1 Tim 4:12 | "A Church's Image"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Please take your Bible this morning and open it to the New Testament book of First Timothy.

We've been working our way through Matthew for a long time now, but we're taking a few weeks off from that and looking at a section in the middle of 1 Timothy.

And as we do that, I have to say that the image of Paul Flaydlin was fresh in my mind regarding our text for this morning.

And I trust that you will see why as we go through it.

Today we we send emails by the hundreds.

Some of you maybe by the thousands.

I try to avoid it as much as I can.

That's why you haven't gotten a reply from me.

Thank you for one person who laughed.

I appreciate that.

It is one of my failures.

Some of you, though, remember the days when we we sealed mail in an envelope and put a stamp on it and had Doug Grahambeck take it from us.

Doug, are you with us this morning?

No, Doug's not here.

Well, hopefully he's watching online.

Some of us still use that method of sending mail on occasion.

Getting a handwritten letter in the mail is a treat these days.

Did you know, though, that long ago, envelopes and even scrolls of paper, rolled up pieces of paper or leather were sealed not by sticking that sharp edge of a piece of paper against your tongue and cutting your tongue, but by a drop of wax on the edge that then dried, dried, soft, started soft, dried hard, and sealed that edge to what was underneath of it.

Most often, that piece of wax then had an imprint made on that piece of wax, whether it was an imprint from a piece of stone or metal or even a carved piece of bone.

It had an image that was carved into the bone or the wood or the stone that made an impression on that wax.

Then that letter then was carried to whomever the recipient was with the stamp of its owner on it.

The image of its owner stamped into that wax.

You didn't have the actual stamp, you just had the form, the image that was put into that soft wax before it hardened.

Did you know that God uses this same concept for the church?

He uses that same idea to refer to his people, his household.

Writing to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 6, verse 17, he said, But thanks be to God.

Romans 6:17

Where is it?

Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.

That word standard in the English Standard Version is the word tupos.

It's the word from which we get our English word type.

And it refers to a pattern that is left after something has been stamped.

More often it was used of a statue, or someone would take a hammer and a chisel, and so you hammered something into a piece of stone and it was chipped off, it was chiseled off, and so what was left was that stamped image.

The believers in Rome, comprising the church there, had been stamped with the word of God, identifying them as belonging to God, and therefore freed in that context, freed from being slaves to sin so that they could be slaves to righteousness.

You see, the stamping of God's word on a person's soul identifies that person as belonging to the one who stamped them.

But it also works to do something else.

It has a continuing effect of conforming that person to be like the stamp, like the image that is being stamped upon them.

This idea that God stamps us with his word, by which he then makes us like him, is important throughout the rest of the New Testament.

And now that you have that image stamped on your mind, yes, pun intended, look with me at 1 Timothy 4, verse 12, where a young pastor named Timothy is told to set an example for the believers.

1 Timothy 4:12

Apostle Paul writes to Timothy and he says, set the believers, there in the church in Ephesus, an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.

Now in Romans chapter 6, verse 17, the stamp of teaching, the stamp of the teaching of Scripture, is the faithful, continual teaching of God's word.

Romans 6:17

The same word used in Romans 6.17, that word tupos, type, is the same word used here in 1 Timothy 4.12, but translated this time as example.

Here in 1 Timothy, the word is used in a different kind of way.

In Romans 6.17, the word points to the object that is doing the stamping.

Paul says to the Roman church, this book, the Word of God, is stamping you as belonging to God and as doing a transforming work in your life.

Here in 1 Timothy, it's used in a little bit different way.

The word here refers to the wax that is on the letter, if you will, that has already been stamped.

Timothy is to bear the image of one who has been stamped.

So what does God's stamp on young Timothy look like?

Well, we're told, it looks like one whose speech, whose conduct, whose way of life in loving and having faith and purity has all been shaped, chiseled away the hard things to make an image that looks like what God's word calls us to be and to do.

So Timothy's pastoral mentor has given him a command, an instruction to live out this stamped image before the church in Ephesus.

Now, before we go on, I want to clarify a couple of things as we consider this idea of what Timothy is supposed to look like.

Because really what is being described here is that statue idea, that image, if we can put it in terms of a person, that God is chiseling away, striking Timothy, striking Christians to mold them into an image that He wants them to look like and to be.

So we can imagine this as a statue that's being carved out by an artist, or we can imagine it like that soft wax that has an image stamped into it.

In the end, we get to something that we are to look like.

First, let's remind ourselves of the context.

This takes us back a couple of weeks ago when we looked at chapter 3, verse 15, through chapter 4, verse 11.

We need to remind ourselves that the direct connection here is to Timothy.

Timothy's a young man, but not exactly in the way that we might think.

Young in the first century world could be someone in his 30s all the way to his early 40s.

Now, some of you men especially are thinking, praise God.

I'm a young man.

Yes, you are.

Go with that, run with it.

But even as it can be today, folks that are older than that, however you term young, folks that are older than that can sometimes have a hard time taking instruction from an upstart young person.

Right?

And Timothy is being told, don't let that deter your ministry.

Instead, he used to pour his focus into setting an example for other believers.

That's the context.

That's the direct context here.

But let's not forget the larger context is not simply young Timothy, but the local church in Ephesus.

If you question that, you can go back to chapter 1 and look at verse 3.

I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, stay at Ephesus.

Stay at Ephesus to work out some things in the church there.

So the larger context is the local church.

Everything that Timothy is told is set within the context of the gathering of God's people.

We saw a couple of weeks ago in chapter 3, verse 15, how the Apostle Paul set some boundaries in place for the church in Ephesus.

He said, This is the household of God.

In other words, God is the father of this house, and he's the one who sets the rules.

He sets the boundaries, he decides what is and what isn't.

This is the living God.

Contrary to what Friedrich Nietzsche wanted us to believe, he is alive and well.

He is not dead.

He is the living God.

And his word given to his people, then, is the foundation upon which we rest.

And the church, the gathered church, upholds that standard and that rule of God's word as the bastion of truth.

So the gathered church gathered together has this sense that we belong to another with a capital A.

We belong to another, and He is our divine Father who rules his household, and He is with us.

In chapter 4, verse 6, we see that that's why, or how God's people are trained to be servants of Christ in a dark world.

That's why in verse 7, Timothy was to have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.

Training in godliness is what lasts for eternity.

So we toil and we strive, we labor, we agonize for Christ-likeness, not a worldliness that is opposed to Jesus.

This is what Timothy is instructed to command and to teach to the young church.

But that can be difficult for a young man to do when some might be dismissive of him.

So Timothy was to set an example for that church to see and to follow.

This letter was likely read in the church in Ephesus.

So people gathered together to hear it would have heard this and understood it as the Apostle Paul saying to them, Timothy has been shaped by God's stamp.

He's your example.

Be like God's stamp.

That's the first clarifying thought.

The second clarifying thought is this.

We can have a perception of an image that is different than the reality.

Okay, what we perceive may not be real.

Let me give you an example just from yesterday.

We were sitting at the dinner table, and my wife holds up her phone from about four feet away and says, Look at this, what do you see?

And I said, I see pizzas.

Look, seriously, I saw pizzas, round things that looked like cheese with a red center.

Said, I see pizzas.

She brought it a little bit closer, and you know what?

It was a couch from the 1970s.

You lived through the 1970s, didn't you?

You know what I'm talking about.

My perception was completely different than the reality.

Right?

We misread things all the time, and there were people in the church in Ephesus that were unfortunately misreading Timothy.

They looked at him, and all that they saw was youthfulness.

Now we all have a way of appearing on Sunday morning.

Some of us here this morning are dressed up pretty nicely when the internal reality is that we're filthy inside.

And we want to be anywhere but here.

Some of us have put on a happy face and a cheerful face this morning, and the reality is that we're quite broken inside.

We misread things all the time.

It's a common thing.

Timothy was a younger man in that culture, yes.

But that appearance, that age belied a wisdom and a maturity and a godliness that was developed from years of apostolic discipleship.

So his mentor's instruction is to patiently change that perception by living out the stamping of the word of God in his life through his speech, through his conduct, through his love, his faith, and his purity of life.

That's significant for the local church.

Because what Timothy was to be to the church in Ephesus is what the church in Ephesus is to be before all other churches and the rest of the world.

And in a similar way, Timothy's youthfulness might be compared to the church's immaturity.

Remember, the church in Ephesus didn't always have the best of reputations.

And that was the Lord Jesus speaking to that church.

And here there are folks mistreating Timothy.

They have some growing up to do, don't they?

Now that's a lot to take in all at once, and so let's spend a few moments digesting it.

But first, let's go back again and review from chapter 3, verse 15.

God's household assembles in different places at different times.

But they should all be intent on holding firm the foundation of God's truth.

That's the identifying characteristic of a true church in 1 Timothy 3.15, is that it upholds the foundation of God's word.

And when we train others and one another in the words of the faith and in sound, healthy teaching, verse 6 of chapter 4, and we run from those things that take away from that soundness, chapter 4, verse 7, and when we diligently devote our collective selves to this purpose, verses 7 and 8 of chapter 4, then God's word, God's truth, begins to work itself out in our diligence so that others begin to see us as examples of godly speech, of godly conduct, of godly love, of being devoted to the faith, and being committed to purity.

So Timothy's spiritual father gave him a plan to follow in relation to the church at Ephesus.

But that plan wasn't supposed to stop with Timothy.

It was to go on and be replicated in the church.

Let's digest this a bit.

Beginning with this comparison between Timothy's usefulness and the church's immaturity.

Timothy was in a in a tough spot.

The church in Ephesus had some problems.

More specifically, they they had some problem people.

But that was not that surprising when we look at Acts chapter 20, because the Apostle Paul gathered with the Ephesian elders and told them, he says, listen, after I leave, there are going to be men springing up from even within your own selves teaching false things to draw people astray.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

There were people teaching wrong things and leading folks astray.

That wrong teaching led to wrong behavior and even some wrong policy in the church.

But Paul wasn't there to fix the problems.

The apostle wasn't there to deal with all of the issues.

He left Timothy there to lead that collection of people toward a place of proper behavior in the household of God.

But Timothy's problem was that some of the folks in that church thought he was just a bit too young to be telling them what was right and wrong.

So the common image of Timothy in the church was of youthfulness, not of wisdom and of maturity and of godliness.

Who cares that he's Paul's protege?

He's just a smart Alec whippersnapper.

But what's the real image of Timothy?

What does God's stamp on Timothy look like?

That's a key question here.

If you look down at verse 14 of chapter 4, it says that he has been given a divine gift.

Seemingly similar to an apostolic gift.

He's not an apostle, but his gifting seems to be similar to that.

There's a divine unction, a calling, if you will, from God that rested upon that man.

But there's an even bigger deal that we have to wrestle with, and that is over in chapter 6 of 1 Timothy and verse 11, where Paul says, As for you, O man of God.

Timothy's a man of God.

The real image of Timothy is of a divinely prepared, godly man.

But the church saw him as too young, too immature, too lacking in wisdom, especially when he's trying to command and urge and exhort the church.

But the real image that God has stamped upon him is of a man in whom the Spirit of God resided.

A son of God, if you will, a man of God.

Sounds an awful lot like the way young David was described in the Old Testament.

Now, this is where our understanding of context is important.

This is about Timothy, certainly, but its truth exceeded.

To the household of God.

You see, some in the church looked at Timothy, and all they saw was a young man wrongly thinking from their perspective that he had the authority to tell them how things were going to be.

They were looking at him and having a perception and making a judgment based off of that perception.

Now we don't do that to one another, do we?

Yeah, we do it all the time.

Do we do that to other churches?

Ooh, low blow, Pastor.

Yeah.

If we're honest, we look at other churches and we evaluate based on perceptions.

If we did that for Ephesus, I'm not sure any of us would want to go there.

Let's just flip through the pages here in 1 Timothy.

1 Timothy 1:3

Chapter 1, verses 3 and 4.

There are people teaching different doctrine, teaching myths, endless genealogies, speculations.

Chapter 1, verses 6 and 7.

There are people wandering away from the boundaries of the faith, leading people to improperly understand and apply scripture.

Goodness gracious, in verse 13 of chapter 1, it was founded by a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent.

Who wants to go to that church?

Yeah, his name was Paul, but you get the point.

Why does Paul in chapter 2, verses 1 through 3 urge praying for rulers?

It almost sounds like there's an anti-government faction going on there.

Chapter 2, verses 8, 9, and 10, there's a place that struggled to be different from the pagan world from which they came.

Chapter 3 has all of this instruction about deacons and elders, all these qualifications.

I mean, who can live up to that, right?

Well, does that indicate that maybe they had some dysfunctional, disqualified leaders?

Maybe.

Chapter 3, verse 15 indicates that it was a place that needed some behavioral correction.

Chapter 4, verses 1 through 5 tells us that it was receptive to appeasing false teaching.

Chapter 4, verse 12, with Timothy, and chapter 5, verse 21 tells us that it was a place that treated people with partiality.

Chapter 5, we read that it was a place that had policies for helping people that ended up being an extreme burden on the church in an inappropriate way.

Chapter 6, verses 9 and 10, and verse 17 tells us that it was a wealthy church.

It was a rich church.

And in its richness, it trusted not in God, but in its riches.

Chapter 6, verse 20, it was a place that had a lot of falsehood just floating around.

Sound like a place you want to visit?

If that were our perception of the church in Ephesus, if that's what we believed to be true about the church of Ephesus, I don't know about you, but I would just keep on driving until I came to the next church.

And if we were to perform an honest evaluation of most churches today, I would probably suggest to you that that might be a common perception of many churches today.

Some might have similar things to say of our fellowship or any other gospel-centered church in Grand Forks.

Timothy might say to the people there, yeah, you're right.

I still have many years of growing up ahead of me.

In the same way, the church might say, Yeah, we've got some growing up to do too.

We're not perfect, are we?

All churches have problems because we all wrestle with sin.

But even if a church has some growing up to do, is that the full image?

Is that need of a maturity and a and a fellowship of people?

Is that the full picture of a church?

What we just covered here briefly in a quick run through of just 1 Timothy, is that the real full picture of the church of Ephesus?

The answer is no.

We don't get the full picture until we consider what the apostle Paul actually wrote to that church of Ephesus.

You're familiar with it, Ephesians chapter 1?

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

It says the Apostle Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

For what?

That we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.

You're starting to get a picture of this church?

Yeah, they're messed up.

But what does God say about them?

We can go on.

In him we have redemption through his blood.

The forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us.

And all wisdom and insight making known to us the mysteries of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things, including the church in Ephesus, in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Not just that, in him, we have obtained an inheritance.

Because we've been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

In him, you also, church in Ephesus, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our promised inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glorious grace.

That's the full picture of the Church of Ephesus.

So just like the church wasn't looking at Timothy properly, we have to be careful to not look at Ephesus improperly.

Let's look at the full picture.

You can apply this to any true gathering of God's people in any community on earth.

When God's household is assembled, it's full of dirty, rotten, broken, sinful people.

And those who belong to Him, God is stamping.

He's chiseling away.

Sometimes gloriously, sometimes painfully, sometimes with large chunks falling off, sometimes little tiny bits.

The public image is often of a church's immaturity, its youthfulness, its need for growing up, evidence of its brokenness is everywhere.

Sometimes we look down on those churches that are in the midst of a temper tantrum.

Or even facing demonic onslaught.

We think they're just being petty, but maybe they're under demonic influence.

But the full picture of God's churches gathered together, like Timothy, being young, but being the man of God, is that genuine assemblies of God's people are his household.

They are churches standing as bastions of God's truth.

Timothy had plenty of years of life ahead of him.

He was young for that culture.

But there was much more to him than just that youthfulness.

He was God's man.

God's churches have a lot of growing up to do.

But they're God's household.

They're God's assembly.

And they are the foundation upholding his truth.

Timothy was called to live out the stamping of God's word upon his life, just as the church was to live out the stamping of God's word upon its life.

That's where we see begin to see the significance for God's churches.

What Timothy is to be, well, I just messed everything up.

Sorry, guys up there in the booth, you're gonna have to help me out.

What Timothy is to be before the church is what the church is to be before others.

Timothy's naturally in a bind, right?

There's a tension of sorts, there's a butting of heads, there's just something that's not not working efficiently.

There's a tension because he's being instructed by his pastoral mentor, his apostolic mentor, to lead firmly, to lead lovingly among people who look down on him.

And in a similar way, God's church, the assemblies of God's children, are to live out the stamping effect of his word, even if we're looked down on.

Same instruction is given to us at Faith Evangelical Free Church in 2021 as it was for Timothy and Ephesus and for any other church in any era, in any setting.

Set the believers an example.

Stand as God's chiseled image, as his stamp in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.

I encourage you to take some time tracing those elements of outwardly directed character and inward character throughout the scriptures.

There's much fruit there that we simply can't harvest this morning.

Instead, I want us to grasp what's going on here.

Paul's saying to Timothy, God's chiseled you.

God's stamped you.

Timothy, you you you've been as that soft wax upon which God has put his stamp.

God's word continues to form you.

Live that out.

Focus on your character.

Pay attention to how you communicate.

Pay attention to how you live.

Have the right love.

Don't lose that first love.

Feed your faith.

Walk in all purity and all of life.

Now there's an element, maybe just a little bit, but there's an element of you focus on you, Timothy.

Pay attention to yourself.

As if Timothy wasn't supposed to pay attention to those looking down on him.

I think there's some of that here, and we'll see more of that next time.

But again, if we look at our whole context, Timothy is supposed to pay attention to the church.

He's told to give commands.

He's told to urge.

And just in case you don't know what urge means, that means to sort of come up behind somebody and shove them.

Urge.

He's told to exhort.

He's told to rebuke.

He's told to give charges to people.

So how then do these commands to set people straight, to set the church straight, fit together with, yeah, don't worry about them, Tim.

How do those go together?

Well, there's a thread that ties them together.

And first, look back at chapter 1, verse 5.

Look at the apostolic goal.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Now that comes right after a charge to the people to not teach a different doctrine, right?

To not have a different teaching.

So Timothy was responsible to make sure that God's household in Ephesus was living as God's children are to live.

If we put that in connection with chapter 3, verse 15, this might be a little bit of a stretch, but if you'll just go along with me here, it's as if God is saying to Timothy, Timothy, my kids have been having a little bit too much free reign in my house.

Go and set some boundaries.

And the goal was to bring the assembly of God's people into a place where love was genuine, where it came from a purity of heart, where it came from a clear conscience and a non-hypocritical faith.

I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like what Timothy was to focus on, doesn't it?

You see, the church needed what Timothy was to display.

But how was Timothy to be an example when people looked down on him?

How was Timothy to display God's stamping?

Well, Romans 6, 17 is the thread tying all of this together.

You see, God forms his people.

He transforms them, he conforms them to the image of Jesus through the stamping of his word.

Now I'm not talking about you taking your Bible and smacking somebody upside the head and leaving the imprint on their head.

That's not what I'm talking about.

God makes you to be like Jesus.

The grace of God takes sinners.

Sinners like Paul in chapter 1, verse 15.

He says the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost.

The grace of God takes sinners like Paul, like Timothy, and he showers his grace upon them.

Verse 14 of chapter 1, the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

You see, faith and love are like seeds that are planted in tilled fertilized soil.

The water of the word is then poured out regularly upon those seeds.

And the water of the word is that sound, healthy doctrine, that teaching that is good and proper in chapter 4, verse 6.

And that effective water of the word causes growth in those seeds of faith and love, so that they begin to bear fruit in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity, displaying then the effect of God's stamping upon your life.

The water of the word comes from faithful people like Paul, feeding young Timothy with the spirit-empowered word of God.

So that Timothy is then trained in the sound words of the faith and of sound doctrine.

And Timothy is then given that same instruction to pass that on to others, feeding them with the same word.

Timothy is molded, is chiseled, is stamped with this word as he follows God's stamp upon Paul.

In the same way, the people in Ephesus would be changed as Timothy led in the soundness of healthy doctrine, showing its stamping effect upon his life.

As the people in the church in Ephesus watched the effect of God's word upon Timothy, they too would be established in God's household, assembled together to be watered, to be fed with the same healthy teaching of God's word.

And that effective watering and feeding then begins to work itself out in the fruit of speech, conduct, faith, love, and purity.

Now the Lord Jesus Christ, Colossians tells us, is the perfect image of the living God.

And each one who trusts in him will be stamped, if he will, so that we might be also in his image.

And God does that by using people to encourage us onward to live out that stamping.

People are examples to us.

They stand as chiseled statues of speech, conduct, love, faith, purity.

And you know what?

Churches even, gathered assemblies of God's people, stand as examples, as statues, as stamps of God's work.

1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 6, the Apostle Paul says, You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received what?

1 Thessalonians 1:6

You received the word of God in the midst of much affliction.

You received it with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became, guess what?

An example, a stamped image, a chiseled statue.

This is the church in Thessalonica.

You, the church of God in this location, became God's stamp to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

But not just that, for not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith has gone everywhere.

Imagine that, friends.

Imagine that the faith, the faithful example, the faithful stamping of God's word upon this fellowship of believers was heard throughout the world.

That's a positive example.

The negative example is Ephesus.

Because the word that went out from them in the end was, you've lost your first love.

A church's image is to be stamped by the word of God.

Of course, it then bears asking.

What does our stamp look like?

We can ask that of ourselves as individuals, putting ourselves in Timothy's place, what are people really seeing of God's work in my life?

But we also ask that as a church.

Doesn't matter what people's perceptions really are.

What we're talking about here is what is the stamp of God upon a church?

Does our life, does our assembly bear the stamping of the word of God or of the world, or of sin, or of scripture?

Are we trained, chapter 4, verse 6, in the words of the faith and the good doctrine, trained for godliness, laboring for that, displaying the stamping, the chiseling effect of our good Father to the praise of his glorious grace.

And will we remain there, steadfast and firm until the end?

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, may we be Thessalonica.

Not for our glory, not for our praise, so that we can point to ourselves and say, look what we've done, look who we are.

Oh, but Lord, we want your word to go forward.

We want the effectiveness of your word to go forth from here.

Even as we leave today, may we leave changed, challenged, stamped by your word, so that someone today might come in contact with this stamping effect upon their lives.

Lord, if it pleases you, use us as examples so that others can see your work in us.

Not our selfish perceptions, not our sinful condescension.

But seeing people in the way that you see them.

This is what you've called us to.

Empower us, enable us, and do your fruitful work in our fellowship we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.