Living Outloud: 1 Timothy

We celebrate three years by discussing 1 Timothy with a fresh lens: Paul’s stated purpose that believers be formed in love from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. We look past rule-keeping to the character and unity that make the gospel believable.

• why 1 Timothy feels complex and layered
• context over proof-texting in hard passages
• women’s roles, men’s holiness, and integrity
• jewelry, posture, and the motives beneath behaviors
• widows’ care and wise application versus legalism
• Paul’s purpose: love as the lens for conduct
• division as a spiritual tactic and how unity resists it
• questions to test whether debates help faith

Chapters

• 0:00 Third Birthday, Fresh Purpose
• 0:51 1 Timothy 4:13 As North Star
• 2:21 Why 1 Timothy Feels Harder
• 3:26 Context Versus Verse-By-Verse Traps
• 4:31 Specifics To Timothy Or To Us
• 5:36 Women, Teaching, And Heart Posture
• 8:16 Men, Holiness, And Integrity
• 10:31 Legalism Versus Heart Transformation
• 12:16 Widows, Rules, And Wisdom
• 14:21 Paul’s Stated Purpose: Love
• 16:11 Division As The Enemy’s Tactic
• 18:11 A Unified Church, A Clear Lens

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:11

Welcome back to the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast. I'm Mike.

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

And I'm Kelsey.

SPEAKER_02: 0:16

And this is Living Out Loud, the segment where we will talk about what we read in the podcast previously in the week and try to figure out what we need to do about it. Not just hear it, but do what a Bible says. Because that's the whole point. That's why we're here.

SPEAKER_00: 0:29

To kick things off, Mike, happy birthday.

SPEAKER_02: 0:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:32

To the podcast.

SPEAKER_02: 0:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 0:35

This is the third anniversary. Birthday? Birthday sounds more fun for the podcast. Three years ago.

SPEAKER_00: 0:42

More cake for birthdays and anniversaries.

SPEAKER_02: 0:43

Oh, well, then we should have cake.

SPEAKER_00: 0:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 0:45

Um, yeah, this is uh it's a fun milestone in the life of Outloud Bible Project Podcast. And I'm thankful to you for listening and being a part of this podcast. Whether this is your first time jumping in, hey, welcome to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 0:59

Welcome to the party.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00

We're gonna be uh we're gonna be continuing to read the Bible. And uh if this is your, you know, your third year anniversary of listening to the podcast, well, thanks so much for being on this journey together. Uh, I think it's also fun that we get to kind of celebrate this third birthday of Outloud Bible with the book that contains probably the founding verse for this ministry, 1 Timothy 4.13. Until I get back, which is Paul talking to Timothy, but I'm like, ooh, maybe Jesus is talking to me. Um until I get back, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, preaching and teaching, and throw yourself into these works. You know, let everyone see your progress. And so that's what we're doing. Really focusing on the public reading of scripture part, because there's a lot of great teachers, there's a lot of great preachers, and you know, if we're able to do that if the time comes and an opportunity arises, but but really focusing on the public reading of scripture. Let the word of God speak for itself and pierce hearts and do what it does, it's good stuff. The thing about First Timothy here that we're going to talk about today is it's this is a way harder letter than Paul's other letters in the New Testament. Actually, there are two churches that have invited us to do an outloud Bible experience at their church, and both of them, they have been going through the books of Timothy and Titus in their sermons.

SPEAKER_00: 2:14

And it's working really well as a culmination, a celebration after they've already spent time studying the word. They're celebrating it by kind of getting this overarching full reading of all of these letters in one sitting. And and I like that because they've already kind of worked through as their churches uh some of the more difficult passages. But the beauty of reading it in a in its full context, of reading the whole Bible, the way we do here on the podcast, the way you do on the podcast, and and the way we do in the Outloud Bible experiences live in churches, the value of that is that we get to see the overarching heart of God, the overarching narratives and the things that tell us the kind of people we ought to be, the heart of God as it's revealed through large chunks of scripture, as opposed to sometimes we can get, we can drill so deep down into one verse or one word, and I'm a word nerd, I love a good word study. But sometimes we get so bogged down in the exact words of one exact verse and one exact verse that we lose sight of what we ought to be learning from the whole context of a book, from the whole context of a letter written.

SPEAKER_02: 3:21

And the reason that that is so difficult when we read First Timothy is because Paul is addressing kind of a bunch of different things. He's addressing Timothy specifically, like, hey Timothy, you should probably drink more wine more often because you're getting yourself sick drinking the water. Very specific to Timothy. That doesn't really apply to me today, or the church on the whole. Uh, but then he also addresses Timothy regarding some specific issues that Timothy is experiencing or will experience when he's establishing church leaders and church members. And there's also things that Paul is prescribing kind of for all church at all time, like, hey, this is good, I don't care who you are, when you are, this is good church doctrine and church practice. And even above and beyond that, kind of meta-wise, Paul is sharing the gospel sometimes, you know, just like he's he's he's preaching, he's just getting into preacher mode. And so how do we determine what to do?

SPEAKER_00: 4:12

But you didn't leave any footnotes of like what is specifically for church of all time and what's specifically for.

SPEAKER_02: 4:17

I mean, I got footnotes in my Bible, but I don't, it's not signed Paul, so it's it's a little bit tricky, right? Like with a particular verse, is like, is that for Timothy's body of believers? Or uh or is that for us, or what do we do with that? And so if it was easy to just determine what we do with each verse in First Timothy, or the Bible in the whole, but turke First Timothy, then honestly, there wouldn't be a discussion. People smarter than us would have solved it long ago. So we won't solve any problems here, but I think what we always have the responsibility of doing is, like you said, recognizing the heart behind the doctrine, heart behind the teaching. Because God's heart is revealed through scripture, and God's heart is relevant today. And we have the the responsibility today to recognize God's heart and align ours with his.

SPEAKER_01: 5:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:06

If we fail to do that, we're gonna find ourselves in disagreements and divisions about some of the details that we see in 1 Timothy. Not talking about hills to die on when it comes to the doctrine and the gospel. I'm talking about some of these things that's like, okay, I disagree, but you can still be a Christian based on, you know, if you believe about this or not, based on how you're you interpret it. I guess you might as well jump into it. One of the more difficult things to swallow, one of the things that kind of pricks you and comes up in in some arguments, is a discussion about women's roles in church.

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 5:42

So the specifically, women should learn quietly and submissively. I don't let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly. And then he kind of talks about the origin of man and woman and the woman being deceived and bringing sin into the world. It's like, okay, what do we do with that? That's crazy. And now and there are some people who try to establish with good hearts of, hey, I want to do what the Bible says. I don't want to lead a church unbiblically. And so they will say, well, you know what? Then a woman should not teach men, or a woman should not be a pastor, or a woman should not be a teacher. And they may draw lines in different areas. There are going to be disagreements here, but we have to be careful to not lose the heart. If we drill down on this particular thing and make a whole structure around it, then I think we're going to miss the heart behind it. Because Paul seems to care very much in this letter about the kinds of people we are.

SPEAKER_00: 6:34

Well, look at look at it in its bigger context, right? That's one of those verses that if we drill down on it, we can lose the bigger context. He goes on to describe how men ought to operate in church, how men in leadership, deacons ought to be the a man of one wife. Well, does that mean that no single man could serve in leadership at a church?

SPEAKER_02: 6:53

If he's not married, he's not a wife.

SPEAKER_00: 6:55

Because he's not a man of one wife. Or is there more of a heart that is being described here? A heart of a man who would be faithful to one wife, a wife of uh the heart of a man who isn't a womanizer, who isn't abusing women, or who isn't uh just playing the field and kind of sewing his work.

SPEAKER_02: 7:12

Or maybe have a a trail of failed marriages behind him that's probably a red flag that maybe he's not ready to be a deacon, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

And those of you. But but that is all talking about the heart of the man, like the integrity of the man. There's just so many specifics in here. Paul advises that women ought to not wear pearls and gold at church. I have a gold ring. Should I not be wearing that gold ring? No. I think that would be a ridiculous reading of this passage. You and I talk a lot about taking the bit of Bible literally, but we do not mean literalistically. Right. I think a literalistic interpretation is okay, I've got to take my gold ring off.

SPEAKER_02: 7:48

If he says it, then I will do it.

SPEAKER_00: 7:50

Then I've got to take my ring off before I go to church. A problem is that women will dress or put things on in such a way as to draw attention to themselves. The most attractive thing for a godly woman is to live a life that pleases God and serves him. And so why am I dressing the way I am? You know, Paul isn't specifically for all churches for all of time telling women that they can't wear gold or pearls to church. He is saying, why are you doing what you're doing? Be the kind of person whose life is committed to God by loving people and loving others and loving God so much that that's what draws people to you, not your outward appearance.

SPEAKER_02: 8:26

And in that same section, he says, hey, in every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God. Every place of worship, that would mean like our church today. Should men raise their hands when they pray in church? Again, that's not the point. Paul is saying this, I want them to be holy hands. Emphasis on the holy, not the emphasis on the raising hands, emphasis on holy hands. How do I make that assumption? Because he says at the end of that sentence, free from anger and controversy. That's the more important thing to Paul. It's like, hey, I'm I'm gonna assume you raise your hands. Whether or not you raise your hands, I don't really care. But make sure that your hands are holy hands tied to a holy heart. If you're raising your hands in prayer in church, but in your heart you're angry at your wife, at your kids, at your coworkers, at someone across the room in church, and you've got controversy in your heart and just like conflict that you're that you're bitter and you're unforgiving, that's that's an inappropriate posture to be in church. If you're gonna raise your hands in prayer, like, oh, I'm praying to God, well then put them down. If your heart is not right, if you're gonna raise your hands, make sure they're holy. If you're not gonna raise your hands, make sure your heart is holy and pure. Like the main point here from Paul is like the heart behind doing what you're doing and the integrity. And that's true whether it's about a man in church or a woman in church or the leader of the church. Now, we should see certain things of these people. This should emanate in their behavior, but if we turn those behaviors into what need what they need to be doing, then that is legalistic. It's legalistic to make these things the focus and ignoring the heart. Like whether it's jewelry and hair with women or or raising hands or I don't know, any of the prescriptions for what Paul says people should do. If you focus on those things and ignore the heart behind it, that's legalistic, just like it would be worldly to make those the focus and ignore the heart. Right? Like it'd be worldly to wear this jewelry just to get everyone's attention and ignore the heart behind it. The in-church version of that is to focus on behaviors and not the heart. That's legalism.

SPEAKER_01: 10:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 10:31

And so Paul is very clear. Like, I just want God's church, God's people, to be the kind of people that just exude the difference that the gospel makes in someone's life. Paul knew that, hey, he was establishing Timothy and Titus as leaders of leaders. Like you're gonna go appoint church leaders, it's gotta start with the leader. Like this integrity issue needs to start at the leader. And there was a whole region of new believers and new churches popping up that did not have leaders of integrity, and it was going to make the church a laughing stock among the culture if these churches did not look any different and their leaders did not look any different than any other group of people. Paul is not doing behavior modification by saying, do this and do this, don't do this and don't do this. Or even church structure or even establishment. A format necessarily. It's hey, make sure that you're the kind of person that is a worthy representative of the gospel. When he talks about a widow ministry, he's not exactly prescribing, like, here's the format for all churches' widows' ministries throughout time. Now, if we followed it, would we do pretty well? Yeah, we'd do pretty well. Is but he says, hey, if a widow is under 60, she shouldn't be on the list for help from the church. So if we see a widow who's fifty-nine, do we have to say, sorry, come back next year? Or do we look at the what kind of widow is she? Like, Paul spends a lot of time saying, is this the kind of widow who's just looking for a free ride so that she can go and sit martinis with her girlfriends and gossip about all the things going on at church? No. I don't care if you're 80 or 20. That's inappropriate for a widow to do. Um, and so it's like, no, we're looking, he said he drew a line somewhere. It's like generally around this age, that's when their focuses start to shift in the right directions.

SPEAKER_00: 12:24

So again, if if we've honed down on the he said 60, so therefore this woman who's 59 and desperately needs the help of the church has to wait a year while she, I don't know, struggles on her own for the next year before we're gonna help her. She's not on our widows list. Like that's legalistic.

SPEAKER_02: 12:38

It's ignoring that.

SPEAKER_00: 12:39

And I think anybody with a reasonable mind would look at that and be like, yeah, it would be unloving to reject and throw out into the street a woman who's 59 because she's not 60, like Paul prescribed. And yet in some of these other things, we're like, we're gonna hold staunch to these things uh in an inappropriate way.

SPEAKER_02: 12:57

Paul explicitly says why he's writing this letter. We don't have to guess. We don't have to figure out what he's trying to do when he teaches these things. He says it in 1 Timothy chapter 1, the first chapter of the first letter, verse 5. He says, The purpose of my instruction is okay, great. This should clear it up.

SPEAKER_00: 13:15

And this should be the lens through which we read the entirety of the instruction.

SPEAKER_02: 13:19

The purpose of my instruction is that all believers, that's you, that's me today, that's all believers.

SPEAKER_00: 13:26

That's Timothy, that's Titus, that's the leaders in their church, that's the members of their church, that's uh our church today.

SPEAKER_02: 13:32

All it's almost like he means all, right? All believers would be filled with love. Love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.

SPEAKER_00: 13:44

But he knew that two thousand years later we'd still be arguing over this with these words, because they were doing it then.

SPEAKER_02: 13:51

It was already happening. He says, but some people have missed this whole point. What point is he talking about? The fact that we need to be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. He says they've turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless discussions. They want to be known as teachers of the law, but they don't know what they're talking about, even though they speak so confidently. This is a danger here of like if we miss the point that all believers need to be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith, then we're gonna engage in meaningless discussions about words, about phrases, about meanings.

SPEAKER_00: 14:28

And it's emphasized again in chapter three, fourteen and fifteen, the second half of fifteen. Uh, he says, I'm writing these things to you now, and he says, so that you will know how the people must conduct themselves in the household of God, this is the church of the living God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

SPEAKER_02: 14:46

Hello, this is the church of the living God we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00: 14:49

And so we have to figure out how to conduct ourselves as the people of God, in the church of God, because the church of God is the pillar and foundation of the truth of the gospel. And so when we come against each other, when we fight with one each other, when we get bogged down in these meaningless conversations, fighting over what Paul meant and what Paul didn't mean in this letter, we are giving ground to Satan. Can we just admit that that's what's happening? When Satan can come in and cause division and cause separation within the church, where we decide, oh, well, that's an irreconcilable difference. I can't agree with you on that, so we can't worship together. Like when we make those kind of lines in the sand that have nothing to do with the gospel and everything to do with our preferences and our readings and our personal interpretations, when we let those lines happen, what happens is the line of the church that ought to be united in one front, coming against storming the gates of hell, is broken in two, and Satan wins the land that is in between those two factions. Satan gets to win inside the church when we come at each other about these different doctrines and these different things that we disagree about. It is Satan winning ground when what we ought to be doing is unifying over the gospel of Jesus Christ so that we are coming at the gates of hell, not coming at each other. When you and I are facing each other, we're not actually facing the enemy. And that's exactly what Satan wants to do to eliminate and make the church ineffective the way Christ set it up.

SPEAKER_02: 16:18

And why does he do it? Because I've seen enough cop shows where like the good cop guy gets kidnapped and he's held hostage and he's surrounded by the bad guys, and then he just says something that kind of gets these two fighting or makes this one insecure or makes this one say, hey, you're not paying me enough or whatever, and gets them fighting so that he can slip out and do what he needs to do. Because why does he do that? Because he's outnumbered and overpowered on his own. And Satan knows that he is outnumbered and overpowered by God's bride, the church. If if God's church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, were a united front, all attacking the gates of hell together, he'd be out of business. He'd be done. The only tactic he has to give himself an edge is to cause little riffs and little divisions among little groups of the church to get them kind of disagreeing and and having their own little worship services and differences instead of actually actively fighting against his work in this world and bringing God's kingdom to earth. He knows he's overpowered, he knows that he's outnumbered. We just don't know that because we're so busy arguing with each other. And so it all comes down to when we read 1 Timothy, when we read the Bible on the whole, it comes down to what Paul says. The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would have a great model to build their church? No. To have a lot of great discussion points for their Bible studies? No. That's not the purpose of Paul's instruction. The purpose of Paul's instruction is that all believers would be filled with love. Love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. That needs to be our focus. That needs to be the lens with which we read scripture, and that needs to be the engine motivating our words, our thoughts, and our actions as we go out into the world, being the church.

SPEAKER_00: 18:06

Because like he says in verse 4, these things only lead to meaningless speculations, which don't help people live a life of faith in God? Is the conversation you're having helping people live a life of faith in God? Is the woman you might attack because she's a pastor, is she helping people live a life of faith in God, then maybe get off her back, right? Are are the things that you're trying to staunchly like land a doctrine doctrinal statement on, are those things helping people live a life of faith in God, or are they distracting? Are they distracting and causing divisions? Because if it's distracting from the main mission, if it is causing division within the church, then I'm gonna call that out as a satanic attack against you, your ministry, and your church. I care about this topic a little bit. So I get a little bit fired up.

SPEAKER_02: 18:51

Well, this is This is good. This is uh a call for just a heart check. When we read the scripture, are we looking to just find ourselves reasons to to feel right about what we believe? Or are we allowing ourselves to let our heart be changed to be more like God's? God's heart is clear in the Bible if we look for it. And we have the opportunity to ask him to make our hearts more like his. Not to make his word sound more like ours.

SPEAKER_01: 19:17

Oof. Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 19:18

Well, we're gonna continue this discussion next week as we talk about more of Paul's personal letters and what we can learn from them and align our hearts with the heart of God. We'll see you next time.