We're looking in 1 Timothy, Paul
writing a letter to his son in the faith, one who was very close to him, and as he
says that he had no man who was with him in all things,
even as Timothy was. And so we can learn a lot, you know,
when you read the communications, if you read letters to, that
were written by someone many years ago to someone they love,
and you read those letters later on. I've often read letters of
men who wrote back from the battlefield during the Civil War. Some of
these letters have been preserved down through time, and you really
get a window into the thinking of people in situations like
that. You know, letter writing is something
that's almost a thing of the past. Very few people ever sit
down and write a letter anymore. Email is pretty much taking it
over, and we live in a soundbite world. Usually if something lasts
more than a couple of minutes, people's interest is moved on
to something else, but it's not always been the case. Thank the
Lord it was not the case with Paul, that he unburdened his
heart and he spoke such things as needed to be spoken in a way
that would be of benefit to the people of God. And yet, it is
impossible that a man can come to this book, as clear as it
is, and have any comprehension of it apart from the mercy of
God showing him the truth of it. There are many, many, many
people who know the Bible backwards and forwards. Many great scholars
that would put me to shame as far as what they know about the
things that are in the scriptures. But knowing those things that
are in the scriptures is not what we're after. We want to
know the truth of the scripture applied to our heart. And only
the Lord can do that. I can't do that. You know, I
can't do it at all. I mean, even Paul couldn't do
that. I mean, he wrote these things, and everything that he
wrote here is absolutely true, but until the Lord is pleased
to take these things and burn them into our very mind and heart,
they won't be of much profit to us. And how often it is that
we have read these things over and over again, and yet the Lord
will show us Now were those things always
there? Of course they were. But we were just not able to
get it. I remember an old black preacher one time using the illustration
of that, of looking in the word of God. And he said that looking
in the word of God is like digging sweet potatoes. And he said you
can dig all the sweet potatoes up, but you can get out of the
ground And you think you've got them all, but he says you can
go back there tomorrow and you can dig down there and you're
going to find another tater. And so it is. That's the way
the Word of God is. It's an inexhaustible book and
you can memorize it. There have been men that memorized
the Bible, and they thought that was a big thing. And I wish I
had committed more of it to memory. Now I can't hardly remember what
I do know. But memorizing the scripture
is a very good thing, but you can memorize it. and still not
get it. Our goal is not to memorize it,
although it is good to memorize it, but our goal is to memorize
it so that the Lord might take the truth of it and apply it
to our heart as only He can. But anyway, he is speaking here
to Timothy, my own son in the faith. grace, mercy, and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we looked at
those two verses last week. He says, as I besought thee to
abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia that thou mightest
charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Now so Paul was
at Ephesus and he spent some time at Ephesus and he had left
Ephesus on his journeys. The Lord had called Paul to go
from place to place preaching the gospel and as some would
call it, planting churches. I don't like that terminology
because it kind of leads men to think that they have some
power to, you know, call something to grow up somewhere where you
don't. I mean the Lord is the one that raises up churches. Now the Lord may use men as a
catalyst, but they don't plant the church. Only the Lord can
plant the church because a church, if a church is planted, that
means it's got roots. And the root is Christ. And so
he's the only one that can do that. So we can't plant churches.
We can't start a church. You know, you hear people talk
about, well, we're going to start a church. Well, how are you going
to do that? You can't start a church. I mean, only the Lord can start
a church. You see, he said that he would
build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against
it. I've seen many a church that was started by men over the years
and the gates of hell prevailed against it. But when God plants
that seed and causes it to grow, then those things will accomplish
the exact purpose for which they were planted. So may the Lord
give us a mind to that. So anyway, he gave Timothy this
charge that he might charge others that they teach no other doctrine. Now what other doctrine is he
talking about? No other than what? And so he
goes on to say what other doctrine it is that he's talking about
that he wants them to abandon. Now let me simply say this, any
doctrine which is not centered in Jesus Christ and him crucified
is other doctrine. It doesn't make any difference
what it is. It might be true. You might can go to the Bible
and prove it. But it is other doctrine, that
is, it is doctrine which is outside the realm of those things that
comprise the heart of what we've been sent to teach, which is
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's what Paul said. He said,
I determined to know nothing among you. Now he taught them
a lot of things, didn't he? But the end of everything that
he taught, that he wrote these letters to, is Christ and him
crucified. You can't read the letters of
Paul and not see Christ and him crucified. In every word that
he is speaking, that's his purpose, is to bring men to that place
that they might behold him. And so he said, charge them that
they teach no other doctrine. Now, why do you need to do that?
Because it is in the, it's just in the nature of man to depart
from that one simple truth. Because men get to think, well,
there's gotta be more to it than that. I mean, that's too simple. You know, we want to go on to
the deep things. You ever known people that really
want to get into the deep things? Well, there's no deeper doctrine,
dear brethren, than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I mean, that
is, that's as deep as it gets. And so when we move away from
that, you know, in any fashion to think that we have the power
to accomplish something in the kingdom of God that is not centered
in that, then we have moved away. And we are in danger of holding
on to other doctrines. So he said, no other doctrine
than that which I've given you, than I've told you. He said,
neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister
questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith. Now, when
we come together, our goal is to build one another up in the
most holy faith. That's the purpose of our gathering
together. We're not coming here to impress
one another with what we know, because we don't know anything.
I mean, as much as Paul knew, he said, we know nothing as we
ought to know. Brother, we don't know anything.
Why would we boast of what we know when the scripture plainly
says we don't know anything? So we don't have any great wisdom
to impart to anybody. The only thing we can do is just
seek by the grace of God to magnify the name of Christ as we go through
the scriptures. And that's, If we can accomplish
that, if by the grace of God we can do that, that's a wondrous
work. You know, men look at great congregations
that people build up, great numbers and all this, oh, what a mighty
work he did over there. Well, no, he didn't do any mighty
work at all, because if anybody was called out of darkness and
into the light, it was because of the mercy and grace of Almighty
God. Didn't have anything to do with
him except that the Lord was pleased to use him in that way,
but he didn't do it. And we're not going to do it.
But he said, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies
which minister questions. So if we are desirous of building
one another up in the faith, if we're entertaining questions,
let them be questions that would be to edifying, not just simply
to prove how much we know or don't know or whatever. I mean,
you know, that's not our purpose. Endless genealogies. Now, of
course, he's writing somewhat to the Jews because The Jews
were, as Brother Al pointed out there this morning, in all these
tribes and different things. That was a big deal to them.
You know, they could trace their lineage back to this one and
that one and the other. But he said these things, there's
no end to that. There's no purpose to it. It's
not gonna serve any purpose, so let's don't get caught in
that. Let's don't get turned aside and move away from that
which is the important part, which is godly edifying in the
faith. What is the faith? What's the
faith of God's people? It's Christ. Christ and Him crucified. See, that's where all of our
hopes rest. It doesn't have anything to do
with what I've done. It doesn't have anything to do
with what I've believed, how long I've believed, or how much
I've believed. That doesn't have anything to
do with that. It has to do with the one in whom I have believed.
See, Christ and Him crucified is our faith. Oh, that the Lord
might teach us that and burn it into our hearts. See, sometimes
people get worried, well, I don't have much faith. No, none of
us do. I mean, we're a faithless generation. You know, we're a
weak and beggarly people. And apart from the gift of God
to give us faith, we won't have any. I mean, the Lord said to
His disciples, He said, if you had faith as a grain of mustard
seed, He said, you'd say to this mountain, move and it'd be cast
into the sea. Now was He telling them, what
you need to do is get down here on your knees and work up some
faith and you can move that mountain. Is that what He was teaching
them? No, He was teaching them that they didn't have any faith.
He said, "'Cause if you did, you could do that." Now he could
do that, could he not? Because he had faith without
measure. We have the faith that God is
pleased to give us. And he may give a man, from time
to time, faith to move him. He might do that. But by nature,
a man don't have it. And the man that has that faith
today, he won't have it tomorrow. How'd I know that? Well, look
at Elijah. I mean Elijah stood on Mount Carmel and he laughed
at the prophets of Baal, did he not? He mocked them when they
were cutting themselves and doing all these things. And he was
just sitting back there, he probably had him a toothpick, and he was
picking his teeth, and he was laughing at them as they went
through, because he said, whoever's gone, whose God answers by fire,
well then, when they'd got through with all their stuff, he had
them to wet that thing down where it was impossible for the thing
to burn, and he said, Lord, show them who you are. And the Lord
did. Now, was he a man of faith when
he stood on Mount Carmel? Did he have great faith? Well,
sure he did. I mean, he was strong. He believed God, did he not?
But look at him a few hours later, and he's cowering in fear because
he's afraid Jezebel's gonna kill him. Now, what would the Lord
teach us by that? He'd teach us that you don't,
because today's faith's not any good for tomorrow, brethren.
I mean, the Lord has to give you faith every day, every moment. You'll quit believing tomorrow. You won't believe this afternoon,
except that the Lord gives you grace to do so. And when He gives
you that grace, that gift of faith, no man can take it from
you. It can't be overturned. But oh, don't ever get to the
place where you think you can keep it, because you can't. He
alone is the one that can give it to you and sustain it. Thanks
be unto God that He does do that. He keeps us from falling. Now,
if He keeps us from falling, what does that tell us? It tells
us that if He didn't, we would fall, would we not? I mean, every
one of us is just right on the verge of turning away in unbelief
every day. But He keeps us from falling
if we belong to Him. What a glorious God He is. Now
the end of the commandment, the purpose, he says, the purpose
of the commandment, he said, the reason the Lord has given
us his truth and taught us these things, the end, the purpose
of the commandment, is charity out of a pure heart. Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind,
and thy neighbor as thyself. Now that's the purpose of the
commandment, is it not? The purpose of the commandments
that the Lord gave was not to make some rigorous exercise for
the people of God to go through. And so they could say, well,
buddy, we've done it. Now, the Pharisees thought that was it.
They said, well, man, we kept all the law. The rich young ruler
did, did he not? He said, man, I've done all that.
I mean, what's left? You know, people's got them pasted
up on signs out in their yard and stuff, and you can ride by
and read it, and it's as if they're saying, you know, here's what
I'm doing. No. Brethren, when we look at the
law, we realize what we can't do. We realize how weak and beggarly
we are. And what is the purpose of the
commandment? If you love the law of God, And it doesn't cause
you to, your love of the law of God doesn't cause you to love
your neighbor as yourself and to love the Lord your God with
all your heart, then you missed the whole purpose of having the
commandment to start with. Because the Lord said that's
the sums of the law. The end of the commandment is
love out of a pure heart and of good conscience and of faith
unfaith. So we're not trying to impress
anybody. A good conscience. What is a
good conscience? A good conscience means that
that's what a man believes when nobody's around. That's his conscience. You see, that's the place where
he's at. Notice he doesn't have one thing
that he believes when he's around people and he comes and he meets
with the brethren on Sunday and then he goes back home and tomorrow
he's thinking and believing something else. No, he's got a good conscience. He believes that to be true.
He's satisfied with it. Faith unfeigned. There's plenty
of feigned faith. When it comes down around election
time, you can see plenty of famed faith, buddy. You'll have the
politicians coming out in the woodwork. You haven't seen them,
you know, all year, but you'll see them, buddy. They'll be in
every church around, and they'll be standing up there, you know,
and hobnobbing with the people. Because they want people to know
they're men of faith, you see. I mean, all these politicians,
they're men of faith. But then, You turn around and
you wonder what kind of faith are they men of? Faith unfeigned. It doesn't have
to be put on. It's not something that you seek
to impress men with. You can't help it. See, the man
that believes the Lord Jesus Christ, he just can't help it.
He can't do anything else. He's just got to believe. Faith unfeigned, from which some,
having swerved, have turned aside to vain jangling. Swerving. That's an interesting word, is
it not? We know what it means when you're
driving down the road and you swerve. Now, you can be driving
down the road and run off the road and hit a tree. And like Mr. Purcell used to
say, depending on how fast you were going when you went off
the road, he says if you hit that tree doing 30 miles an hour,
he says it might kill you. But he said if you hit it doing
60 miles an hour, it will kill you dead. So there is a coming
off the road, but that's not what he's talking about here,
is it? He said from which some having swerved. Now what's swerving? That's where you don't actually
run off the road, but you just kind of move over a little bit
and you swerve back. So what is swerving? Well, swerving
is leaving the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's
what swerving is. Sometimes it's almost imperceptible. Sometimes people will swerve
by getting off into Bible prophecy. Now, I love reading the prophets
and the prophecy that's in the scripture, but some people make
it into a house, like a industry. They make it into like a, the
whole reason for their existence in the world is to, you know,
no, you can get somebody interested in the red heifer. Had a fellow
ask me this week, what do I think about the red heifer? You know, I didn't want to make
a mockery of him or anything, but, you know, I know what he was talking about.
I mean, you can read about this stuff. I mean, these guys come
along, and they got the Red Heifer Society, and supposedly the Jews
is looking for these red heifers. And this guy was all concerned,
because he said they found five red heifers, and they're going
to take them. And I said, well, You know, I don't know anything
about the red heifers. I know the reference in the scriptures
over numbers, I believe it is, where it speaks about all of
this stuff. But all of that stuff, to get bogged down in that, that's
swerving. See, that's moving away. That's
keeping your eyes off of the prize. Well, I'm not interested
in what the Jews are doing or how many heifers they get or
what color they are. It doesn't make any difference
to me. What does make a difference to me is Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. He is the Lord of glory. He's
the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and He's the one upon
whom our eyes, keep your eyes on the prize. See, that's what
Paul said. He said, this one thing I do,
forgetting those things that are behind. All that's behind
me. I mean, I'm gonna tell you, I've swerved enough in my lifetime
into all kinds of stuff. I mean, I've looked at every
kind of thing there is, and I'm gonna tell you that where the
truth is is in Christ. It's not in all these other things.
They sound good, they look good, and I don't have any doubt that
there's some good folks that's walking in those ways. But he said don't swerve because
he said some. Now swerving is bad enough. I
believe sometimes people swerve over there and they don't necessarily
leave the gospel, but they just kind of get sidetracked. But
he said, some have turned aside to vain jangling. Now vain jangling,
that's a worse situation than swerving, is it not? But that's
what swerving, if you swerve enough, you will eventually get
off into vain jangling and you'll lose sight of what the prize
is. So he warns us, keep your eyes straight ahead. That's what
the Lord said, did he not? He said, a man that puts his
hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom
of God. But what did he mean? Well, anybody that's ever plowed,
whether with a mule, I never did any plowing with a mule,
but I have with a tractor. And I know this, if you don't
keep your eyes straight ahead, looking at what you're going
at, pretty soon you'll be, your row will be crooked, and you
can't even hardly plow it then. So you have to keep your eyes
straight ahead. And we have one goal, as Paul
said, that I might know him. and the power of his resurrection.
That's what I want to know. That's the only one I want to
know. I'm not interested in all these other things. He said,
some have swerved, turned aside to vain jangling, desiring to
be teachers of the law. You know, there's plenty of people,
plenty of preachers that spend their time telling you what you
ought to be doing. They desire to be teachers of
the law. Some of them on the radio right now, that's all they
talk about, is what you need to be doing. And they desire
to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say, nor what
they affirm. They don't understand what they're
talking about. Because the Lord has not sent
us to tell one another what to do. The Lord has sent the preachers
of the gospel to tell men who has done what needs to be done,
and his name is Jesus Christ. And we flee to him. They desire
to be teachers of the law. They don't know. But we know
that the law is good if a man use it lawfully. We're not against
the law of God. A lot of people accuse us, not
necessarily you all, but I've been accused many times of being
an antinomian. I don't even really know 100%
what that means, because that's a big word, but it does. I know
what they're trying to say. They're trying to say the same
thing that they accused Paul of. Shall we sin that grace may
abound, or are we teaching men, well go out here and just do
whatever you want to? I mean, how foolish is that?
I mean, can a man who's constrained by the Spirit of God just disregard
the Word of God? Can it be so? I mean, didn't
the Lord send His Spirit? He said, His Spirit, I'm gonna
send my Spirit and He will guide you into all truth. So how foolish
is such an argument is that? We know that the law is good
if a man use it lawfully. Well, what is the lawful use
of the law? Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all
your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. That's the lawful
use of the law. Now, are you measuring up to
that? No, I doubt that you are. In fact, I know you're not. Neither
am I. But I'll tell you one who did
measure up, and he kept it in his jot and his tittle. He left
no stone unturned, no T without a cross, and no I without a dot.
He did it all. He fulfilled the law in our behalf. And the law is good. But it's
a terrible thing if a man uses it unlawfully. You know, if a
man uses the law to beat people over the head with it, I'm talking
about the people of God now. Now, understand this. as he goes
on to say what the laws were. He said the law was not made
for a righteous man. See, I'm not talking about the
law going out of style. I mean the law of God is in as
full force and effect as it's ever been. And that's the basis
upon which men are going to be judged as sinners. So the law hasn't quit being
what it's going to be, but you see, the lawful use of the law
for the people of God is to, as a demonstration to him that
they do not measure up to it. And Christ alone is our righteousness. Oh, what a glorious revelation
it is, dear brother, to know that there is no condemnation
to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the spirit. Our goal was not to fulfill the
lust of our flesh, Now, we find ourselves gravitating towards
that every day. But Paul said, good that I would,
I do not, but that which I would not, that I do. But he said,
when I do those things, I know that it's no longer I that do
it, but sin that dwelleth in me. Oh, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death? I thank my God through Jesus
Christ my Lord. See, there's our hope. is not
that we're going to live up to the standards that God has set
forth, but that Christ already has. That's our hope. I mean, that's where we stand,
is it not? That's our faith. We believe that.