Brother if you will you be turning
to first Timothy chapter 1 First Timothy chapter 1 just
some notes No service this coming Wednesday
I expect everybody to be enjoying a good time with their families
and be busy with those things. So we will be too and we're thankful
every day and what a blessing it is to have a day of the year
people ought to be thankful. Wouldn't that be nice? um and
then uh a week from today the 26th we'll have just one service
at 10 a.m or 10 30 i got there in a bulletin 10 30 uh just one
service uh that week for words we have to use words for something
no bible study I've said this before, and I want to be as painfully
clear as I can be, the difference between a Bible study and a message,
they ain't one. There is in false religion. Like,
well, we turn, and this one and this other one's an expository
message of experiential learning. And I was talking to Brother
Stoniker about that one time, and I said, I just, whichever
one I think is going to be the shortest, that's the one I use
first. And he goes, me too. Unless, you know, obviously we
need to see this first before we see that. and uh it's ought
if i ain't experienced it it ain't what the word says i ought
not be preaching it right same thing we gotta call it something anyway you got first timothy
these are some faithful sayings we're gonna look at Faithful
sayings. Four times in the scriptures,
Paul writes, this is a faithful saying. He tells Timothy three
times, and he tells Titus once. He said, these are faithful sayings.
What's he getting at by using words like that? When he says,
this is a faithful saying, he says, this is trustworthy. What
I'm going to tell you, this is God's apostle. If you don't believe
that, don't listen to him. Find you another one. This is
the man's sin of God. Open our ears up. Lord, give
us ears to hear. He's saying this word's from God. It's sure.
You can rely on this saying forever. It ain't gonna change. And you
need to write it down. And you need to read it often.
Not one time 26 years ago, I remember a message on it. No, we need
to hear it today. We need to read it today. We
need to experience it today. We need to take notice. And these
four statements, three times in Timothy, one time in Titus,
We're gonna see some things, and this will be a great comfort
if there's sinners in need. If somebody's got, they're all
squared away and they got everything sorted, I ain't got nothing for
them. If somebody's a sinner and they're in need, these will
be comforting. This will be good. We'll see
who does the saving. We'll see who is saved and how
we're saved. And then we'll look at what a
faithful saying that gives us security and comfort and all
of us that are preserved and who preserved us, how. And finally,
those faithful sayings, we'll see the product of the salvation.
we'll see the outcome, the fruit of salvation. What happens after
a man and woman is saved and they're given a hope of perseverance? What that produces. And we're
gonna turn to these and look at them. If you'll turn with
me. These are trustworthy. These are from God. It's his
word. And there are four things that's
worthy to be accepted by everyone. What's that mean? Young or old,
rich or poor, learned or unlearned. We've heard 26 messages on this
before. We ought to hear this one. We
should. These are sayings that warrant
acceptance any time of day. It's just so. So 1 Timothy 1,
verse 15. 1 Timothy 1, 15. Paul writes to Timothy and he
says, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom
I'm chief. This is the very foundation of
salvation. Here's where it all starts. You
ready? Christ Jesus, the Lord Jesus
Christ, came into this world The very one who thought it not
robbery to be equal with God, because he is God, was made a
man. And he left his throne in glory
and he descended to this sin-cursed earth for the purpose of saving
sinners. Of whom, this is the qualifier,
I'm chief. That's a faithful saying. Everybody
will accept that. It's a worthy acceptation. Who
came? The God-man, the Messiah, the
prophet that Moses wrote about, that one that Noah was in in
his family, that one that it typified, that priest that Melchizedek
was just a type of. We've been looking at Joseph
portrayed in every little nook and cranny in Genesis, in every
way. All those things, this is him. It's the Lord of glory.
He's the Christ. That same Jesus. That angel told
Joseph in Matthew 1, he said, she's going to bring forth a
son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. For, because, here's
the reason you're going to call him Jesus. He shall, not he might,
not he pretty please wants to, that ain't God. This is God.
He shall save a people, his people, from something, because they're
sinners. their sins. Call his name Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sins. That's the one
Isaiah wrote about. He said, the Lord himself shall
give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel. That's God with us. Who came? God came. God came. The Lord, God with us. What did
he do? That's who came. What did he
do? He came into the world. The very world he created. And
you know what? He came here and the world didn't
know him. We think we got a handle on God,
we can put him in a cute little box at Christmas. They didn't
know him and he was here. He preached to them and they
didn't know him. They tried to kill him. That was their intent every
turn. Throw him off a cliff, let's
cast rocks, let's accuse him, let's do something, get him out
of our hair. If he ain't gonna give us hospitals and free healthcare
and permanent income and all this other stuff. We don't want
him. If he ain't gonna be our physical king, get rid of him.
Crucify him, crucify him, crucify him, they cry. That's the world
he came to. This condensation, it's easily
looked at that he came down for those sinners. He came down to
save some sinner somewhere else. He came to save this sinner.
Now we'll quit getting away from stuff up here and start getting
stuff here. It's not just that he's the savior of sinners. He
saved this sinner. And I needed him. It had to be
that way. It had to be just. It had to
be whole. And he's the only one who could do it. Do you need
him? I do. That's what he came to
do. He came in this world where I
live. He was made from the dirt that I was made from. He come
from a woman, didn't he? I came from a woman. And for
33 years, God dwelt among us, and he walked perfectly among
all the demons, and the hell-deserving sinners, and Satan tempted him,
and everything else. And he walked in perfect holiness,
in thought, in word, and in deed to his father. Why? Because those that he came to
save must be holy. You gotta be holy. And he made
his people holy, just like him. He lived for them. He died for
them. He rose for them. We must live
a perfect, God-honoring life that he deserves. And we can't
really calculate what that means. Like that man with the withered
hand stretched forth thy hand. He commanded to do something the
man could not do. And he says to his people, live, be thou
holy just like me, as I'm holy. And they are. He's never commanded
something that didn't come to pass. It happens. That's how
we're saved. Substitution. I touched on that
last hour, but if you boil the gospel of peace with God in Christ,
that free and sovereign grace, that amazing grace, that saving
grace, if you boil it down to two words, it's substitution
satisfaction. We are war against God until
he saves us. Until he comes and gives us life
and reveals Christ in us that we always have been saved, and
he did it on Calvary, and he did it right now when he revived
us. Christ, the Almighty Godhead
in a body, came to this world He created, lived as our substitute,
was punished as me because it was my guilt and my shame and
me laid on Him and He died and He's risen from that tomb and
all of us that He died for with Him. Risen from that tomb because
the Father was satisfied in absolutely every point. That's our proof.
And He's satisfied forever. There's nothing to add to it.
Christ did this, now you. That's a lie. Stop. You ain't gotta do nothing or
have to do something. You gotta clean up something. I'm glad, me and
Joe Terrell sat down and talked about this one time years ago.
I said, ain't you tickled to death? I can't mess this up.
If it's an anvil, I could break it. Give me enough time. I'll
ruin anything. Can't be undone. Who was this
for? This is good news. Who's it for?
Sinners. Not just those that are a little
bad. Well, I've done some wrong things. You self-righteous pig,
I was too. That's why I ain't that bad. Sin, the noun, that's our nature. We drank iniquity like water.
That means that's all the good stuff. We drank religion like
water. This is a faithful saying and
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am chief. That's what Paul said.
God made me a preacher. Paul said that too. I'm an ambassador. I just come and tell you what
he said. People get really mad at me, don't they? They get frustrated.
Somebody reached out to me. I talked to somebody in six months,
because I told them what God said, and it wouldn't have nothing
to do with me. And then they reached out, I guess they could have changed my position.
And I said, here's what God says. And then I ain't heard back from
them. I'm an ambassador. I just tell
you his word. Here's what I'm going to preach. If you're the
chief of sinners, If you're enmity with God, at God, not at God,
enmity with God, all you are is war with Him. You're an enemy.
You're the worst offender. That's exactly who Christ came
to save. If you're the worst of the worst, that's who came
to save, not the ones that's kind of bad. I thought of this
the other day. I don't know if we'll go on to
Exodus after we get through with Genesis or not, but whenever
the Lord gave the Passover, the Lord's Passover, not the Jew's
Passover, he said, you take a lamb and he's put it on the door with
hyssop and water and everything, and you go inside that and the
firstborn's gonna live. Anybody inside that house are
gonna live. Now, take the worst sinner you can think of, Trick
question. Or the worst crime. That'd be
the best thing. What's the worst offense that I haven't outwardly
committed? Imagine the most, I mean, a horrible
thing, the most atrocious thing that a human being could do.
You take that and you put it inside of that building with
that blood on it. Is it saved? Well, we're getting
out of brass tacks now, ain't we? What does that blood do? God said, when I see the blood,
I pass out. It's painful. God teach you that, go read Romans
14. And then go read Romans 13 and everything else. Read his
word. Doesn't matter. If they're in
there, there he is. It's covered. It's covered. That's so, isn't
it? That's witnessing, is telling about that. Telling someone,
the gospel's called witnessing sometimes. Why? Because we're
just recounting what happened. If I was a witness to a car wreck
out there, I'd just say, well, that car hit that car. I don't
say, well, I think that a long time ago Ford made this. No,
that's my opinion, that a helicopter was involved. No, you just tell
what you saw. You're a witness. You don't make
stuff up. You tell what you saw, you're a witness. What's Paul
witnessing? I'm the chief of centers. What
do God's people witness? I'm the worst one there is. I
know Paul felt that way, but he didn't know me. He hadn't
been through his mind. He hadn't thought the things
I thought. He hadn't done the things I've done. I'm a chief. I'm a chief. Not somebody else,
me. I care for people's souls. I care for y'all's souls. Almost
like I gotta give an account. I want that to be us. Us. In the heart. And God, the Holy
Spirit came and he told me about it. God sent the Holy Ghost to
abound towards me one day through a man preaching the gospel. He
wasn't an eloquent man. He wasn't a well-educated man.
He wasn't a man of great stature or nobility or anything else.
Just some old country bumpkin. Got up, preached the gospel,
and I heard God speak that day. It wasn't just that fellow I've
known since I was born. God spoke to me that day. Though
him. That was just the water hose
the water was coming out of. That water hit me. He sent his
Holy Spirit and did that. He revealed sin in me. He revealed
my unbelief. Remember when you didn't believe?
I didn't believe God. He's right. I'm wrong. He sent the Holy Ghost to do
that. Nothing's left after that but
to praise the Savior and to tell others who He is and who He saves. I want to tell somebody else.
I want to tell those I love. Don't you? When Christ sat down
to eat lunch one day, He sat down with some dirty people.
He sat down with some uncomely folks, some publicans, some sinners,
some prostitutes, fishermen, crippled folks, blind folks,
those with leprosy on them. And those self-righteous, prideful,
arrogant people said, look at what he's doing. He eats and
drinks with publicans and sinners. And he answered them. God spoke. And he said, they that are whole
need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to
call righteous but sinners to repentance. If he calls, you're
going to get repented. It's going to happen. You're
going to be at repentance and in it and doing it and everything
else. He's going to make sure. It's his doing. It's his work. Preaching just one beggar telling
another beggar where they found bread. Where we find the living
bread, it's in Christ. He's the living bread. It's a
person. I'm just a doctor and a person. And he came to this
earth and he died for sinners, the very chief of sinners. I wrote down, am I the chief?
It's a good question. Are you the chief? We'd have a humble spirit if
we was. We wouldn't be uppity if we was. God put that in us
because his mind would be in us. Are we the worst one ever? If I am, if you are, then this
is a faithful saying. Faithful saying is worthy of
all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners
of whom I'm chief. What do sinners contribute to
this work of salvation? Turn a couple pages over to 1
Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4. Verse 8. For bodily exercise profiteth
little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise
of the life that now is and of that which is to come. This is
a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation." Is the Lord
telling us through Paul's writing here that we don't need to worry
about doing push-ups and sit-ups and running? How do people think
that? Now be careful in translations
of the Bible. Get you a King James Bible and stick to that
one. Or is he telling people you gotta
obey the law? No. No, he's not insinuating those
things. He's telling us that all that physical exercise of
religion, it profit us little. All the doing. All the doing. We think, me too, right? If I just got up and preached
and we sang the songs at the end, you can act like it wouldn't
bother you. We'd cringe a little bit, wouldn't we? What if we
had the Lord's Supper instead of the Lord's Breakfast? That's
been on my heart for a few years. What's he doing? We got a lot
of grave clothes, all of us, because we got them from Adam.
We got them in our own doing, but we got them from Adam. We
think things ought to be done a certain way. Me too, I'm chocked
full of them. All that doing, it profits little. It doesn't do anything. Look
at verse 1. 1 Timothy 4.1. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly,
that in the latter time, some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking
lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hard
iron." We'll be the product of that. Verse 3, forbidding to
marry. and commanding to abstain from
meats? Who does that? Do heroin addicts tell you you
can't get married? Or you can't eat that meat? You can't observe
those days? They don't care. It's religion. It's what that
is. If you're gonna get married, you gotta run it through me first.
We're gonna have to have some counseling sessions. We'll have
to pre-marital counseling. And then I'm gonna determine
how long that's gonna take before you can get married. Who am I? I'm a sinner. I'm a chief of
sinners. Look to Christ. I'll give you some recommendations
of what His word says. Marry a believer. You can't eat a BLT and be God's
child or fill in the blank. If they do this or don't do that,
you can't be God's children. What do this? They can't do that.
You have to wash your hands. You know, they got after the
Lord for that. Your disciples don't wash their hands. You can't wear certain clothes,
or you have to wear certain clothes, or you can't be God's child.
Observe days. There's no way a child of God
could observe Halloween. Maybe they observe that day and
they can't get over it yet, and they still have to. They don't
see they have liberty that they can go out and let the kids trick-or-treat.
Like, that ain't worshipping devils. You can do yoga. It's
fine. You're stretching. If you're
doing it to worship a devil, then you're worshipping a devil. But if you're doing
it like, well, the Lord gave me this body, I'm going to stretch
it and try to take care of it. Then you just stretch it. You see
the difference? And Paul, that's what we read
in Romans 14. Paul said, don't be an offense. Don't say, watch
what I'm going to do. Well, how are those brothers and sisters
going to learn? By me standing up here and telling it. That's
foolish. That's exactly what they think
it is. I got to address those things or nobody's going to tell
them. Preaching of the word, isn't it? He said, make disciples,
baptize them, teach them everything I say. What about these restrictions? What about the meats? Read on.
They're in verse three. So which God hath created to
be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know
the truth. You eat what you want as long as it's received in our
bodies with thanksgiving, because you know God provided it. That's
like if that Catholic church down there was having a fish
fry and I was broke and I only had 99 cents and the cost of
admission was 99 cents, go down and eat a fish fry. Thank God,
like look what he gave us, a fish fry, that's wonderful. Thank
you, Lord. I'm not gonna make it my practice
to go down there, especially as your pastor. As a man that
preaches the gospel, but if that's necessity, don't you know what
David did? He ate the showbread and then
took it out to his men. If we get the, I was trying to
write that as an article of the day. If we get the principle,
we'll understand the particulars. If we can get the principle,
we'll know how to apply it. And that's called maturity, that's
growth in grace. The Lord starts teaching us some stuff and we'll
start applying it. Then we start, I got, Frank Tate preached a
message last week and I want my children to listen to it.
I told you all about it, I'll send it to you today. You can listen to
it on the trip this week. Employees and bosses. You want
to be a good employee, be a child of God first and dwell on Christ
and you'll be a good employee. You got a mean boss? Don't matter.
It don't matter. If your bosses pay your employees
as much as you can pay them, and then thank them when you
pay them, it does wonders. Well, why would I do such a thing?
How's the Lord dealt with you? How was he a servant? How is
he as a boss? If we know him, we get that principle,
the particulars will know how to apply it, won't we? I just
beg him to teach me, to give me wisdom and understanding. Verse 4, For every creature of
God is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received
with thanksgiving. For if it is sanctified by the
word of God in prayer, Lord, thank you for Thanksgiving. I
thought of that. We got a day coming up. One day a year people
has to acknowledge that something come that they didn't do. God made the crops or he raised
chickens and turkeys and hams or wherever y'all eat. And somebody's,
who do we thank on Thanksgiving? Maybe they'll ask somebody. Maybe
somebody like the mass message will be sitting at that table
that didn't offend everybody and they didn't get invited.
They'll be sitting at that table and they say, well, we ought
to be thankful for. Remember somebody asked Queen Victoria
that, the letter M? God chose a people. Like another faithful saying,
he came in the world to save sinners, I'm chief of them. If
you's a chief sinner, I got good news for you. I'm thankful for
that day. Some say, well, these days are
abused. Other people abuse it, other people take Christmas and
ruin it. Well, they aren't in my house, that doesn't affect
me, I'm thanking God for it. I'm thankful for it. What ought
we to do? Out of this debt of love, what
is profitable godliness? Confessing the truth of Christ
and man. All flesh is grass, behold your
God. Avoiding that fleshly religion and our vain minds and all those
traditions, because that's what mommy and daddy did, and that's
what grandma and grandpa did. And staying, looking to our Redeemer. as He's pleased to make us. Look
at verse six. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these
things, your sinner, Christ came to save sinners. Thou shalt be
a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up with the words of
faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained. He asked
Peter, Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep. Peter, do you
love me? Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Nourish
my lambs. Nourish them. Verse seven, but
refuse profane and old wives' fables that exercise thyself
rather unto godliness. You want to do something to serve
God? That Lord that came down from heaven and saved us and
gave himself for us, a ransom, you want to serve him? Then do
it. You want to serve a God that saved you? Here's your chance.
Serve him. How can sinners saved by grace
serve our Lord? Remind brethren of Christ, love
one another. You wanna serve God, the one
that saved you? You wanna do something to honor him? Be long-suffering. That means you're gonna suffer
for a long time. Be kind, be gentle, be meek. Make ourselves
the servants, not make ourselves the head honcho. Make ourselves
the learner, not the teacher. Put our helmet on. Let this mind be humble." Verse
8, for bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable
unto all things, having promise of life that now is and of that
which is to come. This is a faithful saying and
worthy of all acceptation. Put away all that religion, the
superstition, the routines that we have, and believe Christ and
love the brethren. Remember when I come here preaching
out of 1 John, we look through 1 John. Believe Christ, love
the brethren. That's John's thing all through
that isn't it? Believe Christ, do righteousness. What's that?
Believe in Christ, love the brethren. Love them. Don't talk about loving
them, love them. Don't think about loving them,
love them. I don't know how to love them. And the Lord said,
you being evil, you know how to deal with your children. They
ask you for bread, fish. You don't give them a scorpion.
Love them. Love them. In the life now and the life
to come. Don't put on a show for men. Don't put on a show
for God. God looks on the heart, not on
outward form. God help us to come into his presence and his
people with two ears and one mouth. Looking to learn and serve
and not instruct and be submitted to. And those that declared to
God, they said, look at our wonderful works or look at all we did. And we, we cast out demons in
your name and we heal folks in your name. And we, we, we, and
I, I founded churches and I planted things and baptized folks. And he said, you're crying to
me, Lord, Lord, not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of
my father, which is in heaven. What's the will of his father. Many will say to me that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, cast out demons,
and done many wonderful works? He'll say, I never knew you'd
depart from me. But when God speaks to his children, he says,
the king will say to them in his right hand, come, bless to
my father, inherit the kingdom, prepare for you from the foundation
of the world. For I was hungry and you gave
me meat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was in prison
and you came and visited me. I was sick and you run soup out
to me. And Wolf said, Lord, when did we ever do? We never saw
you in prison sick. When you been sick? You can't
even get sick. I never saw that. He said, you
done it to the least of these, you done it to me. Our Lord tells us there in verse
6, 1 Timothy 4, 6. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of
these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ. What
an attitude change, isn't it? From keep the law to do in those
first three verses to I'm a sinner saved by grace. And here's what
the Lord did for me. I used to do the same thing you're
doing. I've done it. And then the Lord
taught me and the Lord showed me and he did this and he had
mercy on me and had gracious to me. We got a brother right
now that's going through a big trial. He moved far away and
he's going through something. And I went through that 15 years
ago. That wound healed up. I learned
the lesson. And he sent me here to say, I've
lived it. I understand. I know exactly
what you want. You're thinking this, ain't you? I bet you felt
that. And he said, that's exactly right. It's fine. Lord's on his
throne. This is on purpose. You may be
going through this. You can legitimately comfort
a brother in 15 years from now or a sister or whatever. So this is a faithful saying
worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came in the world
to save sinners of whom I'm chief. And then he said, Bali exercise
profit of little, but godliness is profitable unto all things.
Having promise of the life that now is and that of which to come,
this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptation. I didn't
save myself. I didn't perform an exercise
to be saved, to be made more holy or to stay that way. Christ
did. and believe in God, loving Him,
loving our brethren as Christ loved us, as He served us, as
He's laid down our life for us, that's worthy of everyone in
the world accepting it. Isn't that profitable? Is all this going to last forever?
Are we really going to be preserved forever? Is this too good to
be true? It sounds that way, doesn't it? You mean I was at war with Him?
He did all this stuff for me? 2 Timothy 2. 2 Timothy 2 verse 11. It is a faithful saying, for
if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. If we suffer,
we shall also reign with him. For if we deny Him, we will also
deny us. If we believe not yet, He abideth
faithful. He cannot deny Himself. If we
died with Christ, we live with Him. If we're made one with Him,
we live with Him right now. In this physical world, death
means to end. We always use that, don't we? The car died. That
means it don't work no more. Or somebody else died. We think
of that as an end. In the spiritual world, death is this body shedding
and us just beginning. They're with Him. Boy, that's
a start. We're going to know Him as we
are known. We're going to see Him face to face. We're going
to be like Him. Even the possibility of failure,
of sinning, is not there. Holy. With Him. Blameless. Before Him in love. When He came
to this earth and lived, we lived in Him. When He died, we died
in Him. And now we live because he's on his throne. That's the
token of baptism. He lived, I was living. He died
and buried, I was died and buried in him. He rose forth, I came
forth because I'm in him. Unity, oneness. We suffer with him. What's that? Being counted with Christ? Bearing
the reproach of Christ in our hearts against our old man? Yes,
if I was long on an island, that's so. And in our families. A lot of people have reproach
for this gospel from the mothers, the fathers, the husbands, the
wives, children, siblings. I do, you do too. We do. And the reproach of our friends
and coworkers. And the Lord said, marvel not, my brethren, if the
world hates you. He called us brethren. He called
us friends. He said, marvel not, my brethren,
if the world hates you. It hated me before it hated you.
That's just so. It's just gonna happen. Brother Henry wrote an article
in somebody's bulletin this week, and I'll try to put it in ours
next one. Joy of Christ in the midst of troubles. He said, any
man or woman who claims continual uninterrupted joy, rest, and
peace in this world is either not telling the truth or has
no connection with reality. True joy, rest, and peace are
things we enjoy in Christ in the midst of troubles, afflictions,
and infirmities. We have to have the troubles,
afflictions, and infirmities to have the joy of the rest and the peace,
don't we? Now we glory in those infirmities. He sent them so
we'd look to Him. Isn't that kind? Isn't that wonderful,
to suffer with Him? Even too, there in verse 13,
if we believe not, you have unbelief? I do. I'm still in this old man. I believe there's a new man in
me. I got a whole lot of this old
man left. There's times I, Lord help my unbelief. I read this
word and it don't seem real to me. And I think there's no way
I'm a child of God. If it's up to me, there ain't,
right? If we believe not, he abideth
faithful. He can't deny himself. You mean
he's the one that's faithful? Yeah. I'm one with him. Yeah, he ain't gonna deny himself.
That's all done. It's finished. That's good news. That's a faithful say. People
go around this world saying you better not do this or don't do
that or start doing this or God will punish you. My punishment's
over. I may get corrected. I may get
chastened as a child and that's okay. Lord teach me something. That punishment's put away. It's
over. That's a faithful say. That's precious. There's times
we don't believe. We have unbelief. And we get
frail, and we're weak in faith sometimes. And we say, Lord,
I didn't believe at all. And when our faith is small,
it can't get any smaller to its lowest point. He's faithful. That never changed. Titus 3. Titus chapter 3. Verse 8. This is a faithful saying, and
these things I will that thou affirm constantly. That every other year. Constantly. Stand on it, pay attention to
it right down. There's a faithful saying and these things I will
that thou affirm constantly that they which have believed. Who's
he talking to? People saved by God's grace.
It's already happened. You're his, he's put away your
sin. I'm talking to the new men and
women inside of you people. That's what he's saying, okay?
That they which have believed already in God might be careful
to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable
unto men. That licentiousness, or lasciviousness,
that license to sin. God saved us, I can't undo it,
so I'm gonna go out and rob banks, or whatever. What? No. Should we sin that grace
may abound? God forbid. A believer doesn't have a desire
to do that. Do we sin? Absolutely we do.
Do we want to? No, that new man doesn't. It
abhors itself. It does. But that we might be
careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable
unto men. Is that good for us? Well, it ain't gonna hurt us.
Is that good to your neighbors? Don't have some rip-roaring party
out there, or cutting a shine, or fighting with your husband
or wife, the neighbors hear it and say, oh, by the way, you want
to come to church with us? That's good for them. It's good for
them. Here's the fruit of faith. The
fruit of faith. People talk about fruit. Well,
what's fruit come from? A root. There's a root, and a trunk,
and a branch, and fruit comes out. And the fruit ain't for
that tree. Fruits are something else. If you've got an orchard
and you don't sell it to somebody, you'll go clean all that fruit
that fell out. It's gonna rot and stink. Flies are gonna be
all over. It's gonna be nasty. It's for somebody else. The root
is believing on Christ. The fruit of faith is walking
in His footsteps. Our walk's rooted in Him. And
we're looking unto Him, the author and physician of our faith, aren't
we? You who believe, you're saved by the blood of Christ. You be
careful not to bring reproach on the gospel of God's grace.
And I tell that in a mirror. Remind myself who I am and whose
I am. I told the kids the other day
out of the car, I said, remember who you are and whose you are. There's times in life, there's
gonna be people I've bumped into, that's a burden. And the only
influence or introduction or contact with the gospel they
have be through me. The only relationship, the only
believer they'll ever bump into was me or you. I want the Lord
to give me wisdom in those things and be with me. You be careful
not to bring reproach on the gospel, not to bring reproach
on those that are redeemed by his grace also. This is profitable,
not just for the brethren, but to all men. That's good for society. Did you know that? Makes us good
citizens. Kiermaier said we're not raising
children, we're raising adults. It's gonna be the intent someday,
I hope. I pray that the Lord love me that I can love others.
I pray he'd give me joy, that way I would be a joy to others.
He'd give me peace, that way I could calm somebody else. He'd
be long suffer me. So just show me how long he's
been suffering me. That way it'd be a whole lot
easier for me to suffer my brethren. That's sufferable. Be gentle
to me. I pray be gentle to me so I know
how to be gentle. I have to be taught these things. These are faithful sayings, isn't
it? Christ came to save sinners of whom I'm chief. I didn't do
anything to merit it, it was all of grace. I died to sin,
death, and hell in him, and I'm alive in him right now, and when
I'm weak in the faith, when I should perish, he's faithful. Does that provoke us to good
works? Does that give us a heart to serve him that laid down his
life for us? I pray so. I hope he'll stay
with you. I hope I can affirm them constantly.
Keep a notepad and remember them. Let's pray together. Father, be with us today and
this week. Send your spirit to us and give
us a word of wisdom. We're around those that don't
yet know you. Lord, strengthen us, make us
wise. Wise as serpents and harmless
as doves. Forgive us for our failure, our cowardice, our look
into self. Lord, in turn us, make us look
to Christ. Thank you for him. Thank you
for your purpose in saving a people and his payment and the proclamation. You've sent your spirit to declare
your people. Thank you. Be with us as you
promised you will be. Amen.