Take your Bibles again with me and turn to 1st Timothy chapter 4. We're going to be looking at verses 12 to 16 tonight and as we read this I want to be preaching primarily tonight to the young preachers in our church, myself included. If you remember, Timothy was a young preacher. He was selected by the Apostle Paul as a very young man to go with him and had been traveling with Paul at this point for probably twenty years. He was likely in his late thirties and Paul was likely in his seventies at the time this was written.

Paul had selected Timothy to go and preach and become the new pastor at Ephesus. It was not Timothy's decision, and it was not the decision of the people at the church of Ephesus. This is Paul flexing his apostolic muscles and moving Timothy there. As a young pastor, I'm sure Timothy felt a great deal of anxiety about this situation. Much of First and Second Timothy is Paul trying to encourage Timothy in his ministry.

But here in this passage Paul gives probably the most famous challenge to preachers. He challenges them in four different areas (and in the middle of it there's actually teaching about what should happen in a church service so it's interesting for all of us.)

So I’m going to be preaching primarily at our preachers tonight: Myself, brother Adam, Matt, Daniel, Brother Rincker, and any aspiring preachers who may be here. And I want you to listen in, because this will help you understand what God expects out of preachers and help you to pray for us.

Let's go ahead and read verses 12 to 16 today.

[12] Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
[13] Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
[14] Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
[15] Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.
[16] Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
1 Timothy 4:12-16 (KJV)

So in these verses the Apostle Paul gives four challenges to preachers. These challenges ought to occupy a huge part of any preacher's life. They ought to, as the kids say, “live rent free in our heads.” We need to be reminded of them often.

Let’s look at them together. The first challenge Paul gave is the challenge to

1. Be an example

Look again at verse 12:

[12] Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12 (KJV)

Eastern culture was not like our culture. Our culture elevates youth above just about anything, but in Eastern culture, even to this day, youth are always submissive to age, to the elders. In Greek culture you were still considered young until you were forty years old. Timothy probably wasn't there yet. He was probably close but he wasn't there yet.

So Paul said, "Don't let anyone despise your youth." I want to be honest. There is a natural tendency for older people to have a little bit of contempt for younger people. I'm getting to the age now where a lot of the adults that I interact with are twenty years younger than me and they're in another generation. I'm starting to feel that old-man grumpiness about some of the ways that they do things. The way they dress, the way that they talk, some of their mannerisms, kinda get to me. That's a very natural thing. It's a very natural thing for older people to look down on younger people.

I remember Miss Ellie. I loved Miss Ellie. I have a coffee mug that's probably my favorite coffee mug. She gave it to me and I think about her every week as I'm drinking from that coffee mug. There are a couple of things hanging up in my office that she gave me that I think about her all the time. There is zero doubt in my mind that that woman loved me and respected me as her pastor. More than once I did something and I watched her kind of grumble and say, "Millennials!" Now I have the tendency to look at some of the 20-year-old people I know or 25-year-old people I know and be like, "Oh, Gen Z." Or “Gen Alpha?”

(I mean really do you have to put everything on the internet? You don't have to post everything right? - see I’m doing it right now.)

So how can Paul say "don't let anyone do something that is natural to do"? It's natural to have a little bit of contempt for younger generations. You can't control their emotions so what's Paul saying? Paul's saying live in such a way that their contempt for your youth has nothing to stand on.

The way that you do that is to understand that being a preacher means being an example. Your character matters way more than your ability. Way more than your talent.

As Kent Hughes said, "The ministry is a character profession." More than anything else, it is your character that matters. How you live your life when people are watching and when people are not watching are the most important pieces of your ministry.

I think this is especially true now because there is so much excellent Bible teaching out there. You're probably not going to do better than it. If people can't find an excellent sermon or an excellent explanation of a passage of Scripture on the internet at this point, they can just fire up ChatGPT or Claude and it will do it for them.

But you know what Claude or ChatGPT or some faceless internet preacher can't do? It can't live a life of example in front of people. It can't be an example and the call to be in the ministry is the call to be an example.

You are literally called to be an example of what it means to be a Christian. People ought to be able to look at your life and think, "What's a Christian supposed to do? What is Pastor doing? What's a Christian supposed to do in this situation? What's Brother Adam doing? How does Daniel live? How does Brother Ken live?" You're called to be an example.

And Paul called out several areas of your life where you're to be an example. The first area is in your speech. A pastor, a preacher, ought to have their tongue under control. They ought to be careful what they say:

• that it's truthful
• that it's kind
• that it goes along with the scripture
• that they're not gossiping

An example in word, and then it says an example in conversation. That's not talking about how you talk. That's talking about how you walk. Your lifestyle ought to be exemplary. People ought to be able to see the way that you live and copy it. That's convicting stuff.

Then it says, "An example in charity." You ought to be an example in the way that you love people. The ministry is not about people serving us. It's about us as preachers serving other people. And that should be obvious in the way that we live. We should be living to serve others and to love others.

It says an example in spirit. This is talking about your attitude. Man, this is something we have to work at because sometimes I'm kind of grumpy. Sometimes I can be kind of a Debbie Downer and I don't have the joy of the Lord evident in my life the way it's expected to be. Look, all the time we're supposed to be an example in our spirit and in our attitude. People ought to look at us and see something that they want. I don't get to say. That's just my personality. If my personality isn't exemplary, I gotta work on it.

Then it says, "In faith." This is faith, not in what you believe but in your faithfulness. We as ministers of the gospel are to be examples in our faithfulness. We're supposed to be like the Energizer Bunny, everlastingly at it.

Let me tell you something that I think about all the time when I think about the people in our church who are in leadership. I think these people should be an example of what it means to be a faithful church member. In my mind, more important than your talents, more important than your education, more important than your giftedness is your faithfulness.

Are you an example of what it means to be a faithful church member? If everybody in this church acted like Ryan Hayden in the area of faithfulness, would the church be better for it or worse for it?

Finally the passage says, "An example in purity," and this is speaking of sexual purity. There ought to be nothing questionable in the way that I live my life as it regards the opposite sex:

• not in what I watch
• not in what I look at
• not in the way that I treat other women
• not in the way that I treat my wife
  I am to live as an example in that area.

So the first challenge, and maybe the hardest challenge in this whole list, is to live as an example. To be an example.

The second challenge (remember, there are four of them) we see in this passage is

2. Be Thoroughly Biblical

Look at verse 13:

[13] Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
1 Timothy 4:13 (KJV)

This is the verse I was alluding to earlier that talks about what's supposed to happen in a church service. These are three things that are public things. We know that because exhortation means preaching and doctrine means teaching, both of those are thoroughly public activities. We understand that reading here is referring to public reading.

What Paul is saying is that the church services you lead should be thoroughly biblical. You need to give attention to reading. This is the public reading of the Word of God.

I'm going to be honest: I did not grow up in a church where a lot of attention was given to the reading of Scripture. It's something that kind of died out. In the 1990s and early 2000s, I think it desperately needs a revival. That's why in church we've started doing public reading as part of our Sunday morning service. We shouldn't shy away from reading long passages of Scripture. The most important thing in our services is not my opinion; it's God's Word.

In the early church they read the scripture. They read both from the Old Testament and the New Testament, and it was an important part of their service. They didn't come up with that on their own; that's something they took from Judaism. If you read Acts and even the Gospels, you see Jesus and the Apostle Paul going into the synagogue and reading the Scripture. As you read in the Old Testament the books of Nehemiah and Ezra, you see the people standing together and having the law read to them.

This is an essential and important part of the church service.

After the law is read it needs to be explained and applied. That's where the other two things in this verse come in: exhortation and doctrine. Exhortation is applying the Word and doctrine is teaching the Word.

Paul is telling Timothy, as a young preacher, you need to give your attention to these three things:

1. The reading of the Word
2. The applying of the Word
3. The teaching of the Word
   Your ministry needs to be a biblical ministry.

When you stand up to preach, it is not to give your opinion. It is not to share your politics or some social cause that you believe in. It's not to entertain people with your wittiness or your humor. It's not to give self-help advice. When you stand up to preach, it is to preach the Word of God.

This isn't something that just happens. It's something we have to give attention to. It's not going to happen accidentally. Biblical ministry demands our attention.

So preachers, we've got to be:

1. number one, an example
2. number two, we need to be thoroughly biblical

The third challenge that Paul gives to preachers in this passage is...

3. Be working at it

Let's look at verses 14 and 15. These two things go together. They're kind of like a negative and a positive.

[14] Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.
[15] Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.
1 Timothy 4:14-15 (KJV)

One of the more interesting things that we see in 1 and 2 Timothy is how often the Apostle Paul reminds this young preacher about his spiritual gifting and about his ordination. There are at least three different times when Paul does this.

And two different times Paul says, "Don't neglect your gift." In 2nd Timothy he says, "Stir up the gift that's in you by the laying on of hands of the presbytery."

Paul was reminding Timothy of a couple of things:

1. He was gifted by God for the job that he had.
2. That gift was recognized in his ordination by the presbytery and the other elders.
3. As part of that ordination, he was prayed over and prophesied about.

The challenge for Timothy was not to just coast but to cultivate and work at his gifting. To meditate on his gifting, to give himself wholly to his gifting, and to grow in his gifting.

Here is the challenge for us as preachers: if we are truly called of God to be preachers, we ought to be working on it and growing in it all the time. It ought to be something that literally takes over our life.

You might have a spiritual gift. God might have given you the gift of preaching and teaching. That gift is not something that just happens. It's not something that you can just coast on. It is something that you have to stir up. It's something that you have to cultivate. It's something that you have to give yourself to. It's a use it or lose it thing. It's a grow or die thing.

Church, I hope that it's obvious to you that I am growing as a preacher. Being a preacher is something that I work at very, very hard. I work not just at my preaching but at improving as a preacher, writing better sermons, and doing better in my delivery, getting better at studying, interpreting the Word of God, making the sermons more memorable.

Listen if you are a preacher, particularly if you're a younger preacher and you are not constantly working at it, what are you doing? What's the point? Go sell insurance! Tithe! Be a faithful church member! If you're not going to work at being a preacher, what's the point?

But if God has called you and gifted you, then that gift deserves everything you've got.

Listen I hate to use myself as an example here, but I have been a preacher for 25+ years at this point. I am still constantly reading books about how to do it better. Just this week I was listening to and taking notes on points on sermon delivery from a preacher friend, H. B. Charles Jr.. Last month I read a biography about a faithful pastor in Canada. The month before that I started reading two books from Kent Hughes about pastoring.

I haven't arrived yet. I want to still grow. I want to be a better preacher when I'm 72 than I am at 42 and I sure hope that I'm a better preacher at 42 than I was at 22.

We've seen three challenges so far:

1. The challenge to be an example
2. The challenge to have a biblical ministry
3. The challenge to work at it
   There's one more challenge that Paul gives in this passage, and we see it in verse 16.

[16] Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.
1 Timothy 4:16 (KJV)

The fourth challenge for preachers is

4. Be Careful

That's what the phrase "take heed" means: to be careful. Paul says there are two areas where preachers need to be careful and they're related. The first area is to yourself.

It is a terrible thing to preach to others and not to yourself. Paul talked about this in 1 Corinthians 9:27.

[27] But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
1 Corinthians 9:27 (KJV)

You have to watch yourself. You have to watch your own heart. You have to watch your own sin. Are you growing in the Lord?

So many great preachers who are gifted preachers don't guard their own hearts and guard against sin. They end up doing more damage with their life and their example than they would if they were never preachers at all.

Take heed to yourself. The second area you have to be careful about is your doctrine, your teaching. We can lead people astray with our life and we can lead people astray by teaching them the wrong things.

Remember Paul put Timothy there because there were leaders in the church. There were elders in this church that were teaching the wrong things. They were leading people astray and that could happen to any of us. We have to keep a guard on our heart and on our doctrine.

And look at how this verse ends “for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”

Here's the challenge of being a pastor, of being a preacher. It matters how you live. It matters how you minister. You're going to stand before God and give an account for everything that you've done as God's servant. You're also going to give an account for how you have led and taught and been an example to the people God has allowed you to influence.

Your life has eternal consequences. The parts of your life that are not exemplary have eternal consequences. When you go out of balance in one area or another, when you fail to live up to what you're saying, it affects the faith of generations.

Being a preacher is such a weighty thing and I don't know about you but I need this challenge.