timothys inferno
TIMOTHY’S INFERNO
The true story of one young pastor’s call to fight an eight-alarm fire in Jesus’ church. And what we can learn from it.
a Seven Mile Road preaching series from January through June, 2008
It was 65AD, and things weren’t going really well in the life of the church at Ephesus.
Corrupt leaders were leading people astray with their false teaching. Ascetic legalists were insisting that nobody get married, have sex, eat meat, or drink wine. First-century televangelists were pursuing fortune and fame at the expense of the gospel. Violent men and obnoxious women were reeking havoc in the worship service. Sons and daughters were neglecting to care for their widowed moms. Younger widows were dividing the church with their gossiping and gallivanting. Relationships were a mess between servants and masters, men and women, the young and the old. Rich Ephesian converts were disdaining generosity and holding onto their cash with tight fists.
It was a veritable inferno… an 8-alarm fire, threatening to burn the Ephesian church out of existence.
The church’s one hope was a timid, young pastor named Timothy. Timothy had worked alongside the Apostle Paul on many a mission, and had seen his share of troubles, but never had he encountered anything like this. And now he was alone, lungs filling with smoke, unsure what to do next.
Thankfully, although alone, he was not forgotten. When the Paul heard about the situation facing the Ephesian church, he immediately composed a letter in which he encouraged Timothy to dig in, grab an axe and a hose, fight the fires, and rescue the church.
That letter has survived for 2000 years and found its way into our Bibles where it is now known as the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, or I Timothy. For the next 5 months we are going to immerse ourselves in the text of this letter and the story of this church and see what we can learn together.
Modern theologians are always arguing back and forth about the proper way to read the letter. Some insist it is nothing more than an ad hoc document to be interpreted only within the context of first-century Ephesus, having no normative value for Jesus’ church today. Others see it as the Apostle Paul’s intentional blueprint for the ecclesial life of every church ever. Rather than picking sides, we are going to embrace the wisdom in each of these approaches by splitting our preaching series into two parts.
Part 1 is entitled firefighting. In these 8 weeks we are going to watch as Paul challenges Timothy to extinguish each of the situation-specific fires that were burning. To do this well we will have to get the local context right and see how Paul’s charges bring the Gospel to bear on the problems that Timothy and the Ephesian church faced.
Part 2 is entitled fireproofing. Throughout I Timothy, Paul weaves together many threads of beautiful, godly, pastoral wisdom how Timothy and the Ephesian church should do church, wisdom that that every pastor and every congregation in every time and place should embrace. We love our church as much as Paul and Timothy did theirs, and so in these final 13 weeks we are hoping to respond to the timeless truth of this letter and work diligently to keep any future fires from ravaging the life of our church.
And so, grab your helmets and hoses (careful sliding down the pole) and find your place on the ladder truck as we head off to fight the eight-alarm fire that is Timothy’s Inferno, and see what lessons we can learn that will help us fireproof our life together along the Seven Mile Road.
