Stagnation

1 Timothy 3:14, 15

…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…

Timothy was young and simply wanted to serve. He was willing to help and watch, seeing how he could help all the more. By God’s grace and provision, he was gifted with skills through experience. God worked in his life little by little so that he was able to serve easily in this place or that. He would teach and be taught. So, Paul sent him. He had the skills that would be needed, Ephesus. I have preached through 1 Timothy and felt I had garnered a good understanding of. As I read through it again, it became more plain to me.

It is always good to try and understand the heart of God. When he chooses to tell us why is doing something we are best helped by listening. As Paul writes to Timothy, he makes one of these statements. He says “so that”. Paul is writing this letter to Timothy at Ephesus “so that” … “you may know” It is expressly for the purpose of teaching. Teaching what, you ask? How we are to act and behave in Church. All of what we read in 1 Timothy is so Timothy can understand how God’s people are to “do” church how to behave when they gather together.

As I meditated on these things, I was struck by other texts I know are in 1 Timothy. “Among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 1:20 ESV). Why would someone be removed from the fellowship of the saints. If the goal is being an example, wouldn't denying them that example hurt the end goal? Yet, Paul gives men over to Satan to LEARN. One of the more “controversial” sections of 1 Timothy says “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:11 ESV) I am not so much interested in the direct application to women in the pulpit/eldership, but that the focus and concern is about learning and teaching. Continuing to Chapter 3 we read that an elder “must be…apt to teach”. In that same chapter a deacon needs to be “tested” before he should be part of the diaconate.

Moving past the verse at hand, in Chapter 4 we read a Christian is to “train yourself for godliness” (verse 6 &7), “devote yourself…to teaching”, and to “practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.” (1 Timothy 4:15).

It is easy to stagnate in your study. To read the same verses over and over and think you know. I have read 1 Timothy enough that I can’t remember how many times. I have preached through both first and second Timothy, and yet the almost obsessive care that Paul and God had for the issue of education was not apparent to me. Paul’s fatherly care of Timothy was on full display for every believer to see, that who teaches and what they teach is important. Not just a little but painfully, repetitively, important. Over and over and over important, immersively important.

I won’t continue to point out all the times teaching, training, practice, and so on persist in this letter or in the next letter, but understand that teachers and teaching are critical to the church. It is easy to stagnate. Water does it the best. It sits still and gets to the point that it is unhealthy, or worse. Its appearance and its content get to the point that serious work must be done if it is to be good for human consumption. The particles settle out and then all the unseen things start to do their work and it is covered in slime. Such is the human mind when it stops learning, seeking to know, practicing what it has been taught. It becomes poisonous and dangerous.

 Small wonder Hebrews tells us to “stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Sometimes all it takes is one question to press the curious to further work. A casual thought grasped, “wait, Paul is talking about knowing and learning a lot, how much is he saying it?” And your mind is agitated, ready to know. Not to know “things” but to know him. The revelation of Paul’s intense concern for learning in the church in Ephesus is nice, but GOD’s concern for it makes that knowledge transcendent. To know him and his heart. That is what makes teaching valuable. To read is a great joy but to read the bible is immeasurably more.