Notes for a Pastor’s Biography?

Sometimes those of you who preach and find yourself as a visitor, you find yourself looking for a text for the occasion.

And then there are these relatively rare occasions when it seems to be that the text has been looking for you for this occasion.

And it seems to me in many ways this passage that we've read in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and then to chapter 4 is a passage suited to this occasion.

There are many reasons for that.

One is the very obvious reason that this is one of the most significant passages in the teacher.

Timothy, we are told here in chapter 4, was to do the work of an evangelist.

It seems to me in the New Testament we know this was a special office in the church, very closely linked with the ministry of the apostle.

the evangelist served as a kind of apostolic lieutenant, as an apostolic deputy, and Paul had deputized Timothy to serve in the church in Ephesus.

And you remember how in Ephesians 4 he speaks about the fact that God in Christ has given to the church apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers.

And just as it seems to have been true of Apostles, when they served in local churches, they also functioned as pastor-teachers in those churches.

The same seems to have been true of Paul's young friend Timothy.

He was to do the work of an evangelist locally in Ephesus as someone who was their pastor-teacher.

And so he gives Timothy, or perhaps reminds Timothy, of this wonderful teaching that he had received from the Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, about what it means to be an under-shepherd of the flock of Jesus Christ.

I think there's another reason why the Lord Jesus has given us this letter through Paul, and that is that Timothy was a very special person to the apostle Paul.

You may remember how he wrote to what may have been his favorite church, if you're allowed to have a favorite church as an apostle, the church in Philippi.

I don't have anyone like Timothy.

And what a thing for the apostle Paul to say about anyone, I don't have anybody like Timothy.

And it seems from all we know of that relationship that Paul also saw Timothy as a kind of model for the future.

He invested in him in order that Timothy might be a model for future pastors, and the instruction that he gave to him might be instruction for future pastors.

that would also help us as Christians in the church family to understand the privilege of having a pastor-teacher and what is involved in being a pastor-teacher.

And it's really interesting to me if you look right at the end of this second letter to Timothy to the very last word in our English versions, grace be with you, that you, maybe you've got a footnote in your version that tells you this, so you can say the Greek says, even although you don't know any Greek, that you is plural.

That you is the American y'all.

or the Texan, all y'all, or in my case, the Scottish, yousians, all of you.

And so clearly, although Paul is writing to Timothy, he's not writing only for Timothy.

And we have this privilege, as others must have had as Timothy received this letter in Ephesus, the privilege of overhearing what it means to be a pastor-teacher in the church, what it means to be the minister of God's Word, what it means to be an under-shepherd in the flock.