Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.Until I come, pay attention to reading, to exhortation, and to teaching.Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.Till I come, give heed to reading, to exhortation, to teaching.
3 sermons cite this verse
… But set the believers in example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things. Immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers. So very simple here, two parts. First, the 10%. This is the public, visible part. So note the outputs here that Paul is expecting of Timothy. Verse 11. Command and teach. Paul is assigned to go to Ephesus. Timothy is assigned to go there as Paul's delegate. Timothy is supposed to teach what he's learned from Paul with the appropriate forcefulness. So command these things. There's moral weight to the teaching. Then verse 12, set the believers an example, something to be seen, a model, something to be emulated. …
… when a person preaches in a way that they like. We're supposed to be people of the book. You know, Paul tells Timothy, man, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture. And the Bible says, blessed will be those who hear the word and obey it. You can receive a blessing from God by the way that you listen. And Lisa's going to receive a blessing from God just by reading the book out loud. See, I dream of the day when there are churches all around the U.S. where people gather because they just want to hear the very words of God. Not the words of Francis Chan, not the words of John Piper, not the words of, I mean, that's all fine, but I'm thinking It's kind of like if Lisa came up here to sing a solo. And what if the moment she started, I'd sing along with her? Yeah, exactly. My voice ruins it, right? You're just like, shut up, Francis. Shut up. Yeah, like shut up. …
… It was about people themselves devoting themselves to learning the scriptures. And that's why he says, look, you know, Paul tells Timothy, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture. And I realized something I've done for years is Jesus said, I'm the good shepherd. He goes, my sheep, they hear my voice and they follow. And what happened was I was so much about. Thanks, buddy. I was so much about preaching so well and keeping everyone's attention. And then pretty soon people got addicted to a style of teaching. And it was like they committed themselves to hearing my voice, but not his. And I realized they were devoted as long as I was giving the message. And going, wow, Jesus, my sheep will listen to my voice. They'll follow me. and so I thought, man, what would happen if I just read a chapter from the Bible today? Could it be that even if you've been tuning out a little bit and out of my message, that's fine, but now that I'm going to read from his lips, would you hang on every word? Because that's what would please him. You know, when you blow out the candles, you know, sometimes they go, speech, speech. And then when that person speaks, because it's their birthday, you just, to show honor, you just hang on every word. And so I thought it'd be so honoring to him if I read 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you hung on every word, because it's not Francis …