We continue our series in 1 Timothy, our passage today is from 1 Timothy 4:11-16 and we’re going to see why character matters more for leaders. You may say “I’m not a leader!” Well, everyone has some sort of influence, so I think it applies to everyone that character is much more important than the title! This is important because we live in culture that seems to only value charisma and talent in a leader.
Paul tells Timothy we need to lead first by our character, and we have to actually live out the Christian life.
If you recall from two sermons ago, we talked about how the church in Ephesus was going through big problems because of “teachers” in the church teaching false things. But I didn’t necessarily say what they were teaching.
In this sermon, we’re going to go into what these “false teachers” were teaching and why it was a such problem, not just in the Ephesus church, but also a problem for today.
We start a new series in 1st Timothy. It’s a personal letter from Paul to Timothy, who is one of Paul’s most trusted partners in ministry; Paul basically calls him his son. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Paul wrote, “I have no one else like him.” That’s pretty high praise for a young leader.
The church in question is the church in Ephesus that Paul planted and pastored for a few years. Ephesus is a big pagan city, but now that church is going through some very big problems. And this is where we begin our passage.
Boaz was of man of courage/ He was always willing to do the right thing, whether he was by himself or seen by others. He was consistent. Is your character consistent? Does your private life match your public life? Or are two completely different people? Do you care more about what God thinks even if it will cost you or do you care more about the approval of the crowd?
We know that Ruth couldn’t save herself. The situation was too dire. She needed someone, she needed the RIGHT “Kinsman Redeemer”, one with character to act on her behalf. She got it from Boaz.
Ruth takes place in the era of the Judges, which is arguably the worst era of Israel’s history. There was moral and spiritual collapse everywhere. Not only was it chaos on a moral and spiritual level, economically, things were in shambles too.
There was no food because of a famine and in the ancient world, this was not just an “economic” problem, but it was a theological indicator that something was deeply wrong.
The land was supposed to be blessed if Israel stayed faithful to Yahweh, so the fact that the crops are failing was a sign of God’s dissatisfaction. In v.1-5, we are introduced to a family: Elimelech and his wife, Naomi. They have two sons.
Because of the famine, they move to Moab, which isn’t the best place for an Israelite to go to. The sons end up marrying Moabite women, which was discouraged, because of their commitment to other gods like Molech. And then absolute tragedy strikes!
Elimelech, the patriarch of the family, dies. And then the two sons also die, BUT they die without having children. This is a very big deal in an ancient world dominated by men. It wasn’t just personal heartbreak. It also meant no inheritance. It meant no economic security and no social standing.
Our Bible passage today is about how we can respond to suffering? Every single one of us inevitably will experience some sort of suffering in this broken world. It’s going to happen, but we have a choice on how we respond to it. In our passage, we have two sufferers in Naomi and Ruth and both respond differently to their circumstances.
In our passage today, Paul gives us portrait of what spirit led community looks like and then warns us of the threats that can kill that type of community.
Let’s first quickly review the story so far. At the beginning, God told Jonah to warn the Ninevites of impending judgement. Remember, the Ninevites have done atrocious things too!
They would cut off their enemies legs and one arm, leaving the other arm and hand so they could shake the victim’s hand in mockery as he was dying. They forced friends and family members to parade with the decapitated heads of loved ones on elevated poles.
The Ninevites were a very violent society. Jonah didn’t want to warn the Ninevites. He didn’t want to give them a chance, he would rather they stay the way they are so God can just destroy them. Nothing would make Jonah happier than an obliterated Nineveh.
So, Jonah runs away and he finds out the hard way that he can’t run away from God. So, he reluctantly goes to Nineveh and warns them of looming judgment if they don’t change their ways. And lo and behold, the people of Nineveh shockingly take the warning seriously.
They turn from their evil and violent ways and God shows them mercy. He doesn’t destroy them. And this brings us to our passage, let’s see how Jonah responds when he sees that God had spared the city. When he sees that God has shown mercy to this violent city.
We all wonder sometimes what is God doing. You may have big dreams, but at times it seems like everything is just falling apart. Maybe this year has been really painful. Our Bible story today helps us make sense of our trouble.
It reminds us that God is working in ways that we might not expect, that he’s using our trouble to empower and draw us to himself.
Last week, I talked about Jonah and how God wanted him to warn the Ninevites of impending judgment. But Jonah didn’t want to help them, so instead, he ran away from God. He got on a boat and tried to sail as far away as he could.
Maybe you had big plans for your life, but it never worked out, leaving you confused and disappointed. That’s how I felt, when people were leaving all around me as I pastored a small church. I wanted to run! Yet God was teaching me that I still need to love and obey him, right where I was at.
That is what our Bible story is about today. It helps us understand the core basics of God’s will for our lives. Our story teaches God’s will is love in the big picture and faithfulness in each moment. We’ll see this pattern in the book of Jonah!
Culture clashes are inevitable. However, it isn’t just between ethnic cultures. It also happens between our Christian culture and the secular culture that we live in. We feel that tension because we see the world differently.
How do we navigate this tension that we feel with people who don’t believe like us? Some Christians respond by trying to blend in at all costs so that they don’t look weird. Other Christians become very zealous, yet they become unnecessarily offensive that it affects the mission.
The Bible gives us a better way to deal with the tension.
