A little less than 2,000 years ago, a man named Timothy moved to a beautiful coastal town in what is now Selçuk, Turkey. His mom and grandma were Jewish and his dad was Greek. When he was possibly about 45 years old, he moved to Ephesus to work with a newly formed group of Christians. Before this, he traveled with Paul all over the Roman empire telling people about Jesus and how he came back to life.
By Jewish standards for a teacher, Timothy was a young man. He may have been naturally introverted and had difficulty with confrontation (I Cor 16.10, II Tim 1.7-8). Besides this, he had a criminal record in the Roman empire. He was arrested at least once for teaching about Jesus (Heb 13.23), possibly while he was working with the church in Ephesus.
He had a very tough job— Ephesus was dealing with bad influences (like Judaism and Gnostic groups) and Timothy had to stop them. This was obviously very difficult for him. Paul wrote I Timothy as a pilot’s checklist of what God wanted for his family. It was also a gentle push for Timothy to keep those bad influences out of the church. This wasn’t enough of a push, though, because II Timothy is far more direct and has a distinct air of reprimand.
Despite his weaknesses, Timothy was an awesome person and a very hard worker. Next week we’ll start our study of I Timothy 1.
The Preacher Pollard Blog 