What would you say is the work of God? God’s work was first known when He formed creation and its creatures, and declared it very good. But his creatures turned to sin. In our rebellion we bring about curse rather than blessing. Death and its sting are our destiny. We yearn for eternity and find ourselves returned to dust.
What is God’s work in a fallen world like this? How do we know if it’s going well? And who are the people who get to participate in this work? Christian friends, how do you and I participate in God’s work for a fallen world?
What do we think of suffering? It has been said that “more people have died for their faith in the Twentieth Century than in all of the previous centuries combined.”
We might find this to be far removed from us. Christian gospel suffering can feel a bit far away, and we can be secretly happy about it. Yet this section in 2 Timothy show us how we are to relate to suffering. Paul specifically calls Timothy to share in gospel suffering.
1 Timothy spoke about godliness, God’s truth lived out in life. Now, what else does Paul have to say in 2 Timothy, after all that he has said? 2 Timothy is not just a letter to Timothy, but it is the final letter that Paul ever writes. Paul therefore writes this in a different circumstances from the first — now under imprisonment in Rome. This is the final stage of Paul’s life. He is an old man, about to leave this world under persecution, and these are his final words to young Timothy.
We come to the concluding verses of 1 Timothy, and we see how Paul wraps up his letter to Timothy. Paul leaves him with some final exhortations and encouragements, which we will do well to read and apply too.
We are all being discipled by something or someone.
A heart that loves money is self-sufficient and reliant. Your relationship with money has everything to do with your relationship with God. What the love of money reveals in our hearts is a deep discontentment with God. It is a heart that loves money is a heart that says Christ is not enough. It is a heart that is self sufficient and self reliant.
In this section of 1 Timothy, Paul’s argument is clear — your relationship with money has everything to do with your relationship with God.
W e are in a section of 1 Timothy in 1 Timothy 5-6 which speak of honouring different groups. Godliness expresses itself in honouring others. The command given is to regard with high value and worth. Hence, here, we have a vision for how we think about work, and how we are to respond to them directly. And therefore how we are to see ourselves as workers.
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?
