1 Timothy – Sermons in 2019

Our guide to Sunday morning readings and preaching, the Revised Common Lectionary, takes a sweep through the ‘pastoral epistles’ (1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus) in September and October. Taking a lead from the RCL, we heard from an extended set of readings from 1 Timothy over late September to the end of November 2019.

These sermons can be found here:

Preparing for the series:

  • The best introduction to any scriptural book is to read the book itself! It’s not long — a half hour should get you through it quite comfortably. Plan to do this a few times through the series, and you should also have a look at 2 Timothy and Titus over this period.
  • A short animated video introduction (9 minutes) can be found here, which summarises the book rather simply but nevertheless tells the story pretty well. One caveat on this material is that many modern scholars wonder whether fact St Paul did write this letter but, this aside, the video summary is a useful intro.
  • A more sophisticated introduction can be found in this lecture. The first 20 minutes of this lecture treats the question of the authorship of 1 Timothy via the question of Paul’s attitude towards women (cf. 1 Timothy 2.9ff); the discussion of the letter more generally begins at about 21mins into the lecture.
  • So far as commentaries go, Tom Wright’s ‘For Everyone’ series is a good basic introduction to biblical texts. The volume including Timothy is available here (Koorong) and here (Amazon, including a Kindle version). The ‘Interpretation’ series provides reliable introductions to biblical books with a bit more detail than Wright’s (and more expensive!); The volume including 1 Timothy can be found here (Koorong) and here (Amazon, including Kindle).