“A Middle-Aged Minister” August 25,
2013
1 Timothy 4:5-16
SI: 1 Timothy is a pastor to pastor letter about church
life.
Paul’s main point to Timothy is
that anything in the life and teaching of the
church that detracts from, erodes, or
contradicts the Gospel must be opposed.
And on the positive side, the
church must be organized and guided in such a way
that the Gospel is adorned and magnified.
I’ve written these things so
that you will be able to show people how to behave
in the church, which is a pillar and
foundation of truth.
In this passage, Paul tells
they young pastor Timothy
what it takes to be a good minister, how he
is to view his life and calling,
how he is to conduct himself as the pastor
of God’s people so Gospel magnified.
INTRO: I came this close to doing something today that I’ve
never done before.
I
almost skipped this passage of Scripture, and preached on the next one.
You may have noticed that my practice is to
preach through a book of the Bible,
passage by passage, not skipping anything.
That
approach to preaching has a fancy Latin name—it’s called lectio continua—
which means “continuous reading.” It has a long and honored tradition in
church.
Lectio
continua forces the preacher to deal with every subject in the Bible.
He can’t stick to his pet subjects, favorite
passages, and he can’t skip hard ones.
Because whatever comes up next, he has to
preach on it.
The
benefit to the congregation is that over time, it gets the whole counsel of
God.
Now,
there is no law that says a preacher can’t skip.
There are perfectly good reasons to skip.
And there are many good preachers and even
great preachers who do skip.
Dr.
Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Pres, in New York City skips.
Listen to any of his sermon series on books
of the Bible,
and without any reason or apology given,
he’ll skip passages.
That’s
the prerogative of the preacher.
So
this week, as I was getting the bulletin ready for Judy to print,
I put down the Scripture text as 1 Timothy
5, and I put in another title.
And
I said to myself—If Tim Keller does it, then I can too!
But
my conscience got the better of me.
Because the reason I wanted to skip is that
this passage cuts too close to the bone.
It puts me in the spotlight in a way that I
find very uncomfortable.
But
that’s not right. Because I haven’t
skipped on behalf of other people.
In the past, when I’ve come to passages that
deal with divorce, for example,
I’ve preached those even though they
probably made some people uncomfortable.
What’s
good for the goose is good for the gander.
There
is probably no passage in the Bible more convicting for pastors than this one.
Of course the Bible convicts you in many
places as a Christian,
or even more specifically as a Christian
spouse or Christian parent.
But
as far as the inspired Word of God speaking to pastors as pastors—
this passage is like a sledgehammer and
fire.
The
last line of verse 16 alone is enough to make you fall down like a dead man.
This
October will be the 20th anniversary of my ordination.
I
thank God for continuing to give me a sense of calling.
Anything
good that has come from my ministry is because of his grace.
Surveys say the average tenure for pastors
in America is less than five years,
some say three years. I’ve been at Christ Covenant 17 years.
When
I was a young minister I asked an older minister I admired, a man who had
been in his church 30 years, to tell me the
secret to longevity in the ministry.
He
said: The secret is to have a very
tolerant and loving congregation.
I’ve known many men better than me, who God
gave very hard churches.
One
friend of mine was seven years in a church, it was all he could stand.
After he left, he was talking to another
former minister of that congregation,
who said:
Brother, don’t you know that years in that pulpit are like dog years?
You have to multiply by seven. You were really there 49 years!
All
that is to say, that my many years here are because God has been gentle to me.
I had no idea what I was getting into when
we moved here in 1996.
But God knew how fragile I was, so he gave
me a tolerant, loving congregation.
That’s
just one example of how every good thing has been all his grace.
And
every bad thing has been my failure.
One
sentence in this passage that I find painful to read is when Paul says:
Let no one despise you because of your
youth.
Timothy
was a young pastor. He was where I was
20 years ago.
I
tried to remember what I thought about this passage back then.
I’m sure I mostly thought of it as a
challenge, marching orders.
Yes,
I can do this. I’m going to be diligent
and be this pastor described here.
I
still feel that force in these words and their motivating power to be a good
pastor,
but I also have something now that I didn’t
have then—I have regrets.
The
names and faces of people I failed pastorally.
The prayerless decisions that have come back
to haunt me.
The bad pastoral habits that once seemed
easy to overcome, but feel like chains.
I
haven’t been the pastor described here and I know it.
And yet God’s grace has been even more
abundantly shown in my failure.
I
trust that Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, will mitigate my failures and
even work them for good, and that he will be
merciful to me on that day.
So
this morning, as you can tell already, I’m going to preach to myself.
And you get to listen.
Even
though this message might be better suited to a seminary graduation
or to a service at Presbytery, I think it
will benefit all of you because
this passage is fundamentally about life in
Christ.
And
no matter what your calling—whether you are a minister, a butcher,
a baker, or a candlestick maker, it’s your
connection to Christ that must
be cultivated in every season of life.
I
want us to look at this passage under two points—they both come out of vs 16.
These
are the ways Paul tells Timothy to cultivate both ministry and life in Christ:
1.
Keep a close watch on yourself.
2.
Keep a close watch on your teaching.
Everything
that Paul says to Timothy fits under those points.
MP#1 Keep a close watch on yourself
Pay
close attention to yourself, another version says.
That sounds very therapeutic. Pay attention to yourself.
But
Paul is not talking therapy, about pampering yourself
He’s not saying: Timothy, you need to get away. You need some me time.
He’s talking about Timothy in the ministry
and he is basically saying:
Don’t
let the ministry keep you from Jesus.
That’s exactly what will happen if you don’t
keep a close watch on yourself.
Pay
attention to yourself as a man of God—
and the first part of that is to be a man of
God, to walk with Christ.
How
could it possibly be that the ministry could keep a man from Jesus?
It just doesn’t make sense. Ministers deal with the Bible week after
week.
They are called upon to give thought and
judgment to spiritual matters.
They
stand in the pulpit from one Lord’s Day to the next expounding Scripture.
How is it that they handle the very Word of
God that leads people to Jesus,
and yet here is this warning that they might
be kept from him.
I
was in another city this summer and passed a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop
and the light was flashing—Hot doughnuts
now! Hot doughnuts now!
My
car turned in on its own accord and before ordering, I watched the doughnuts
running down the conveyer belt, into the hot
oil, flipped, and then up through
that wonderful shower of glaze. I ordered a dozen and said to the clerk:
We
don’t have Krispy Kreme in our town.
Aren’t these great.
And she said: Honestly, I used to love them, but I’ve lost
my appetite for them.
It
starts in seminary.
If
you go to a seminary that believes the Bible and has godly professors
(not all of them do) then it’s great.
I went to a seminary like that and it was
profoundly positive.
Three
years studying the Bible, reading good books, listing to thought-provoking
lectures, conversing and debating with
fellow students, thinking big thoughts
about the Kingdom of God.
But
something happens to you there for the first time.
You have to deal with the Word of God as an
assignment.
You
have a paper that’s due on this or that passage of Scripture or on this or that
doctrine but you are working a part-time
job, you are doing an internship in a
church, perhaps you are married, maybe you
even have a baby at home—
You
want to be a good student so you just buckle down and do it.
But if you aren’t careful, a little callus
can form on your soul.
Because rather than allowing the Word to
lead you to Christ, just get it done.
Then
you get out into your first church, and you are just swept along for the first
five or ten years, you wonder what on earth
you are doing,
it’s hard but it’s exhilarating at the same
time.
Your
studies all your pastoral duties lead you right to the feet of Jesus
because you feel so inadequate and you need
him so much.
And
then, as life moves on, you accumulate more and more responsibilities.
Your children are getting older, your
congregation is growing,
you get more deeply rooted in the community
and people’s lives—all good things.
But
responsibilities are like barnacles, they slow you down,
take up more of your time.
There
is the weekly preparation for preaching.
You know as you spend more time in the same
pulpit that people expect more.
And rightly so. They are growing and want to be fed, it’s
your job to feed them.
Whereas
you used to pray and even agonize over Scripture in your study
and beg God to give you some message for his
people,
there are now very predictable paths your
thinking follows.
By
this time you’ve gained some level of competency,
so you just bear down and get it done.
And
those calluses from way back then start to thicken.
What’s
missing? What’s the dynamic force in
your study and ministry
that is no longer there? It’s communion with Jesus Christ.
It’s
listening to his Word. It’s talking to
him in prayer.
A young minister thinks that could never
happen.
I’ll
never become a pastor like that, just going through the motions,
a back-slapping sermon machine. But Paul says: Oh yes you can.
Watch yourself.
Someone
has said that the most important things in life don’t have deadlines.
Talking to your wife doesn’t have a
deadline.
Visiting your aged relatives doesn’t have a
deadline.
Spending time in quiet communion with God
doesn’t have a deadline either.
But
the things with the deadlines can dominate us.
The 8:00 am school bell, the 2:00 pm
conference call.
And
for the pastor, the Sunday morning worship hour.
I
don’t have time to pray—I’ve got a sermon to write.
That sounds crazy, but it’s real.
As
I mentioned earlier, this October 10th is the 20th
anniversary of my ordination.
The
sermon at that service was preached by my boss—Dr. Bruce Fiol.
His passage was Luke 10, Mary and Martha.
You
remember the story. Jesus had come to
visit the sisters.
Martha was busy with all the preparations and
Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet,
listening to him teach. Martha came in and said: Lord, don’t you care that I’m
doing all the work myself, and she’s just
sitting here? Tell her to help me.
Jesus
said: Martha, Martha, you are worried
and upset about many things,
but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will
not
be taken away from her.
Bruce
simply said: Don’t let the busyness of
the ministry keep you from
sitting at the feet of Jesus. Watch yourself.
I
feel the force of that even more today than I did then.
Is your life going to get simpler?
Are you going to have fewer emails to answer
next year?
Fewer text messages? Is your work going to get less complicated?
Are
your children’s schedules going to get simpler?
Are
all the pressures of modern life that keep you from regular worship,
and life in the body, to say nothing of your
private life with God—
are those pressures going to be lessened?
Of
course not. And that’s life. Paul understood that.
Life in that time was not fundamentally
different from ours now.
And
so the question is: Are you going to
watch yourself?
Are
you going to grow in your reliance upon the grace of Jesus—
so that people who know you sense that you
are a man or a woman
vitally connected to him?
It’s
not a question just for ministers, but for all believers.
Brings
us to the second point:
MP#2 Keep a close watch on your teaching.
The
New International Version says: Watch
your life and doctrine closely.
What does that mean? What’s Paul telling this young minister?
I
listened to a very interesting sermon by a professor at Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary on this passage. He told the young seminarians
that what Paul was exhorting Timothy to do
was to be a life-long learner.
He
said that the way you watch your teaching is not to let your mind grow rusty.
Keep reading, keep studying.
There
is certainly a lot of truth to that—I feel the force of it as a minister.
It is easy to get rusty and not to read and
think.
One
of the very last things Paul himself wrote was when he was near the
end of his life, in prison, and he asked
Timothy to come and bring him his books,
and especially his parchments.
Up
to the very end of his ministry, even with his death looming, Paul studying.
So that’s a very good word.
But,
I don’t think that’s Paul’s point here.
When
he tells Timothy to keep careful watch on himself,
he means, don’t let the ministry keep you
from Christ.
And
when he tells him to also keep careful watch on his teaching,
he means, don’t let your teaching keep other
people from Christ.
Think
about it: That’s Paul’s point throughout
this passage and this whole letter.
He’s concerned about teaching that focuses
attention on things besides Gospel.
Here
he tells Timothy to avoid silly myths, to devote himself to Scripture.
This sentence literally says: Keep a close watch on the teaching.
That phrase “the teaching” is a way of
referring to the body of doctrine,
the foundational truths of our faith which
is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul
is saying, Timothy, make sure, keep watch, so that your teaching is always
Christ-centered. Preaching and teaching can be about all sorts
of interesting
things, even things that people like to hear
and find useful, but if your preaching
is not fundamentally about the grace of God
in Jesus Christ, you are missing boat.
My
professor of preaching in seminary (we called it homiletics) was
Dr. Bryan Chapell. This was the very heart of everything he
taught us.
That
the person and work of Jesus Christ and the grace of God had to be the
ultimate focus of all of our preaching.
There
were a number of ways Dr. Chapell pushed this home.
Every
passage of Scripture is either about man needing salvation
or God providing salvation. Bible fundamentally not about what we do,
it’s about our great need and God meeting
that need in Jesus.
God
is the hero of every story. Abraham
isn’t the hero, David isn’t the hero,
Peter and Paul aren’t the heroes. They are all flawed men. If they achieve
anything, it is all God’s grace. Find that grace in the story and peach it.
He
would even say:
Don’t tell people just to be like Jesus.
That’s the most depressing sermon in the
world—be like Jesus
Who can be like Jesus?
Preach
Jesus Christ as your savior and your enabler before you ever get around
to preaching him as our example.
He
would say: Gentlemen, the rules don’t
change, but the motivation does.
Don’t motive by guilt or shame, don’t tell
people to pull themselves up
by their bootstraps—it must always be the
grace of God.
There
was a story told about Dr. Chapell which I never heard him tell,
but it was true, it really happened.
He
had great natural speaking talents.
He started preaching when he was just 16 in
a little country church.
So
when he came to seminary, he was head and shoulders above everybody
else in terms of his confidence and
delivery.
He
was clearly the best preacher on the campus.
The
day came for him to preach his first full sermon in his first homiletics class.
He
put his heart into it, he pulled out all the stops. It was a masterpiece.
All his fellow students were both in awe and
in despair—
knowing that they would never rise to this
level.
He
submitted his sermon manuscript to the professor.
The professor was an elderly minister, Dr.
J. S.
A very kind and winsome man.
And
the next day, Bryan Chapell got his sermon back in his box.
He pulled it out and there on the front page
was a big, fat red F.
And scrawled across it was one word: Moralism.
He was crushed.
He didn’t even know what that meant.
Moralism?
Went to Dr. S. with his sermon in hand.
Where
is Jesus in this sermon? Here, I
mentioned Jesus here and here.
Yes, but if you hadn’t mentioned him at all,
your sermon would be
fundamentally unchanged—because it’s all
about what you must do.
It’s
about being a good person, doing the right things, keeping the rules.
A Jewish rabbi could preach this sermon.
A Unitarian minister could preach this
sermon.
You
have to preach our inability to do anything God requires—
and how Jesus, through his perfect life and
shameful death
has done everything for us.
And
then, only then, do you say: Now,
because of his grace,
and in gratitude for his grace, and relying
on his grace—this is how you must live.
This
convicts me so deeply. Many times I’ve
left out God’s grace in my
preaching and especially in my pastoral
dealings with people.
Because
the default mode of my heart is moralism.
It is about performance.
Motivation by guilt—What kind of Christian
are you, that is so wrong?
Motivation by shame—How could you do this to
the Lord, you ingrate?
Motivation by fear—God’s going to get you
for doing that?
Motivation by bribery—Keep the rules, follow
the steps, obey the law
and God owes you.
It
sounds a lot like parenting, doesn’t it?
After all we’ve done for you. How dare you treat your mother that way.
You are going to get it. You don’t want to see me when I’m mad.
Do what I tell you to do and I’ll give you
what you want.
It
sounds a lot like marriage, doesn’t it?
How can I manipulate, threaten, punish,
bribe my spouse to see things my way
and do what I want?
In
fact, it sounds like all of our dealings with people in every area of life—
whether school or work or family.
See,
this is not just for pastors. All
Christians are preachers.
The
way you deal with your child’s disobedience is a sermon to that child.
You
are either preaching moralism or grace.
Either, keep the rules and God owes you, or
you are a sinner just like your mom
and dad.
We need Jesus to be good and you do to.
The
way you deal with your spouse is a sermon—
When you are wronged or you do the
wrong—it’s either the cross and humility
and forgiveness requested and forgiveness
granted, or it’s hell to pay.
Keep
a close watch on your teaching. Be
growing in grace.
Remember,
the rules don’t change, but the motivation does—
It’s the cross of Jesus and your gratitude
for his amazing salvation.
Keep
a close watch on your life—
Don’t let the busyness and the urgency of
life, the barnacles of responsibility
keep you from the important business of
growing closer to Christ.
Take
time to worship with his people on the Lord’s Day.
Don’t let other things intrude. Take time to pray and meditate.
Keep
a close watch on your teaching—
In all your dealings with people, especially
those close to you,
keep the cross of Christ and the grace of
God in the forefront of your mind.
That
means you are constantly reminding yourself that you are sinner saved
by grace, and that gratitude drives you and
motivates you.
And
finally, I ask that you remember me in your prayers.
That
the Lord will help me in both of these vitally important areas—
that my walk with him will be close, and
that my preaching, teaching,
and all my conversations with you as your
pastor will be full of grace.