You might notice on your lesson, the title of the lesson is, Take Heed to Yourself. And that's found in 1 Timothy 4, 16. Paul telling Timothy, take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine. And the intent of Paul here, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is to remind Timothy that as you minister to others, and give your time and your attention, even your heart, for the people of God. Don't neglect yourself. And I know from personal experience that that can happen. Because you just, you know, hey, I'm a preacher, you know, I've got it all together. No, not always. We're just sinful men preaching to sinful people. and we have our problems, and we don't need to neglect ourselves. But the reason I wanted you to turn to Galatians 6 is to remind you and myself of a sinful tendency that we have to fight. And that sinful tendency is to focus our attention on others rather than ourselves. Now, let me tell you something right now. I'm not talking about assurance of salvation. Because if you want assurance of salvation, don't focus on yourself or others, focus on Christ. All right? But I'm talking about how we deal with each other and our relationship with one another. And I just wanted to use this opportunity, since Paul's telling Timothy to don't neglect yourself, to make this point here. Look at Galatians 6.1. Paul writes, brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual, or restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou be tempted. And that's the kind of thing that Paul's talking about, though that's not his intent in Timothy, but it applies. Because when somebody, when a brother or sister in Christ messes up, and we all do, Our tendency is to focus on them, and we do need to help them, but what's the point here? The point is restoration, not to drive them away. And that's a beautiful thing, because if something happens to you and you mess up, what we ought to do as brethren in Christ is work to restore you, not to browbeat you, not to neglect you, but to restore you, and he goes on in verse two, and he says there, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. What if it were you in that situation? All right? And somebody might say, well, I'd never do that. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, let's put you in the right situation. God's in control. You're not. I'm not. So in verse two he says, bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. What he's talking about is the law of love. Bearing one another's burdens. It hurts. You know, we don't relish when a brother or sister in Christ gives in to temptation or gets down or is hurt. We love that person. And verse three, for if a man thinketh himself to be something when he's nothing, he deceiveth himself. If you think you're not capable of the same sorts of things, you're deceiving yourself. But let every man prove his own work, test your own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden. In other words, focus your attention on yourself. Lord, deliver me from the evil one. Deliver me from temptation. If a brother or sister messes up, deliver me from going through the same thing, because I know that I'm fully capable of doing the worst. I know that. And it's only by the grace of God that we don't get ourselves into those situations, if we don't. And so I thought about that when I saw this lesson when Paul's telling Timothy to take heed to yourself. Now Paul's intention here is not the same thing that he had in Galatians 6, but I thought that was worth bringing up to ourselves and reminding ourselves of that. So he's telling Timothy, take heed to yourself. And let's look at what he's saying here. Look at verse 13. He says in 1 Timothy 4, 13, he says, till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. In other words, until I get there. Now, you know, Paul had talked about going to Ephesus back in chapter three and verse 14. And so he's telling Timothy as Timothy's teacher, Timothy's mentor, he says, till I come, give attendance. Now that give attendance means that both publicly and privately, read the scriptures, reading, he says, read the Bible. And it's okay to read other books that are related to the Bible, but to understand only the Bible, God's word, only God's word is the inspired inerrant word of God. I've written books, other men have written books, but our words are not inerrant. Now, and so, when you read a book that I've written, or somebody else has written, or a pamphlet, or a sermon, test them with the word of God, what you read. And I know that many times, you know, we will read things that we don't know the actual meaning of immediately, It takes some study, it takes some time, it takes prayer, all of that. But read the word of God. Try to read it every day. Set some time aside to do that. It'd be good to you. One year I set aside a time that I thought I was gonna read through the Psalms, for example. And one of the things I learned in reading through the Psalms is how to pray. Because Psalms are full of prayers. And I'd see Psalms written by David when he was in trouble, and other Psalms when he was like on cloud nine. I'd say, well, that's the way we are. But read the Bible. And make it your habit. That's a good thing, because we feed on the word of God. And pray. Lord, give us understanding of what we're reading. And it may be you'll find a sermon that I preached or somebody, other gospel preacher has preached and you can listen to a sermon on that and it might help you. So make that your habit. And then he says, give attendance to exhortation. Now, exhortation, the best way that I can describe exhortation is encouragement through instruction. And that's what he's telling Timothy. Make sure when you preach to the people of God, you preach as a teacher. You know, I know, I get so sick of hearing these guys talking about, well, are you a preacher? Are you a teacher? You know, and all that. If you're ministering the word of God, you're both. The word preaching just means telling forth. All it is. And teaching is you've got something to tell. Something to tell, you're not just up there, emotionalism and all of that. We want to teach each other. We want to exhort. We want to encourage growth in grace. And sometimes exhortation involves correction. Sometimes we have to be corrected. And when we do that, we have to be careful. We all have our egos. And you have to kind of dance around a little bit because you don't want to correct somebody just to humiliate them. You want to do it in a way that in love. And that's what he's telling Timothy as a minister of the gospel. The gospel is such an encouraging message of salvation. God's grace. And none of us, I mean how many times we say this, none of us deserve it. None of us have earned it. It's just, it's a miracle of God's love and grace and justice. And so he tells them there, exhort one another. And then he says, to doctrine, give attendance to doctrine. I tell you what, these preachers who go around putting down doctrine all the time, they're not of God. They don't have the word of God. I had a preacher here a long time ago. who got up here and talking about dead, cold doctrine. And he was talking about the Pharisees. And he said they had dead, cold doctrine, but no heart. And I corrected him. I hope out of love. I don't have any fellowship with him now. I guess I made him mad. So, whatever. But I told him, I said, look, the Pharisees' doctrine was not true doctrine. It was false doctrine. Christ called it the doctrine of devils. He told his disciples, take heed of the doctrine of the Pharisees. So their problem wasn't cold dead doctrine, it was a lie. And I told this man, I said, go through Genesis to Revelation and find me one scripture from Genesis to Revelation where the doctrine of Christ the doctrine of the gospel, the doctrine of grace, is even put in a negative light as being dead and cold. You won't find it. It's not there. You see, the problem, when somebody claims to believe right doctrine, but doesn't really believe it, all right, and you know that's possible, the problem is not the doctrine, the problem is the dead, cold heart. That's the problem. which we can't change. God has to do that. But the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the gospel is called, it rains down like water, quenching the thirst. It's beautiful doctrine. It's good doctrine. How many times has Paul already told Timothy, be faithful to good doctrine? And in 2 John, John said, He that transgresses and abides not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God, but he that abideth in that doctrine hath both the Father and the Son. There's just no scripture that speaks of doctrine, true doctrine now, teaching, that's what doctrine is, in a negative light. It's always put within the positive. So if you find somebody who claims to believe the gospel but their doctrine is wrong, that's not dead code doctrine, it's a lie if their doctrine is wrong. And somebody says, well, he's just a doctrinalist. I plead guilty. I'm a doctrinalist. I want to know the doctrine of Christ. I want to know the person of Christ, the work of Christ, the issues of righteousness and salvation by God's grace and the assurance of salvation. I want to be inspired. I want to be motivated by truth and love and the glory of God. And the only way that's going to come is by the Spirit empowering the truth. Christ said the truth will set you free. That's doctrine. Now he is the truth personified, I know that. But the only way we know him as the truth personified is as we hear and believe the true doctrine of Christ. So Paul says, Timothy, give attendance to doctrine. Don't let it slip. Don't let it go by the wayside. If somebody brings in wrong doctrine, you have to be ahead of it. You have to recognize it and you have to deal with it. Look at verse 14. Neglect not the gift that is in thee. Now the gift he's talking about is the gift of preaching, the communication of the gospel, teaching, It was given thee by prophecy and we talked about that because apparently God the Holy Spirit had revealed to some of the apostles or Paul or other ministers that Timothy was the man that they should support and bring up in the doctrine as a minister, as a pastor, as an elder. And then he says, which the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Presbytery means the body of elders. That's what that's talking about. The assembly of the elders of the church and maybe even the apostles. That's the presbytery. It comes from a Greek word. And so Timothy had spiritual gifts. He could communicate the gospel. Now, not everybody has the same spiritual gifts to do that. Not everybody is going to be a preacher. Now, every believer can be a witness, can speak to people of the gospel and the scriptures, but to have a pulpit, public ministry, not everybody's gifted to do that. And so Paul tells Timothy, he says, Don't neglect that gift, and it came to you by prophecy. In other words, God revealing it to other men that Timothy was a minister, a young man who was bound for the ministry, and with the laying on of hands of the presbytery. Now, the laying on of hands, all right, let's talk about that. It's not magic. I put in your lessons no indication of magical powers in the hands of the apostles. But it was an outward confirmation and identification of the will and power of God in giving this gift to Timothy. And I've got reference here, 1 Corinthians 12, you can go back and read that. Now the apostles did have the ability to impart spiritual gifts. You can read that in the book of Acts. I don't believe that that spiritual gift is applied today because the main reason, people don't understand the import, how do you say it, the finalization that was come together providentially when the Lord ended the verbal inspiration that we find in the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation. And I know there's a lot of people who, they don't believe the Bible, the Bible's suspect. I know there's sometimes a lot of problems with the language and the translation, I know that. I believe that this Bible that we have was, you know, unbelievers had a lot to do with bringing it together. And I know that shocks some people. Who commissioned the King James Version? King James, right? Now, he wasn't a believer, but he commissioned. What we see in all that is the working of God in providence to put his word together, even using the heathen sometimes. And of course he used godly men who wrote the epistles, Paul and James and John, Peter, godly men. But to bring it together like we have it today, that's an act of God's providence even in spite of unbelievers. There were some who didn't even want the book of James put in here because they didn't understand it. They didn't understand that they saw a contradiction between Paul and James about justification. Because James actually says that a man is not justified by faith only but by works. But they didn't understand that James is talking about one realm of existence and Paul's talking about another realm. Paul's talking about justification of a sinner before God in God's court of justice. And that's only by the merits of the obedience unto death of Christ, the imputed righteousness of Christ. James is not talking about justification before God, he's talking about the vindication of our ministry before men. That's what he's talking about. And he uses Abraham as an example. Now, the Bible says that Abraham was a just man even before he was circumcised. If you read Romans chapter four, and of course we believe that was from eternity, but it says in James that he was justified when he obeyed God and took Isaac up on the mountain to sacrifice him. Well, Abraham was justified before God by his grace long before he took Isaac up on that mountain. But what this did, when Abraham obeyed God and took Isaac up on the mountain, it vindicated his faith. Abraham really believes this stuff. That's what he's saying. Man, you really believe it. You took your son up there and sacrificed. Well, Abraham knew that if he did kill Isaac, God would raise him from the dead. You read that in Hebrews chapter 11. Because it was through Isaac that the seed would be called. That's Christ. So when Abraham did that, it was a testimony vindicating him, justifying his faith. In other words, Abraham, you really believe this, don't you? See? And that was the issue. But this Bible is the inspired and errant word of God, and I realize, I mean, I've read it, and I study it, I realize there are some language problems, especially in translation. And sometimes that can confuse, and I'm like you, I've asked, God, why did you do that? Why didn't you just spell it out? Well, you know, and this, We just have to say it. You know, sometimes when people continually reject it, they go past a point of no return. And as in 2 Thessalonians 2, it says, God sends them strong delusion that they might believe a lie as a judgment on them. And I'll tell you, I'm amazed that God didn't do that to me. Because I mean, you know, when I first heard the gospel, I really got serious and started reading the Bible to prove it wrong. That was my goal. I wanted to prove it wrong. And then I found out by the power of the Spirit that it was right. And God made me bow to it. And I'm glad. So the laying on of hands is the identification of the authority of the apostles or the elders and It's no man, for example, I put in your lesson here, no man is to try to take the office of preacher or teacher to himself. You wake up one morning and say, I think I'll be a preacher today. And mama says, oh son, I'm just so glad, I'm just so proud. Well mama's not gonna call you in either. So many churches have been split and new ones started because Uncle Roy and his family wanted to preach. And that's crazy. I didn't get into the ministry because I necessarily wanted it. And so you just do it. It started with the pastor asking me to teach a Sunday school class. And I had a man ask me to come and fill in for him while he was gone. And it just kind of developed. The last thing on my mind, when I first started all this, was I was going to move to Albany, Georgia. I mean, that was the last thing on my mind. I didn't even know Albany existed. When they said Albany, I thought they were talking about New York. In fact, the first plane I booked to come down here, they booked me into New York, and I had to change it. But I'll tell you what, it's been a privilege. It's been a miracle. And I thank God for it every day. But anyway, he says in here, verse 14, he says, by prophecy and all of that. So this laying on of hands was not a magical transference of the power of the spirit, because nobody can do that. But the apostles at one time did have the power to impart spiritual gifts, but that's over. We have the word of God now. Look at verse 15. He says, meditate upon these things. Now you know what meditation is. And he's not talking about staring at your belly button or anything like that. Think about it. Get them on your mind. Consume yourself thinking on these things. And he says, give thyself wholly to them. And you know, it's kind of like this. If you get a deadly disease, you're going to give yourself wholly to curing that. And that's what this is. We've been cured. And so the evidence that we've been cured is continuing in it by the grace of God. Give yourself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. His profiting is growth and grace and knowledge. And I'm sure Paul could see this in Timothy. I know he saw it in John Mark. Remember when Paul, who was it, Paul and Barnabas, was it, that fell out over John Mark? Am I right there, or was it, it wasn't Paul and Silas, I think it was Paul and Barnabas. They split because they disagreed about this young man named John Mark. But later on, Paul received him and made him a fellow minister. Now why is that? Because he saw John Marks profiting through all of this, studying the word of God, preaching, ministering to people, being a good steward of God's grace. And so that's what he's talking about Timothy. Even the congregation can see your growth in grace. And I hope you see that in me somewhat. I want to grow in grace and I've seen it in y'all. the growth and grace and knowledge that God gives us. That's not progressive sanctification, and it's not works-based assurance. It's just that we see growth and knowledge of the goodness of God, maturity, all of that. And so he says in verse 16, take heed unto thyself. Think about yourself in this way. Don't be egotistical. Don't be self-centered or self-consumed. But take heed. Be careful in this area. Think about yourself and do these things without being egotistical and self-consumed. Don't promote yourself. I've seen preachers who do that now. Their whole idea is to promote themselves. I've often said that the worst thing that can happen to any pastor is to gain a following for himself. That's bad. I want to be like John the Baptist. They said they heard John preach and they followed Jesus. That's what we want. And so he says, and unto the doctrine. See, doctrine is so important here. It's not dead and cold. And if it falls upon a dead, cold-hearted person, it's not the doctrine's fault. Take heed to your doctrine. Be careful in this thing of doctrine. Be diligent. Be proactive. Especially when we're talking about the essential doctrines of the scripture, of the gospel, and of God's grace. The person of Christ. The work of Christ. The righteousness of God in him. What is that righteousness? You all have seen it in these last 20 years, men who used to preach justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ are now teaching justification by an imparted righteousness. It would do all of us well to make sure we understand that distinction now. In other words, does God justify me? Does he forgive my sins and declare me righteous based totally upon what Christ has done for me? That's imputed righteousness. Or does he do that based upon what the Holy Spirit does within me? That's imparted righteousness. One's true doctrine. The other is false doctrine. Now God does impart a lot of things. Spiritual life, a new heart, knowledge. That's the work of the Spirit in me, but that's not my righteousness. Christ's obedience unto death is my righteousness. You see the difference? And some people, they just don't think that's important. I say it's vital. Don't you? That's what he's saying, take heed. Continue in them. Don't waver from them, these essentials. of salvation by grace through the blood and the righteousness of Christ. Continue in them. John has a lot to say about that in his first and second letters. He says, abide, abide. Don't leave Christ. And he says, for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear me. Now what does he mean by that? Save thyself. We know that sinners cannot save themselves. Salvation's of the Lord. Even old Jonah knew that. And Abel knew it all the way back. If salvation comes to me, I didn't give it to myself and you didn't give it to me and vice versa. It's God. So what is he talking about? And think about Paul. Paul had made it so clear in his ministry that salvation is not by the works of men, but by the grace of God through Christ. All of a sudden now, talking to Timothy, does he change his theology? Especially when he said continue in the doctrine. Why no? He's talking about ourselves as being instruments that God uses in the preservation of ourselves and our brethren. Just being an instrument. I'll close with this, it's in your lesson. We cannot save ourselves and we cannot be saved by our works, but God saves us and preserves us under glory by his grace in Christ and through the use of means that he gives and empowers to our eternal good. And through these means of truth in Christ, he keeps his children pure from error and apostasy. You can read about that in 1 John 2. Salvation is all of God's grace in Christ. And so, it's kind of like what Paul did say in Galatians chapter 6. He said, he said, in doing these things, you recover, you help. in the preservation of a brother or sister in Christ.