Jeremiah 28:1-29:32, 1 Timothy 1:1-20, Psalms 86:1-17, Proverbs
25:17
Today is the 16th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue our journey and, yeah, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. In the Old Testament we’re gonna cover, probably if not the most, one of the most famous passages in the Scriptures right now. And then when we get to the New Testament, we’ve got a brand-new letter in a whole new kind of series of letters that we’ll talk about when we get there. So, we’re reading from the New International Version this week. Jeremiah chapters 28 and 29.
Introduction to first Timothy:
Okay. So, now we come to our New Testament portion for today and we enter this new grouping of letters, three letters. They are known as the pastoral letters or the pastoral epistles, and the first one is known as first Timothy and the other two are second Timothy and…and then the letter to Titus. Now these are highly disputed letters of Paul. There’s very few biblical scholars who would affirm that Paul wrote these letters, much like we’ve talked about before, like the letter to the Hebrews. We…we don’t know who the author actually is. There are those that say these are letters from Paul, there Pauline in their kind of ethos, but this is not like a new debate. This is a centuries old thing that’s been going on for a very long time, whether or not Paul wrote these letters, which letters Paul actually wrote, which came from Pauline influences but maybe later than Paul. And that kind of debate is a vigorous thing until this very day. And, so, those that would favor that Paul didn’t write the pastoral letters would say that in these letters there’s church structure, right, polity church governance. There’s ways of things being done that…that’s being said in these letters that were later inventions after Paul’s lifetime. And as a side note, I mean Paul has only ever been a controversial figure, I mean from the beginning of his ministry. And, so, we’ve talked about why, especially the Jew, Gentile, kind of rub there, the tension that existed but Paul’s still controversial today. And if he’s controversial today, it’s around church governance things that get said in some of his letters that then get hotly, hotly debated and vigorously defended. And, so, for those that are like, yeah, these things that were laid down, they came after Paul, Paul did not put these in place then we’re looking at like just a little bit after Paul, how as the church grew, how structures were put into place. And there’s pretty much no scholars out there that…that don’t affirm the fact that the language in the pastoral letters is a bit different than the language in any of the other letters but then those would be more persuaded to for Paul’s authorship would…would like, you know, they authenticate themselves, the author claims to be Paul in the letters, these letters were referred to by the early church fathers. And then maybe that the language differences are because these weren’t circular letters, like these weren’t letters to be performed in front of an audience at church to be sort of read as a word of encouragement directly to a church. These are personal letters. And, so, they weren’t supposed to be passed around even though they obviously were passed around or we wouldn’t have them today. But that’s kind of what's…what’s going on around these three letters, the pastoral epistles. They are correspondences to two different pastors who were very, very close to Paul, - Timothy and Titus - who had under Paul’s leadership become pastors themselves. And, so, they were directly caring for churches that…that had been established by Paul. And the churched needed leadership, strong leaders who understood the doctrine or the teachings of Paul regarding the faith, the faith itself and how to live into it in community. So, you know, we’ll talk about Titus when we get to Titus. But the very first pastoral letter is to Timothy. And Timothy is somebody we know. We’ve been hearing of his name a lot. He is a protégé. He grew up in the shadow of the ministry of the apostle Paul and we met him in the book of Acts. So, we know a little bit about Timothy. His mother’s name was Eunice, his grandmother’s name was Lois, they were from the city of Lystra, they were some of the early believers. And Lystra is now in modern-day Turkey. Paul introduced the faith the Timothy. Timothy received that faith, believed in Jesus and became a loyal follower and…and disciple of Paul. Paul loved Timothy enough to call him a son, like a spiritual son in the faith, and not just like a son in the faith that was distant. Like, Paul directly mentored Timothy in the faith and in church leadership for that matter. And Timothy was kind of Paul’s go to messenger. So, we hear Timothy mentioned in six of the other letters of Paul in the New Testament and often in the context of Paul sending Timothy with a letter or Paul sending Timothy to a church, and Timothy returning with news of how things were going. So, Paul’s kind of a stand in, a representative…or I’m sorry…Timothy’s a representative of Paul during his ministry. And, so, Timothy knows the churches. He’s been around church leadership enough to know people. So, he’s got some skill and he’s got some experience. And when this letter is written it is near the end of Paul’s ministry if…if Paul wrote this. I mean, the context of that it’s set in. And Timothy’s a pastor. He’s a pastor of the church in Ephesus a strong church where…where Paul spent a lot of time. And it’s just a spiritual father writing to his spiritual son, guiding him, giving him counsel, giving him encouragement. And there’s a lot of personal personality, like love and hope. It’s personal to Timothy, not just to the entire church itself. This is the letter where Paul says to his son in the faith Timothy to fight the good fight of faith. And, so, we begin the short letters, personal letters, known as the Pastoral letters. First Timothy chapter 1.
Commentary:
Okay. So, you probably recognize the very, very famous Scripture that we passed through in the book of Jeremiah today and maybe even when you heard it in its context you were like, wow, that’s a different story kind of like the one I’ve been thinking or quoting. And if you’ve been, you know, one or more revolutions around the sun hear the Daily Audio Bible then you kinda know this. But this is one of the greatest examples of how context matters while reading the stories in the Bible as there are. And…and really, really one of the most helpful examples because this is one of the most famous Scriptures, “for I know the plans I have for you says the Lord,” right? “And there plans for good and not for harm or disaster. They are plans to give you a future and a hope.” Chances are you can quote that. It’s like one of the most memorized verses in the Bible, one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. And, I mean, those couple of sentences they’re actually lifted out of a letter that Jeremiah had sent. So, Jeremiah is in the holy city of Jerusalem that is basically a conquered land that is now deporting people. Many, many people, like all of the aristocracy, the royalty, the best laborers, the smartest thinkers, kinda like the cream of the crop best of the best, these people have already been sent away into exile in Babylon. And Babylon’s not like just a town, it’s an empire. So, people are being dispersed all over the place. Families are being broken up, people have died, there’s a bunch of stuff going on in the disruption and dislocation of people. There are those who are left in Jerusalem. Jeremiah the prophet is still in Jerusalem prophesying from Jerusalem. And there are those who are speaking for God in Babylon. There are people, prophets, who are speaking for God in Jerusalem. And since there are still people in Jerusalem these profits are like going, “you know, this is all gonna be over soon. This is all gonna be over really quick. Within two years all the stuff that’s been taken from here is coming back. It’s not gonna take that long. It’s gonna be a quick thing.” Jeremiah, on the other hand, has been saying all along, “it’s not. It’s not gonna be as quick of a thing as what you’re saying anyways. And there were all kinds of points where this story could have turned, the plot could’ve shifted. You were warned. You were warned.” Of course, we’ve already talked about how difficult of a scenario this is, the faith that the people would have to put into the surrender to the Empire that they saw as their enemy - Babylon. Babylon is coming. So, they looked at this invading nation, this invading Empire as the enemy, when Jeremiah is prophesying, “they’re not really the enemy. They will be your protector ultimately. They’re kind of going to be used in my master plan as a bulldozer. We are starting some things over. It’s gonna take a minute, we gotta build new foundations, we gotta start this thing over because the trajectory is only evil and I’m not putting up with it anymore. The covenant has been broken for the last time”, basically. So, this is what Jeremiah’s kind of been saying, but there are other prophets who are saying, “no it’s not gonna be like that at all. The mighty arm of the mighty God is gonna do some mighty arm mighty God things and He’s gonna use that mightiness and this is all gonna be over quickly even though it never had to happen.” And even though God’s saying through Jeremiah, “that’s not the plan. These quick fixes these Band-Aids, they’re not working anymore. You keep returning to only evil. So, we’re gonna do something different and it’s gonna take a little longer.” Okay. Are you with me? Because that’s the backdrop for this very famous passage. Jeremiah from Jerusalem writes a letter to the exiles who have already been taken away to Babylon. This letter is supposed to be distributed and…and move around kind of like Paul’s letters only much earlier. And, so, now I read from the letter placing our famous passage in context. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses, settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there”, right? So, in exile. “Increase in number there. Do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you too will prosper. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says. Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them declares the Lord. This is what the Lord says. When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” These people did not specifically particularly want this message. They would have very much preferred the two-year plan that other prophets were prophesying in the name of the Lord about how quickly this plague, this exile was gonna be over which ironically is…is sort of the general use of these famous sentences, “behold, I know the plans I have for you”, right? Somehow embedded into our quotation of this is a short time span, that God knows the plans that He has for us and they are coming quickly, which is not the context for this verse or what’s being said here at all. What God is saying to those people is it’s gonna take 70 years. So, basically a generation. And what God says is, and I’m quoting, “build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.” In other words, like the next generation. “Increase in number there. Do not decrease. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you to will prosper.” And then basically goes on to tell the people. “Don’t let people lie to you. This is what I’m saying.” So, for those of us who like quote, “behold I know the plans I have for you” to ourselves or to others who are in or like basically feel like they’re in exile. Some of us feel like we’re just…we…we’ve been in exile forever, but this is not where we believe, we need to move out from here, we need you to be moving in some other direction, the path has to lead somewhere other than this. We feel trapped. We feel stuck and we keep telling us God’s got a plan. God does and He did have a plan here. What he told him was, “settle in. This is gonna take a minute. You don’t have to be upside down in all this. You don’t have to be only longing for what you no longer have. You don’t have to be all anxious and all uptight about what you…you don’t have right now. You can settle in. We are restarting something. It’s gonna take a minute. I have plans and they are good, and they don’t have to start in 70 years they can start now. You can prosper where you are while you wait. And then you will fully bloom and fully prosper later, right where you are while you wait, you can prosper.” That is the message of Jeremiah 29:11. That is not as flashy of a prophecy as some of the other prophets were speaking which is like “this is all gonna be over so quick. You’re gonna barely remember it even happened. Within two years all the exiles, all the stuff’s coming back.” The problem is that just wasn’t true and is not the context of this verse. God is giving His people though permission to thrive where they are, even if they don’t want to be where they are. They can thrive. The thriving doesn’t have to start when they finally get to where they want to be. It can start now and continue as God’s plan unfolds. Some of us, yeah, we’d still like the two-year plan, right? We’d like the six-month plan. We’d like the 30-day plan. Like we just want this all to go away when actually what’s being invited here is a shift of internal focus, a settling down, a ceasing of striving towards something that we just keep bashing our head against over and over and over. Maybe it’s gonna take a minute but maybe we can thrive. Maybe we can prosper where we are while we wait. I mean, if we’re honest isn’t this really kind of the backdrop of life itself. Like haven’t we come to a place of the now and the not yet? Haven’t we come to a place in our faith where we are living into it? And yes, we fall down, and we get up and we fall down and we are continuing to press forward. But ultimately, we’re waiting. We’re waiting. We’re waiting for God to do what’s next; we’re waiting for Jesus. Same as the people that we’re reading about in the letters in the New Testament. So, maybe we can prosper where we are while we wait.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit we invite You into that. We don’t like waiting. It’s hard. It can be really, really, really hard sometimes knowing that the best is out in front of us, but not being able to get anything but a glimpse once in a while. It’s hard. And, so, You are inviting us to stop worrying about what is out in front of us because that isn’t happening. It has not yet happened, but things are happening now. And when all of our focus is out in front of us on things that are not happening, we are missing what is happening, that You have given us permission to thrive. And, so, come Holy Spirit and help us appreciate with deepest gratitude where we are. And may we settle in as You have said and follow Your time and follow Your plan instead of the anxiousness of our own. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.
Song:
While I Wait - Lincoln Brewster
Deep within my heart, I know You’ve won
I know You’ve overcome
And even in the dark, when I’m undone
I still believe it
I live by faith, and not by sight
Sometimes miracles take time
While I wait, I will worship
Lord, I’ll worship Your name
While I wait, I will trust You
Lord, I’ll trust You all the same
When I fall apart, You are my strength
Help me not forget
Seeing every scar, You make me whole
You’re my healer
I live by faith, and not by sight
Sometimes miracles take time
I live by faith, and not by sight
Sometimes miracles take time
While I wait, I will worship
Lord, I’ll worship Your name
While I wait, I will trust You
Lord, I’ll trust You all the same
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
Though I don’t understand it
I will worship with my pain
You are God, You are worthy
You are with me all the way
So while I wait, I will worship
Lord, I’ll worship Your name
Though I don’t have all the answers
Still I trust You all the same