A Good Servant of Christ

I invite you to turn with me to 1 Timothy and to chapter 4 and to follow along as I read. As we turn there, it is an immense privilege to be here—for each of us to be here as, as it were, fellow foot soldiers in the army of Jesus, students in the school of Jesus, and servants of the Word of Jesus. And I have looked forward to this along with all who’ve come with me, and I covet the opportunity of these days in your company. It was so good to be led in praise, wasn’t it?

First Timothy 4:1:

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

“If you put these things before the brothers [and sisters], you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserv[es] of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have [set] our hope … on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

“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.”

Amen.

A brief prayer:

We ask, gracious Father, that you will take your truth, plant it deep in us, and shape and fashion us in the likeness of your Son,[1] in whose name we pray. Amen.

Well, what I want us to spend this first session doing is taking seriously the notion of being “a good servant of Christ Jesus,” as Paul puts it here to Timothy: “If you [do] these things … you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus.”

Now, the framework in which we consider this—indeed, the context in which chapter 4 is set—is very, very straightforward. If you look at verse 14 of chapter 3, there Paul explains, “I hope to come to you soon”—he’s not there—“but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.” So, “At the moment,” he says, “I’m not with you, but it is imperative, Timothy, that you know and that your congregation also understands what it means for you to fulfill the calling that you have.”

And very specifically—although we won’t spend time on this—the opening five verses here of chapter 4 further provide the context. What he’s describing there is departure from the faith—people who’ve been led astray by “deceitful spirits.” These deceitful spirits have come to them not in some magical way, but demon-inspired doctrines had gained an entry into their world and into the congregation in which they were living, and those stories and those ideas, those concepts, had come to them through human agents. And the kind of things that were being expressed and said it’s there for you to consider. There was essentially an emphasis on asceticism, hence the expression about not being allowed to be married and the concerns of food and so on.

Essentially, if you look at it, it is an attack on the doctrine of creation itself, and it is a distorted perspective both on marriage and on food. Obviously, there was an initial expression of this with which Timothy was confronted, but it’s not an unusual experience to find that two key areas of life—namely, food and sex—become the occasion for people to deviate, become deluded, and express all kinds of notions and views. And when you think about the nature of that—especially when you think about the contemporary circumstances that we’re in vis-a-vis gender, marriage, and so on—it’s not unusual.

Years ago, when Stott was quoting Fairbairn, an ancient commentator, Fairbairn said this: “A flagrant current misuse of the creation argument is the claim that the practices of heterosexual and homosexual people are equally good because equally created. … But no, what God created was ‘male and female’, with heterosexual marriage as the intended outcome.”[2]

So we need to be sure that we have an understanding of the doctrine of creation and that we have a very clear understanding of the fall. Because it’s not unusual for people to say, “Well, everything is good.” No, everything is not good. The text actually says that “everything created by God is good,” but we live in a fallen world. And so the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of the fall, the expressions of evil are all around us. Satan prevailed upon our first parents to doubt God, to disobey God, and so on. And so, consequently, the attributes of human error have been passed on and down through the ages.

For us to be servants of the Word of God and be prepared to say what the Word of God says and to be unprepared to retranslate it in order to fit the culture of our day is a demanding task.

Again, I don’t want to delay on this, but it is surely significant that Paul regularly attributes human error to the influence of demonic spirits—the influence of demonic spirits expressed through human agents. Hence Ephesians 6: We’re not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.[3] When you think about the preoccupation of our contemporary culture in relationship to these things and a straight denial of the doctrine of creation—“In the beginning, God…”[4]—and then the upturning of that which God has made for good, you realize that for us to be servants of the Word of God and be prepared to say what the Word of God says and to be unprepared to retranslate it in order to fit the culture of our day is a demanding task. And it is in that context that Timothy, and all of us as Timothies after him, are given this charge and encouraged to become a good servant of Jesus.

Now, when I read this just now—I have read it before—but when I read it just now, I said, “Goodness gracious! There’s a lot of stuff in this chapter.” And, of course, there is. And so what I want to endeavor to do in the time that I have is just work our way through this text and see if we can’t understand what it means for us to take seriously what Paul is saying here to Timothy concerning the good servant of Christ.

The Good Servant

Straightforwardly and immediately, he says, “You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine you have followed, if you put these things”—“if you put these things”—“before the brothers” or “before the brothers and sisters.”

Now, let me just say that in the average home Bible study, someone will immediately raise their hand and say, “What does he mean by ‘these things’?” And the temptation is then you will go into a great discourse about how many times “these things” comes in Paul’s letters and so on, and it will be a deviation from course. He means “these things.” What are “these things”? Read the text. You have the exact same thing in verse 14.

And in the same way (and I’ll just get ahead of this one as well): the question of “This is a trustworthy saying.” Is he referring to the following verse, or is he referring to the previous verse? Once again, if you’re going to expound this passage, don’t get diverted by that. And since I don’t want to, I’m calling myself to account before I even get there. All right!

So, the good servant of Jesus Christ is doing what? First of all, he’s putting “these things” before the church family.

Secondly, he himself is being trained, or nourished, in the good doctrine. Trained and nourished in the good doctrine. Remember, when he writes to Timothy in the second letter, he says, “Timothy, continue in the things that you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing those from whom you learned them and how from infancy you were aware of the fact that they’re able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.”[5]

And here he is now, as the servant of God in the community of God’s people, and we mustn’t miss this: Timothy, the pastor, is being personally nourished in and with the Word that he proclaims. In other words, his ability in public is tied to his private engagement. What we are before our congregation is nothing other than the reality of what we are in the privacy of our study, in the privacy of our bedroom, in our cars as we drive through the community—private engagement giving rise to public proclamation.

This training is to be an ongoing training. I’m getting alarmed by when they say, “Who are the oldest people here?” It’s getting really tenuous for me. And there’s nothing worse than when they ask you to put in your birthdate when you’re signing up for something, and you start at 2026, and you have to scroll back. And it’s like “Goodness! This thing’s going to run out here before we get to 1952.” And, you know, here we are, at whatever age we are. Have we conquered this? No, we haven’t. Because this nourishing, this training, this being taught by our own teaching—this in some sense is being sanctified by our own proclamation. Because otherwise, who’s going to teach us the Bible on a regular basis? We can listen to our friends and our colleagues, but if we’re not being taught ourselves by the study that we’re doing, we’re in difficulty. God is using our own teaching, our own sermons to accomplish his purposes not only through us but in us. And that direct relationship is vital.

The good servant, then, is putting these things before the people. He himself is being trained in the good doctrine. And, you will notice, the good servant is steering clear from “stupid Godless fictions.”[6] “Stupid Godless fictions.” In his second letter, Paul actually says the very same thing, doesn’t he, where he says, “I don’t want you, Timothy, to have anything at all to do with foolish and ignorant controversies”?[7] That is actually in verse 23, I think. But here in verse 16: “But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness.”[8] Twenty-three: “So flee youthful passions … pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. [And] have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; … they breed quarrels,”[9] and so on.

It’s a very important reminder, isn’t it? Especially when we get together, the danger is that if we’ve come up with some little intriguing notion, we might want to spend a lot of time on that. But Paul is saying to Timothy: To engage in that is like getting blood poisoning. It would poison the body. It breeds quarrels amongst people. And quarreling amongst people should not be a feature of our pastoral ministry. If you’re a quarrelsome pastor, the chances are you will have a quarrelsome congregation. If you’re a fighting pastor, you will create a fighting congregation.

And Paul is saying to Timothy, “Don’t even think about that! You need to be the one who is kind, who is able to teach, who is patient, who has the ability to gently correct those who oppose the message. Steer clear of godless fictions. And rather, having done that, make sure that you train yourself for godliness. Have nothing to do with this stuff; train yourself for godliness.”

Now, there’s a word, isn’t it? I remember years ago, a long time ago, I was speaking at a Bible institute. (That probably gives it away.) Anyway, I was speaking at a Bible institute, and I just said to the young people there, I said, “How many of you have read Holiness by J. C. Ryle?” Not a person put up their hand. I said, “How many of you know there was a J. C. Ryle?” Nobody put up their hand. I think then I said, “How many of you have a Bible?” And a few of them put up their hands at that point.

But if you think about it, J. C. Ryle’s book on holiness has probably never actually been bettered. And I can’t think of a contemporary book by a contemporary minister that has addressed anything—other than probably Wells of old at Gordon-Conwell and his work, and certainly Jim Packer—but in contemporary terms, when you think about all the things that we are keen on in pastoral ministry, the things that we’re attracted to, the ideas that we get from one another, it’s not very difficult to realize that godliness itself may not actually be found in the top two or three.

Gifting is obviously important, but character is more important. It was Murray M’Cheyne who told his congregation that their greatest need in their minister was not his effectiveness, his ability in the text, but was his own personal godliness. That is a tremendous challenge, and it is the challenge that is being laid before Timothy here: “Timothy, you want to be a good servant of Jesus Christ? Then read carefully what I’m saying to you.” Better a leader, said somebody, who is modestly gifted than a gifted man who is brilliantly gifted but ungodly in some ways. Better to be modestly gifted and living a holy life than brilliantly gifted and living a secret, ungodly life.

Gifting is obviously important, but character is more important.

What is godliness? Well, we could define it in all kinds of ways. How is this? “Devotion to God actively expressed in a good life motivated by the gospel.”[10] Godliness: a “devotion to God actively expressed in a good life motivated by the gospel.” When our ministries—when evangelical theology per se—loses sight of this vision, it inevitably loses its way.

When he writes to Titus, of course, he’s really on about the same thing all the time. In Titus 2: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us” to do what? “To renounce ungodliness.” “To renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.”[11]

Now, I’m an older guy, so I grew up in the ’50s, and I grew up in the ’50s in Scotland. Were my parents wrong with me when they thought it’d be a good idea if I didn’t have a television before I was twelve years of age—or maybe never have one at all? Were they wrong with me when I had to twist their arms up their back to let me go, in my mid-teenage years, to a movie for the first time, and they capitulated, and they let me go to see, of all things, The Ten Commandments? But once I had broken the mold, I cut free, and I went next to The Sound of Music. Were they wrong in seeking to send me down that track? I wonder. Were they wrong about a Sunday as the Lord’s Day? Or were they concerned that they would set me, as a boy, off in the right trajectory, at least, so that I would be able to recall, like Timothy, the things that I have learned and firmly believed, knowing those from whom they taught me?

We’ve all got that—maybe parents, Bible class teachers, sports coaches, whatever it is. And sometimes, when we’re tempted to veer off course, their face comes in view, and we find ourselves realizing again: A good soldier is paying attention to this.[12]

And in the same vein—and I’m just following the text—the good minister must “take time and trouble to keep [himself] spiritually fit.”[13] “Don’t get into silly myths; train yourself for godliness.” And “bodily training is of some value,” but “godliness is of value in every way.” It’s so often, isn’t it, that you see all these people going around with exercise bags and yoga mats and all manner of things, and gigantic bottles of water, and all this stuff, and “Oh, look at me! Look how righteous I am! Look how trim I am! Look how I am,” and everything.

You say, “Did you read your Bible today?”

“Oh, no, no. I’ve got to go to the gym first. I do the gym first. No, no. No, I mean, a healthy body is a sign of a very good life.”

Yeah, really, apparently, Timothy had it upside down. “Train yourself for godliness,” because “[physical] fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential both for this … life and for the life to come.”[14]

Let me just segue and say to those of you who have got children, and you all think your children are about to run in the Olympics—I’ve got news for you: They’re not. They’re not going to play for the Dodgers either. They’re not. There might be one in twenty thousand, but that’s it. The reason I say this is because I’m watching young families—young families—prioritize physical fitness and progress in their children. And it’s had a huge impact on church, it has a huge impact on family life, and at the very heart of it are many of us as pastors who, wittingly or unwittingly, have actually led the charge. Well, that would make it difficult to be a good soldier, wouldn’t it?

B. B. Warfield, commenting on Calvin, says, “No man ever had a profounder sense of God …; no man ever more unreservedly”—I can’t read my own scribbles—“no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to Divine direction.”[15] I was just reading to my assistant last week, before we left, from one of the Puritans. And he was commenting on how to prepare yourself for the Lord’s Day. I think I stopped reading when I came to point twenty. And it went, “How do you prepare yourself on Saturday night? How do you prepare yourself on Sunday morning? How do you respond to the text when it’s proclaimed? How do you see the nurture and nourishment of your soul as a result of the food that you’ve been fed?” And by the time we got to about number twenty-two, both of us were saying, “We know nothing about this! We’ve seen nothing like this.” And we, as the pastors of the churches, if we’re going to be good servants, have first of all got to take it seriously, and then we’ve got to be prepared to challenge our people with it.

This is Calvin—not on Warfield, but this is Calvin himself: “God,” he says, “by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teach[ing] frame …. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with … intense … desire to make progress.”[16] Godliness.

Paul’s exhortation, again, as he comes to the end of the chapter, makes perfect sense when he urges him to flee and to follow hard after and to fight. Well, you say, don’t take me too seriously, just because I’m jealous of all of your physical fitness. You can tell: I don’t go to the gym very much, as you can see. So, there you have it. That’s okay. You say, “Oh, that’s because you’re reading your Bible so much.” No, it’s nothing to do with that. It’s just cause I’m downright lazy, and that’s it right there. Good servants. Good servants.

Now, this is where you come to the verse that I mentioned: “The saying is trustworthy and deserv[es] … full acceptance.” I take it that what Paul has just said is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. As J. B. Phillips paraphrases it: “There is no doubt about this at all, and Christians should remember it.”[17]

The good servant is also fully engaged in this. Notice verse 10: “For to this end we toil and strive”—“toil and strive”—“because we have [set] our hope … on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” Now, there’s another opportunity in your Bible study to get immediately off course. Because somebody’s going to put out their hand and say, “What does it mean he’s ‘the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe’?” And you’re going to say, “We’re going to talk about that later,” and you’ll hope that he never brings it up again.

This is Calvin commentating not on this verse but on 2 Peter 3: “God … stretches [out] his hand without a difference to all, but lays hold … of those, to lead … to himself, whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world.”[18] It’s an antinomy, it’s a challenge, and whenever somebody does something with it in a way that is helpful, I write it down immediately.

I’m going to give you a quote, and you’ll want this afterwards, because it comes from a friend of mine in Memphis. His name is Ronnie Collier Stevens. And he sent this to me a few weeks ago. This is how it goes. And the reason I quote this is because of this verse. And let this quote help us:

The gospel points to a narrow door. That door is as wide as the breadth of two arms whose hands were nailed to a cross. The gospel points to a single name, the name of a Jew born in Bethlehem whose mother was a virgin and whose Father is God. The gospel points to a universal invitation: Anyone who comes to the one true God through the one saving name may enter heaven forever. The gospel conveys the message with an urgent necessity. This is the only way we can be saved.

If these things are being put before the church family and are being inculcated in the ministry of Timothy and all the Timothys after him, then the work of the gospel proceeds.

Specific Exhortations

Now, I want to keep going if I still can. He “is the Savior of all people, especially … those who believe.” And then there’s a sort of transition there as he now gives these more specific exhortations. First of all: “Do not let anybody look down on you…” “Let no one despise you for your youth.” Okay. It’s tough when you’re young, because you are young. When I was ordained to the gospel ministry, I had to put on a clerical collar. It was a long time ago—1976. I bet some of you have never even seen a clerical collar, let alone put one on. And I did it out of a sense of subjugation and out of deference to my boss and so on. I wasn’t particularly attracted to it myself. But the time that it really harmed me was when I had put it on, and my wife and one of my younger sisters came in and saw me with it, and they just fell about on the floor laughing. Indeed, when I did my first funeral, I think some people thought that they were at Saturday Night Live, because this boy was standing there presiding over this thing.

And so, we’ve all been there; we’ve all been young, and we’re not as young as we used to be. And the danger is that in our youthfulness, we don’t take this exhortation, but we try and use language that we’re not qualified to use, or we make references that we’ve never gained the strength to make references to, or that we shout louder, or we become little manipulative little characters, and so on. All of that is a temptation and is a danger to be set aside.

“Let no one despise you for your youth, but set [them] an example.” In other words, teach with your life. Teach with your life. Well, what’s involved in that? Where is the example to be found? Well, first of all, in speech. Well, that’s just so hard, isn’t it? Because that’s what we do. It would be better if it didn’t have speech in it—if it was just like “Lead with your life,” and you said, “Okay. I can figure that out, I think.” No, but with speech! “Let not many of you become teachers,” James said, right? “Because the one who teaches will be judged with greater strictness.”[19] He goes on to say, “Are you really going to accept the fact that out of your mouth as a preacher comes blessing and cursing? Brethren, this ought not to be,” he says. “You don’t get saltwater and fresh water out of the single spring.”[20] He’s making the point very clearly. In the Old Testament, in Proverbs—and James is a very proverbial kind of book—it’s words that are “fitly spoken” that are “like apples of gold in [pictures] of silver.”[21]

When you have a capacity with words, your words can wound as easily as win. They can drag down as well as build up.

I’m sure we have all been confronted by the immensity of this and also by the awareness of the fact that the prophet of God, when he is confronted by the God-ness of God in Isaiah 6—when he comes clean, what does he say? “I am a man of unclean lips.”[22] The people would have said, “No, you’re not! You’re the prophet of God!” “No,” he says, “I’m uncovered. Here I am.” Because when you have a capacity with words, your words can wound as easily as win. They can drag down as well as build up. And I’ve never been able to get beyond that little poem that goes like this:

 If all that we say
 In a single day,
With never a word left out,
 Were printed each night
 In clear black and white,
It would make strange reading, no doubt.

 And then just suppose
 Before my eyes close,
I must read the whole record through.
 Then wouldn’t I sigh,
 And wouldn’t I try
A great deal less talking to do?

 And I more than half think
 That many a kink
Would be smoother in life’s tangled thread,
 If half that I say
 In a single day
Were to be left forever unsaid.[23]

A good servant of Jesus Christ is not making a fuss about things, but he’s setting an example—in conduct, speech and in conduct; in your deportment, in your behavior. I didn’t really do much with this as I was thinking about it, but there is something here, when you take those first five verses again, and you think about the externalism of the ascetic activities of no marriage and certain kind of food distinctions and everything else, and the people are very quickly then attached to the idea that “as long as I have prevented myself from engaging in this, that, and the next thing, then I’ve actually got this covered.” These external and formal regulations, unhinged from the work of the Holy Spirit, will avail nothing[24]—except make us proud, probably. The Father’s desire is that the work of the Spirit will be so advanced in our lives that we will be conformed to the image of Jesus.

Bianco da Siena, 1867. Do you have this in your portfolio as you come to the pulpit, as you come to a new day?

Come down, O love divine,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine
Own ardor glowing.
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it,
Thy holy flame bestowing.[25]

Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go,
My daily labor[s] to pursue,
Thee, only thee, resolved to know
In all I think or speak or do.[26]

The way we set the trajectory of our days matters—and not just our Sundays.

He goes on to talk about “love,” “faith,” and “purity.” In fact, purity comes again, doesn’t it, when you don’t rebuke older people, and you want to make sure that you treat younger women as sisters and older women as mothers—at the end of 5:2—“in all purity.” And he comes back to it again: “Do[n’t] be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; [but] keep yourself pure.”[27]

We’ll just pause on this, shall we? I think we must. Because we have lived through another decade in which many of our heroes, many of our friends, many of our partners in the gospel, apparently knowing this really well, have decided that it didn’t apply or that they could make a big distinction between public ministry and personal holiness. How many of our friends have failed, and they’ve failed because in secluded pastoral situations, they have chosen to embark on sexual adventures to the shipwreck of their ministries and to the besmirching of biblical Christianity and to the harming of households again and again and again? It is grievous!

So, what do you do? This is what you do: You say to yourself again and again, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he falls.”[28] And this is mainly men here, so I can say this, I think—and even if I can’t, I’m about to. But Charles Bridges in the nineteenth century has a wonderful quote. And sometimes when you’re off like this, and perhaps you’ve left your family, left your wife behind, and you’re now with two or three of the guys, and you have freedom and so on, and you are challenged by various things… Bridges says this: He says, “Tender, well-regulated, domestic affection is the best defence against the vagrant desires of unlawful passion[s]”[29]—which, being translated in the twentieth century, is “Sleeping with your wife and delighting yourself in the wife of your youth[30] with a wholehearted, unrelenting, ongoing, enjoyable affection is the best antidote to the vagrant passions of unlawful desires.”

And I’ll tell you where you’ll get into it—get into it the wrong way: pride. Pride. The contemporary church has a tremendous way of attaching significance to all kinds of character traits, or personality types, or whatever it might be. And the whole notion of “We’re special”—you know, part of our role in life is just to poke people in the ribs and say, “You’re not special. Did you know that?” and to say, “Hey, Alistair! You’re not special. Did anyone tell you you’re not special?” I said, “Yeah, my wife told me that not so long ago. But it hasn’t harmed our domestic affection. I can guarantee you that!”

But let me just say something. Let me give you… Because the antidote to pride is humility. And this is Spurgeon. This is Spurgeon. Well, that’s the wrong page. Spurgeon is 28, and 28 is right here. “[If you] seek humility,” he says to his students,

try hard work; if you would know your nothingness, attempt some great thing for Jesus. If you [want to] feel how utterly powerless you are apart from the living God, attempt especially the great work of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ. … And you will know, as … never … before, what a weak unworthy thing you are.[31]

You say, “Well, you can’t say that today. Haven’t you heard Joel Osteen? He’s got the reverse of that going.” Yes, of course he does! That’s another subject for another time.

Pride lies behind every collapse that I’ve observed living in America for forty-two years. Pride. Doesn’t matter if it’s sex, money, bullying, whatever it might be; it’s pride. It’s “The rules don’t apply to me. I’ve now managed to create a gap between what I am publicly and what I am privately”—and it’s the end of the line.

If you’ve read Robert Harris in the trilogy on Cicero, you will have enjoyed it, and you will know that the voice in Harris’s writing in that trilogy is the voice of Cicero’s slave Tiro. And Tiro moves with Cicero and observes everything about him. He is in the context one day when Crassus, who is not a friend of Cicero, comes to him and blows smoke at him, if you like. And he tells him what a wonderful person he is: “Cicero, there’s never been a leader that could possibly do the things you’re doing,” and everything else. And Tiro says this:

There was a time when Cicero would have spotted such an obvious trap a mile off. But I fear there is in all men who achieve their life’s ambition only a narrow line between dignity and vanity, confidence and delusion, glory and self-destruction. Instead of staying in his seat and modestly disavowing such praise, Cicero rose and made a long speech agreeing with Crassus’s every word.[32]

And if you read on, then, of course, you realize that Cicero’s leadership was going to come to a crashing halt. And probably little things like that led to it.

“Devote yourself…” We’re almost done. Relax! “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.” “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.” Yeah. This is Justin Martyr in the second century: “On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has finished, the president speaks, instructing and exhorting the people.”[33]

I don’t mean any judgment in this, but I’m fascinated and somewhat troubled by the fact that as I move around the country, I’m aware of the absence of the public reading of Scripture—that many churches do not have a liturgy that involves any public reading of Scripture; not simply that they don’t have the Old Testament and the New Testament, not simply that they don’t have the Law and the Gospel, but they just don’t have it. They have it on screens so that people can have it in their hands. It’s, pragmatically, very understandable. And people say, “Well, why would you read a long passage like that?” Well, because we’re supposed to—that it’s the entrance of God’s Word that brings light.[34] It is after the public reading of Scripture that you will then be involved in exhortation and in teaching.

In teaching, what we’re actually doing is giving people an understanding of the text—the first principles of the text, if you like: an understanding of basic Christian doctrine. In preaching, we are then making an appeal to people’s wills and to their emotions to respond to the Word that they have heard in the teaching. So if we think about it in those terms, we’ve got to be very careful that we have given them information that is then to be applied to them. If we go very quickly to the application…

For example, in the gospel, you might be preaching through something, and then say to the people at the end, “You know, it’s very, very important that you respond to the gospel. If you respond to the gospel, God will do this and that and the next thing. If you don’t respond to the gospel, you will find yourself in a very bad place.” And one of the people who was brought by a friend is sitting out there going, “I get that, but you never told me what the gospel is. If you tell me what the gospel is, then I’ll find out what it means to respond or not to respond.” And so what he’s saying here is “Make sure that you give the public reading of Scripture, that you do exhort people, that you do teach people, and that you don’t neglect the gift you have. Don’t neglect the gift you have.”

Paul knew that Timothy had been called, that he’d been set apart. You read it in chapter 1.[35] He knew, and Timothy knew, that he was a conscript, not a volunteer. He wasn’t operating on the basis of natural talent. And Timothy needs to be reminded of this: “Don’t neglect the gift you have. It was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.”

I don’t know where you were ordained or how you were ordained, and I don’t know whether you pay much reference to it. I must say, I don’t talk about it to myself on a daily basis. But the men who were instrumental in being brave enough or crazy enough to set me apart to the gospel ministry in the second Sunday of October 1976 still loom large in my life. They are, without exception, dead, but their faces appear before me. And they appear before me both to scare me, to encourage me, and to say to me, as it were, down through the years, “Begg, do not neglect the gift you were given.” There is no point that I have found along the journey of pastoral ministry when we’ve got it. If that is something, maybe in another ten years I’ll tell you about it. But right now, we haven’t got it.

I used to think by the time you reached your seventies—when I heard guys in their seventies preach, I’d say, “Well, it must be great! You get up there in your seventies, I mean, you’ve known everything for fifty years, and you just go.” Now I’m in my seventies; it’s harder than it was when I was in my thirties or my forties. Because in my thirties and forties, I was stupid! That’s one of the reasons.

Well, we must stop, shouldn’t we? Sixteen (or whatever it is): “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them.” Do you have earbuds? Do you have the Apple ones? Yeah. Okay. Well, when you get them—which, your wife will give them for you as a present after you get home—and there’s three settings in them, and you touch them, and they do their own thing. But one of them says, “Immersion. Immersion.” I’m like, “Okay!” “Immersion.” And then what it does is it shuts out the “Please put up your tray tables and fasten your belts.” It just goes, “Immersion.” Okay.

That’s the picture that is used here. “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them”—in the same way that we breathe air. “All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.”[36] Remember that song? Or let’s go to My Fair Lady, when old Higgins, after he’s been so unkind to Eliza Doolittle and has cast her out, then he sings that song, remember? And he goes, “I’ve grown accustomed to her face, … like breathing out and breathing in.”[37] It’s very touching, actually. ’Cause he’s a real surly joker, and you get the sense that, yeah, she got through to him, and he’ll never be the same again as a result of the impact.

The servant of the Word of God, Paul says to Timothy, and to all of us as Timothys, is to be immersed in these things in the same way as the body is immersed in the air that it breathes. Then and only then will those among whom we serve understand our progress.

The servant of the Word of God is to be immersed in these things in the same way as the body is immersed in the air that it breathes.

And if you’re like me, then you will come to the awareness that any progress that they see us making they will ascribe to God’s grace. They’ll say, “Begg is not as”—whatever—“as he used to be. That’s the grace of God!” And when they are aware when Begg is in the midst of a difficult journey and managing through it, they will magnify the grace of God, who chose to put his treasure in such an old clay pot.[38]

Finally, he says, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.” Close watch on yourself and on the teaching. If you travel in London, you know, when you get on the Tube, there’s a voice there that says the same thing all the time. Drives you nuts, doesn’t it? “Mind the gap.” “Mind the gap.” And it’s a good exhortation, you know—especially as you get old like this, you know. You’re like, “Whoa-ho!” You know, you’re an idiot if you go, “Hey, the gap!” They see you somewhere around London dragging your bad foot with you because you didn’t mind the gap. You say, “There’s somebody that didn’t mind the gap!”

“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine,” Johnny Cash. “I keep my eyes wide open all the time. I keep [my eyes open to the end] that binds,” or whatever that line is. “Because you’re mine, I walk the line.”[39]

“Because, Jesus, you’re my Savior, I want to mind the gap. I want to be a good servant of Jesus. I don’t want to be diverted from course. I want to keep on. And I keep on in the awareness that I’m strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus[40] and that he who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”[41]

Thank you for your patience.

Just a prayer:

O Lord our God, we thank you that it is your Word that does your work. We pray that out of an abundance of words we might have heard the very voice of God. We pray that as we take to ourselves the exhortation of Scripture, as we seek to draw close to Jesus, that you will use these hours of these days as helping to set forward your plans and purposes in each of our lives, in our hearts, homes, marriages, families, churches, and friendships. We don’t want to be great servants. We’d just like to be good ones. Please help us. In Christ’s name. Amen.

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[1] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[2] John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus: Guard the Truth, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 114.

[3] See Ephesians 6:12.

[4] Genesis 1:1 (ESV).

[5] 2 Timothy 3:14–15 (paraphrased).

[6] 1 Timothy 4:7 (Phillips).

[7] 2 Timothy 2:23 (paraphrased).

[8] 2 Timothy 2:16 (ESV).

[9] 2 Timothy 2:22–23 (ESV).

[10] Kenneth Brownell, The Titus Revolution: Putting Godliness at the Heart of the Church (London: Grace Publications, 2024), 14.

[11] Titus 2:11–12 (ESV).

[12] See 2 Timothy 2:3.

[13] 1 Timothy 4:7 (Phillips).

[14] 1 Timothy 4:8 (Phillips).

[15] Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), 24.

[16] John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 1:xl–xli.

[17] 2 Timothy 4:9 (Phillips).

[18] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles, trans. John Owen (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1855), 419–20.

[19] James 3:1 (paraphrased).

[20] James 3:10–11 (paraphrased).

[21] Proverbs 25:11 (ESV).

[22] Isaiah 6:5 (ESV).

[23] Grace W. Castle, “Suppose,” Christian Century 29, no. 3 (January 18, 1912): 16. Paraphrased.

[24] See Colossians 2:23.

[25] Bianco of Siena, trans. Richard Frederick Littledale, “Come Down, O Love Divine” (1867).

[26] Charles Wesley, “Forth in Thy Name, O Lord” (1749).

[27] 1 Timothy 5:22 (ESV).

[28] 1 Corinthians 10:12 (paraphrased).

[29] Charles Bridges, A Manual for the Young: Being an Exposition of Proverbs I–IX (London: Seeleys, 1849), 122.

[30] See Proverbs 5:18.

[31] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Unsearchable Riches of Christ,” Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 13, no. 745, 206.

[32] Robert Harris, Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 233.

[33] Justin Martyr, First Apology, trans. A. W. F. Blunt, Cambridge Patristic Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1911), 1.67, quoted in John R. W. Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus: Guard the Truth, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1996), 121.

[34] See Psalm 119:130.

[35] See 1 Timothy 1:18.

[36] Mike Hazlewood and Albert Hammond, “The Air That I Breathe” (1972).

[37] Alan Jay Lerner, “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” (1956).

[38] See 2 Corinthians 4:7.

[39] Johnny Cash, “Walk the Line” (1956).

[40] See 2 Timothy 2:1.

[41] See Philippians 1:6.