20210109 Training for Ministry? Part 2

Yesterday’s post ended asking you to consider two verses, 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 2 Timothy 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway).  Note that when you compare these passages to 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17 (here @ Bible Gateway) all three passages essentially have the same four actions. 

Consider this chart:

2 Timothy 2:24 - 25	2 Timothy 3:16	2 Timothy 4:2
Teach	Teaching	Proclaim
Correct	Reproof	Reprove
Repentance	Correction	Rebuke
Knowledge of the Truth	Training in Righteousness	Exhort

As you can see the four actions are similar if not identical.  

In 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul is challenging Timothy to confront false teachers, or in other words, those who do not have a relationship with the Lord, non-Christians.

In 2 Timothy 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul is challenging Timothy to share truth with believers, Christians, those in his ministry in Ephesus. 

However, in 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul is challenging Timothy to be in the Word for himself, to follow Paul’s example, allowing the Word to teach him, reprove him, correct him, and train him.  This is also the ministry of the Word of God in our lives.

Further, note that 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 2 Timothy 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway) mirror 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17  (here @ Bible Gateway), the ministry of the Word of God in our lives.  The implication seems to be that our effectiveness in sharing with both non-believers and believers is dependent on our being in the Word first.

In Deuteronomy 6:6 – 7, 20 (here @ Bible Gateway), we are told that we are to always share the Word with our children.  In a sense we are helping them learn to process life through the grid of the Scripture.  In Ephesians 6:25 – 31 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul outlines a husband’s responsibility for his wife.  It is a ministry to build her up and present her to the Lord with out spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless.

If what we read in 2 Timothy is true, then is seems that the prerequisite for our being successful in serving our wives and our children is for us as husbands and fathers to be consistently in the Word.

What do you think?

Training for Ministry?

A few years back I was asked to lead a seminar on how to study the Bible at the headquarters of a well know Christian organization.  It was essentially the same seminar that I have done in 10 weeks compressed into about 4 days.  During one of the last hours together one of the staff asked me if I thought that training staff was essentially Bible study.  I did not answer the question well.  About three years later I tracked down the staff member that asked the question and we talked through the issue.

Essentially, my answer was Bible study is the starting point and the foundation of all equipping for any Christian ministry.  

In this blog a reading plan has been mentioned several times.  The plan was put together by a Scottish minister, Robert Murray M’Cheyne.  It has been an enormous help to me.  So much so that I wanted to know more about this man whom the Lord took at the age of 30.  I got a copy of his biography and have been slowly reading it.  There is early in the book a key passage:

Mr. Alexander Somerville (afterwards minister of Anderston Church, Glasgow) was his familiar friend and companion in the gay scenes of his youth.  And he, too, about this time, having been brought to taste the powers of the world to come, they united their efforts for each other’s welfare.  They met together for the study of the Bible, and used to exercise themselves in the Septuagint Greek and the Hebrew original.  But oftener still they met for prayer and solemn converse; and carrying on all their studies in the same spirit, watched each other’s steps in the narrow way. (Memoir and Remains, Andrew A. Bonar)

Note that these two men who were struggling to walk with the Lord amid a world that was pulling at them, chose to fight by joining together to study God’s word.  This is a good example of Hebrews 3:13 (here @ Bible Gateway).  This is a key concept.  These men joined together to help each other excel in the Christian life.  What did they do?  They started by studying the Word of God together.

In 2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:4 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul tells Timothy essentially the same thing.  Timothy is to continue in the Word of God.  All of us know 3:16 – 17 (here @ Bible Gateway), the four things the Word does, teach, reprove, correct, and train.  But have you noticed that Paul repeats those four impacts of the Word in two other places in 2 Timothy?  Consider 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway).

In the next post we will unpack these two passages, consider some of the implications of Paul’s statements, and catalog some ways they apply to men leading their families.

Digging Deeper, Part 2, Finally…

Tomorrow was more like next year…  Sorry, my wife had her right knee replaced and that has taken up a lot of bandwidth over the past weeks as well as two rounds of maintenance chemo for me.

So back to 1 Peter 2:1 – 3 (here @ Bible Gateway).  I mentioned that one of the things that looking at the passage suggested as a good step would be to investigate the usage of the word “tasted”.  Why?  Well, there are several reasons.  The implications of that verb have significant impact on how we understand what Peter is telling us.

Looking at the data, the word γεύομαι (geuomai) that is translated “tasted” in 1 Peter 2:3 (here @ Bible Gateway) shows up 15 times in the New Testament and 13 times in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek Old Testament excluding the Apocrypha.  Looking at the way the word is used in the New Testament, Peter only uses “tasted” here.  So we do not get any direction from his other usage.  The next closest for us to consider would be other epistles.  We find “tasted” in both Colossians and Hebrews.  In Colossians (2:21) (here @ Bible Gateway) the usage is ambiguous.  It could mean either sample or eat.  In Hebrews we get some better help.  In Hebrews, the writer uses “tasted” three times twice it seems ambiguous (6:4, 5) (here @ Bible Gateway), but in one instance it seems to indicate consumption (2:9) (here @ Bible Gateway).

The other usages of “tasted” are in the gospels and Acts.  There we find clear usage of the term, in Matthew 16:28 (here @ Bible Gateway), Mark 9:1 (here @ Bible Gateway); Luke 9:27 (here @ Bible Gateway); and John 8:52 (here @ Bible Gateway), Jesus uses the phrase “taste death”.  It seems from that usage that it means to experience death, to die.  The implications would seem to be that one who “tastes” has entered into the experience completely.  The other two places the word appears are in Matthew 27:34 (here @ Bible Gateway) and John 2:9 (here @ Bible Gateway).  In both of these it deals with tasting or drinking a liquid.  Again, that is consumption.

The last three instances in the New Testament are in Acts 10:10 (here @ Bible Gateway); 20:11 (here @ Bible Gateway); and 23:14 (here @ Bible Gateway).  In each case the word is used to describe eating food.

In the LXX, our word is exclusively used to describe consuming food and beverages.

While there is more that we could do, do you see the pattern here?  The sense of γεύομαι, taste, is to consume something to take it into your body or to enter into an experience wholly.  

In 1 Peter 2:1 – 3 (here @ Bible Gateway), Peter uses this word in the first part, the if clause, of a conditional statement the structure of which indicates Peter assumes the reader has, in fact, tasted.  The then clause is complex.  It is the first part of the sentence.  It is also in contrast to the kindness of the Lord.  Putting this together, if we have fully consumed and entered into the kindness of the Lord, then we are to put away malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander which things are the polar opposite of kindness.  Then we are to long for the pure milk of the Word.  Note that the word γεύομαι that Peter uses here suggests that we are consuming, tasting that milk.  Consuming, tasting that milk then becomes that which causes our growth in salvation.

In that paragraph we used what we found out about the use of the word γεύομαι and the structure of the sentence that Peter penned to unwrap what he wanted us to know.  There is more there, but that is enough for now.

Hope that makes sense and is helpful.