First Timothy 4 11 these things
command and teach now these things To which he refers are all that's
included In what he's talking about which is being a good minister
of Jesus Christ To be a good minister of Jesus Christ is described
in the context as being nourished up in the words of faith You've
got to learn what God said before you can tell what God said you've
got to Somebody got to teach you which will be able and then
you'll be able to teach others also Paul told Timothy in another
place But that's how the gospel was passed on you don't need
to go to university you need to hear from God And if you can
go to university that's all fine and well you learn some good
things there, but that's not how the gospel is taught It's taught by preachers through
the preaching of the gospel. But to be nourished up in the
words of faith and of good doctrine, verse six talks about that. And
so when he says these things, that's what he's referring to,
that's part of it. It's also in the context, he's
talking about rejecting and warning against fleshly religious requirements. It's strange to say that to teach
forbidding to marry is anti-Christ. Most people would be shocked
by that. If you teach forbidding to marry, don't marry anybody.
But you've got to think about why they teach that. And the
reason for that is you're supposed to be able to make yourself holy
in some way by not marrying. Oh, that makes me chaste and
pure or something. Nonsense. These are things Paul
said that God has given to us to enjoy, not eating certain
things on certain days and things like that. God has given, and
if you look at the first part of this chapter, that's what
we talked about. for you to do something or refrain from something
or in your mind you're suffering somehow, that makes you holy. That's anti-Christ. Christ is
our righteousness or we don't have any. That's the clear message
of scripture. We just don't have any. Our good
outweighing our bad ain't gonna cut it. We don't have any good
before God. You can do things that I might
call good, relative to other things. But even our righteousnesses
are filthy rags in the sight of God, is the declaration of
scripture. So to say forbidding to marry
and don't eat certain things, they're saying do that because
that makes you, that recommends you to God in some way. That
is anti-Christ. There's only two religions, grace
and works. And guess which one that is?
It's not Christ. It's anti-Christ, it's against
Christ. Now the things to be commanded
and taught in one word, you can sum it up in one word, the gospel. Command and teach the gospel. Command and teach that sinners
are not made holy by anything they do and don't do. They're
made holy by being put in Christ by the Father from the foundation
of the world. And these things to be commanded
and taught, as I said, they all boil down to that, the gospel.
He calls it God-likeness in 7 and 8, verses 7 and 8. Godliness,
God-likeness. We preach and teach a God-like
God. I know that's a strange way to
say it, but godliness means godlikeness. We preach a God that is sovereign. They asked David, where's your
God? We have these gods of silver and gold and stone and other
things. They said, where's your God? He said, my God is in the
heavens. You remember how he characterized him? Of all the
things he could say about his God. He could say my God is in
the heavens and follow that with a thousand different statements,
but here's the way he said it. My God is in the heavens, he
hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. That's God, that's God-like. Saying that God wants to do things
if some wretched sinner will just let him, that's not God-like. That's not according to godliness.
And that's a lot of what we talked about last time. He commands. He does not invite. That's God-like. Notice our word, command and
teach. God doesn't invite. He doesn't
suggest. He commands. And so what do we
do if we're gonna speak for God? We command the gospel. That's
God-like. For God to want to save you,
but you know, he wants the best for you, but it's all up to you.
That's not God like. Not gonna preach that. He's sovereign,
he commands, he doesn't invite. And that's the first thing to
consider in our text, that word command. God commands and he
commands us to command. We're not to go and try to get
sinners to do something for God. God's gonna have to do something
for you if you're gonna be saved. God don't need you. He just don't
now. And I got news for you, if it
is news to you, you don't need a God that needs you. You need the God of the Bible.
You need him, you need him. So this is not to be thought
of as the 10 commandments or the law when he says we command,
command these things and teach these things. He's not talking
about the 10 commands. We see that word command and our mind
automatically goes to the commandments. That's not what this is. Not
at all. What we are to obey here is not
the law. That's a foregone conclusion.
We've already broken the law to pieces. For him to say, for
God to say, okay, I command you to obey the law. That would make
God the most naive person in the universe. We've already busted
his law wide open. He knows that. He didn't give
the law in order for us to keep the law. He knows better than
that. He knows that we're dust. He
knows we can't keep the law. That's why Paul said the law
was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. That's why God
gave the law. He didn't expect anybody. He's
not naive. He sees the end from the beginning.
The law was our schoolmaster because he knows that when he
brings the law home to the hearts of his people and reveals Christ
to them, they're gonna run to Christ when they see that God
commands us to be perfect and holy and spotless. And we see
ourselves utterly foul and defiled before him. Then we realize it teaches us
what? We'll have to have Christ. Got
to have him. Got to have his righteousness.
Got to have his blood to wash our sins away. But we do command,
but it's not the commandments of the law. That's not it. And you should be real happy
about that. That God doesn't command you to keep the law. We're commanded to abandon our
law keeping. righteousness. That's what we're
commanded to do by the gospel. We're commanded to abandon what
we call our righteousness, like Paul did in Philippians chapter
3. We're commanded to bow to, flee
to, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as our righteousness. Of God are we in Christ who is
made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Christ is those things for us. As our sin offering, we flee
to him as our sin offering. From the very start, God has
required an offering for sin. Christ is that offering. Every
other offering pictured Him, looked forward to Him, presented
Him, revealed Him. We come to Christ as all of our
salvation. Another thing we need to understand
about this command Command, not the law, but this
is a gracious command. Think about this with me for
a second. This is a gracious command. The gospel is not an
invitation. It is a command, but it's not
a burden or a yoke like the moral law is to a sinner. Paul said, don't put this yoke
upon us, which even our fathers nor anyone else has ever been
able to bear. The yoke of the law, we can't
bear that yoke. But in the gospel, the Lord says,
come to me and take my yoke on you. That's not a burden. He
said, my burden's light. That's not the yoke of the law.
So the gospel, it's not an invitation, it is a command, but it's not
a burden or a yoke. Think of it this way. If you're
in a burning building, you're in the middle of a burning building
and timbers are crashing around you and the smoke is choking
you and blinding you and you can't see, and you're turning
this way and that, you don't know which way to go to get out.
But I've already gotten out. I know the way to get out. And
I'm calling to you, come here, come to me, come here to me.
That's the kind of command this is. It's not a suggestion. It's
a command, come over here. It's an urgent command, come
here. But it's an awful gracious one.
It's an awful gracious one. Not like the command of the law
that threatens and they didn't even want to look at Moses' face
when he came down from receiving the law from God. The moral law,
much less speak to God about it. And you don't either. Come to me, come to me, that's
a gracious command. Now that's a decent illustration
of what type of command this is, but also in order to do some
justice to the spiritual reality of this command that we're talking
about, the command of the gospel, we gotta go a step further than
that. God calls to us in the fire.
He calls to us graciously at our confusion and blindness and
our sin. But when we hear his call of
grace, we're gonna find that he don't even leave it up to
us to come to him. No, no, we can't do that. The
Lord said plainly, no man can come to me except the father
which has sent me draw him. Not only does he call and there
is the gospel call, come. What was it Paul said? Save yourselves
from this untoward and Christless generation. And there is an element
of that. When you come to your senses,
when God gives you the grace to see the situation you're in,
your own wretchedness, and see Christ as your only hope, you're
gonna run to Christ. But another way of seeing that
is this. God not only calls, but he comes
and gets you. The good Samaritan came right
where that wretched man was, laying in the ditch, bleeding
out. He was a goner. And if the good Samaritan would
have come up to him and said, you know what, there's a real
nice inn up the road here, so go take care of yourself now,
and left, that man would have died. No, he didn't do that. He picked him up, he poured in
oil and wine and bound up his wounds and put him on his own
beast and carried him to the inn and paid his way and told
the innkeeper, if he owes you anything else, put it on my tab. That's what Christ does for us.
He doesn't just call to us in the burning building. He comes
right up in there and takes ahold of us. He said, I found my sheep
and he laid it on his shoulder and brought it home. That's salvation,
a person. The Lord Jesus Christ, God's
son. He said, no man can come to me.
We hear his call of grace, we do, but we find that he's not
left us anything up to us even then. He comes where we are,
he carries us out of the fire. He does call us to himself, but
no man can come except the Father, draw him. That word draw means
take you from where you are and bring you somewhere else. Where
does he bring us to? To me, Christ said, to me. Which
brings us to yet another way that we've got to consider this
gospel command. When God commands the light to
shine out of darkness, it shines. You gotta go all the way back
to the beginning to remember that, don't you? God said, let
there be light. And what happened? There was
light. That's the command of the gospel now. Many are called,
but few are chosen. He commands his sheep to come
and they come. He said, they hear my voice and
they follow me. When the general gospel calls
goes out, we don't know what's gonna happen. He told us to go
and preach and we do and we don't know what he's gonna do. We don't
know who's a sheep and who's a goat, but he does. And we're
thinking, you know, will anybody hear the gospel today? I don't
know. Will anybody be saved in the rest of our lifetime? Who
knows? I don't know that. I don't know who God will save.
I know how he'll do it if he's going to save them. Because he
said, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. But I don't know what he's going
to do, but I know what he said. And by his grace, I believe him.
He said, my sheep hear my voice. It ain't up to them. Aren't you
glad? Aren't you glad? It's just not. They hear me and they follow
me. And I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish. And he turned to those Pharisees
and said, you don't believe me because you're not my sheep.
You see, we're dealing with God. Somebody told Charles Spurgeon
one time, why don't you just preach to the sheep then? You
know how people are, they mock the truth. because they hate
the God of the truth. They hate a sovereign God. They
want everything to be up to them. People want to be God, but not
that way. So people mocked, they said,
why don't you just preach to the sheep then? He said, you
put a mark on every one of them and I'll just preach to them.
You let me know, tell me who they are. And I'll just preach
to the sheep. Until then, I'm gonna preach
to everybody that'll listen. And as Paul said, peradventure,
God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
That's how sinners are saved. We're dealing with God here.
There's our way of looking. He said, your ways are not my
ways. And we believe that. But one more way to look at it,
boy, here, is when God says, let there be light, what he really
said there was light be, light be, and there was, light was. That's the gospel now. When he
calls to his elect, he says, be not faithless, like he did
to Thomas. He said, Thomas, reach into thy
hand. Thrust it into my side and feel
the Prince in my hand and be not faithless, but believing.
Be not faithless, but believing. And the next words out of Thomas's
mouth are, my Lord and my God, my Lord and my God. This is not a crapshoot. God don't just shoot into a bunch
of birds and hopes he gets one. That's not salvation. That's
not the gospel. And the exhortation here is command
and teach. Teach. The gospel is not to be
presented in a harsh and demanding way. It sounds that way, doesn't it?
A command. You're like, you know, you're
all high and mighty commanding this and that. Well, no, it's
not to be presented that way either. It is absolutely a command,
but it's a gracious one. It's a gracious one that is simply
a declaration. It is a teaching of who Christ
is, what he did, why he did it, what he accomplished by doing
it and where he is right now. That's what the God, it's teaching. I want you to consider two verses
of scripture. I want you to turn to them with
me and look at them together. If you can understand how both
of these passages of scripture are true, then my point is made. And so look at it with me now.
This is who Christ is. Consider these two, 2 Thessalonians
1-7. I want us to look at that one,
then look at the other one, and then go back to that one. So
hold your place when you turn to the next one. But 2 Thessalonians
1-7, I'll give you a minute to get over there, because I want
you to see this with me. 2 Thessalonians 1-7. And to you, To you who are troubled, rest
with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels. You believers who are troubled,
rest. Don't worry, when God comes with his holy angels, you've
got nothing to fear now, you're in Christ. But listen, when he
comes, here's what he's gonna be doing. In flaming fire, taking
vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now think about this. Notice
that word vengeance in this text. I was gonna say a lot this morning. We may not get much further past
this, because I want us to see this. Look at that word vengeance. You think, well, they don't know
God. Oh, those poor people, you know, nobody ever told them about
God and they just don't understand and oh, poor them. No, they deserve
hell like nobody ever deserved anything else in their life.
They deserve, they richly deserve hell. They refuse, read Romans
chapter one. When they understood, God, the
Godhead, the Godhood and Godhead of God, they reject Him. They want nothing to do with
Him. They refuse to glorify Him as God. God takes vengeance on
them. It's just not, oh, those poor
sinners, they just don't know any better. No, read your Bible. Vengeance, vengeance. And notice,
they don't know God and they haven't obeyed Gospel They deserve the vengeance and
wrath of God all of us do by nature all of us So think about that They obey
not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ All right, hold that spot
and turn to 2nd Timothy chapter 2 now that's the preaching of
the gospel and It is incumbent upon you to believe God. It is
a command. It is high treason against heaven
to reject Christ and his gospel. It's not to be taken lightly.
But look at 2 Timothy 2.24. So we ought to be fiery Helen
Brimstone preachers then right now. Look at it. 2 Timothy 2.24. And the servant of the Lord must
not strive We don't argue with anybody. We don't have a chip
on our shoulder. You ever heard a preacher that
just has a chip on his shoulder? If you say one thing, you're
scared to even talk to him, because if you say one thing that he
could construe as being wrong somehow, he'll call you on it.
We're not to strive with people. But be gentle unto all men. Treat everybody you meet like
they're your son or your daughter. Somebody that you love, be gentle
and apt to teach, not apt to prove them wrong. There's a difference
between being apt to teach and being apt to prove somebody's
wrong. I'm right and you're wrong. I
see a lot of that spirit now in so-called Christendom. And
that is not the spirit of Christ. Aptitude, patient, patient, in
meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves. They're their
own worst enemy and don't know it. Are you gonna kick somebody
like that? My old pastor in Texas used to
say, we don't kick a man for being blind. Now, does he deserve God's wrath? Oh, absolutely. It's a command,
the gospel's a command. But we, we're not God. We're another sinner like they
are, that God just had mercy on. And we sure would like to
see him have mercy on them too. Oh my, in meekness instructing
those that oppose themselves. They're their own worst enemy.
and don't even know it. And why we do all that? Why are
we so careful? Paul said, we have such hope
that we use great plainness of speech because this is a vital
hope. This is freedom. This is life. This is life and death. And we
need to understand that as we present Christ and Him crucified. So we want to be real plain about
it. And we want to be gentle. We want to be teaching. Not blasting
everybody that disagrees with us. Long-suffering and kind. Why? Because God just might. You see that word per adventure
right there? Religion talks about we got to
get people saved. What a presumptuous, horrible
thing to say. You're not gonna get anybody
saved. What you're gonna do, if anything, if you're gonna
be useful at all, if you're not gonna be cut down and thrown
in the fire, if you're gonna be of any use whatsoever, what
you're gonna do is just tell people about Christ and God might
do something for them. That's what Paul's talking about
here. He just might. I know this. I know how he does
it. I know that the gospel is how
he saves sinners. So we're gonna tell everybody
we can. Everybody he gives us opportunity to speak to the truth
of Christ. God just might give them repentance. That's what they need. They don't
need to make a decision. They will, they will ultimately. If God gives them repentance,
they're gonna decide all the right things. But what they need
when you preach the gospel, don't try to get them to do something.
That's not how sinners are saved. This whole book is about not
of works, lest any man should boast. By grace are you saved
through faith, and even that is not of yourselves. It's the
gift of God, not of works. Because we're just looking for
something to boast about. and you're not gonna find it
in the gospel. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. Romans chapter three, two and
three. God just might give them repentance. And you know what'll happen if
he does that? They'll say, boy, that's the truth. Through the
acknowledging of the truth, they'll say, you preaching the truth.
He turns the light on. And you'll sing to your last
day. I once was blind, but now I see. Amazing grace, amazing grace. And these two things are not
a contradiction. Look, just glance at the other one again. In flaming
fire, God's gonna take vengeance on them that obey not the gospel. But how do we present the gospel?
We just tell sinners about Christ. Somebody said it's just a beggar,
an old beggar, telling other beggars where to find bread.
That's pretty simple, isn't it? Pretty simple, it's pretty true,
too. Pretty true. Verse 12, in our text, back to, that's
not a contradiction now. If you can see how both of those
are true, the gospel now, it's incumbent upon you It's not to
be trifled with. God don't play games with sinners
now. And yet, I come to you with a
gracious command. Come to Christ. Come for life
and righteousness, peace, comfort. Come for everything you need. You need somebody, that's what
you need. Verse 12, let no man despise
thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in
conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Now that's a lot of things to
talk about. That's why I don't think we'll
get to all of that. But listen now, the way that you make it
impossible, that he says, let no man despise thy youth, but,
so he's fixing to tell you how you can make it impossible for
people to despise you for whatever disadvantages you have in preaching
the gospel. Be their example in everything
good. And there ain't no way they can
turn it around on you and say, Oh, he's too young, or he's not
very smart, he never went to school, or any of that. It stands
for all of the disadvantages you might have as a preacher,
of which I have many. All of the above. The only one
I don't have is I'm too young. But you see how it stands for
every disadvantage you might have, everything that people
might despise you for as a preacher. Boy, if you're gonna despise
somebody as a preacher, you're sure enough gonna despise me. But the way you make that impossible,
the way you make any seeming disadvantage that you might have
as a speaker, which all of God's preachers have, let's face it now, God didn't
call the best of the best. And he says that. We somehow
shrug that off, but it's just the truth. Now, God's preachers, don't misunderstand
me, they're my heroes. To me, they are the best of the
best. To me, the men I know, they could do anything and do
it well because of the grace of God that's evident in them. But according to the flesh now,
God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies those he calls.
And that's pretty evident too. But the way to let no man despise
you because of any seeming disadvantage that you might have is to be
thou an example of the believers. Be an example to the believers.
The believers, live in such a way, conduct yourself, study, be ready
to give an answer to them that ask, a reason for the hope that
lies within you. Walk worthy of the calling wherewith
you are called. All of these exhortations are
right from scripture. Don't talk about how qualified
you are, live it. And he gives us some specifics
in word, in word. And I believe this is talking
about the Bible primarily because of the next phrase, in conversation. That's word, but we'll talk about
that in a minute. Now, of course, this is in whatever
you say, what you say in your regular everyday life has got
to be consistent with what you say from up here as well. but he's not repeating himself
here in word. Listen to 2 Timothy 2.14. Of
these things, put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord. Here we go again, commandment,
commandment, charging them before the Lord, that they strive not
about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers.
And here's how you do that now. Study to show thyself approved
unto God. A workman that needeth not to
be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. That's what preachers do, they
preach. And how that's described here is rightly dividing the
word of truth. Now then, also in conversation,
now this word means manner of life, and in many places we just
change that. I have for years. It means conduct. But I've come to find out there's
a reason why they translated this conversation. Because think
about, now your manner of life and how it's perceived by others,
that's what's being talked about. Be an example. In other words,
when people hear you, look at you, and listen to you. So there's a reason they use
this word. The root word is about having conversation. having conversation,
in the definition it has that phrase. And that's a large way
in which we interact with others, if you think about it. We talk
with them, we speak to one another. They say that actions speak louder
than words, you know, that's a saying, and there's some truth
to that. But you don't see 99% of my actions,
and that's true of everybody. You don't always see what people
do. So a large way that we interact is through conversation. And
so what we do, of course, is essential to this also, and maybe
even most important, because it's easy to say one thing and
act another way. And we've all witnessed people
like that. Don't miss the conversation part
of this either, because you can listen to somebody talk for five
minutes and learn an awful lot about them. Learn an awful lot. May it be by God's grace that
what people learn about us when we talk is that God has been
gracious to us and saved us from our sins, that Christ is indeed
our all. And even when you're not specifically
talking about the gospel or talking about our Lord, even when you're
not specifically talking about Him and the things of God, our
speech can and must be seasoned with His grace. Colossians 4,
5, walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the
time. Let your speech be always with
grace. all the way with grace, seasoned
with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every
man. So conversation. And then of
course our conduct, how you spend our time. How do we spend our
time in this world? It'll tell you what's important
to you. Are you reliable and steadfast?
Can people count on you? Does your word mean anything?
Does your actions back up what you say? Are you generous? Are you gracious? Are you forgiving?
Are you kind and considerate? These are the things that we're
to be an example in. Our conduct, including what we
say, especially in a great way what we say. I want us to particularly
notice that it doesn't say to harp on people about these things. It doesn't say to always be found
in fault with people and say, boy, you need to be more gracious
or you need to do this or that. It says be an example unto them. Boy, that speaks right to me,
doesn't it? That speaks right to me. Don't harp on them, be an example
to them. What we harp on is Christ. Not criticism and the law, putting
the yoke of the law on sinners. We don't do that. But we are
to be an example in that which is glorifying to our Lord. And then he says in this too,
in love, in love. You can't see my heart, but you can definitely have a
lot of evidence with regard to my love, who I love and how much
I love them, including the Lord. You're going to know it. You're
going to know it to a great extent. Love does and doesn't do. That's
what 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is all about. It's about what
love does and what it doesn't do. A couple of examples, love
is kind. What is it not? It's not puffed
up. It's not puffed up. Among many
other is's and is not's in that chapter. And you can't fake it, can you?
You can for a while now. You can imitate it. You can put
on a show for a little while, but it'll come out on you eventually.
It'll show. Becomes apparent eventually who
you love and how much and who you don't love at all, including
the Lord Jesus Christ. We know this about that from
the Lord himself, whoever is forgiven much, loves much. And that'll show, it'll show.
In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul speaks of how that your support of the
ministry and generosity to others, how committed you are. That's
what that is. It's in every way. It's not just giving. money,
but it's giving your time, giving whatever skills you have to help
promote the ministry. Now there's easy ways to see
that. If something's wrong with the
building, we need to fix it, right? Because we've got to have
a place to worship that doesn't, you know, that we take care of. We don't want And that's an obvious one. But
also, just being kind to one another, being an encouragement
to one another. We're the church, not this building. Being a blessing to one another.
I hate the way religion talks about that. It's all about, you
know, have a blessed day and be a blessing, a blessing, blessing,
blessing. But you know the truth of that. God can use his people,
and he does, to be a blessing to one another. There are many proofs. Paul used
that as an example and he called it a proof of the sincerity of
your love. Second Corinthians 8.8. And there are many proofs of
the sincerity of your love. That's how you be an example
in love. And in spirit. Now your spirit
is, according to Strong's definition of that Greek word right there,
it is your essence apart from matter. In other words, apart
from anything physical. It's your essence apart from
that which is tangible. And it's your essence that is
capable of knowing, desiring, deciding, and acting. So this is your overall spirit. A good word for it, I believe,
is your attitude. We don't stress that word enough.
Your attitude in all things is so important. It can either be
encouraging and uplifting and helpful or not. You can come up with your own
adjectives. Some people, you just don't even
want to be around them. Our scripture this morning is
specifically teaching us not to be like that. It's for Christ's sake now. It's
not just so people will like us. It's for the gospel's sake. Be an example in everything that
makes you you, your spirit, your attitude, your motivations, your
desires, as it said. And I know this is very general,
but I think we know what this is talking about. We all have
a unique spirit in a sense, don't we? A spirit about us, an attitude,
a quality about us, and they're very unique to us. The scripture talks about this
in a few different ways that I think will be helpful. It talks
about the spirit of grace, the spirit of grace. In other words,
you have a you about you that evidences that the Lord's grace
upon you. And it flows to others. As he said about forgiveness,
you can have a spirit of forgiveness. Why? Because you've been forgiven.
Forgive one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you. That's what it said. So if you have been shown grace,
you're gonna be gracious. That's not a nature you're born
with, unless you're born again. So this is, it talks about a
spirit of meekness, humble obedience, Meekness, Galatians 6.1, a spirit
of faith, 2 Corinthians 4.13. Let's just, our attitude be,
we believe God. We don't believe stuff that he
didn't say. People say, well, everything's
gonna be all right. You know, this is gonna turn
out this way. This person's not gonna die from
this disease, and we gotta just believe. God didn't tell you
that. They may very well die from it. That's in God's hands,
and he didn't tell you that. That's not faith. Faith is not
just believing everything's gonna be okay according to your sense
of what's okay. Faith is believing God. We should have a spirit of that
about us. A spirit of wisdom and revelation, Ephesians 117.
A spirit of wisdom and revelation. God's people actually know what's
going on in this world. That's kind of a big deal. Most
people live in this world for decades and decades and never
have any idea what's even going on in this world. It ain't about
you just, you know, he that dies with the most toys wins. That's
not what this life is about. It may be for you. That's not
what it's about. a spirit of power, love, and
a sound mind, 2 Timothy 1.7. The spirit of truth, 1 John 4.6.
So you see all of these things as a believer that God blesses
his people with. He did a work of salvation for
us without our help. Not of works, lest any man should
vote. He also did a work in us. If any man be in Christ, he's
a new creation. New creation. Old things are
passed away and all things are become new. And then in faith, were to be
examples in faith. Faith there means the conviction
of the truth of anything. In other words, don't be carried
about with every wind of doctrine. A spirit of conviction. I believe
God. Help my unbelief, Lord, but I
believe him. We pray, Lord, increase our faith,
and we pray, Lord, help our unbelief, but by God's grace, we believe
what God said. We pray for all of these, don't
we? Lord, give us, the disciples said, Lord, increase our faith.
Help us to believe. Lord, give us a spirit of wisdom
and revelation in the knowledge of you. Give us that. Give us
that love and that peace which passeth all understanding. These
all are things we pray for and desire. And by God's grace, bear
fruit in for his glory. He said, herein is my father
glorified that you bear much fruit. We desire that. to be an example in that, in
purity, sinless of life. I know I've gone too long, but
I've got to close with this. And I've just got four more pages
of notes, but I'm gonna say one more thing, and I'll come back
and get this later maybe. But listen, to be an example
in purity, you think that means just being holy, just living
a holy life? Let me try to find in my notes
where I sort of was specific about this, because I don't want
to preach another four pages to you this morning. But listen. Let's be clear about what in
that word purity, it means sinless living. Sinless living. All right. Let's be clear about
what sinless living is. It's not about keeping the Ten
Commandments or any other commandments. No sinner is pure in the sight
of God, nor can be an example in purity by keeping the law. You're not going to do it. You're
not an example in that. Sinners can only be pure in God's
sight by the blood of Christ and the righteous representation
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That we can and will, by God's
grace, be an example in. We're an example of purity by
showing forth in our lives how we're pure, in what sense we're
pure, and what those who are pure in Christ are supposed to
act like. We're an example of purity by
always looking to Christ, trusting in Christ, and pointing everybody
that we have anything to do with to Christ. That's an example
of purity right there. It's not going about to establish
your own righteousness. That's what Paul condemned in
Romans chapter 10. They're going about to establish
their own righteousness and they haven't submitted themselves
to the righteousness of God. Purity and righteousness are
pretty much the same word. Let me read that to you. Romans
10, one, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for
Israel is that they might be saved. This isn't just a little
difference of opinion. I pray that God would save them
for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God. They're religious. They talk about God and heaven
and hell and Jesus and all of that, but not according to knowledge,
not according to knowledge. They don't know who God is. They
talking about God and don't know who God is. That's the definition
of 99% of religion in this world today. for they being ignorant
of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own
righteousness. You might think that's what it
is to be an example in purity, to go about just being righteous
all the time. No, that's their problem is they
go about to establish their own righteousness and have not submitted
themselves unto the righteousness of God. What is the righteousness
of God? Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. to everyone that believeth. To
be an example in purity is to show that forth in every way
you can. Christ is my righteousness. We
are never to take any credit whatsoever for any kind of righteousness
before God, because it's just false. No, we rejoice in Christ
our righteousness. And boy, may God make us examples
in all of this by his grace. Amen, let's pray.