Hello, and welcome to the very first Tabernacle Tidbit. And this is a special Tabernacle Talk format.
Specially requested, because this is the very first episode, I will name drop Sherri Cooney. And this is for you and for anyone else that needs just a kind of briefer time in God's Word. And so we're going to jump right in.
This is an audio exclusive.
So if you've got friends that watch the video versions of Tabernacle Talk on either YouTube or Facebook on Tabernacle Baptist Church of Essex, Maryland's stuff, you can rub it in their faces and you can say, I know more stuff about the Bible than you
do because you have your own secret source of knowledge. Tabernacle Talk. Let's get started. We're going to be beginning in Second Timothy.
And that's where we're going to start off. Second Timothy, Chapter one and verse number one is where we're going to begin. This will give us kind of the background for the book.
And then as we journey on through the upcoming weeks, we will walk through Second Timothy five minutes or less at a time.
Second Timothy, one one says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will, for the sake of the promise of life in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dearly loved son, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Bit of background as we look here. Paul, he was a person that had grown up in the Jewish faith.
There is some both archaeological evidence as well as evidence within the Bible that would suggest that Paul's parents might have been in a region of Israel that engaged in a rebellion against Rome.
That area of Israel was conquered, the rebellion totally put out, and the people taken from that region and transplanted into a different area of the Roman Empire, kind of by the, well, we would know Saul of Tarsus would be the name that Paul would
be known by, kind of the city moniker that they would give to him. So they were placed within that area where they eventually earned through working for people as slaves, bond servants would be the other phrase that we would know it by, that they
bought their freedom and bought citizenship in the Roman Empire, which was something that you could do back in those days. And so Paul was coming from a very unique background where he had a history, obviously, as an Israelite.
He came from the tribe of Benjamin, which was Jacob's, you know, baby boy from his favorite wife, Rachel, the younger brother of Joseph. And so from kind of a favored son, Saul came from that line and grew up.
He became a Roman citizen, not through any work that he had to do, but simply because he was the son of Roman citizens. And he experienced much of what people went through as far as economic and political hardships in his life.
And he, then once he got back to Israel itself, he was in Jerusalem and he served as a Pharisee, someone who knew the law of God, knew all of the laws on laws, was very religious and God himself called him to be an apostle while he was busy attacking
and hurting other people. And what a thought that God can turn the persecutors into the greatest preachers. And that's why Paul says he is an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will. Paul didn't make himself a preacher of the gospel.
That was something that God did in him. And I want you to think today, what is a way in which God wants to change your life? What mission does God have for you?
It wasn't the plan that Paul set up for himself. It was the plan that God had for him. And God has a plan for your life.
That you would follow him. That you would treat others as God wants to treat you with love. That you would pass that on.
And there in the end of verse number one, Paul says, for the sake of the promise of life in Christ Jesus, we serve in recognition of eternal life. Thanks for tuning in. We'll hit verse two tomorrow.
