I direct your prayerful attention
to the portion that we read, the first epistle of Paul the
Apostle to Timothy and chapter 1. And reading from our text,
verse 5. Verse 5. Now the end of the commandment
is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and
of faith unfeigned. 1 Timothy 1 and verse 5, we are
told what the end of the commandment is, or what is the aim of it,
what is the effect of it. We are told very clearly by our
Lord of the aim, the reason why he came into this world to bear
witness to the truth, that he would be a ransom, the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world. The whole aim of
his life was that through his perfect life of obedience to
the law, He would magnify it and make it honourable and work
out a righteousness to be able to give to believers who do not
have a righteousness of their own. The whole end and aim of
Christ's death upon Calvary was that he should pay the debt that
his people cannot pay, that he should lay down his life that
he should suffer, bleed and die to put away their sins through
the sacrifice of himself. That which he came to do, he
has done. The empty tomb is a witness that
his sacrifice was accepted, that the sins of those for whom he
died were put away. that is accomplished, that is
to be remembered, that sacrifice in the ordinances of his house,
in baptism, buried with him by baptism into death and risen
again in newness of life. And in the Lord's Supper, this
do in remembrance of me, he do show forth his death till he
come. There was an aim, there was a
work, And He intimated this when He was 12 years of age, wished
ye not that I must be about my Father's business. This was testified
from the cross, it is finished. The work that the Father gave
Him to do, He finished, He accomplished, He did it. Now, There is a work in one sense
that the law of God has. By the law is the knowledge of
sin. And our Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world to save sinners. Those that through the law of
God and through the grace of God have been brought to know
that they are sinners. We are told in this chapter that
the law is good if a man use it lawfully. It is not good if
the end or object of the law is made out to be a way of salvation,
a way of being saved. That is not the end that God
designed it to be. It is through the law that all
the world shall be brought in guilty before God. It is through
the law being applied that, like the Apostle says in Romans 7,
when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. That which
was ordained unto life I found to be unto death. What he means
is that being convicted of his sin through the law, it brought
him to feeling the die spiritually to any hope in saving himself. But that law was ordained unto
life. The reason why he was convicted,
why he fell under the law, was that the Lord would save him,
not through the law, but through the gospel, through believing
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says that the law is our
schoolmaster unto Christ, that the aim of the law in God's overall
plan and scheme of the gospel Yes, it is as in this chapter
to be for those that are ungodly and to restrain their wicked
works and to be as a testimony against them of their evil works
and ways. But the law in God's plan of
salvation is to make known the necessity of Christ make him
precious and to magnify what he has done in fulfilling that
law and in dying that the law required without the shedding
of blood there is no remission and so the law has an end an
object that some can misuse Some can make out it is something
different than it is. This was the error of the Galatians. After they had been preached
the gospel, they had others come and preach that they needed to
fulfill the law, especially, namely, the ceremonial law in
circumcision. And except they did, they would
not be saved. The apostle told them that that
was not a gospel. It was not even an element of
it. He says, and testifies to every
man that would obey the law in that way, that he has fallen
from grace. Instead of being saved by God's
grace, free favour, in applying the merits of his son and his
son's death to us. Here is someone that is wanting
to pay their own debt, which they will never do. And so, our
Lord gave an end of the law, another end of the law, in the
summary of the law of God. And that was the two tables of
the law, which was in love, that we should love the Lord our God
with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind,
is the first table toward God. And the second is like unto it,
that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. That is the fulfilling of the
law is in love. In our text we have an aim. Some have thought that what Paul
is referring to is the commandment that he has given to Timothy.
Paul exhorts his son in the faith, he gives him commandment concerning
the gospel, the preaching of the gospel. And in that sense,
whatever Paul exhorts Timothy to do, it must indeed be consistent
with God's aim and God's purpose. In that sense, the end of Paul's
commandment to Timothy or the end of Timothy's preaching must
be this aim as set forth in our text, charity or love out of
a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfamed. However,
as we read on further, the Apostle speaks of those that are teachers
or desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither
what they say nor whereof they affirm. In other words, Paul
has set before Timothy the gospel. He says in verse 11, according
to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed
to my trust. And so he commits this same gospel
and same word to Timothy. As much as the coming of our
Lord had an object and an aim or an end in view, so also all
of the proclamation of the gospel, the preaching of the gospel,
has an end in view. That end is not just that we
do, as the hymn writer says, rounds of dead service, forms
and ways. Is not to come to the close of
a service and say, well, everything went according to plan. All the
right things were said and done in the right order. Or in other
churches, the right robes were used, the right liturgy used.
the ceremony went off lawlessly, and the whole end in view does
not rise above the ceiling of the building. Is not an end in
view that leaves men happy and smug with themselves and what
they've done, and that God then is put in their debt, that they
have come and worshipped and bowed before him, The Israelites
of old, many of them walked that path and were reproved by God
because of it. They thought that God should
show them some great favours because, well, hadn't they met
in his house? Hadn't they done what he asked?
Hadn't they served him? And their end then? was a way
of obtaining God's favour by their works, by their ceremony. We should really think of this. What is God's aim? What is God's
purpose? When he gathers his people for
worship, when they hear the word of the gospel, what does God
aim at doing? What is to happen? We know it is linked inseparably
with what our Lord did on Calvary. Paul, he determined to know nothing
among men, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He was to
preach the gospel. He was to preach what Christ
had accomplished and what done. In his letter, his first letter
to the Corinthians, and in chapter 15, the beginning of that chapter,
he gives a very brief summary as to what the gospel is. He says, Moreover, brethren,
I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which
also ye have received, and wherein ye stand. So there's one aim
of the gospel, that the Corinthians were to stand in that gospel. That was to be the foundation
upon which they stood. And then in verse two, We have
another aim, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory
what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For
I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received,
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according
to the Scriptures. That is a summary of the Gospel
that also gives the aim in view. And the Apostle in another place
says that through the foolishness of preaching that it had pleased
God to save sinners. And so it is through the preaching
of what Christ has done, authoritatively declaring the word of God, what
the Lord has done. The end in view is that men,
women, children, those that hear that word will be saved. How will they be saved? You might say, well, surely the
end in view is that they will be brought to heaven at last,
have eternal life and live eternally beyond the grave. That is one
aim in view. But the end of the commandment,
the end of the gospel that's set before us here, it begins
in time. The eternal life that God gives
his children through faith in what his beloved son has done
at Calvary begins in time. If you and I are saved, then
it will be through the Word of God preached, having an effect
upon our hearts, upon our lives. It will change us. It will be
that that is the true effect and witness and what God intends
by the preaching of the Word. that it will change men's lives,
it will make them new creatures in Christ, that it will make
them to be renewed in the spirit of their minds, that they be
born again of the Spirit, and that there be those very specific
areas in which the mark of God's sovereign saving grace is known
in our hearts and lives. And those marks are here set
before us in our text. The Apostle introduces them with
these words, now the end of the commandment is. He tells us what the aim of preaching
is, the aim of the gospel. the aim of the fulfilled law
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he sets before us three things,
what it is. And those three things will be
our points this morning. The first is charity or love
out of a pure heart. The second is of a good conscience. And the third is of faith unfeigned. If you and I are saved, are blessed
through the Word, these three things will be true of us. We will still be sinners. but will be sinners with these
marks, these three marks, that are the aim, the end that God
has in view through his blessing upon the preached word. The first one then is love out
of a pure heart. It is not just love, it is charity,
which is a practical working love, not just in word but in
deed. The pure heart is a heart that
is unmixed. If we have water that is said
to be pure, then we would not expect to find impurities in
it. If we have gold that is pure,
we would not expect that it would be an alloy of some other metal
that is joined with it. Purity means that there is just
one substance there, not two. Our Lord was very clear, he cannot
serve God and mammon. If any man is a friend of the
world, then he is the enemy of God. He cannot be in the same
heart a friendship with the world as loving the world and loving
God as well. Those two things, they cannot
go together. Love not the world nor the things
that are in the world, for all that is of the world The lust
of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, is not of the Father,
but is of the world. When Paul writes to the Thessalonians,
his first epistle, in chapter 4, he sets before them the commandments that were given
by the Lord Jesus Christ. He exhorted them that they would
walk as they ought to walk and to please God. And the first
thing that he mentions is love. But before he mentions
love, in verse 9, brotherly love. He first clears the decks and
makes sure that that love is a pure love. And so he says in verse 3, that
this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye
should abstain from fornication. and he speaks against uncleanness
of any kind. He says that God's children should
know how to possess their vessel or their body in sanctification
and honour, not in the lusts of concupiscence or evil sexual
desire, even as the Gentiles which know not God. And we are
to really notice that before God speaks of love to us through
Paul's epistle to the Thessalonians, he makes sure that we understand
that that love is to be a pure love. When King Saul died and Jonathan
his son, then David lamented for Jonathan. And he says that
the love that he had for Jonathan surpassed the love of women. Now some in our evil and perverted
day would charge David and say that that was a love of a man
to man in an impure, wrong and evil way. The Word of God makes
it very clear. We can love a man to a man, a
woman to a woman, with a pure love in the Gospel. Not in any
way sexual, not in any way impure, but love them for the Gospel's
sake. Love them as God's children. And we have to be very clear
on that. What we have here is an evidence
of the end of the gospel or end of the commandment is charity
out of a pure heart. How vital that the effect of
the gospel within is to make us hate sin, hate evil, and that
how we think and how we regulate our lives is according to the
Word of God, and that our love is a love that is according to
the Word of God, a pure love. How vital this is, because as
we said before, the two tables of the Law of God, both of them
are summed up in love. Love to God and love to man,
love to our neighbor. When John writes his general
epistles, he dwells very much on love. In one John, right through
that epistle, and he gives some very vital words of evidence
of being a child of God through love. In chapter 3, 1 John chapter
3 in verse 1, we have, behold what manner of love the Father
hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of
God. So here again we're reminded
that there are different manners of love, different ways of love. Here is a pure love, the love
of the Father, the Eternal Father, and it is a love that is bestowed
upon sinners, and it is to bring them to be called the sons of
God. Throughout this passage, he then
uses this love, as in verse 10, to mark out who are the Lords. In this, the children of God
are manifest, or made known, and the children of the devil,
whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that
loveth not his brother. For this is the message that
ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that
wicked one, and slew his brother, and wherefore slew he him, because
his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Marvel
not, my brethren, if the world hate you. Then he gives this
beautiful testimony of being a child of God. We know that
we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother
abideth in death. Those whom Christ has redeemed
those that were chosen in him from the foundation of the world,
those that have been called by the same gospel, redeemed by
the same precious blood, there is to be a love to them for the
truth's sake, because they are dear brethren. And when we come
then to our text, the end or aim of the commandment, the effect
that God gives his word and brings sinners to believe it and receive
it and hear it, is that they have charity out of a pure heart,
a real practical love. You think of Lydia, whose heart
the Lord opened and immediately The effect of her love was to
take the apostles into her home and to minister to them. You
think of the woman that washed the feet of our Lord with the
hairs of her head. Those things that were done,
those things that were done by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus,
in lovingly taking down the body of our Lord and laying it in
the tomb. Love has a way that shows itself,
is a very practical love, is evidenced, and it's very lovely
when the Lord's servants, when the people of God, receive those
tokens, evidences of love, of those who have received the Word
and received the Gospel through them. The Apostle had many sorrowing
times. He had those times that he said
the more that he preached to them, the less he was loved. Very sad. And that is the effect. It's a very blessed thing. where
there is a cleaving to those by whom God has brought the word
of life for the soul, and a cleaving to those that we discern, know
the same gospel, the same God, the same work of the Holy Spirit,
and the Holy Spirit abides in them. The Lord does not send forth
his servants and to proclaim the gospel, to have the end effect
there to be controversies and anger and bitterness and malice. The Lord says, by this shall
all men know that ye are my disciples indeed and that ye love one another. James, in his epistle, He uses
the illustration of a fountain of water. He says from that same
fountain cannot come pure water and dirty water, clean and unclean. And he reproves those to whom
he wrote that from the same mouth cannot come blessing and cursing. We are to be through the effect
of the Gospel, and if the word of the Gospel is effectual in
us, you will have this fruit, charity, out of a pure heart. May the Lord make us to be of
one mind and one heart in serving the Lord and in love one to another. And where we may feel that we
do not have that, may this word be an encouragement to us. This
is not what we're born with. The Apostle Paul, he was first
hailing men and women to prison. He hated the Lord. He needed
the Lord to come to change him, to bless him. And so do you and
I. Whatever we have, we do not have
of our own, but we have through the blessing of the Lord and
the blessing of the gospel. And as we meet, may we be encouraged
to think, this is God's aim. This is why we sit under the
gospel. This is why we hear his word. This is to be the effect. And
may we pray and ask, Lord, Give me a pure heart and give me love
to the brethren out of that pure heart. May this end and aim be
realised in me, that I am what thou wouldst have me to be, the
same as what thy end is in view, wherever the gospel is proclaimed. and set forth. So that is the first. Love out
of a pure heart. Then there is the second. A good conscience. of a good conscience. What is
a conscience? Now everyone has a conscience. It is a voice some have said
inside your head. It's a person's moral sense of
right and wrong. It bears a testimony. It has
a remembrance, and it remembers, and it brings to remembrance. We think of our Lord and when the Pharisees, the scribes,
brought a woman that was taken in adultery, and they said, that
Moses commanded that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou? The Lord said to them, at first
he did not answer, he just wrote on the ground. And then he said
to them, who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
at her. And then he kept writing on the
ground. We're not told what he wrote. But you can picture the
silence. And you can picture each one
of them there, their conscience beginning to work. And the scriptures
tell us that each one being convicted of their own conscience, they
went out, beginning at the eldest to the last until there was none
left. And the Lord looks up and sees
only the woman And he says, hath no man condemned thee? She said,
no man. And he says to her, neither indeed
do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. Their conscience testified that
they also had committed adultery. Whether in thought and looking
upon a woman to lust after her, or in actual deed the same as
what they are arraigning her. Conscience bore a faithful testimony
and they had to bow before him. Paul says to the Gentiles that
the law, even though they don't know the letter of the law is
given on Mount Sinai, yet the law is written in their hearts. And they either are excusing
or excusing one another or accusing one another in their own consciences. They have a conscience. But it's
not guided by the law of God, it's guided by their own thoughts
of what is right or wrong. Really, the remnants of the fall,
though we are fallen, there is still a sense, a moral sense,
of what is right and what is wrong. The scriptures speak of the case
of a seared conscience, a conscience that has been trodden on again
and again, that is testified, that is said, it's still a small
voice, That's wrong, don't do it, don't walk that way. But
it's been ignored, it's been resisted, and in the end, it
is so hard, it is so seared, it doesn't speak anymore. That is not a good conscience.
A good conscience is a tender conscience. It is a teachable
conscience. We do not want a conscience that
is not a good one. The Apostle Paul, he says, and
he testified that right from a child, he always exercised
himself to have a good conscience before God and before men. And we might think, how could
he have that when he was hailing men and women to prison? He very
thought that he was doing God's service. What he did, he did
with a clear conscience because he didn't know any better. He
didn't know the Lord Jesus Christ. And that tells us two things.
One, the aim should be with us, as well as it was with the apostle,
always to have a good conscience, a conscience that is not accusing
us, a conscience that is bearing witness that what we have done
and how we walk is a right way. It also tells us how vital it
is that that conscience is informed rightly, informed by the gospel,
informed by the law, that it testifies rightly. You
know, if when we were children our parents said to us, don't
go to such a place, when we were going to that place,
in spite of what they said, Our conscience would bear a nickel. We were told, do not go there. And it would be based upon what
the parent had said. We might have many laws in this
land. And I know there's been some
that I have broken and not realized I had. And then I found out that
Actually, that was forbidden. You shouldn't have been doing
that. And my conscience was clear in what I was doing first. But
from the time that I understood what the law was, then I couldn't
do that same thing without conscience bearing a witness that it was
wrong. The Word of God guards a tender
conscience. Paul, when he was writing of
those that were fearful of eating things offered to idols, he says,
to me, an idol is nothing. It doesn't matter if I eat things
offered to it because my conscience tells me it's just a bit of wood,
it's nothing. But some of the brethren, to
them, weren't that clear in that at all. And if they were to eat
something offered to an idol, their conscience would accuse them. And so he
would then be very careful that he did not, by what he did, cause
a stumbling block to them. God is very careful and is one
of the great blessings in our land. And yet we wonder, even
though it is in our statute books so much, that men do not have
to swear or say things against their conscience, that it should
never be something in our land in which someone is forced to
say what they do not believe. And yet more and more in our
land, we hear of those losing their jobs because they refuse
to use the pronouns which people want to be used because the people
of God believe that we are made male or female. We should not
use anything different than that. And yet those that cannot, for
conscience sake, go along with the directions that so many institutions
are taking today. They're losing their jobs. In
other words, they're being forced to say things, to do things against
their conscience. That really is against the Constitution,
is against the law. And yet it is being brought in
again and again. But it is a blessing to be able
to worship God according to our conscience. and that none be
forced to worship or do something of which their conscience accuses
them. But this evidence here, a good
conscience, is a conscience that is informed through the word
of God. It is a conscience that doesn't
just take one part of the word and ignore the other. Is not
a conscience that says, you have broken the law there, therefore
you will go to hell, therefore you are condemned. Is a conscience
that says, yes, you have broken the law, but there is Christ
and there is Calvary, there is hope, By grace you are saved,
not by works of righteousness which we have done, and a conscience
that knows that and bears witness that we are trusting alone in
Christ. A conscience also that will bear
witness if we are actually sinning that grace might abound. We are
living our lives thinking it doesn't matter whether we Sin,
whether we do evil things or not, because, well, Christ has
died and we can be forgiven. Really, if we know the scriptures,
our conscience should tell us you are not walking in a right
way. You are walking contrary to the
gospel, contrary to the word of God. A good conscience is
one of which God himself governs the thoughts and intents of the
heart according to the gospel and according to grace, bringing
every part of it. And so that we might, when we
come down to the grave, have a good conscience, that we might
look back and we might realize that though our lives have been
lives of sin, though we've walked in the ways of sin. Yet we have, as in John 1, confessed
our sins, brought them before the Lord. We have sought repentance. We've turned from those sins,
and it may be had to turn from them again and again and again. But our conscience testifies. Like the apostle, he says, the
good I would, I do not. The evil that I would not, that
I do. His conscience bore witness he
really did want to do good. He really did not want to do
evil. And his conscience bore witness
that this was really what he was. He wasn't being one that
took advantage of the gospel. in a wrong way, but in a right
way. And so when the word is preached,
the law is preached, the gospel is preached, may our conscience
speak according to that. An unctuous light to all that
is right, a bar to all that is wrong, the fear of the Lord governing
our conscience. to the last one, which is of
faith unfeigned, that is, not imitated. You think of the solemn
case of Simon Magus, who believed, who was baptised by Philip, and
then when Peter was imparting the Holy Spirit through the laying
on of hands, he offered him money that he might obtain and have
that gift to be able to do the same. And Peter says, thy money
perish with thee, that thou hast thought to get the gift of God
through money, obtain it in that way. The root of the matter was
not in him, The true faith of God was not in him. Whatever
he was doing, he was trying to imitate the people of God. Judas as well, no doubt the same. Looking as if they were, but
they weren't. Now I know many, maybe some of
you, have greatly tried sometimes, whether your faith is a feigned
faith. But I believe this, and this
is what I feel is set forth here. A belief in the Lord Jesus Christ,
the faith of God's elect, the faith according that cometh by
hearing and hearing by the word of God. A person that does not
want to deceive themselves, They don't want to deceive other people. They don't want to deceive God. They want to truly believe what
they do believe and truly want to believe the Word of God. There's not a thought in their
head of deliberately trying to deceive. They're not going to
say, I want to be a church member. I'll listen to what they want
me to say. And I'll come to a church meeting
and I'll just utter the things that they want me to say and
I can get into the church. The very aim then would be to
deceive. But if we come and just say exactly
what God has done in their lives, and what the Lord is to us. You might think and be very fearful
it's not good enough or the church will not receive me. But if we're
coming and we're not wanting to deceive, we're wanting to
tell it just as it is. You know, the woman that touched
the garment of our Lord came behind him in the press. He said,
who touched me? You know, she came and told him
all, told him everything. And I believe this, this effect,
faith unfamed, a belief, a trust in God, and there's not a part
of it that is scheming, double-minded, a subtle person that is just
telling the people of God or the Lord They think they want
to hear, and being something different. May the Lord give us this threefold
effect under the preaching of the Word. Charity out of a pure
heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith, unfeigned, because
Where we don't have that, we're told in verse 6, from which some
having swerved, or not aiming at, have turned aside unto vain
jangling. That is, the preacher's not aiming
at that. And then we have those in verse
19. He says, holding faith and a
good conscience, with some having put away concerning faith and
made shipwreck. In other words, they haven't
held faith. They haven't held what they believed. They'd put away a good conscience.
And it was the cause of shipwreck, and he gives names to them in
the 20th verse. Well, may the Lord bless this
word and grant us to be always mindful. What is the end of the
preaching? What is the end of the commandment?
And is it realised in us, in our lives, in our love, in our
consciences, in our faith? My word, says the Lord, shall
not return unto me void. It shall accomplish the thing
whereto I sent it. Our text is the thing whereto
God sent it. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen.