Paul, a church leader, is writing to another church leader. Before we think that it has nothing to do with us if we are not elders, we can learn from the way he is writing to Timothy about elders and see how we can encourage one another. This is how we can all take it back, and apply it in our churches.
We practice encouragement by learning how to honour, to make holiness our goal and to pay attention to how we live.
Paul has continually exhorted Timothy to be faithful to the gospel and to also train himself in godliness. This section of 1 Timothy focuses on how Timothy is to also train the church to care for widows, as this too, is a matter of godliness.
1 Timothy is a training manual, given in wartime. This might be hard for us to understand, as we are used to training in peacetime for war. So, what does training in wartime look like? What time do you think you are in? What kind of training are you undergoing?
What will it be like if we were truly godly? What if we know the meaning of our life to be truly for God, such that our ambitions would smell like God?
1 Timothy 3 lays out what the elders and the deacons should be like. As church members, this help us to understand what we are to look for in the leaders in our church. It also clarifies and shapes what we should value in the leaders of our church.
What is the most important word in our title tonight?
The most important word is “godly”. 1 Timothy 2 contains verse that may be surprising or confusing to us, but the purpose of this chapter is to promote godliness. We will see God’s design for godliness and as we read this chapter, we are reminded that we are going to be weighed against God’s requirements for godliness.
Are you godly? Does your life reflect God as He has revealed Himself to be?
We continue our series in 1 Timothy, and in this opening chapter, Paul writes to Timothy about the grace of God. It is important for Christians to understand and be clear about grace.
This is the first of a series in the book of 1 Timothy, a letter that is a wonderful resource for young people, seeking to be established in the faith.
What would you say to a young person to encourage them to be rooted and established in the faith? Paul writes 3 things — there are things to remember, there is doctrine you need to know and there’s godliness you need to pursue.
We are looking at more Proverbs (as a continuation of our previous study) to help us to understand our work and our attitude towards work. For the Christian, every moment of our lives is lived before the face of God. He is aware of our entire life and requires that we be accountable to Him for how we live our lives.
How should we look at our work. Proverbs has lots to say about our work, and how we should work! We will do well to read it and learn from it.
How do we make sense of the big, weighty idea of glory, especially when we are caught up in our own lives and the details of it? Yet, so much of Jesus’ life and death revolves around His glory. The Christian life too, is shaped, seen and moulded by His glory now revealed. What does it mean for us today? How do we make sense of it in light of the cross and His resurrection — where His glory is known?
In this section of Luke, we will be reading about events that took place from the day before Jesus’ death. As we trace the steps Jesus took to the cross, we hope to see Jesus' mercy on sinners and our need for a Saviour.
We all live under power one way or another. As Jesus headed to Jerusalem in today’s passage, people were excited and they were curious about the kind of King and Kingdom He is to usher.
We live in a culture shaped by work and its rewards. Singaporeans know it well. We are some of the most overworked people in the world, clocking in an average of 45h/week!
What hope is there for us in a cultural context where work wields a vice-like grip? We turn to Nehemiah. It is the last of the history books in the Old Testament. How will the Holy God bring about His spiritual purposes in this world?
The idea that our identity is tied to our jobs is not a new one. In the past, people’s names were tied to their jobs like “Baker” or “Cook” or “Smith”.
In this study, we don’t want to think about ourselves from what we do. Through Colossians 3, we want to remind ourselves that the selves we bring to our jobs should be our new, resurrection selves. This is the new identity we have in Christ because of the gospel.
Our jobs play an important role in our lives. After all, our jobs and the work we do take up at least a third of our lives.
Thus, we need God to teach us how to work. Today, we want to ask ourselves about the work of Jesus, the carpenter and Saviour of the world.
Work that was once fruitful, is now in vain. Somewhere between our last study and this Psalm something went very very wrong. Work that was perfect, is now anxious. And we know this all too well ourselves — how did your day go? How has 2024 been treating you? Genesis 3 holds the answer to that and we will look at the nature of sin, its impact on work, and what hope we have for an otherwise hopeless situation.
This passage — Genesis 2 — might be a familiar passage, especially when we resolved to start Bible reading plans at the start of the year. But have we thought about what God’s word says about work? As we begin this study on work, it is important for us to understand how God designed work! Otherwise we will be shaped by other voices!
We will begin this series on work by thinking about the God who works. All our ideas about work come from the Bible but are grounded in God Himself as He is revealed in the Bible. The Old Testament speaks of God as a gardener and in the New Testament, Jesus is a carpenter. This is the God who works.
How would you describe grace? What sort of adjectives would you attach to grace?
Whatever it is, the goal of this study is to leave with 3 more adjectives, and to live in light of His grace.
