1 Timothy chapter 6 and we'll
begin reading at verse 11 and go through verse 19. But you,
man of God, flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness,
faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith.
Take hold of eternal life to which you were called when you
made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. in the sight of God who gives
life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who, while testifying
before Pontius Pilate, made a good confession, I charge you to keep
this command without spot or blame until the appearance of
our Lord Jesus Christ. which God will bring about in
his own time, God, the blessed and only ruler, the King of kings
and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal, who lives in unapproachable
light, whom no one has seen or can see, to him be glory forever
and ever. Command those who are rich in
this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope
in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God,
who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them
to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and
willing to share. In this way, they will lay up
treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age,
so that they may take hold on the life that is truly life. Now if you'll turn back to John
chapter 5, John chapter 5, the believer right now has eternal
life. Everyone here this morning who
is In truth, a believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ, right now you have eternal life. It says in John
chapter five, verse 24, I tell you the truth, whoever hears
my word, and what is his word? It's the gospel. It's the gospel. Whoever hears my word, and that
means hears it with understanding, knows what it means, who hears
my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned. He
is crossed over from death to life. And then look over at 1
John 5. Same writer, different book.
But just like all faithful preacher, he says the same thing. 1 John
5. And we'll begin reading at verse
11. First John chapter five. Now remember earlier, we read
there in John five, it says that anyone who hears my word and
believes him who sent me. Okay, what did him who sent the
Lord say? Verse 11, and this is the testimony.
That is, it's God's testimony. God has given us eternal life. And this life is in his son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son,
the Son of God does not have life. Now, there is not a blessing,
not a single solitary blessing, which any of the people of God
shall experience which they do not now have. And you say, wait
a minute. That doesn't make sense. You
have often said there's more to come. Yes, but all that is
to come is already ours by right. When someone passes away, they
leave a will. And there's the reading of the
will. And the heirs gathered together and the will is read.
The moment that will is read, whatever is left to any particular
heir at that moment becomes his. But that does not mean that right
at that moment, they're going to put it in his hands. Sometimes
the heir is a child. And it's not appropriate that
such things be put in their hands until they come of age and are
prepared to deal with such things. Sometimes there's some legal
matters that need to be taken care of before legal ownership
can be given to them. And it may be that there is an
inheritance of land. And while that land is owned
by the heir, Yet he's got to get there before he can actually,
as it were, take possession of it and enjoy it. So we, right
now, are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus. We are
heirs of every blessing which God has because they're all in
Christ and he's given us Christ. So we have them by right, even
though not all of them have been experienced as yet by us. But right here, we read that
we have life. And the way that it was written,
or in those couple of passages we read in John and in 1 John,
it's written in such a way that when it says we have eternal
life, it's not as though it's one of those possessions we have
to wait in order to experience. In other words, in both of those
scriptures, it is teaching us that the present possession and
experience of the child of God in this world is that he has
eternal life. That's why our Lord could say,
he that lives and believes in me will never die. Why? He has eternal life. And
eternal life doesn't die. These bodies will die, but the
person will not. We, at the present moment, if
we believe, we possess eternal life. Now, you take that truth,
unquestionable truth of the scriptures, and then you read where Paul
says to Timothy, lay hold of eternal life. Now, how in the
world can you lay hold of what you already have? Seems not to make sense, does
it? Well, there's a couple of ways this could be handled. One sense, and you can be looking
back at Philippians chapter three, beginning in verse 12, Philippians
chapter three. One way to look at this is that
eternal life, while it is our present possession and experience,
yet we do not have it in perfection. For example, these bodies of
ours certainly are not eternal, are they? They're getting older. Everybody here is a day older
than they were yesterday. The clock only goes one direction,
and while for the first 20 or 25 years of our lives it seems
the clock won't move fast enough, And it's exciting as we go through
the processes of growth and maturity. From about 25 years on, it seems
like the clock will not slow down. And the process from then on
is not to ever greater strength, but generally speaking, from
that point on, we start giving up and having to make adjustments
as this body begins that process of aging. You see, there's a
difference between maturing and aging. Maturing is a good thing. Aging, not so much. Maturing is putting together. Aging is falling apart. And these
bodies are falling apart, aren't they? But the time will come
when the Lord Jesus Christ will come and transform our bodies,
what the Bible calls vile bodies, corruptible bodies. And the only
thing you have to do to prove that it's corruptible, let the
life go out of it and see what happens to it. Life, as we experience
it, is a constant battle against the forces of death at work within
us. We are always dying. It's just until we finally die,
the body was winning the battle, but eventually it's going to
lose. We have right now, everybody here has got within them bacteria
that would kill them, were it not for the body's ability to
fight off bacteria. But bacteria of death is in there,
and viruses, and there's faults in the systems, and all of that,
which if it were not for the principle even of life that we
have here, we would die immediately. The time is coming when these
corruptible, vile bodies will be changed to be like the body
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I guess the older I get,
the more I like to think about that. The writer of Ecclesiastes says,
remember thou thy creator in the days of thy youth. Before,
and he gives a lot of various illustrations of the process
of aging. Says, the grinders cease. What does it mean like that?
Well, they didn't have good dentists back then. Not many people made
it into old age with their teeth. The grinders cease when pleasure
is gone, the ability to enjoy life, even the mind starts to decay. I'm simply amazed at how poor
my recollection is. I try to come up with somebody's
name and just all at once it's gone. A name I may have used
10 seconds ago and I can't think of it all at once. events that happened yesterday.
If you tell me about them, they'll recall it, but I'm not going
to be able to recall it on my own quite often. That's the process,
and we remember our Creator in the days of our youth, because
the older we get, the more difficult it is to enjoy this life, And
if we have not laid a foundation for the life to come, what then
do we have in our old age? Nothing. Nothing. You see, the wonderful thing
about a believer, or one of the wonderful blessings of being
a believer, is even as the ability to enjoy this life decreases,
the ability to see and long after the life to come increases. I'll not ask any of you older
people to raise your hands, but is it not so? Is it not so? Brother Henry Mahan wrote to
me in a letter some time ago, and this is when he was in his
late 80s, and now he's 91, but he says every night Doris and
I pray, Lord, take us home tonight. Why? Well, we've always longed
to go there, And the more time goes by, the less we want to
stay here. But, here in Philippians chapter
3, beginning at verse 12, we have
this idea of laying hold of that which we already possess. And
Paul says, beginning in verse 12, not that I have already obtained
all this, by meaning that he's the resurrection of the dead.
Of course, he's not obtained it. So I haven't obtained that. We've already been made perfect.
We're not perfect, are we? We're not complete. We're complete
in him, but we aren't complete by experience. But I press on
to take hold, to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus took
hold of me. I got into a Facebook argument
with some people that were opposing sovereign grace. Living among you all or in this
community where everybody supposedly believes in sovereign grace,
you usually don't have to argue the point too much. Sometimes
my sword gets a little dull on that particular point because
it's not a fight I have to engage very often. These ones that were arguing
it, it's always this, that there is some ability in us to choose
positively and God will not do any more than he's already done
until we make that positive choice. That's not Paul's experience.
Wish I'd have thought this scripture. What does he say? I'm pressing
on to lay hold of, yes, we lay hold of it. I lay hold of that
for which Christ laid hold of me. Before you and I ever lay
hold of anything, Christ laid hold of us, didn't he? Grabs
us by the scruff of the neck. Says, that's far enough now.
You've wandered far enough. You've gone your own way long
enough. Now, come here. All right, let's go on. Brothers, I do not consider myself
yet to have taken hold of it. In this case, he means I've not
experienced everything there is to being in Christ. I have not come in full possession
and experience of all those blessings which are in Christ. But one thing I do, forgetting
what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press
on toward the goal to win the prize which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus." Now, all these things that he
mentioned, righteousness, life, all these things, they were all
his by an inheritance. But he says, I am like a racer
I am eating up the ground as fast as I can. I'm pressing on.
I'm forgetting everything behind, whether good or bad. I just keep
going because I have a goal in front of me. This prize, and
he's likening this to a race, so he calls it a prize, but it's
not so much a prize we win, but yet he's still using this race
metaphor. He says, I want to get to the
end of this race and I want to lay hold of that. There is a
crown of righteousness. There's a crown of life. And
by that, he means not an authoritative crown, but they used to put on
winners of races a laurel wreath, sometimes actual laurel vines,
and at other times, it was just a little circlet made out of
gold. You may have seen pictures of some of the Caesars, and that
was the kind of crown they wore. But it was meant to be a crown
of victory or, you know, you won. Paul said another place, I have
finished my course. The time of my departure is at
hand. I'm right here at the finish line and all that's left is that
crown of righteousness and I've been straining for that since
it was first revealed to me in Christ Jesus. Now that's one
way Paul's words to Timothy could be taken. But I believe that here we have
a different sort of exhortation. They're related and connected,
I understand that. But I think that what Paul is
saying to Timothy here is this. That in our lives, we are confronted
with many distractions. Things we might be tempted to
turn our attention to. Other things which we might be
tempted to lay hold of. Lay hold of it as the reason
for our existence, as the force and focus of our lives. And Paul
is saying, don't lay hold of those things. Lay hold of eternal
life. And speaking of eternal life,
he doesn't mean just actual life itself, though that's included.
He means all those things that pertain to eternal life. We could say lay hold, we could
also say cling to. Grasp with all your might eternal
life. Now brethren, I can cling to
what I already have. That makes sense, doesn't it?
If I got something, I can cling to it. I can grasp it with all
my might. And I believe that's what he's
saying. You see, and if we look at the context here in the earlier
part of chapter 6, we find that there were some who were laying
hold of social and political causes in the first verses It
says, all you who are under the yoke of slavery should consider
their masters worthy of full respect so that God's name and
our teaching may not be slandered. And he goes on to talk some more
about that. Now, there is simply no way in the world for anyone
ever to justify the practice of slavery. Now, you and I, we
were brought up in a nation that we thoroughly opposed slavery. But you know, it's kind of interesting,
I was born 90 years, only 90 years, after slavery was abolished
in this nation. Our own nation, the so-called
Christian nation, practiced one of the most brutal versions of
slavery until about 150 years ago. And it was going on here. And
there were believers whom God had found them when they were
slaves, and he left them as slaves. Slaves to unbelieving masters.
And here's the shocker. Now you and I, from our viewpoint
in history, we just can't understand this. There were some believing
people who had slaves. and not just believing people,
believing people like Philemon in whose house the church met
and was a leader in the church. But Paul did not take up the
social issue of slavery. There were some who maybe with
at least humanly speaking good motives had begun to stir up
believing slaves, and saying, you know, you're the Lord's free
man now. You should be a slave to no one.
And you owe obedience to no one. And they were getting all caught
up in this. You know something? I'm glad for the people in the
past who took their stand against slavery, the abolitionists of
the 19th century in our country, a fellow named William Wilberforce. who as a child attended John
Newton's church. He was instrumental in England
in getting the slave trade stopped. Took him 20 years, but he got
it done as a member of the House of Commons. I'm glad that these
people did that. But Paul says, particularly he
as an apostle and Timothy as a preacher, he said, that's not
what you're supposed to be laying hold of. That's not your issue. That's not your focus. In fact,
it was not even to be the focus of the slaves or of the masters. Slaves were to render obedience
to their masters for the glory of Christ. And if there was any
believing master, he was to treat his slaves good for the glory
of Christ. But Paul did not lay hold of
the issue of slavery. There was others, like beginning
in verse three. It says, if anyone teaches false
doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our
Lord Jesus Christ and the godly teaching, he is conceited and
understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest
in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy,
strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction
between men of corrupt mind who have been robbed of the truth
and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.
Now who are these fellas? These were the kind of people
who were laying hold of the religious controversies of the day, even
the religious controversies within the church. And they were taking
this stand and that stand on things that were irrelevant.
But they did so because it is in our nature to enjoy controversy,
and we like to have our champions in controversy. And fellas that
get themselves involved in controversies like this, quite often they do
it because they got an eye to the money that they can make
by being a champion of this or that cause within the church.
I mentioned in the Sunday school, I weary of these mega preachers. I'm not saying that they're all
bad, because they're not. There are some preachers whom
God has made them very prominent, and they are faithful men, and
I'm glad of it. But it just seems that among so many, and I mean
so many now that Calvinism is becoming fashionable in many
circles, you have these fellows rise up who are like Paul spoke
of in the book of 1 Corinthians, these are men who speak well,
they're good looking, they have a natural attractiveness and
charisma about them, they preach and they become more and more
famous and people hang on every word they say and they act like
the gospel arrived with them and likely when they die it's
going to depart. And they pick up the controversies
of the day and they start a blog, get it on the internet, get some
followers. They were laying hold of the
things that people by nature by their natural instincts want
to lay hold of. And in so doing, became controversial
and attractive. You see, if you're a moderate,
nobody's going to be particularly attracted. People like idealists. They flock in political circles.
They tend to go after those who are very outspoken on the right
or on the left. And that's what these fellas
did, they just picked a side and became very good at arguing
that side and drew after them a lot of people. They were laying
hold of these useless controversies. And then others were laying hold
of the riches and pleasures of this life. Verse six, but godliness
with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this
world, and we can take nothing out of it. Boy, wouldn't it be
good if we could really get hold of that, or more importantly,
that that would really get a hold of us? We came in with nothing,
and we're gonna leave with exactly the same amount. Nothing. And we spend so much of our time
and energy trying to lay hold of that which we cannot keep.
and spend so little time in energy, reaching for and laying hold
of that which cannot be taken away. He goes on, but if we have food
and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to
get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish
and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction
for the love of money. is the root of all kinds of evil. Now, there may be a few people
in this world who can say, I have no love of money, but if any
man says that to me, I'm gonna be suspicious of him. It's natural
to us to want it. There is a real appeal in having
a bank full of money, because it falsely gives us a
sense of security. We think, I've got so many dollars
down at the bank, it doesn't matter what happens, I'm taken
care of. I was reading just yesterday
in one of the articles I was reading, it talked about, you
all probably remember that Enron debacle, a company called Enron
that somehow put all of its employees' pensions at risk. And it spoke
of one man who had $1.3 million laid aside for retirement, and
now he's mowing lawns and his wife had to take up work. Riches
are uncertain, but boy, we like to have them. The question is, what are we
willing to do to get them? We can't help the fact that we
see in riches blessings, we think they're blessings, blessings
we'd like to have. The question comes, what are
we willing to give up to get them? Now, there are those who
love it to the point that it actually becomes the focus of
their lives. That's what they're about. And it says here, some people
eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves
with many griefs. We must always be on the watch
that our efforts to make our daily bread, which we are called
upon to do, If any man doesn't work, says the scriptures, don't
let him eat. We have a responsibility to do what we can. But if our heart becomes attached
to gold, and we seek it, and it becomes
our passion, it will almost without fail lead us away from the Gospels
and the things that pertain to eternal life. Let us all the time watch out for our
souls that we not be led like these people were into the needless
issues of the day, the useless controversies of religion, and
the seeking after gold for its own sake. Because all of these
things will eventually bring us to the end of life with the
realization that everything we reached for is going to burn
up. And if it doesn't burn up while
we're still alive, the time's going to come when death is going
to take every bit of it away from us. And we have nothing. Lay hold of eternal life. Now, what is eternal life? Well, it's the life of God. Ephesians
chapter 4 verse 18, he tells the disciples there, do not live
like the Gentiles do, who do not have the life of God in them.
Eternal life is life from God. It's the life that he provides.
Now, all life comes from God, doesn't it? In him we live, move,
and have our being. There's no life we have that
we didn't get from God, because God is the source of all life.
But this special life of God is a spiritual life. That's what
he's talking about. All men born into the world have
fleshly or carnal life. Only those born again by the
Spirit of God have the life of God. The life of God which brings
with it an understanding of the things of God, brings with it
a faith in the Son of God, brings with it not only a knowledge
of, but an appreciation and a hunger and a thirst for the things of
God. They say, well, why would it
be considered a thing to want to lay hold of if it's just going
to leave you hungry and thirsty? Well, I'll tell you this. There's
one kind of person I know that never gets hungry and never gets
thirsty. That's a dead man. One thing about hunger and thirst,
it proves to you, you are alive. Now you and I, in this world,
we hunger and thirst for righteousness. Even though we know that it's
been charged to us that so far as God is concerned, we are righteous. Yet we know within ourselves
that the powers, the motions of sin seem to have the upper
hand most of the time. We just can't stop doing it.
We hunger and thirst to be like our Lord Jesus Christ. It's frustrating,
it's difficult, it's vexation, but thank God it means there's
life. The life of God. It's the life
that's a gift. Romans chapter 6 verse 23, the
wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. There is not a person in all
of history who has ever earned eternal life except the Lord
Jesus Christ. He earned it. He earned it by
his very perfect nature. He earned it by the life he lived. He's the only man in all the
world who could have gone to God and said, God, as the judge
of all the earth, you judge me. You'll find me without spot,
without blemish. You owe me eternal life. And
God would have said, yes, I do. Here it is. But the gospel is that the one
who earned eternal life forfeited that life that you and I who
couldn't earn it might have it anyway. It's the gift of God
to you and me. Everything that we have done
earned us eternal death. Everything. Everything we've done, even our
best efforts at doing what God tells us to do. Our prayers,
our Bible reading, everything is so tainted with the sin that
resides within our flesh that were we to come before God and
say, God, really, I only want to judge you, or have you judged
me on those things where I was really trying to do good. Leave
all the rest out. I realize that's gotta be covered.
That's gotta be forgiven. Just judge me on the things where
I was doing good. And the Lord would say, I haven't
found any of those yet. Well, over here, didn't you see? I
was praying over there. I was looking at your heart.
I saw what was in there. I heard your flattering words.
I heard you say, oh, all glory to you and God, but I knew what
was in your heart that you were saying all that to butter me
up for the request that was coming later. Or he says, yes, I heard your
prayer. You got two or three sentences out and then your mind
was somewhere else. I saw you reading the Bible and I saw the
pride swell up within you that you're someone who would do that.
And we can go on and on, you understand the principle. This eternal life is the life
of Christ within us. He that has the son has life,
we read that. Why is it that he that has the
son has life? Because Christ is the life. He
is that life. It is the life which endures
forever and it is the life which is perfected in glory. We have
it in measure now. Spiritually speaking, we are
alive to God. But in our minds, in our natural,
or in our consciousness, let's put it that way, our consciousness,
we find two lives there, don't we? The life of the flesh and
the life of the spirit. And it's a constant warfare. But that is eternal life. What is it to lay hold this life
well as I said earlier I think what he means here is cling to
it don't let it go don't get distracted to lay hold on eternal
life means with purpose to look to Christ to look to his cross
and to look to all those blessings which are in Christ and make
sure that you are aimed for that at the cost of anything else
You know, there's nothing wrong with riches until they interfere
with the pursuit of Christ. There's nothing wrong with innocent
pleasures until the search for them and the devotion to them
begins to interfere with the pursuit of Christ. Everything
God has put in this world, he has put in this world for his
people to enjoy in a proper way. It is good to love your mother
and father, but not in such a way as would make you choose them
over Christ. You say, well, that would never
happen. Some people have had to make the choice. Mom and dad don't
like the gospel. And you start going where the
gospel's preached. And mom and dad get in a huff, because that's
not the way they are. And they say, look, it's us or
it's that church. You make the choice. You should be devoted to your
spouse and to your children more than anyone else in the world,
but not to the point that you would choose them over Christ. Brother Mahan told the story
of a man who was going to go to church on Wednesday night.
He got up to go. His wife was an unbeliever. She
didn't like the gospel at all. But he started to go. And she
says, you stay home, or when you get home, me and the boy
will be gone. And his response was, he said,
dear, If you'd have asked me to stay, I would have. But now
you've made me choose between you and Christ. And that choice
was made a long time ago. And he went to church. And true
to her word, when he came back home, she and the man's son was
gone. And it was not for a long time
that he saw his son again. Lay hold of eternal life. even
if it means letting go of everything else. Now, we look at those stories
and we think, how sad. Well, yes, a sad and difficult
thing to endure. And we go through trials and
troubles, and they're all designed by the devil, if the devil's
involved, they're designed by the devil to lure us away from
Christ. But in all of these trials, we
are to cling to eternal life. Saying we'll have health, we'll
have family, we'll have riches, we'll have pleasures, so long
as none of them interfere with me pursuing Christ. But the moment
they come between me and Christ, they will be cast aside. The
moment any of these things say it's me or him, well, it's always
going to be him. Because I must have him. I must
know him. I must have his righteousness.
I must experience his life. Who is it that's called on to
lay hold of eternal life? Those very same ones who have
already professed an interest in it. He said in verse 12, fight the
good fight of faith, take hold of the eternal life to which
you were called when you made your confession in the presence
of many witnesses. This is not so much an exhortation
to unbelievers to believe the gospel, it's an exhortation to
believers not to let go of it. Layholders, you've made your
profession, stick with it. And he gives an example, in the
sight of God who gives life to everything and of Christ Jesus,
who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,
I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the
appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine our Lord there,
now he is standing before Pilate, and he is accused of things he
did not do. But the book of Hebrews says,
for the hope set before him, He endured the cross. He made
a good confession. Pilate said, are you king of
the Jews? And he said, it's as you say. Our Lord could have
gotten out of that. You realize that? He could have.
He could have, he said, called on the father to get him out
of it. He said, don't you realize I could call on my father and
he'd send six legions of angels and get me out of this mess.
Our Lord didn't have to go to the cross at any moment. I mean,
anyone who has the power to make men fall backwards just by uttering
his name, I am. And that's what happened in the
garden of Gethsemane. He said, who are you looking for? They
said, Jesus. He goes, I am. And they fell
backwards. I think he could have got himself out of that trouble
if he'd have wanted to. But he didn't. he chose to lay hold
of that which would have been set before him. Now we don't
have exactly the same thing set before us because we're not the
Savior. But the point is still the same.
What the Lord came here to do and to lay hold of, he laid hold
of even at the cost of his life. So should we. Keep this commandment
without blame. Don't ever, under any circumstances,
let go of Christ and him crucified. Don't let yourself be distracted
by what is good and make you miss that which is perfect. Don't allow that which glitters
but is gone in a few years. to distract you from that which
is glorious and eternal. Make sure that whatever you do,
at your job, in your recreation, in your family, in all your life,
that your nose is turned to Christ and let nothing interfere. Lay
hold of eternal life.