1st Timothy says with love, affection, and beneficial instruction what the family of God is to look like, and how the individual family unit is to be shaped.  Paul writes to Timothy with clarity and precision about age (5:1-2). About younger and older women who are widows (5:3-16). About fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children. These are not offensive statements or instructions to the believer who is trusting the Lord Jesus. That trusts that His instructions through His messenger Paul are good and beneficial. To the skeptical unbeliever, these helpful instructions are as vile as Mein Kampf. 

The family is continually under assault in today’s contemporary Western society. Even defining a family can be tricky today with as many “blended”, “mixed”, “multi-layered” and “modern” family units and styles as there are. We all know that “Yo Mama” jokes are a great way to alienate. But nowadays culture considers any sort of defined role within a family unit or structure as offensive, abusive, and evil, it’s tough to put any concrete reason as to why “Yo Mama” jokes are offensive.  If there are no mothers or fathers and we’re supposedly all fluid anyway, these jokes would not be offensive. When the most basic unit of the human experience is cast away, the society doing the casting is not long for this world. 
Determining the Main Point of the Passage
I’m currently preparing to preach through the New Testament book of 1st Timothy. Whenever preparing to preach through a passage, it is essential to bring out the main point of the passage. When communicating the main point of a passage to a congregation, there are always questions that arise along the way. 
Why was X the main point of the passage? How does the main point apply to the church in the present? What are the cautions, or benefits regarding the main point? 
These are questions that the preacher must often wrestle with themselves during sermon preparation. If the preacher does not receive first what he must deliver, then the preacher may be speaking publicly, but the preacher is not preaching a faithful sermon from the Word of God. 
Depending on the passage at hand there may be some questions that are more secondary in nature, and some that are more essential to the main point of the passage. For instance, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-3, Paul’s main point is to remind the Corinthian church of the essential, salvific, foundational truths of the gospel. These first few verses then provide the introduction to the bulk of the foundational truths Paul wanted his audience to be reminded of, detailed in 15:4-8. 
There are many secondary questions that may arise about the passage, such as: 

What year in history did Paul visit and preach the gospel to the Corinthians? 
Is it possible to believe the gospel in vain? 
How does a person “hold firmly” to the gospel? 

These are all wonderful questions that can and should be answered in response to the passage. Yet, they are not the main point of the passage. The main point of Paul’s reminder (15:1) is the absolute necessity of belief (15:2, 3) in historical truths about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection (15:3-8) as the fulfillment of the promises of God in sacred scripture (15:3). If we miss out on the main point, we may have a variety of nice answers to important questions, but we will have missed the main intended purpose of the passage. 
Dominant Themes in 1st Timothy
I say all this as a preamble because in 1st Timothy there is a central point in the book. Dominant themes prevail throughout each of the instructions and doctrines. In the midst of that dominant theme (instructions on worship, community life, and family roles), there are many applications of the instructions that today are absolutely antithetical to the dominant voices in Western political ideology and religious preference. 
One Christian theme that is antithetical to current culture emerges as a statement of thesis within the first few sentences of the letter. Paul wrote:
“As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” 1 Tim 1:3-5
Paul draws a firm line in the sand that stands against pluralism, and syncretism. In this instruction to Timothy, Paul reminds his young “true son in the faith” (1:2) of the incompatibility of God’s work by faith and alternative spiritual views. That’s hardly popular or welcome in today’s Western contemporary setting. 
Besides the exclusive claims of the gospel, 1st Timothy is sometimes neglected by contemporary preachers due to the Holy Spirit-inspired words regarding:

the ordering of worship, 
the ordering of church community life, 
and the ordering of family life.

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“Finally I just turned around and I said, ‘Are you guys Christians?’ And they just – they laid it out for me. They told me what they believe. They told me the gospel. ‘So what does your church in Hollywood believe about homosexuality?’ And they were just like, ‘Well, you know, we believe it’s a sin.’ And what’s interesting about that is, number one, I appreciated how kind of frank they were and honest.”

“After college. I ended up moving to LA to pursue acting and writing and kind of a creative – more of a creative field. I just came out to everyone. That’s when I fully embraced homosexuality as my identity.”
“After each relationship with a guy, and after it would end, I had total amnesia that it – how it all ended. And I would think, oh, the next guy is going to be perfect and the next guy is going to be amazing. And of course like two years later, (MAKES SOUND) it’s over, you know. There’s cheating, infidelity, and it’s over.”
“At this point in my life, I was very successful in my career as a set designer, production designer. I mean, I was doing covers for Vogue and for Harper’s Bazaar. I worked with a lot of pop stars like Katy Perry and Paris Hilton and Oprah. Like, everyone you can imagine – I worked with them. And I also started my own men’s fashion line that was successful. Our clothes were in, you know, L.A., New York, Paris.
“I went to all the shows. I went to all the after-parties. I was at this one after-party in Paris, and I remember, just everyone was there from the fashion world. I think Kanye was there that year, and I was kind of looking out over the crowd, it just struck me so profoundly. I was like, is that all there is to life? Just going to parties for the rest of my life, is this what it’s all about? And I really started to panic that night. I was overwhelmed with a sense of emptiness.”
“I got back to LA and got busy with work for about six months. I was at a coffee shop in Silver Lake with my best friend. And he was gay too. And we noticed, shockingly, that there was a table next to us with Bibles on the table. This was the first time I’d seen a Bible in public in Los Angeles ever. And by that point in my life, I was – I was a practical atheist.”
“Finally I just turned around and I said, ‘Are you guys Christians?’ And they just – they laid it out for me. They told me what they believe. They told me the gospel. ‘So what does your church in Hollywood believe about homosexuality?’ And they were just like, ‘Well, you know, we believe it’s a sin.’ And what’s interesting about that is, number one, I appreciated how kind of frank they were and honest.”
“They invited me to church the following Sunday. And I-I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to go to your church, but I’ll think about it.’ And then the following Sunday, I wake up and I’m like, ‘I guess I’m just going to go to this church today.’”
“The pastor comes out and he starts preaching on Romans chapter seven and something strange started happening. Everything he was saying, every word he was saying, every sentence he was saying started to resonate this truth in my mind, in my heart, and I didn’t know why. I was on the edge of my seat, literally on the edge of my seat.”
“It was the first time I had really heard the gospel and understood it… And before he left, he invited people to get prayed with on the side of the church.”
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Written by Glenn D. Jerrell |
Monday, June 27, 2022
I share Mr. Castle’s criticism of social media, though he and I may have distinctly different takes on the criticism. But, nonetheless, we should both confess that sins of the tongue can be like a fire, they spread rapidly in a negative and as well in a positive culture. 

The rapid response of the 88th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church under the guiding hand of the moderator and others, was exactly what was needed regarding incidents of reported racial disparagement. Mr. Bennie Castle makes a salient point, which should not be lost, that we live in a “negative” culture.

A negative world is nothing new. Ask the Suffering Servant about a negative culture. From our first parents Adam and Eve through Christ to the apostolic witness, sin is exposed in every generation and that is why the Word makes clear from beginning to end that a Savior from sin is absolutely necessary. Racial disparagement is a destructive and negative manifestation of sin.
I share Mr. Castle’s criticism of social media, though he and I may have distinctly different takes on the criticism. But, nonetheless, we should both confess that sins of the tongue can be like a fire, they spread rapidly in a negative and as well in a positive culture.  Given the ability of social media to spread information rapidly (a curse and a blessing), the 88th General Assembly (GA) was pastorally on target to make a statement rapidly. The GA’s statement on race addressed a specific situation and contains statements that we would use in a sermon without having a trial. Those statements are simply good applications of the Scriptures to a specific situation.
The expression, “doubling down on Presbyterianism,” fuels questions which may not be fair to the OPC and its GA. What is within the power of a GA to deal with in such a situation? Many situations are resolved without formal charges. From a Presbyterian governmental perspective, what tools did the moderator have available to him to address this situation? If it had occurred on the floor in debate the moderator would have called it out of order and even perhaps reproved the person from the podium. But this incident occurred outside of the Assembly’s hearing. It came to us initially by a report from a party outside the church. The moderator and the Assembly realized the immediate need to respond in a Christ-like, pastoral fashion. The Assembly and its representatives worked tirelessly on the situation with prayer and with communication to the University. They took solid steps towards dealing with the situation.
A further Presbyterian governmental point is this: the 88th GA no longer exists. It has been dissolved. Furthermore, original jurisdiction is not given to the general assembly, but the general assembly may communicate the Word in pastoring the church.
It appears to me that the statement served well in that it handled pastorally a real problem that could have proven explosive in our negative culture in which social media governs much debate. If not dealt with rapidly it could have turned out much more poorly. Now it belongs to a presbytery or session to do the rest! The officers of the Assembly recognized that news of the incident would be on social media whether or not the OPC posted anything. Better to acknowledge what happened and how the church was dealing with it.
It has been reported that the comments were meant as a joke. We learn several things from this:1) Don’t wait five days to own it! Be forthright on day one. The delay magnified the problem. 2) Be careful with humor; it can reveal callousness, insensitivity, or even a lack of love. 3) Mr. Castle writes that the “the only real instance of a GA commissioner giving offense was the instance of a bad joke made at the wrong time.” But that minimizes the importance of the biblical call to wholesome, upbuilding speech (Ephesians 4:29). Not long ago, the use of demeaning, abusive language towards several women and men, posted by some (not all) participants on a “private” website, was dismissed as bad humor. Particularly as officers of the church of Jesus Christ, we need to guard our tongues and not minimize the negative impact of disparaging words. Humor can be destructive. Perhaps we need to think about our “humor” in the light of the ninth commandment and the commandment to love our neighbors.
While it is useful to look forward in cultural analysis, it may prove more useful to look back at our own history. John Newton’s hymn, “Amazing Grace” should be played in one’s mind while considering the 13th Amendment. Newton’s history and our nation’s history intersect when considering the sin of slavery.
When it comes to offenses, hurts, and injury we should be quick to listen and to seek to resolve matters, but slow to defend ourselves.

If Presbyterianism is confused with procedure, it will prove to be hollow and devoid of the heart-warming pastoral shepherding that is embedded in a genuine Presbyterianism. Our hearts and minds should be attuned to our resurrected Lord and echo the words of the elders around the throne in glory as they sing “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God almighty.”
Glenn D Jerrell is a Retired Minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC); he is living in Knoxville, Tenn.
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