Dr. McKellar’s Lesson for June 30, 2019

Guest Speaker: Timothy Jeffress

Mr. Jeffress is a retired, 30-year veteran of the Dallas police department and brother of our pastor.

Creating a truth-conforming church environment
1 Timothy 4:1–16

I. Book Theme: Creating a church environment so that false teaching cannot flourish

II. Review Chapters 1-3: Fight, Paul’s testimony, hold to faith/conscience, pray, ordered worship, leaders, personal conduct, doxology

III. 1 Timothy 4:1-5 False Teaching

a. Casualties/Apostasy
b. False Doctrine in other Epistles: “proto-Gnosticism”/proselytizers
c. False Doctrine in 1 Timothy
d. Rebuttal: “Everything created by God is good”
e. Application: 2 Timothy 2:23–26 (ESV)

²³Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. ²⁴And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, ²⁵correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

IV. 1 Timothy 4:6-16 Ministry Instruction:

1. V6 Rely on Scripture
2. V7,8 Train for godliness

a. Knowing ABOUT God through His Word
b. KNOWING God through means of grace (word, sacrament, prayer)
c. Expressing consequence to world
(head> heart> hands)

3. V11 Command and teach
4. V12 Set Example
5. V13 Devotion to Scripture
6. V14 Rest Assured
7. V16 Consistency

V. Application: pursue godliness

“In former centuries, the period between the Reformation and our fathers’ time, the tendency of the Protestant Church was very largely to let the conception of religion as a body of truths overshadow everything else. And nowadays, amongst a great many people, the temptation is to take the second story for the main one, and to think that if a man loves, and has the glow at his heart of the conscious reception of God’s love, and has longings and yearnings, and Christian hopes and desires, and passes into the sweetnesses of communion with God, in his solitary moments, and plunges deep into the truths of God’s Word, that is godliness. But the true exhortation to us is—Do not stop with putting in the foundations of a correct creed, nor at the second stage of an emotional religion. Both are needful.”
– Alexander MacLaren ¹

¹ MacLaren, A. (2009). Expositions of Holy Scripture: Philippians 4, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 Timothy (p. 364). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.