1 Timothy 2:8 | Episode # 1198

May 20, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Timothy 2:8

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for over 25 years. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse-by-verse and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Hope Alive, where we apply God's Word to our daily life. My name is Chad Harrison. I'm first a husband, a father, and a grandfather. I'm also the teaching pastor at Lake Community Church in Dadeville, Alabama on beautiful Lake Martin. I've been serving as a pastor for over 30 years. I also serve as the Tallapoosa County District Judge. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse by verse through the Bible and to find his purpose and will for your daily life. If you would like sponsor this podcast, go to the Show Notes, where there's a link where you can make a donation. I pray in the name of Jesus that God would open his word to you, allow you to see him and to know him, so that you would know his will and his way for your life, that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today. Word of God, please speak to the hearers of your voice today in the name of Jesus. Amen. We are in 1 Timothy, chapter 2, and we finished with verse 7. But I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to deal with something real quick, and that is, that's because we are going to go through the most difficult of the teachings of Timothy, okay? Over the next chapter and a half, we're going to deal with some of the most difficult, understandable teachings by Timothy. And we need to, we need to deal with the idea because, because some, sometimes people. And I'm, I had a conversation, one of the pastors today, but sometimes people, people. And we were just talking about ministry and how to, how to lead and all that kind of stuff. And, and, and, and people who, who, who have not learned how to, how to deal with scripture in its depth. Well, oftentimes, and by the way, this is the way cults kind of deal with scripture and other religions who are trying to diminish scripture, they will. What's known as proof texting. Okay? And what that is is they take one passage of scripture, one verse, and they use that verse to, to say what they want it to say. Now, I've always, in my teaching, trying to show you how that's not really a great way to understand scripture or to interpret scripture. I've always used the rule of the absurd. Okay, and what I mean by that. Well, I take a verse of scripture and I use it and I read it, and I read it plainly as it's written, and then I take it to its absurd end, okay? Such as the Bible says. And remember, now listen to me. The Bible says that God is against flying in airplanes because he said, and lo, I am with you always. Okay? All right, Now I want you to listen, I want you to notice I just gave you the law. I gave you a law, a rule, right? I gave you a rule. And then I used a passage of Scripture that quite clearly, if you thought about it and spent some time reasoning through it, especially, especially in maybe the light of the verses around it or the Scripture around it or just, Just any aspect of understanding God, you go, that is wrong. Okay? But I might also say to you, in modern times, I might say that. That the Bible said. Notice how I say it, right? The Bible says that believers need to drive Japanese cars for the Bible says all the disciples were in one accord. Okay? Now as you as. That is just absurd. It's just ridiculous, okay? It's just absolutely ridiculous. But notice if you say it with the right authority, and especially if you're trying to. If you're trying to be what, And I'm leading somewhere, if you're trying to be what Paul clearly told Timothy not to be, that's how you do it. And you go, what are you talking about? So I'm going to review a little bit. Verse 4 of 1 says this. Verse 3 of 1, chapter 1 says this. I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may change some. And that you teach no other doctrine or that you teach no other system of teaching, no. No set of ideas and understandings. That's what doctrine is. It's teachings. It's ideas and understandings. And he says, I don't want. And you can't use the word twice for you to totally understand it. But he says, basically, I left you there to teach no other teachings. That's the best way to. That's the best way to say that. He says, I left you there. Now notice what are those other teachings. Nor give heed to fables and genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification, which is in faith. Now, the purpose of the commandment is love. Notice what's the purpose of his command to teach. Notice. He says love. The purpose of it is for you to teach the grace of God which comes from the. The love that's found in Jesus Christ from a pure heart, from a good conscience and from a sincere. What faith? He's saying, I want you to have a good conscience, sincere heart and a sincere faith, he says, from which some have strayed, having turned aside to idle talk, meaning teaching that leads to nowhere. Okay? He Says, notice what they're doing. They're desiring to be teachers of the what? Not of the grace of God, not of the fullness of God's revelation. He wants. They want to be teachers of the rules. They want to be lawyers. Okay? Now, I want you to hear me. I'm not all negative about lawyers. I are one. Okay, all right. I understand. I understand how that works. But listen to me. Listen to me. Scripture clearly teaches that God is not in the business in the New Testament of teaching the law. The law has its benefit. It has its power. We see that taught really extensively in Romans and Hebrews. And if you want to go back and look through those things, in Hope Alive, our podcast, we have Hebrews and Romans there for you to study through, don't we? Yes. Hebrews and Romans there to study through. Kathleen goes, I don't know. I've just been doing it. Yes. I mean, it's just been killing. I just. It's. It's almost Monday. I do. I know where she's coming from. She's. I've had to listen to you three times teach these things because she goes through it. But. But if you want to go through that, you can see how Paul deals with the law. He doesn't say you throw it away, but he also says, we don't live by it anymore. Okay? And so understanding that is important. Now, what's. What's even worse is. Is somebody coming to tell you to live by the law. That's bad. What's worse than that? What would be worse than that is if somebody came up and made a new law that you had to live by. Now, that would be terrible, right? If they came up with a new law. Now, we do have new commandments, or they're not old commandments, but Jesus packages them up and says they're his commandments when he said, go into all the world preaching the gospel, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. That's not a group of rules, okay? That is three spiritual rules, laws, three spiritual truths. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. And a new commandment, he says, I give you meaning. That's one that's not found in any context of the Old Testament. So the first two you can find in one of them's one of the Ten Commandments. One of them is in Leviticus, okay? And is a. Is a cornerstone commandment in Leviticus, loving your neighbor as yourself. Because the Jewish people were supposed to be a city of light, a Light to the Gentile world. That's why God put em at the crossroads of the world so that they could be a light to the world. So in Leviticus, Bible teaches the Jews to love their neighbors as themselves. Okay. And then he says, then he says a new command. I give you, love each other as I have loved you. Okay? So now they have the experience of Jesus's love for them. And he says that we're supposed to love others that way. Those are the New Testament commandments, period. Jesus says on the first two of them, all the law and prophets hang on them. Which means all the legalism of the Old Testament hang on those two commandments. And without them they don't exist. With them you can take all the Old Testament law and understand what God's ultimate goal and end is. Because all of those, all of the law and the prophets hang on those commandments. Which means that everything that you can make a law in the Old Testament have to be viewed through the lens of those two commandments. All right, now understanding that is of the utmost importance. Peter. I mean Paul's telling Timothy right here, listen, he says to him in verse, chapter one, we went through it last week, he says to him, don't do that. He says, don't do that. Now if you think that after his first teaching to this pastor that this pastor is going to hold and going to live by for years and years and going to pass on to pastors for 2000 more years, if you think the next thing he's going to do is give him a group of rules for people to live by, that's that. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Okay? Now I tell you that so that you can, you can, you can dive deeper in your interpretation. I gave you the rule of the absurd, right? So you can't just proof text things, meaning you can't just take one verse or even one part of a verse and prove a total spiritual truth. Unless you're taking the three verses I gave you. Now could you take those three verses and ultimately live the complete Christian life? Yeah, because the first one would be how to live with God and the second would be how to live with the world and the third would be how to live with the church. And if you did that, and you did that well, your whole life, where you would live the Spirit filled, powerful Christian life of faith. Okay? But anything else in scripture has to, has to have. The best way I can describe it is if this is the word of God and you've got a Passage of Scripture here, you've got to take all the word of God and focus everything that the Bible says on that one passage so that you might interpret it fully. Does that make sense? So. So it's like a diamond that we place on a. On a verse so that we might contextualize that verse in the fullness of God's revelation, so that we might understand. Does that make sense to you? All right, so when we read something. Now listen to me. If somebody's proof texting you and you're explaining something to them and you've explained it using the Word, and they say, but the Bible says, I want you to listen to me. What they're saying is what you said and what I'm about to say are in conflict with each other, all right? So I want you to listen to me. When you deal with someone like that, you're dealing with a novice in God's Word, okay? Because the number one truth about God's word is that it is the divine revelation of Jesus and that it's not in conflict. It's not in conflict. Okay? So. Well, Pastor, what if I got this right here, and I think it says this, and then I got this over here, and it looks like it says this, and they don't fit together. Well, I want you to listen to me. This ain't wrong, and this ain't wrong, but you wrong, which means you don't understand God's word in its full context. You don't understand it all together, which means you got to let God use the fullness of his scripture to make you understand that. Now, listen, let me tell you something. When I was 20 years old, that was rough. 30 years old, after God had shown me some things over years, I go, oh, oh, it's not in conflict. Oh, that's pretty. It's pretty cool. 40 years old. Oh, this thing's way more intricate than I thought it was. You know, there's some depth to this. Then when I realized I could preach 50 times in a row on the same passage and preach 50 different sermons, I realized, boy, there's some depth here. There's some. There's some stuff here that. That is beautiful and wonderful, which means that the depth of God's revelation to us is very, very powerful. Which means if I think that the word of God is in conflict with. With. With. With itself, it's not. I just don't know how those veins reach out and touch each other. I don't know how they're connected. And that doesn't mean that God's wrong and that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with me. It's just I hadn't walked that path long enough to know I hadn't walked that path long enough figured out. But now I'll tell you this, as a pastor, I'm not getting in a proof text fight with you, okay? I'm not going to argue with a fourth grader over calculus. Are you listening to me? Just not going to do it if the fourth grader is going to sit there and tell me that you can't use Alphabet and math. I know you can. I've taught it. You with me? I know what quadratic equations are, okay? I've taken three semesters of college calculus. I'm not arguing with you over why you don't think a plus three equals seven. A definitely equals four. All the time. Every time. Are you following me? I know. I know it now. You don't know it. Now. I'm going to. Listen to me. Listen to me. I can't make you know what I know because it was divinely. It was divinely given to me. The Holy Spirit revealed it to me. Okay? Now can I teach you and allow the Holy Spirit over time for you to walk in it and learn it? Sure I can. Is it going to teach you everything that I know? Every time I talk, I. No. Is he gonna teach you some things I don't know sometimes when I talk? Yes. Okay. Is he gonna be working with you in your walk, in your glorification with him? Absolutely. Okay, but, but, but, but there's no way for me to substitute. Since 8 years old reading the Bible. If you're just now a year, two years, five years into wrestling with God. I've been wrestling with him for a long time. I felt like he's drowned me several times. He has body slammed me a couple of dozen times. Are you with me? He can put me in a head. He can do all kinds of jujitsu stuff with me. Okay? And now I've done got to where I know it's kind of like that kid that was 175 pounds in ROTC with me at Princeton. He was the four time Virginia State wrestling champion. And all the non commissioned officers in that were working with rotc. They wanted him to wrestle Big Bama. But Big Bama knew that this old boy was the four time wrestling state champion. And I had wrestled enough to know that when I got out there to wrestle him, it didn't matter that I weighed 260 pounds. He only weighed 175 pounds. He was going to jump on me like a spider monkey and he going to beat me. But finally, in April of the. Of my senior year, they talked us into it on a beautiful Sunny Day, about 60 degrees outside the armory. And sure enough, we started and he jumped on me like a spider monkey. Now, he didn't beat me in the head or anything like that. He just like jumped on an elephant, held on, and eventually, over about four or five minutes, he wore me out. And it was like taking a gorilla and strangling him slowly. And finally he just flipped me over and pinned me. And all those, see all Those, all those NCOs go, wow. And I'm sitting there going, now, you see what I mean? That's why I didn't want to wrestle him, because y', all, y' all just want me to get embarrassed by the 175 pound dude, okay? I couldn't get him off of me. Now, I want you to listen to me. When God gets on you, you're not going to get him off of you. And he's going to reveal himself to you when you go. Well, that's not biblical. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Jacob wrestled with God. He wrestled with Jesus himself. All right? He wrestled with him. And when he wrestled him, Jesus touched his hip, gave him a permanent injury to remember the wrestling match, and changed his name. Changed his name for thief and liar to Israel. Okay? So those are all good things. So when you're studying God's word, you need to understand that. Now, I did that for a reason, because it's important that you contextualize this perfectly, okay? Verse eight of chapter two, I desire. Now remember, Timothy's a mumser. When Timothy, when they talk, When Paul talks about Timothy's gifting, he says, it's a gift that we saw in your grandmother and then in your mother and now in you. Which means he didn't have a male spiritual father figure. His first spiritual father figure that was a male is the Apostle Paul. Okay? Knowing that Paul's going to give him some instructions because he doesn't know anything other than as a child being discipled by a woman. That's all he knows. Okay? And so Paul's going to give him a teaching because he's going to, more than likely he's going to do what he knows. And that's all we know to do, right? The only way for me to do what I do is to know what I know. And I can't teach you what I don't know because I don't know it. All right? And so Paul, all he knows is in his spiritual journey he's, I mean Timothy, all he knows is I had these women who taught me spiritual things and then I finally got the Apostle Paul and I had him for a year or two and, and now I gotta lead the church. And Paul wants to give him instructions about that. Now I want you to notice what he says here because it's a problem in the modern church. I desire therefore that men aner the word is anair. I'm giving you the word because it's important. It's translated. This word's used a little over 200 times in the New Testament. It's translated about 120 of those times. 125 times it's translated man. The other 80 something times is it's translated husband. Okay, now very likely all the translations that use husband are probably pretty spot on because that's a more refined use of the word. It would contextually fit and that's why they used it. But it may be used sometimes in some translations as man when it probably ought to be used as husband. And I'm telling you that because when you study God's Word in depth, you realize that I not only have to read what I read in English, but I need to also know what God's saying in his Word. Does that make sense? And it was written in Greek and Hebrew. And so that I need to have some. I need to have. If I'm going to get in an argument about it, if I'm going to make it a cornerstone of my faith, I better know what that says. That's why when I use the word pistio, which is faith. When I say the cornerstone of faith, I always say faith. And then I go pistioar. If I use hope, I go pistio. Or if I see trust, I use pistio. I say believe. Why? Because I want you to understand that that word is a very important word in, in the Bible. And you need to understand what it means contextually, not just in the human, human English language, but in the human Greek language or in Koine Greek or common Greek. And that's where it's found. So a nair is man. And if I want to be particular about it, husband, he says, and by the way, we're going to use this word a lot. I therefore. I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere. What? That men do what? Pray everywhere. Where? Everywhere. All right, now I want you to listen to me. He's starting with the men. He's wanting the men to do what? To lead, to pray, to be the leaders in this thing. He wants the men to lead. Why would. Why bring that up? Because Timothy's used to being led by women. Okay? There's nothing wrong with it. Let me say this. There's nothing wrong with it. Let me take that back. There is something wrong with it, but what's wrong with it ain't got nothing to do with the two women that led him or the boy. It's got to do with the man. We don't know who he is. All right? He says I would. The men pray everywhere. Notice lifting up holy hands. What Paul say we ought to do? Lift up holy hands. All you denominationalists in the back, Pentecostals in the front. If you rise late, we got the denominationalists in the back, Pentecostals in the front, nerds to the right, to the north, over here at the tables. All right? If you're watching from tv, all you can see is the Pentecostals. If we were worshiping, they'd all have hands up. Okay. Can't see all the denominationalists in the back. And you sure. You know, we don't ever show the nerds. Okay, you never show them, but they're. They're. They're cool, too. All right, so. So when you're. When you're. When you're. When you're. Kathleen says, I'm a denominationalist. I better move to the back. You're a nerd. Yeah. You are a nerd. That's exactly right. She feels more comfortable back there, but I make her sit with me. And so. And so. So when we're. When we're studying. When we're studying this. When we're studying this, he's saying that the men should pray and should lift holy hands. And by the way, the word for prayer is a. Is a derivation. It's translated prayer everywhere. But it's a derivation of the word for worship in the Bible, which is pros. Canoe. Which. Which means to prostrate yourself. Okay, what do you mean by derivation? Well, they took a word and they added to it and made it a new word that had had a contextual basis in the same thing. Prayer and. And prostrating yourself are acts of worship. And the reason they. The reason they made it a derivation of it is because they wanted you to see that prayer is an outgrowth of. Of your attitude toward God, which would be to prostrate yourself. All right? He says here, lifting up holy hands without wrath isn't that a man emotion. Okay. You know why men are wrathful? Because they're angry. You know why they're angry? Because they're fearful. Did you hear what I said? The number one emotion. I know women find this so hard to believe. The number one emotion that men struggle with the most is fear. By far. Until a man masters fear by faith, he will act out of that fear. He'll act in wrath. He'll react in wrath. And whenever you see a man full of wrath, you see a man empty of faith and fearful. Okay? All right. He says here and you want to. You want to be without wrath and without doubting. And doubting is the opposite of faith. Okay? As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.