First Timothy 1 1 now we were
in first Timothy Last week a little further along in this chapter,
and I've been been looking at the The beginnings of several
of the books of the Bible to see what our next study would
be and I believe I've settled on this now so I wanted to go
back to the beginning and I can't find anywhere on my desktop computer
where we've Gone through first and second Timothy Though I have
a few messages on there from both books and so that means
I know that we have but it means it was more than 15 years ago
that when we did that computers is that old at least so I wanted
to to just start at the beginning here and and go through this wonderful
book of the Bible. Now, a lot of Paul's epistles
are Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, the names of cities. Many of his epistles were written
to churches to be read generally. He mentions that several times
in his letters. But this is a letter to a person,
a young man, Timothy, a young preacher. Paul calls him his
son in the faith. So it has a more personal and
heartfelt tone to it then just like if you were writing to a
group of people as opposed to Or to a single person that you
knew and loved as opposed to a group It's naturally going
to have that tone to it and it's It's it's good to see that here
in this book and and to and hear that type of Language I
guess in the context of course of the gospel But in verse 1
Paul says I'm an apostle Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by
the commandment of God our Savior now Paul never was Reverend Paul
or dr. Paul though. He was a highly
highly educated man and He didn't call himself the venerable Paul
like I'm sure people do today, the great apostle. And that's very common in religion.
But he did declare himself the apostle of Jesus Christ simply
to show what his authority was to speak for God. The apostles
had unique qualifications. They were taught directly by
the Lord Jesus Christ. Commissioned directly by him
to be apostles and so there can never be any more apostles Paul
said as one born out of due time the Lord Appeared to him and
commissioned him And of course they had the gifts of the spirit
that nobody now has they had the ability to pass on those
gifts, but Once those to whom they passed them on were dead,
and the apostles were dead, then there's no way to have those
gifts anymore. Everyone's an imposter who says
they do. It's that simple and very clear in the Word of God.
But there are a lot who claim to speak for God that have no
authority from God whatsoever. But Paul is saying here, in effect,
this is why you should listen to what I say, because God commissioned
me to speak his word. I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. But what's different from this, what's different about this from
the titles of men is that titles are given to men because of some
scholastic achievement that they've attained. Paul said here, I'm
an apostle of Jesus Christ because God wanted me to be. Did you
notice that? Because God wanted me to be by
the commandment of God. That's the difference. He had a title that God gave
him. And he was the last person in
this world that anyone would ever have thought to be a candidate
for being a preacher of the gospel. He was educated, but he knew
everything he knew was wrong. He counted that but done, that
he might win Christ once he knew who Christ was. Anybody who's trying to train
anybody in anything would tell you that they'd rather have somebody
that doesn't know anything than somebody that knows everything
wrong. Paul knew everything wrong, but God is such a teacher that
it doesn't matter. He teaches the worst, the most
foolish, the base. Among men and uses them that
the excellency of the power may be of God and not of men But
he simply says here God wanted me to be an apostle so he commanded
it So I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was the Lord Jesus
Christ himself Personally God the son who commanded Paul to
do his will in the ministry And Paul just simply describes the
Lord Jesus here as our hope. Do you notice that? The Lord
Jesus Christ, our hope. The words which is, there's nothing
wrong with them, but they're not there in the original. It
just says the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. That's why Paul preached. Seeing we have such hope, we
use great plainness. Speech we want to tell everybody
and we want to tell them in the simplest clearest way we possibly
can That what you need all you need is Christ But you do need
him So this letter carries the very authority of God by the
authority of God Paul speaks and And God chose, as Paul himself
said, the base, the foolish, the one who everything he knew
was wrong. And then his message was our
hope, Christ Jesus, our hope, not the one who gives us hope,
not the provider of hope. He himself is our hope. What would he be giving if he
was given out hope? What specifically would he be?
He is the hope you see what I'm saying. There's nothing that
he gives that's hope he is the hope of sinners If Christ is Righteous before
God that I'm righteous before God in him He's my hope if his
blood atones for sin that I'm at one with God, my sins are
gone. If he doesn't, then it's not
that way. If he lives, I live. He is our hope. Our hope's a
person. Now, second verse, unto Timothy,
my own son in the faith. Well, that means a lot to me
because I have been a son in the faith. Many of y'all are. It has nothing to do with male
or female. be your child in the faith. My
pastor Jack called me that. I believe in one of the very
last messages he preached while we were still there. It may have
been the last one. He said, Chris is my son, my
son in the faith. And it was a great privilege
to be called that, a very special, special thing. But you see how
this letter starts and what I meant by the personal tone to it. This
is somebody that loves somebody. It's like Solomon. I mentioned
quite a bit. Solomon said, my son, my son,
here, take heed unto the wisdom that I'm telling you about. And
as I always also say, God will never send you anybody with a
message to do for you. But it's going to be somebody
that loves you. That's what he's going to do. That's what he's
always done. man after my own heart. Why does God tell you
anything? Because He loves you. And the way He tells you is by
somebody that loves you. So my own son in the faith, grace,
mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul was by this letter not only
at the very outset, did he Establish his own authority being from
God himself. Yeah, God commanded this But
he was endorsing Timothy here in a sense the laying on of hands
by the Apostles was to convey gifts of the Spirit and they
were the only ones who could do that They did that to show confidence
in that person to vouch for them as being blessed of God in the
ministry and And he mentions that about Timothy. The Lord
didn't appear to Timothy the way that he did Paul, but Paul,
to whom the Lord did appear, said, Timothy is ordained, or
to use the language we use now, ordained into the ministry. And Paul gives qualifications
concerning that in in the chapter five of this text that we'll
get to eventually, but here's the lesson. This means that God
uses means that are not what might be considered the obvious
choice. But it's vital to know that God
has called somebody to the ministry. And as I said, this is dealt
with later on in this epistle, so I won't spend a lot of time
This but but this will be important as we look at it And so when
Paul says Timothy's my son in the faith. He's endorsing him
in a sense and That's the way God has arranged
the way his message is is is spread is preached and Those who are taught teaching
others who will be able to teach others also is the way Paul said
it In verse 3 as I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when
I went to Macedonia That thou mightest charge some that they
teach no other doctrines and so this is important to see also
that right at the beginning of this letter that Paul is Asserting
the importance the vital nature of sound doctrine Timothy again
is a young preacher Paul's an old preacher And he's saying
He Has given him the the duty of charging these that they teach
no other doctrine This is the most important thing Paul vouched
for Timothy and others and I'm sure Timothy vouched for some
And Paul is endorsing Timothy here
because Timothy preached what Paul preached, and Paul preached
what Christ preached. So that's the succession of it.
It has nothing to do with going to college and getting a degree
in theology or something like that. The gospel's not that complicated. I don't think you have to go
to college to learn the gospel. You just have to have God turn
the light on. And when you know him, I didn't
have to go to college to get to know my wife. I just knew
her. I stayed with her, spent time
with her, married her. That's how it is with Christ. And he's introduced by the preaching
of the gospel. Timothy being Paul's son in the
faith Paul preached to Timothy and the Lord turned the light
on Acquainted himself with himself acquainted Timothy with himself
taught him the gospel Now there are a couple of he
said that they teach no other other doctrine I And so there's
a couple of ways to do that, to teach other doctrine. Look
at verse four. Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies,
which minister questions rather than godly edifying, which is
in faith. So do. Now there's some very
important teaching here, because this is still the danger. This
is the danger in our day, just like it was when Paul is warning
Timothy about it here. There's sound doctrine. the doctrine
of Christ, and then there's fables and endless genealogies. It's
not the same thing. Think about this. This is two
different issues that exist right now, just as it did then. Fables is just something made
up. God loves everybody. That's just
made up. That's just made up. It is not
true. Christ died for everybody. Somebody
made that up. That's not what God says. Christ
said, I laid down my life for my sheep. And he turned to the
Pharisees and said, you're not my sheep. You don't believe me
because you're not my sheep. My sheep hear me. They follow
me. I give them eternal life and
they're never going to perish because I do those things. Laid
down my life for them and they shall never perish. That's the
difference between never perishing and not being a sheep of Christ
He died for them That's salvation So there's fables fabrications
of men Genealogies may be real But what difference does it make
It's not it might be the truth, but it's not the truth So there's
two different things there beside the point the point is Christ
Endless G. It's just as useless and Christless
to say true things as It is to make things up If the true things
that you're saying are not the true thing I The Bible has one message. To preach God's gospel is to
preach Christ and Him crucified. And I know that we say that over
and over. The reason we do is because it's
the truth. We preach a person, not even
just about a person. If I just tell you all the facts
there are to know about Jesus Christ, That's not the gospel. The gospel's Him. I've used this illustration to
you before, and you'll probably remember it, but if I was to
tell you, you know, that I, you know, my first car was a Plymouth
Duster. Do you feel sorry for me? That
thing was sad. It looked kinda cool, but it
was, I only paid $400 for it, so that should tell you something.
If I told you what high school, I went to Deer Park High School
in Deer Park, Texas. And things like that, all facts
about me. I'm not talking to you about
cars. I'm talking to you about me. You see that? I'm not talking
to you about schools. I'm talking to you about me.
And there's a lot in the Bible about heaven, but we don't preach
heaven. There's a lot in the Bible about
hell. There's a lot in the Bible about good works, but we don't
preach good works. Everything that's in this book
is in there as it pertains to God's Son. These are written
that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Not
that you might know a lot about things, about heaven, for example. Heaven's a person. Listen to Romans 1 1 Paul a servant
of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle When Paul's talking
about his title his title was what a servant of Jesus Christ
Called to be an apostle it wasn't in some Scholastic achievement
it was a calling It was God that commanded it as our text says
separated unto the gospel of God and Which he had promised
afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his
son The gospel concerns his son not heaven hell and good works
or anything his son Jesus Christ our Lord Which was made of the
seed of David according to the flesh so Paul is charging Timothy
to be sure that those who preach and those who listen to them
Don't say or hear anything made up. Or anything that just doesn't
mean anything. Speaking of my pastor Jack Shinks
in Texas, we heard somebody preach together one time and we were
both, he looked at me and he said, what did you think about
that Chris? Don't know what to think about
that. What do you think about that? He said it took him a long
time to get there didn't it? It's just 45 minutes of who cares
and then God Christ gets honorable mention at the end of it, maybe Historical facts and things like
that if it doesn't specifically pertain to the glory of Christ
God saves a sinner You're just showing off your scholastic achievements
which are meaningless Paul said they're done So there's there's much preaching
today I That's just made up. It's just things that you're
just not going to find in the Word of God. And it's the very
tenets of this world's religion. God loves you. Christ died for
everybody. That's the first things you'll
hear in most Baptist churches and neither one of them are true.
And then there are the vain questions and issues that are unprofitable
that just cause arguments and The genealogies referred to in
the verse there are likely lineages that supposedly verified what
tribes these Jews were of and things like that. What difference
does it make? There is none of that in Christ.
There's no Jew or Greek. Paul said very clearly our hope
is a person Now verse 5 now the end of the commandment is love
out of a pure heart Have a good conscience And a
faith that's not fake That's what that says from which some
having swerved have turned aside and to vain jangling Desiring
to be teachers of the law understanding neither what they say nor whereof
they affirm now He's just got through saying that Timothy you
need to charge them that they teach no other doctrine and now
he's describing those ones that teach other doctrine and So Timothy
knows what he's looking for he knows what to expect he knows
the science of Somebody that that's not of God and The vein
jangling. They're not having a clue what
they're talking about. Their faith is fake. And they
evidence that. The other issue in the church
then, as now, is the lawful use of the law. That's key now. That's key. That's how you'll
know if it's a false ministry or the ministry of Christ. That's
one of the key ways It's related to what he said there in the
previous verse even the Word of God can be used unlawfully The end of the commandment is
love out of a pure heart and And a good conscience, of a good
conscience and a faith unfeigned. They desire to be teachers of
the law. And there's something in that.
People, the false preachers, that's what they want to do.
They want to be a preacher. I want to be a preacher. There's
something wrong with that. It's a great privilege and an
honor, but it's not a It's not an ambition Red flags go up if you ever hear
somebody say I just want to be a pretty I'm just looking for
a place to preach I want to be a preacher That's not how God calls people
you look at the Apostles themselves They were doing other stuff.
They weren't looking for the Lord And neither was I I'll tell
you that But this is So he's talking here,
though, specifically about the law and the lawful use of the
law. They desire to be teachers of
the law, but they don't know what they're talking about, he
said. Verse eight goes right with this. Look at verse eight. But we know
that the law is good if a man use it lawfully, which is sort
of a play on words. We'll talk about that in a minute. The goal of the law with regard
To us being righteous before God. Now think about this. What
is the law? Well, it's an expression of God's
righteousness. It's a written, it's written
statutes, do's and don'ts. This is what God requires and
this is what he forbids. So it's an expression of his
holy character in that sense. This is what offends him and
this is what he's pleased with. So that's an expression of his
holy character. But Paul is saying here that
the goal of the law is not for us to keep it. That sounds strange
to people. And most people will never understand
that that's not what the law is. Well, you know, it sounds
logical, doesn't it? You tell somebody not to do something
because you don't want them to do it. That's not what God did. He told us not to do it because
we do it. And to cause us to realize that
we do it and run to Christ. That's not complicated, is it?
It's really not. The goal of the law with regard
to you and me being righteous before God is to bring us to
Christ who is our righteousness. That's what he's talking about.
The goal of the law with regard to our daily walk is love. The end of the law is love. Out of a pure heart. Not fear,
not bondage. Not, oh man, if I do this, God's
gonna be mad at me. If I don't do this, he's gonna
be mad at me. That's bondage, that's fear. That's slavish fear. Not respect and all. worship We are righteous because we are
in Christ and by grace through faith We have Christ as our righteousness
We do what we do because we love him the goal of the law is love
and also by grace through faith We love him because he first
loved us and because we love him we're constrained to live
Not henceforth unto ourselves as we read well ago in the Bible
class, but unto him Which died for us? And rose again, so Paul
is still talking about sound doctrine here He's saying don't
let anybody preach the law as a means of righteousness before
God and nor as a motivation for living righteously before God.
It's not what it is. Our motivation for living before
God the way we want to is we love him. That's what he's saying. Now, verse eight. We know a couple
of things about this. We know the law is good. The law's good. We talk about,
oh, salvation's not of the law. You know, we don't keep the law.
The law condemns us. It sounds like we're talking
bad about the law. The law's a terrible thing. No, the law's
good. But use it lawfully. Not to establish a righteousness
before God. Use it lawfully, knowing this,
that the law is not made for a righteous man. It's not made
so you'll be righteous. It's not made because you are
right. If you were righteous, what use would a law be? And it's not given to make you
righteous either. If it is, then God failed. And
God don't fail. It's given to the lawless and
disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and
profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for
manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves
with mankind, for men-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons.
And if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound, what's
he still talking about? Doctor. What's the tea? Paul's a young preacher. I mean,
Paul's an old preacher. Timothy's a young preacher. Here's
what you preach, Timothy. The law's good, but you gotta
use it lawfully. The law's a schoolmaster to bring
us to Christ. It's not how to be righteous
before God. It's why you're not righteous
before God. So we know that the problem with
the law is not that there's a problem with the law. The problem with the law not
being a legitimate way for us to attain righteousness before
God is that we are inherently and incurably unrighteous by
nature. As an unregenerate sinner, a
dead sinner, the law is not the answer because we cannot measure
up to it. Romans 8.3, for what the law
could not do and that it was weak through the flesh. God sending
his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin Condemned
sin in the flesh what the law couldn't accomplish for us God
sent his son to accomplish for us And in consideration of us as
lost and dead in trespasses and sins and how the law pertains
to us in that state It can't help us That's what he's saying
there Verse 9 tells us how the law pertains to us as believers. The law is not made for a righteous
man. Though we are believers, we are
lawless, disobedient, ungodly, and sinners. And that's the point
of the law, to show that, that every mouth may be stopped, Paul
said in Romans 3, and all the world become guilty. Religion
says well the law God gave his law. We've got to be righteous.
No the law was given to make you guilty not innocent We are not under the law as believers
we're under grace aren't you glad Paul describes that in Romans
7 verses 1 through 6 The law of God has as much claim on us,
he taught there, as man's law has upon a dead person. How much claim does the law have
on a dead person? That's what he taught, Romans
7, 1 through 6. We're dead to sin. of what use is the law to us
as a means of righteousness also, not only think of it this way,
the law is useless to us because we can't keep it, but the law
is useless to us because we don't need it as a way of salvation. I'm not saying the law is bad,
the law is good, that's our text. But it is useless to us as a
way of salvation because we can't keep it, But also, we don't want
it, we don't need it. We are righteous before God in
Christ. What use is the law then to a
believer? The fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance
against such. There is no law. There is no law. So whether dead
or alive, the law is not our hope. Christ is our hope. The law can't give us life when
we're dead. And once we are alive, the law
has served its purpose. We're no longer under it. We're
no longer under a schoolmaster, Paul said. We're under the master. Galatians 3 24 wherefore the
law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ that we might
be justified by faith The law brought us to Christ The law
didn't justify us, but it brought us to Christ that we might be
justified The end of the law is justification, but not by
keeping the law the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ
that we might be justified by believing on him. But after that
faith has come, we're no longer under a schoolmaster. So that's using the law lawfully
now. The law is good and right. Paul
said, I love the law of God in Romans chapter seven after the
inward man. But I can't keep it, and I don't
need to. That's just the simple truth
of what he's saying here. And all of what he said, verse
11, is according to the glorious gospel. Isn't it good news that
the purpose of the law is not that you might be righteous before
God by the keeping of the law? That's good news, because you
can't keep the law, and you know it. By God's grace, you know it.
According to the glorious good news of the blessed God, which
was committed to my trust as an apostle, God himself committed
that to Paul's trust. It's good news that I am no longer
under the law. And this good news, Paul said,
is glorious. It's glorious. How glorious is
the gospel of righteousness without the law? Romans 3 21 through 26, you know
that we've looked at that together so many times over the years
Now the righteousness of God without the law is revealed The
righteousness which is by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ
God has set forth to be a propitiation for our sins through faith in
his blood. I believe in his blood. I don't
believe in me. The world says, well, you just
got to believe in yourself. Well, I don't. By God's grace,
I don't believe in myself. I believe in his blood. Good news, the gospel that God
has committed to our trust. And here's the thing about that. God doesn't trust us either.
We can't trust us and God doesn't trust us, but he commits this
to our trust in the sense that the means by which this gospel
of the lawful use of the law, which is to cause you to look
to Christ for all your righteousness, is preached. He gives us, he commissions us
to go and declare that message, giving us the ability to do it,
the wisdom, putting us in Christ and Christ in us. And by the
way, you know, my favorite part of the Great Commission, Loa,
I'm with you. He doesn't just do all of that and then leave
us on our own from there. That'd be wonderful, but it gets
better. He never leaves. He's with us
always, even to the end of the world. and he won't let us mess this
up. You think about that for a second.
I have messed up everything that can be messed up in this world,
but one of the things that can't be messed up is the gospel by
somebody that God has called. You're not gonna mess it up?
I'm pretty sure, pretty sure I've never preached when it wasn't
the truth of God. How in the world did I pull that
off? Our sufficiency is of God. That's how. And may we never
preach anything or anyone else. Seeing that we have such a glorious
hope, Christ himself, Paul said, being at that hope. May we use
great plainness of speech. Let's pray.