Welcome to the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast. Right now we're going through the entire Bible

to understand it is one big cohesive story. We're covering one book each day, and this

one's about first Timothy.

As we turn the page here from 2nd Thessalonians over to first Timothy, there is an ever-so-subtle

shift in genre that is occurring. All of the letters of Paul we've seen so far have been

letters to churches. Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, then go eat popcorn, Galatians, Ephesians,

Philippians, Colossians, and then 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. All of those open with some

version of Paul and Apostle of Christ because I'm enthusiastic about your church and I want

to obey God. I write to the church and Corinth, I mean, it's a very ugly paraphrase, but

they all start something like that. Well, 1st Timothy opens the same. Paul and Apostle

of Christ Jesus by the command of God, our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope. All right,

that's all pretty familiar. We read on to Timothy, my true son, in the faith. Aha! There's

the wrinkle of difference. We are moving out of the letters of Paul that are written to

churches and we're moving into a new chunk of letters that are written to church leaders

or people in churches, giving them guidance about how to lead or how to play their role

in the church. And the first of these pastoral epistles, as they're often called, is written

to Paul's protege, Timothy. Timothy is representative of, I guess you could say, Generation 3 of Christianity.

As Generation 1 is the people of Jesus met in physical person during his pre-Crucifixion

lifetime. And then Generation 2 are the Christians who came after Jesus' death and resurrection.

Well, then Generation 3 would be the people that Generation 2 reached. And that is what happened

with Timothy because during Paul's second missionary journey, he makes a trip through central

Turkey. This is probably in the late 40s AD. And he goes to this one town called Lystra where he

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