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Patterns of Sound Teaching

             What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. (II Timothy 1:13-14)

             Some people love every new thing that comes along. Whatever used to be accepted is thrown aside on the firm belief that the new is better. When it comes to the Church, sometimes, there’s an interesting twist on this. It’s the idea that somehow, the “new” thing is actually closer to what is described in Scripture. Today’s church is found wanting, and this new church returns us to what the Church was meant to be while simultaneously being just the new approach needed to reach people today.  They use terms like emergent, authentic, relevant, and missional as their way of saying “new and improved.” And then there are other folks who are just as adamant about never making any changes of any sort to anything they have accepted as “Biblical” – even if what they are holding on to isn’t in the Bible.

            Paul advised Timothy to use what Timothy had heard from him as a model for the things he heard. If something didn’t fit a principle that Paul taught, Timothy should reject it. But if Timothy came across something he had never encountered before and that Paul hadn’t specifically addressed, what then?

            In my Sunday School class, we’ve been looking at principles of good exegesis and hermeneutics. Those are scholarly words that basically mean figuring out what the text meant and figuring out how to apply it today. They cause problems because most people today want to reverse-engineer Scripture so it means what they want it to mean today. It doesn’t matter what it meant back then. It’s the 21st Century. Paul couldn’t possibly have foreseen the advances we (in our brilliance) have made.

            And they’re right. Paul probably didn’t foresee electricity, jets, or people going to the moon. But one thing he did foresee, and it didn’t take much to do so. People have remained people. People always look for loopholes in the rules that allow them to do what they want – even if that is only to avoid offending someone else.

            But Paul follows his call to keep his words as a pattern of sound teaching with a call for Timothy to guard what had been entrusted to him. We can’t guard something while allowing everything to beat it to a pulp. 

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