Turn with me if you would now
to 1 Timothy 1. We've been going through Matthew
and Colossians and a few different places, but I felt led to be
in 1 Timothy for a little bit. 1 Timothy 1. Let's read the last three verses
in this chapter. These are very sobering verses
to read. But I pray that these might be
for our good and our encouragement, even though they are very sobering
to read. I pray the Lord might use them
for our good and our encouragement. 1 Timothy 1 verse 18 says, this
charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy. according to the prophecies
which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good
warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some, having
put away concerning faith, have made shipwreck, of whom is Hymenaeus
and Alexander whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn
not to blaspheme." Every time I read this or any
verses like that, I think, Lord, keep me. And I mean it. Keep us. I'm being serious. We assume
on too many things sometimes. Like Peter did. Oh, they may
all leave you, but not me. Isn't that what we all think?
Yeah, I see this one go. What happened to that one? Where'd
they go? Yeah, they all may leave you,
but not me. Lord, Don't let us put away our
good conscience of faith that you have given to us. Lord, if you take your hand off
of us, if you take your hand off of me, this is my heart in
a matter like this, when I read something like this, Lord, if
you take your hand off of me, I know that I am capable in my
sinful, wicked flesh of doing that very thing right there. Please don't let me shipwreck
the faith that you have given to me or the faith that you have
given to my brothers and sisters. Don't let me shipwreck their
faith. Please, please, don't let me
turn from you into a blasphemer against you. Can you imagine how awful that
would be? Please, Lord, don't let my name
be named right there next to Hymenaeus and Alexander. Please let it not be said, of
whom is Hymenaeus, Alexander, and Gabe. whom I have delivered
unto the adversary, that they might learn not to blaspheme." Does that not kill you? Does
that not slay you and pierce you, just pierce your heart with
the reality of that situation? Lord, please don't let me go. That is a helpless, weak, vulnerable
state to be in. Lord, please don't let me go. Please don't let me stray. Please don't let me become as
those who slowly over time, just more and more forsake the assembling
of ourselves together. It starts that small. It starts
that small. That's how small it starts. And then it becomes more and
more. I'm not trying to put a guilt trip on anybody, but this is
the honest truth. It starts with, you know, Sunday
night. Well, I already went Sunday morning.
And then it's Sunday night, Wednesday night. I'm kind of busy. And
then it's Bible study Sunday morning, Sunday night. And then
it's every other Sunday morning. Honestly, You know, these apostles kept
saying, be vigilant, be sober. Be sober. That's what I want
these young people. When you guys get behind the
wheel of a car and you go out on your own, be vigilant, be
sober. Don't sleep the sleep of death.
Don't fall asleep at the wheel. Please don't let me be as those
who just slip away. Just gone. Gone from worship. Gone from the gospel. Gone from
the brethren. Gone. Gone from the faith, gone from
the belief they once held to, gone. And not just gone from
it, but deniers of it. Rejecters of it. That is the
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that will not be forgiven. He
said, I've delivered them to the adversary that they would
learn not to blaspheme. They've made shipwreck the faith. Please, please. But for the grace of God, there
go I. I acknowledge that, all right?
I stand here in front of all of you acknowledging that. If
God does not of His own sovereign will and power keep me, the very
blood that I hope and pray to be under, I will turn from it. I will blaspheme
against it. I will deny it. I will reject
it. Lord, keep me. This is all I
have as your pastor, as your brother, as your friend. That's
all I have. Lord, keep me. I'm in a very
vulnerable position. And so are you. Lord, keep us. That's all we have. Keep us. This is one of my greatest fears. I have quite a few fears. I can't
help it. I'm weak in many areas, but I've known a lot of men who started
out preaching a pretty sound message. And they swerved from it. They put it away. And this is
one of my greatest fears. And this is the reason why. I
don't trust myself. I don't trust in myself. I don't trust in my knowledge.
I don't trust in my resolve. I don't trust in my faith. The only place that my trust
is, is in Christ. That's it. That's the only place
that my trust is. My hope is in the fact that if
I believe not, if I wind up not believing, that would not shock
this sinful flesh right here. All right, but this is where
my hope is. It's that if I wind up believing
not, yet He still abides faithful. That's my hope. And he cannot deny himself. Here's
where my hope is. If he is daily now, this is what
he said concerning all those who belong to him. He said, I
am daily pleading, making intercession for them and all of their sin
and all of their lack and all of their blasphemy and everything
that they are in the flesh. My hope is in the fact that if
He is daily pleading before the throne of God, making intercession
on my behalf, pleading the blood He shed every time I sin against
Him, every time I get lost in my flesh and caught up in my
flesh, my hope is in the fact that if He is pleading the blood
He shed, pleading the righteousness he earned, pleading the faith
that he has given and will give more of, and by his goodness
and his grace will increase and give more. My hope is built on the fact
that he abides faithful. And if he's doing all of that
for me, he cannot and will not deny himself if he's pleading
for me. He cannot deny himself. Lord,
keep me. I read those three verses last
week, preparing for in my preparations for Sunday night, we looked at
verse 17. And when I read that, I thought,
Oh, how awful. Maybe I can just incorporate that in with verse
17 somehow, and just kind of touch on it. And we'll just move
on. But the Lord didn't let me do
that. He didn't let me go there, and I'm so glad now, because
after I preached that message, I looked at it again Monday,
and I thought, what am I gonna do with this? And as soon as
I read it, I thought, ah! Keep me. Keep me. Please, keep us. Keep us, Lord. Oh, keep us cleaving. And this is a little insight
to the message. This is how he keeps us. He keeps
us cleaving. Keep us, Lord, oh, keep us cleaving
to thyself and still believing right up until the hour of our
receiving promised joys from thee. Please, Lord, keep us,
keep us. If He does, if He's going to,
and we're at His mercy. This is God on the throne. We're at His mercy. He does what
He will with whom He will. And we're just crying out for
mercy. We're just saying, we're at your mercy. And if He does
keep us, if we are going to be kept, here's a question for the
message. How will He keep us? If he does,
how will he keep us? How are God's people kept? I want to be kept. I want all
of you to be kept. And our just cry, our beg to
the Lord is please keep us. If he does, how will we be kept? There are scriptures, I looked
up quite a few scriptures that say things like, he has given
his angels charge over thee to keep thee, lest thou dash thy
foot against a stone. Psalm 121 says, he that keepeth
thee will not slumber nor sleep. His ever watchful awake eye is
on his people, but to get to the root of it, to really get
to the root of it, let me show you three scriptures. Go with
me to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1. Verse 3 says, Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His
abundant mercy, it's all His abundant mercy, He hath begotten
us again unto a lively hope, a living hope, by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible
and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven
for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,
ready to be revealed in the last time." If we are going to be kept, it's
gonna be by the power of God. And we're gonna have to look
to, through faith, we're gonna have to look to and trust in
the ability of the Lord our God. I know whom I have believed and
am persuaded that he is able to keep. That's what I believe. If we're going to be kept, it's
gonna be by the power of God. It's not gonna be by the power
of our decision. It's not going to be by the power
of our obedience. It's not going to be by the power
of our resolve. I love that song. I am resolved
no longer to linger. I love that song. I don't know
if it's good or not, but it's not going to be by our resolve.
It's not going to be by our anything. It's going to be by the power
of God. If we're kept. It's going to
be by the power of God. That's the first thing. Number
one, by the power of God. Number two, turn with me to John
17. John 17, verse 11, our Lord praying
to the Father said, And now I am no more in the world, but these
are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those
whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the
world, I kept them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me, I
have kept and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition
that the scripture might be fulfilled. Thine own name, in thy name. If we are going to be kept, how
will we be kept? Through His name. In His name. By remaining in
His name. Now this is why we preach what
we preach. What do we preach? What did the
Apostle Paul say we preach? What is our message time and
time again? And we don't veer from it and
we don't stray from it. What is His name? All right, the son praying to
the father said, I kept them in your name. Keep them in your
name. What is His name? There is only
one name given. The Lord Jesus Christ. You say, well, this is Christ
praying to the father. Speaking of the father's name,
Only one name is given. There's no other name given.
There's not a name given separately for the father and separately
for the spirit. One name is given to our God,
Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ, all the fullness of the Father is in that name. He said, if you've seen me, you've
seen the Father. A child is born, call him the
everlasting Father. If we are going to be kept, it's
going to be by the power of God in that name. in His name. We must gather around His name. We must preach His name. We must
speak of His name. We must declare His name. If we're going to be kept, if
we're going to be lost, it'll be by something else other than
His name. We will get hung up on something
else. If we want to veer away, all you have to do is get off
of His name. That's all you have to do. It's going to be by the power
of God in His name through this right here. Look at John 17 verse
15. He said, I pray not that thou
shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest
keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even
as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. Sanctify means set them apart
from. It means keep them, that's what
it means. Through the truth. Thy word is truth. Now, this is what I want us to
understand tonight. If our Lord is going to keep
us. It's going to be by his power. In his name. Through his word. through the truth of His Word. He will open our eyes to the
truth of what He has written in His Word. And it will convict
us. And it will convince us, that's
right, I'm wrong. And that's right. It will strike fear in us. He
will use this Word. If He is going to keep us, It'll
be by His power, in His name, through His Word. He will use
His own Word to convict us, to convince us, to strike fear in
us. And it'll leave us with nowhere
to turn but the salvation that is in the name of our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ. This Word will make us go running
to Him. He will put us in a place through
this Word where we have to go run into Him. That's what our
text tonight has done for me. I pray it's done that for all
of us. If it leaves us crying, to whom else can we go? You have
the words of eternal life. We read about these two men who
denied the faith, made shipwreck the faith, the truth of the Word. And we think, Lord, if you don't
keep us, that'll be us. But there's life nowhere else. You have the words of life. If that's our response, if that's
what it does to us, if that's what a scripture like that does
to us, then that scripture is keeping us. It's keeping us pointed to Christ.
It's pushing us to Christ. That's what it's doing. Go with
me back to 1 Timothy 1. Verse 18 says, this charge I commit unto thee,
son Timothy. The charge at the beginning was
in verse three. If you look at verse three, he
said, as I sought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went
into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no
other doctrine. Neither give heed to fables and
endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying
which is in faith, so do. Nothing else but the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. No other name, no
other salvation, no other faith, no other hope. And Paul said
in verse 18, As I told you, Timothy, to charge them, don't preach
anything else, no other name, no other faith. He said, I'm
giving you the same charge. Verse 18, this charge I commit
unto thee, son Timothy. according to the prophecies which
went before on thee. All of those holy scriptures
that you learned from a child, from your mother Eunice and your
grandmother Lois, don't leave them. Don't forsake them. He went on to say that thou by
them mightest war a good warfare. We're not wrestling with flesh
and blood. We are not. We are wrestling
with principalities and powers and everything else. I've said it so many times. Do
you find it so interesting how you can go to the movies and
be captivated for an hour and a half, two hours, hang on every
word? But listening to the gospel preached
is just all you can do. There's nothing that you struggle
to focus in more than listening to the gospel preached. Me too.
Me too. It's all of God's people. It's
because we're not wrestling with flesh and blood. I'm just so
tired on Wednesdays, but I'm not on Monday night, Tuesday
night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night. I'm just
not. Saturday night, I'm ready to
go. Lord, help us. How do we war
a good warfare? He said, war a good warfare. How do we do that? Verse 19,
holding faith. What does that mean? That means
looking to Christ. Preach His word, declare Him
in His power, in His name, in His truth, in His word. All scripture
is given to turn us back to Christ. All scripture is profitable for
turning us back to Christ, for keeping us in the faith of looking
to Him. That's where we need to be. Crying
out to Him, begging for mercy from Him. If God will keep us
right there, He will keep us from shipwrecking our faith.
If He keeps us in the place where we realize our broken, humble,
desperate need for His help, that's the place that keeps a
man or a woman from shipwrecking their faith. When they're just
begging, please, I'm just so insufficient. I just, I know
I'll run. I know if you take one finger
off of me, I'll run. That's the place that keeps a
man or a woman looking to Christ. And that's the place where a
man or a woman will not make shipwreck the faith that God
has given to them. He will keep us from blaspheming
against him in unbelief. So Lord, Please don't let us
stray from your power. We cannot run from his power
unless he lets us. Please don't let us. Please don't
let us stray from your name. Please let us not open this word
and get hung up on some other subject than your name. Please don't let us stray from
this Word. Don't let us get, you know, Dr. So-and-so's book on who knows
what and start teaching that. Please don't let us stray from
the Word of your finished work, the Word of your glory. Keep
us. Keep us. Give this charge to
us. The charge you gave Paul, the
charge you gave Timothy, the charge you give to all your people.
Give it to us, hold the faith, look to Christ. Let me close
with two portions of scripture here. This is a charge and a
promise, okay? Turn with me to 2 Timothy 4.
2 Timothy 4, verse 1 says, I charge thee therefore before
God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and
the dead at his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word,
be instant in season, out of season, reprove, that means prove
it, prove it by the word, rebuke with it, exhort with it, Do it
with patience, do it with the word, doctrine. For the time
will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after
their own lush shall they heap to themselves teachers having
itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the
truth and shall be turned unto fables, but watch thou. Lord, help us to do it, give
us eyes to watch. Watch thou in all things, endure
afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of
thy ministry. Lord, keep us right there. By
your power, in your name, through your word, keep us right there.
Don't let us stray. Don't let us draw back. Prone to wander, Lord, we feel
it. Please don't let us go. Now,
through the charge of God's Word, let me close with this promise,
okay? Turn to John chapter 10. This is a wonderful promise.
This is what faith clings to. Holding, this is the opposite
of shipwreck right here. A man holding to this, this is
faith. John 10 verse 11, he said, our
Lord said, I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd giveth his
life for the sheep, but he that is an hireling and not the shepherd
who's owned the sheep or not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth
the sheep and fleeth and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth
the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because
he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good
shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the
Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down
my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which
are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall
hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love
me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No
man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power
to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment
have I received of my Father. Now look at verse 27. He said,
My sheep hear my voice, And I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. My Father which gave them me
is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of
my Father's hand. I and my Father are one." You
know what he's saying right there? I'm going to keep them. I am
going to keep you. Every soul who's crying, please,
please don't let me go. To everyone He says, I'm going
to keep you. If you hear my voice in this
word saying, I am the only God, there is none else. I am the
only Savior, there is none else. I am the only way, there is none
else. You follow me. and your heart
cries, please let me follow you. To everyone he says, I'm gonna
keep you. And I'm gonna do it through my
word. Through the leading, the teaching,
the guiding, the convicting of my word. You're gonna hear my
voice in it. You're gonna follow me through
it. And you're gonna be kept. Lord, keep us right there. Keep
us right there in your hand. He said, you're in my hand. I'm in my father's hand. Nobody
can take you out of my father's hand. Keep us right there in
your power, your name, your word. For Christ's sake, let us be
kept. That's our prayer. That's our hope. He said, you
ask that you'll receive. All right, let's all stand together.