even names them specifically. Okay, what other things? Yeah. Okay, persevere, stand firm, stick to the truth, hold to what is true, is another thing that Paul says somewhere else. Okay, any others? Okay, instructions to those that minister. Okay, y'all hit most of them. I've found three key themes that I want to encourage you as we go through this study. Like I said, this is gonna be a fairly long study. As we go through it, there are three key themes that I want to encourage you to keep in the back of your mind, and you're gonna see them come up over and over and over again. The first one is avoid false teachers and bad doctrine. Now you could separate that into two separate ones very easily, but I'm gonna put that as one. False teachers have bad doctrine, and we have to be on the lookout. We have to pay attention and watch for those. Paul is going to call some of them out and let it be known this person, this individual, is teaching bad things. Now, this is one of those where How are we gonna look at that? How are we gonna preach that this is a tough one? Because our society doesn't necessarily, at least in the past, hasn't really wanted to name those false teachers, and that's so judgmental and it's so harsh. I think society has changed a little bit in that, and it's okay to call people out, but how do we do that well? How do we identify that and yet do it with the love and grace that is in Christ Jesus? So we avoid false teachers, but there's also an issue of bad doctrine. See, it's not just that we are avoiding the people because of who they are, but it's because of what are they teaching. And as we go through this book, we're gonna find several ideas that come up. And in reality, they're the same things that we deal with today. There's self-centeredness, and focus on, I want to do my thing, and I want to benefit from whatever I'm involved in. And there's also, well, it's Gnosticism and Asceticism are the two that really come up if you're ever reading through these. And really, it's this idea that I can be so smart and know all the details and all the answers, and that's what's really important. And you know, even in the church we sometimes get that way. When I was in seminary, one of my professors, and I'm grateful for it, he emphasized the fact that you can study and learn every detail, knowledge-wise, about what's in the Bible. But if you don't let it make that 12-inch travel from your head to your heart, what good is it? It's of absolutely no good. One of the bad doctrines, the false teachings that was prevalent then and is still prevalent now is this idea that as long as I know all the right stuff, if knowledge is there, then I'm good. Whether it's then I'm powerful and I'm smarter than you, or well then I'm made right with God because I know all of the law and every detail and I've memorized more verses than you or whatever. We need to be on the lookout for that, and that's one of the things that Paul is emphasizing to Timothy, to watch out for that. The other, I mentioned the word asceticism, is just this philosophy, and it's even still in place today, is the idea that physical stuff is bad. That if we enjoy anything, then that means that we're sinful. And so we have to beat our bodies and be down and depressed and sad all the time. That believers aren't allowed to have good things or enjoy life or anything like that. Have you ever heard that before? That, oh, well, I don't want to be a follower of Christ because you never get to have any fun. It's still true today that people think that way and believe that way. I would challenge that and say no, actually, Christians get to have more fun because we can enjoy life here and we know that we're gonna enjoy life in the future with Christ as well. So that's another of the bad doctrines that's gonna come up several times as we go through this. I believe on the handout I listed a bunch of different verses that point to all of those ideas. I wrote down a quote from one of my books. It says, these false teachers had an interest in myths and genealogies, in teaching the law and in ideas about knowledge. This so-called knowledge led to speculation and controversy and such vices as deception and immorality. They desired material gain through their teaching. They advocated asceticism, forbidding marriage, eating of meat. They promoted ideas that the resurrection had already taken place. And all of that comes together to create a close link between what they were teaching and a moral decay. They failed to live up to God's standards because they were teaching that which was false. In 1 Timothy 1, verses 9 and 10, Paul associated the false teachers with the worst of sinners. Though they may not have been involved in all of those sins listed in that passage, the errors were deceived and had seared their conscience through a hypocritical living. Ultimately, one of the big things that we run into is when the false teachers become hypocrites. They say one thing and do something else. And we have to be on guard for that. Because even us who want to follow Christ, who want to do the right thing, can fall into that trap of saying one thing but doing something else. So we have to be very careful. We have to be on the lookout for false teachers, the individuals who proclaim false doctrines, things that are not accurate to what the Bible says. So that's one. The second part, connected with that, the second key theme is reaffirming good doctrine. See, not only do we want to avoid what is bad, in fact, I would say more than that, we wanna know what is right, what is good, what is proper. And the way that we do that is through studying God's Word. And Paul is going to emphasize certain positive doctrines, certain good doctrines. And so as we go through this study, make sure that you're on the lookout for what those are. Again, in the handout there are a bunch of those listed that you can get an idea of some of those. And then the third key theme was already mentioned, this idea of instructions to elders and leaders and ministers and widows and men, young men and old men and young women and old women and really, I'm gonna call it organization of the church. How are we, as a body of Christ, supposed to function and live for Jesus? We find out what's bad doctrine, we hold to what is good doctrine, but that needs to play out. That needs to become something that we do. And so the instructions that Paul gives to Timothy are ideas of how to live that out. What are you supposed to do with that? And he gives some very specific ones. Chapters three and five are two of the main ones that dig into that. But there are a couple of other key verses within 1 Timothy that I want to go ahead and look at. I've identified five key verses that I think, as we go through the study, I want to encourage you to keep these in mind. And Liz even brought up the idea of memorization. If you wanted to memorize some of these, that wouldn't be a bad idea. These are key verses where Paul kind of gives an explanation or an idea of why he's writing, what he's about, what's going on, what he really wants the key takeaways for Timothy to be. The first one comes in 1 Timothy 1, verse five. And he says, but the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Again, the goal is not that you have all the knowledge and that you can answer any Bible trivia type question. The goal is more than that. The goal is that we live in love that comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. The next key verse comes out of chapter three, in 1 Timothy 3, verse 15. It says, Paul is writing and he says, in case I am delayed, like I said, Paul wants to get back with Timothy and be able to continue working with him, but if I'm delayed, I write so that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the household, or in the family of God. which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. Now, there's a lot in that verse, and when we get to it, we're gonna unpack it and dig into some of those ideas, but Paul wants Timothy to know, how should you live as part of the body of Christ? If you claim to be a Christian, if you are a follower of Christ, you're part of the body of Christ. So how are you supposed to live that out? We've already established it's not about head knowledge. It's about what God wants us to do. He has given us his word so that we can live for him. So how are we gonna do that? The next verse that I've identified as a key verse comes from chapter four, verse 13. Paul says, until I come, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation and teaching. The focus that Paul wanted Timothy to have was on the Word of God. That's why I started off with my presupposition is that the Bible is God's Word, that it is inspired, that God gave it to us, and that because of that, it is authoritative, meaning that I need to obey it. When it says that I should do something, I need to do it. When it says I need to not do something, I need to not do it. And the goal, the purpose, the point of a minister, whether you're preaching on Sunday morning or coming Sunday evening to our Bible studies or going to the ladies Bible studies or going to any of the opportunities in which we have to corporately study God's word, is not my ideas, not my thoughts, not my wishes or fun stories or things of that nature, it's the reading of scripture, the exhortation, that's encouragement to follow it, and the teaching, to understand it. So that's the main goal that Paul wants Timothy to get, and that I would contest that we need to be getting from this book as well. The next key verse that I've identified comes out of chapter six. In 1 Timothy 6 verse 3, 3 and 4, it says, So, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be considered conceited or misunderstanding things. And so the key is to understand what does the Bible actually say. And Paul says he wants them to advocate the actual doctrine that comes from the words of Jesus Christ. We've already established the Bible is the word of God, and so we need to be drawing what we believe, what we understand from that, not from men's ideas, not from other teachers, not from the world, but from the Bible, from scripture. The last of the key verses comes from chapter six, and it's the last two, verses 20 and 21. O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith. Grace be with you. The last key idea that Paul gives to Timothy is this idea of guard or protect true doctrine. Protect what is accurate. Protect what has been entrusted to you. This one, again, when we get to it, I'm looking forward to pulling out, but there's all kinds of different ideas of what's been entrusted to you individually. Dads, your family's been entrusted to you. You have a responsibility to guard them from bad doctrine, from false teachers. Ladies, you have been given certain roles and responsibilities within the body of Christ. We're gonna get to those, and you have a responsibility to guard those, protect those, take care of those. Now, most of the time, this idea of guarding is protection that is given to men to stand up. and to live for him. And so as the leadership, I started off asking you, please pray for the leadership because they have a responsibility for this assembly, for the body of Christ here that we call Cascade Bible Church, to guard it and protect it. So be praying for them. And as you have opportunity, guard what there is that God has given to you. I know that that's a lot, it's a very sweeping overview of what we're going to get into in the book of 1 Timothy. There's tons of stuff, I've only barely touched on a couple of them, and I can't tell you how excited I am to get into the weeds of the verses and the individual little bits because there's so much in this book. As I mentioned, I want to encourage you sometime this week, take time to read it, to study it, to think about it. It only takes about 15 minutes to read straight through. And if 15 minutes is too much for you, it only takes about 2 minutes for chapter 1. So find 2 minutes sometime this week and read chapter 1. Now, I timed it because I don't want to say, oh, it only takes two minutes and then it actually takes five. I timed it myself. But here's what I do, and I'd encourage you as well. Grab a pencil. I don't mind writing in my Bible. It's up to you if you want to. I encourage it. If you don't want to write in the book itself, print off a copy. write in it and just circle or highlight or put a tick mark or something beside those ideas or those thoughts that are like, huh, I need to come back and look at this. And just take those two minutes and read straight through it. You read through the book, or sorry, the first chapter, and just put a mark beside those. And as you get time later, you'll be able to go back and study them, look into those. or you can identify some of those and then see if I managed to pull those out and give answers to all of those. I think we're going to take enough time to hopefully hit all of them. If I miss something and you've circled it or sometimes I'll put a box around like big ideas, if I missed one of those, let me know and we can talk about it. I love giving answers to some of those or maybe I don't know. In fact, I'm going to pretty much guarantee you that I don't know all of it. And so maybe together we can sit down and study it out and find the answers to it. So what? I always like to end with that idea of so what. What do we take away? Now obviously there's a lot in the book of 1 Timothy and we've barely just caught this overview idea. We're gonna be digging in and we're gonna pull out lots of key ideas and key themes. But from these key things that we've already looked at, so what? As we head into the study, there are a lot of different items to be brought up. We will see some very easy things. We will see some things that are very challenging and very difficult. As you get ready for this, I wanna encourage you, first and foremost, like I said, read it. Find out what it says. Not what you think it might say, not what I might say that it says. Read it for yourself. and pull out what does it say. If you're an experienced individual, you've been around the church for a lot of years, you're used to things, you're a lot like Paul. See, Paul, he had years and years of experience. No, I'm not talking about you, Paul, although you've got years of experience. I'm not saying you're old. Paul the Apostle had years of ministry experience and he looked at this young man and he said, that guy has potential. I want to pass what I know to him. So he sits down and he writes a letter to him. And this letter is full of encouragement and challenge and doctrine and truth. and love for this young man. If you're an older individual with experience, I wanna encourage you, find a Timothy that you can encourage in some way, that you can teach them, that you can train them. You have something that you can teach to someone else. if you're less experienced. And I say yes, less experienced, not to say young, because there are always things that we don't have a lot of experience in. Maybe you're new to the faith, you've only been saved a year or two. Maybe you were saved as a kid, you've been around for a lot of years, but you've not dug in. Maybe, I don't know, maybe you've been around churches all your life, and you've never said, you know what, I wanna be involved, I wanna do something, I wanna help out. whatever it might be, if you are less experienced, be like Timothy. Receive this message, this letter. Find a Paul that you can follow around and be involved in ministry with. Timothy traveled and did all kinds of stuff with Paul and learned and was useful and Paul realized, oh hey, if I put Timothy here and I go over there, we double the ministry. And so as we go through this study, I want to encourage you, are you already involved in something? Maybe you're teaching a Sunday school or a Bible study or doing something. Maybe you're hiding in the back, I shouldn't say hiding. Maybe you are working in the background and very few people know that or are aware. Can you find someone that you can train? And if you're less experienced or not currently active, can you find a way to become involved? We're starting in on the new year, we're getting all kinds of ideas and plans for what we're gonna do. This is a great time, great opportunity where you can get involved and be a part. So whether you're young or old, experienced or inexperienced, there's something that you can be doing for and with the body of Christ. I wanna encourage you to do that. And then the fourth thing, it came from that last verse that I read, be on guard. Don't be rude. Don't be attacking. Don't be mean about it. But be on guard. Be ready to give an answer for the hope that you have. Be looking out for those false teachers and false doctrines because they're there and you've got to be careful. Be on guard for those. And not only for yourself, but also for those around you. There's, as we go through this, we're going to find instructions for older individuals and younger folks, for parents, for ladies, for men, for overseers, for teachers, for everybody. Each of us has a responsibility to guard whatever it is that God has given us Protect it to make sure that that false doctrine, that false teaching doesn't infiltrate and draw them astray and lead them away from who God wants them to be. So whoever you are, whatever your experience level is, I hope that you're excited to dig into the book of 1 Timothy and find out what this older, experienced individual had to write of key ideas and key themes to a younger, less experienced, but still passionate about serving Christ. What did Paul have to write to Timothy? We're gonna dig into that and we're gonna find out a lot of different things that we can take and apply to ourselves as we go through a study of the book of 1 Timothy, which is part of the word of God, which is authoritative and inspired by God for us to learn, to study, and to live out day by day, as the body of Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you that you've given it to us and that it gives us all that we need to live a life of godliness for you. Lord, as we enter in on this study of 1 Timothy, I do pray that we would be looking out for false doctrine, for false teachers. There's so many around us in the world, and yet, Lord, you have given us your words that we know how to live and what to believe and what to do. Lord, help us to implement it, not just to be hearers of your word, but to be doers of it, to put it into practice. Whether we're old and experienced or young and fresh at all of this, Lord, help us to embrace your word and to live for you, to be a part of the body of Christ, to do what you have left us here to do. Guide us, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen.