Continue to ask you to pray for
us in our home and family and the reach of our ministry. Sometimes
it gets very deep. Pray for those who are traveling
today. Several of our families are headed out of town and others
are not well. We're going to finish the introduction
to Timothy today. First Timothy. And it's interesting to think
about how I've been praying. You ever find that prayer is
probably one of the most difficult things we do as believers? Yet
it's one of the simplest things formatted in the scripture. Pray
in this way. We see Jesus teaching us how
to pray, the attitude, the approach, what we're supposed to ask for
and with what heart we're supposed to speak. And yet it is a spiritual
battle. We fight against our own flesh,
which is tempted by that which it desires most, which is power
and freedom to have its own way, to be able to be empowered to
do its own thing, even in the context of spiritual things.
And yet, I would say that probably if we took an inventory, probably
many of us would have to admit that when we do pray, even if
we are in a good discipline of prayer, very seldom do we actually
ask the Lord to lead us not into temptation. I mean, think about
that for yourself this morning. Father, help this day be one
not of temptation. But yet what we do in the antithesis,
it's instead of trusting in God and asking this request, which
is ours in Christ, it is so, we tend to focus on our temptation
and then empower ourselves to be embattled against it. It is
not something that will ever succeed. And some of us even
get confused about what temptation is. Well, I'm no longer tempted
to be a drunkard or I'm no longer tempted to be a philanderer.
I'm no longer tempted to be a raged, angered person. I'm no longer
tempted to do this or steal that or speak ill. But beloved, those
are just the dust upon the window shade. There are deeper temptations,
sometimes temptations related to spiritual matters. When we
look in the mirror and we think, thank God, I'm not that way anymore. No, we're worse than we were.
If we really ask ourselves honestly and look at the reflection of
righteousness in the law of God that points to the person of
Christ, we are worse than we thought we were. And so, Lord, do not let me be
tempted to take these matters into my own hands. Lord, do not
let me be tempted to not pray as I should. Lord, do not let
me be tempted to think that I know better than others. Lord, do
not let me be tempted to feel as though my life has become
a reflection of your righteousness. Lord, do not let me be tempted
to forsake your assembly. Lord, do not let me be tempted
to put other things as a priority over those around me. Lord, do
not let me be tempted to feel guilty when I am self-condemned. Guilt is of the enemy. It is
not a fruit of God's Spirit in us. Beloved, that which we pray for
is more powerful than anything we could ever muster in our own
and even our God-given abilities. Timothy had a gift. He had a
gift and Paul prayed for him and Paul prayed for himself and
Paul asked the churches all throughout the New Testament. We see every
letter he asked them to pray for him. Doing so, Paul could lay down
on the cold, hard, wet, sewage-ridden floors of the prison cells where
he was, and sometimes homebound prison or, as you would say,
house arrest. But many times, Paul suffered
deeply. Infections and illnesses and brokenness. But Paul's desire was that Christ
be glorified and Christ is glorified the most in the greatest suffering
and weakness and brokenness of his people. Because when we are
weak, he is strong. When we are strong, Christ is
not. And I'm not saying not strong,
he is not. When we stand on the resolve
of our own passions and resolutions, Christ is not in that equation.
Never can He be, for Christ does not share His power. God is not
going to say, you can be like me, just get up a little bit
quicker, be stronger, curl a few more pounds. Come on, I'm waiting
for you. God waits for no man. He takes the broken, the foolish,
the blind, the wicked, the hateful, the murderous, and he snatches
them out of the mire. And he puts them in a path of
suffering that sometimes doesn't look any better. But he proves himself faithful.
Christ has proved himself faithful. as God, as man, as the Son of
God, as Messiah. And faith is that which God grants
His regenerate children that their mind is transformed to
take a deep breath in and to rest in the promises therein. And guys and gals, friends, beloved,
we have a lot to learn. We need to pray the Lord not
to lead us into temptation to forsake the Word. Let me share
with you just a few minutes about how sometimes we forsake the
Word in our culture today. We forsake the Word in the obvious
way. We don't pick it up. We forsake
the Word in a predominant way that we don't listen to it. We
need to hear it and listen. Back in the 80s, there was this
large movement, if you will, in the evangelical church that
moved into the 90s, you know, when my household was being started
and everybody was all excited about studying the Bible. We're
going to become Bible scholars. We're going to become theologians. One of the greatest things I
think that ever happened in antiquity was the burning of the Library
of Alexandria. And I used to not say that, because
I really want to know what was in there. There are things that
this world has yet to see that were probably unlocked beyond
our technological understanding that we have today, and it's
gone. But God's not going to share
His glory. Now my only thoughts in that
is I wish that there were some other writings that had been
burned through the years. Things that have taken my time
and pressed into me ideas and philosophies that took me out
of the discipline of scripture. Nothing wrong with reading, beloved.
I continue to amass an ever-growing library. I bought seven new books
last week. And I couldn't stand it, so I
bought the Kindle versions of two of them and I read them this
week. I can't stand it. But, ten years from now, what
will I say about them? Sometimes we are tempted to forsake
the reading of the Word by going into what other people think
about the Word, rather than being with Christ and His Word in purity. Sometimes we forsake the reading
of the Word, we forsake the understanding of the Word by digging into the
Bible to prove a point that we've already arrived upon. Instead
of just being taught by God, we dig through. What would the
Bible be without verses and numbers, chapters? It would be exactly
what it was intended to be. letters, records, narratives,
and instruction. Some poetry. But see, we're not
taught that. No one comes to the table of
American literature and begins to try to apply those things
to their lives. No one reads Mein Kampf and thinks, I need
to change some things the way I think about people. You don't see the book clubs
turning into the auxiliary units, turning into the education system.
Maybe you do. I've never really seen a whole
lot of people turn their life around for Charlotte's Web. But yet we'll go to the Bible
sometimes and we'll dig and we'll do. without ever intending to
understand what has been written. This letter is written by the
Apostle Paul to the Elder Timothy with which Paul had great intimacy.
Great intimacy. This was not just professor and
student, you graduate, see you later, goodbye. This was not
just mentor and mentee. Master and protege. You graduated. This was a man called by God,
appointed by Christ, by the command of Christ and sent to the Gentiles
and sent to the apostles and sent to the cities so that he
may appoint elders and instruct them. And this man was busy. And he was too busy to be in
prison, but when he was in prison, he was even busier. Paul wasn't worried about a missionary
project. Paul wasn't worried about dealing
with whether or not the offering plates were good enough in Ephesus. Paul wasn't worried about the
HVAC system down in Smyrna. Paul wasn't contemplating the
hemology of the churches. Paul was equipping men like Timothy. And it's a lifelong commitment,
even when separated by suffering and time and space. And so when we read these letters,
and this is review, we read these letters, we need to be reminded,
this is an apostle writing to an elder. So we need to read
it in that light. Lord, lead me not into the temptation
to think that I'm Timothy. Or worse, that I'm Paul. help
us all if we think we're Paul. None of us are Timothy, none
of us are Paul, none of us are in Ephesus, none of us were there
when this was happening, none of us knew Alexander or Hymenaeus,
none of us understood or experienced any of the things that were going
on in Ephesus, yet even in that truth, the reality of God's sovereign
power over His Word is that now it was written to Timothy But
we can glean from it. We can learn from it. And so
it's written for our good and for our instruction. And so as
a pastor elder. It not only teaches me and encourages
me and rebukes me, it commands of me. And that which is written here
is true for all the elders of God's church, that we are to
follow its example, obey its commands, and then teach those
things that are commanded to the church in like manner. But yet, what do we do? Nope. We love to go to these things
and say, well, Paul did this, so I'll do this. That's why missions and evangelism
is so distorted and backwards today. Because people are trying
to pretend they're LARPing. We're a LARPing family. If you
don't know what LARPing is, live action role play. We're always
pretending to be something. I bet we have more costumes in
my house than most of you have clothes in the closet. And some
of our children might put those costumes on when they're adults. You think that's odd? Well, I
guarantee you, you're wearing the clothes that you thought
looked good on a mannequin. So you're pretending to be a mannequin
or a model or whatever. Well, we love to be in a fantasy
land, don't we? It doesn't make it real. We're
not to try to be Paul. We're not trying to be apostles
and go out in the center of the world and preach the verbatim
messages of Peter that we see in Acts. We're not supposed to go emulate
the apostles in the book of Acts. Why? Because we're not apostles
and we're not sent by Christ to oversee the planting of new
congregations where there never were. The apostles do a fine job of
that. So church planting and evangelism for the most part
is quiet, invisible prayer, Bible study, discipleship, teaching
the saints of an area to grow and to mature in grace and their
knowledge and understanding of proper polity. of submission
to the scripture and to the saints and to the elders and going out
into the community as they're able and as they're gifted always
being prepared to give a reason, and that's even out of context
when I say that, but always being prepared to give a reason for
their hope in the midst of great suffering. And the reason that we see, even
in so-called, quote, reform circles, a R.C. type, Roman Catholic type,
Arminian type, free will, Pelagian type, for those of you who know
any type of church history, type, type, type, type, and I'll say
it five more times. The reason we see that is that there's just
We're inundated with action. We're inundated with activity.
We're inundated with a stage that we've watched for so many
years that we want to be that person. So much so that I remember years
and years ago when I used to do conference speaking and preaching
to camps and things of that nature. And I always ask this question
when I would get an invitation, why do you want me to come teach?
Because it was always going to be, when I got through teaching,
there was always going to be two things that were true. There
was always going to be a large crowd standing by the stage wanting
to talk about what they just heard, and they were excited
about it. And there was always going to be a smaller crowd in
the back right corner who were talking under their breath, trying
to do something about it. And they made the more noise
by the end of the week. And it was typically, Because
when we exposit scripture verse by verse and we explain it, as
I'm going to do verses 18 through 20 today, and when we explain
it, we find that it's at odds with our imagination. It's at
odds with the Phineism and the Grahamisms of our culture, which
is what we are all, no matter our theological persuasion, we
are all inundated with that type of reality. We think that evangelism
is, again, repent, believe, repent, believe, repent. God has never
saved anybody who have heard those words. Well, I'll be, and
just, now I'm a Christian. There has to be teaching in evangelism.
A proclamation of the good news that starts in creation. Look
at Timothy. I mean, look at, not Timothy,
look at, oh goodness, I've lost my mind here. Doesn't matter.
Look at the book of Acts. And you see where The apostles
and other deacons and others, they would come and just proclaim
the gospel. And they would proclaim the gospel
to people who understood its prophetic promise. And they would
encourage, they would tell the narrative, they would talk about
the story. Paul, even when he preached to non-Jewish people,
He would see that they'd all come to some conclusion about
something in some way, whether there was no God or there were
many gods, and Paul would not do what we see done today. Repair your idolatry, you wicked
devil worshipper! I mean, that's not evangelism. That's stupidity. That is me
thinking that I'm better than God in His promises. That's like the narc standing
up in the middle of the streets and going, I got your names. Stop selling drugs or I'm turning
them in. He won't last long. That's evangelism. That's one
section of evangelism. Lord, lead us not into the temptation
to think that we are your spirit. Lord, lead us not into temptation
to think that our lives are so vital for your ministry that
we must do everything possible. I think God could use our pets
more effectively if he desired. And yet here we are back to this,
back to this letter, this personal, private, intimate letter that
God in His purposes and sovereignty has said was His word, that He
was speaking through Paul to the elder Timothy. Now the elders
of the churches today can learn and glean and know what they
ought to teach in the context of the problems that were taking
place in Ephesus in like manner. This charge, Timothy, this command,
Timothy, verse 18, I entrust to you. Now, see that? He calls
him by name right there. Not just in the introduction,
he calls him again. I mean, you know, in the South,
every man's brother, every woman's sister, every man that's older
is sir, every woman that's older is ma'am, We have all these pronouns
that we use constantly in certain levels of society, in certain
aspects of the country, and even around the world. But there's something extremely
intimate when you call someone's name. Not, hey you, or I'm talking
to y'all, or brothers and sisters. If I say John, John listens. He knows I'm talking to him. Paul's writing, and he's reminding
Timothy that he's talking to him. He's reminding us, the readers,
that he's talking to, and always has been, and only ever will
be talking to, Timothy. You see how different now we
must read the Word? We do it with the Gospels, too.
Oh, Jesus went in there and turned over the tables. Hi-ya! Let's
do it. Let's go in that heretic church
over there and make a scene. That's of the devil. It's of
Satan. Making a scene is of Satan. Whether
it's on Facebook, whether it's in your living room, or whether
it's in the public market. God does not call us to do that. No, that's not what we learn
from Jesus turning over the tables. But man, if I could just get
Paul to write a letter somewhere that I could find back here behind
the maps to James Tippins, the one I can't believe is in
the faith, but is. To the knucklehead of South Georgia,
go whip those people with a scourge and knock over their tables,
and pound the pulpit, and pull down the speakers, and make me
proud. Wouldn't you love to have that? First time ever, I can completely
obey the Lord. Yes, but it's not there. When
we read a story about what Jesus did, there's never ever except
in a weird, strange ignorance that we think we're supposed
to go do likewise. What does that teach us? We need
to learn how to read what we're reading and why it was written. We don't have the right to even
verbally scourge people. We don't have the right to act
like Jesus because we're not God. We don't have the right
to speak to people the way the Pharisees were spoken to by Jesus.
Because to do so means that we are God and we know the hearts. And even when Jesus spoke to
the Pharisees, plural, He wasn't speaking to the elect, who were
among them, who at that moment bore their banner, who before
being born again would not believe in the Messiah. We don't have that authority.
And to think we do is to say, I'm like God. The same problem
that Lucifer had, the same problem that Adam and Eve had. So we read. This charge, I entrust
to you. Timothy, my child, my child in
the faith. This is the second time he said
that. My child in the faith in accordance with the prophecies
previously made about you. that by them, by them, you may
wage the good warfare. And see, now I'm getting, I feel
it now. The soldier in me is ready to
go, right? Onward, Christian soldiers marching. You know, we loved that song
as children. We loved that song, why? Because we were ready to
march into battle. You know what marching into battle
for the Lord looks like? Sheep led to a slaughter. We don't like that. Not to steal
away from the 90s, but you've been punked. You're thinking that war for
Jesus is this glorious fight. War for Jesus is silent death. Calm, peaceable, passionate teaching
of truth. Enduring evil, enduring false
teaching, enduring those who try to hurt you, enduring everything
that the culture brings. We're not here to change the
culture, people. God will change the minute areas
of the micro chasms of cultures as he deems necessary for his
purposes. And when we look through history,
when we saw a group of people living in what we would call
godliness, most of the time the gospel was gone. So the people of God are to be
transformative. We are to put aside the flesh.
We are to lay down sin. We are to help one another and
encourage one another and walk through fire with one another
to help each other through the trials of life and through obedience
and disobedience and through ups and downs but we know what sin is and God's
not put the church here so that the government would be pure because to step out of the pulpit
into the role of governor would be a major step down. But that's next week's sermon. I entrust to you, Timothy, this
command. My child, in accordance with
the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may
wage the good warfare as you hold the faith with a good conscience. By rejecting this good conscience,
some have made a shipwreck of their faith, among whom are two,
Himanias and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan,
that they may learn not to blaspheme." Now that's our text today, and
I've already preached a third of it, you just didn't know. So let's take it from the back.
What in the world is Paul talking about? Kids, you're probably
scared to death. Paul turning people over to Satan. I mean,
if we came into our children's rooms and they were not doing
what they were supposed to do, said, that's it, I'm turning
you over to Satan. I mean, that'd be horrifying, wouldn't it? Kicking
and screaming and you just put them in front of a mirror. Jokes. What is Paul? Have some special ability to
just call on the devil? Open up a hatch in the back of
the camel load and just kick guys down into the abyss? No,
because that's not where Satan is. What does Satan even mean? It means the adversary, the enemy.
What's his name? Lucifer. What is he? He's an angel, a messenger of
God, created by God. Then what does it mean to be
handed over to Satan? Did Paul give any instruction about the
blasphemy of Alexander and Hymenaeus? Did he talk about what they were
doing? Yeah, he did. He says what they're doing is
that they're devoting themselves to all this other stuff rather
than to the stewardship that comes from God through faith,
which promotes love. So you want to measure the spirituality
of anybody's ideas and actions. You ask the question, is this
promoting corrective and unifying love? Now we can all make it work that
way, can't we? I mean, I guarantee you these two guys, Hymenius
and Alexander, probably could sit down and argue and probably
deal with a lot of people. No, no, no, no, no. We're doing
what is right by the Lord because we know this is the way it should
be understood. And we know that these people
need to get on board with this. And we've read these blogs. We've
read all these books. We know dort. I would just, I want to be a
fly on the wall. On a hypothetical, when Jesus
is in the room talking to scholars, oh, I don't have to be, I've
already got it. Read the book of Matthew. And read the other two synoptics.
You bind people with a burden beyond what you can do. I mean,
Brother Trey talked about this last week, didn't he, out of
Matthew 5. You keep people out of the kingdom of heaven by your
constant distinctions and restrictions and other things that you pile
on top of them that I do not command of you. And that you,
Jesus would say, cannot even keep for yourselves. Right? That's what Jesus says to the
scholars. Does it promote? Does it promote? I understand
more today in 23 years of pastoral ministry now than I did three
years ago as to why so many of my colleagues and peers, I won't
say brothers because I don't know, but so many of my colleagues
and peers through the years in the academic circles and in the
pastoral circles have always said, don't ever teach doctrine.
Just teach lifestyle. What you should be doing, young
man, is planting seeds and harvesting these seeds and feeding the poor.
Don't ask me about what it means to be justified. No, we're not
going there. See, that's where some people
get. Why? Because we love knowledge. And it puffs us up. And we love,
when we learn a new term, like propitiation, that we've been
reading since we were three and never knew what it meant. We'd
ask great-grandpa and great-great-grandpa. I don't know. Maybe he had to
go to the bathroom. Propitiation. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that was Paul's
disease. Jesus became his disease. I don't
know. I mean, I don't know. What would you say? Before there
was the internet to connect to everybody else's foolishness.
We learn a word and we go, oh, ho, ho. And then we think about
that word and we think about the implications of that word.
We think about this reality. We think about this amazing reality
of who God is and what he's done and what he's accomplished. And
we divorce it from the fullness of his simplicity. We divorce
it from everything that he is in a whole. And we become so
blind by this one thing that we begin to develop other doctrines
and other conditions based on what we are really passionate
about right now. when the Bible would say we should
not say a word about anything unless we are qualified to teach
before the household of God. Timothy. It's a tough one. Oh! And what did we call that years
ago? The cage stage. Oh, that boy's on fire for Jesus.
Watch out, he'll step over you. Guess what? That's what cage
stage meant in my circles. That they were so excited about
the truth of the gospel, that they couldn't control themselves
and they corrected everybody. They were genuine, they were
sincere, they were right. But they just could not calm
down. It's like my puppy, you know? I'm the only one that can let
her out of the kennel. I let her out of the kennel, she comes
out, she yawns, she stretches, she sits down and she looks up
at me. Waits for the next command. My wife opens the kennel, it's
like a velociraptor coming out. Release the kraken. Bloody nose,
stuff falling around, chairs falling over. Cage stage. You really need to
be put up. But yet I learned, even two years
ago, that for some circles, that is a pejorative term. For people
who want to encourage people in the truth, they need to be
put in cages because they're bothering people. I've never
heard that before then. But either way, no matter what
side of the fence you sit on as to what that means depends
on where you live in the country and whether you're in a Baptist
circle or a Presbyterian circle. It really does. Or any iteration
therein. But what it does show us is that
we are in need of some instruction. We need to learn that we cannot
make ultimate any one reality of God. Because to do so is to
make Him no longer God. It's to put His attribute above
Him or our knowledge of Him above Him. That's why there are people in
the world today that think that because I continue to pound what
we would know historically as Sola Scriptura, I continue to
pound that in such a way that I am an idolater of this leather
paper combination. That I worship the composition
here. Now I like this. I like it. It's held up better than any
Bible I've ever had. Ever. I wish the print was bigger.
But it's not the paper and the goat skin that I like. It's not
that that we worship, is it? It's not even my knowledge of
it. It's not the facts and figures of a systemized theology that
we like. It's not that at all. It's the
person to whom it points. And so my daughter, who is eight,
can love Christ as much as I can based on her limited understanding
of who He is by the grace of God given to her to believe that
He satisfies God's just wrath for her and for all the other elect people. Hymenaeus and Alexander refused
that. They refused that. They refused simple grace. They
refused the instructions of the apostles, hence the letter to
Timothy. And they refused the instruction of the apostles through
the oversight of the elders of the body. And so Paul turned him over to
Satan. What does that mean? Well, we
see it in 1 Corinthians, don't we? Turn him over to Satan. What is that?
About the man and his stepmother. Turn him over to Satan. What
does that mean? Put him out of the fellowship. Don't let him
interact with you anymore. Why? So that he will stop and
turn and be restored. Why did Paul throw out these
two men from the church? Could you imagine the apostles?
One of them walking in here Snatching me by the collar and chucking
me out the back door and saying, until James comes in here and
asks you to forgive him and stops this X, Y, Z, don't let him back
in here and don't associate with him. But what is our job? To wait for that restoration.
On whose terms? On the terms of the apostles,
which are the terms of Christ. Which is what? To not devote
themselves and to stop teaching it. We don't believe in penance.
We don't believe that people have to make restitution and
come to all these different conclusions. We don't believe they have to
go through the timeline of their entire existence and pray that
God becomes the mighty psychiatrist that pulls out all the things
that they've ever thought, said, done, or considered in the context
of theology. and then sit down and make the
laundry list of wicked things that they did not know, thus
then at that moment they can prove to be regenerate. That's
satanic and demonic. And yes, I've been rebuked for
saying that, but beloved, that's what Paul says. Paul says that
we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against the powers
and the principalities of darkness. That is the enemy in all the
fallen angels therein. James says that it's not God
who is tempting us, but that we are tempted by the very nature
of our flesh, that which we desire deep within, that when the enemy,
by his sovereign purposes, lures us by certain ways, the reason
we're lured is because we like what we see. We desire it. My father's retired now and he's
been trying to get me back into fishing. gone fishing since 1991. I haven't been hunting in any real sense
since probably about that time. And I'm looking at fishing poles
and stuff. I mean, back whenever the day
it was, you know, the cheap little Zebco with the spinner bait or
the worm. Or you just got the cane pole.
with a hook and a cricket, a worm. Or if you want catfish, just
throw a rock out there, it doesn't matter, they'll eat anything.
Grits, we used to catch catfish with grits. Throw grits on the
water, they come up, you scoop them with a net. But if I'm gonna catch a certain
type of fish and I just put an empty hook in the
water, I'm probably not gonna catch anything. You gotta have
bait, you gotta have something that that fish wants. That's
what temptation is for us, isn't it? So we find ourselves falling
in the ditch and walking off the cliff and refusing the instruction
of the apostles because that's what we really want. What does
it ultimately say? It ultimately says that we know better than
God and we're going to do it our way. We're not coming back
to church because our feelings are hurt. We're not going to
do this because we don't like you. We're not going to submit
to the Word of God because X, Y, Z. We're not going to be and
just fill in the blank. Who talks that way? Satan. So if I say it's satanic or demonic,
I'm not trying to get a rise, I'm trying to be biblical. And they thus blasphemed the
Lord, didn't they? They blasphemed the Lord because
they did not obey the apostles. They did not obey the elders
who said to them, stop talking about this. Sit down. Let's correct it. Correction
is putting it back in place. The reason that discipline exists
in the body is so that everybody may come back together at peace. On an ultimate end, it's like
a timeout. You sit over here until you can
learn to play nice. I'll play nice. OK, good. Come on back. And when we're restored, we rejoice. Because Paul will say, and he
makes it clear in a lot of different places, in Jesus even, likewise
in Matthew 18, Paul will say, and this is going to shock some
of you, that those who refuse the instruction after discipline,
consider them not in the faith. Because if they're in the faith,
God will call them back. That's His promise. So what do
we do? We consider them. Do we know? No. We're not to
say, you're lost. We're to consider them. We're
to treat them as if. We're to evangelize them. We're
to express, just like we would any other lost person, but more
so than with a little heaviness of saying, because you confess
to be Christ, but you refuse this instruction, you are denying
the gospel because the gospel is also in the Word of God. You
can't pick and choose. It's all or none. And we can't
make that emphasis in a dogmatic way in the context of judging
someone else, but we can make that dogma in the context of
instructing someone else. So Paul says that these two brothers
have made a shipwreck of their faith because they rejected the
good conscience of the truth of Christ and the instructions
of Christ to the apostles. The aim of this command is love
that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere
faith. These people swerving from these things have wandered
away into worthless talking." You know the difference in a
heretic and not a heretic? What they say. We've been friends for 20 years
and somebody says something off and we go, that friendship's
over. Folks, that's not the way it
should be. Seek out unity. An 84-year-old woman years and
years ago, this is 2008, petitioned to be a member of
the church, and we, of course, we meet together with people.
We talk to them. We ask the questions, and they
ask questions. It's not just like, come on down.
What's your name again? Yeah, here's John. He's joining the
church. What's your last name? Oh, John Smith. Okay, good. Welcome
aboard. Brother, right? Yeah, got it.
That's just silly, you know? This woman, we sat down with
her and we're just going through some basic doctrines like the
divinity of Jesus. And she had taught stool for
51 years. And she stopped and she slid
her little glass down. Very, what do you call it? Elegant
lady. And she said, Pastor, I don't
understand how Jesus was God when he died on a cross because
God cannot die. I said, then what do you do with
the Bible that says he is God, he is eternally God, he has always
been. John 1 and Colossians 1 and Hebrews
1. She goes, I don't know, I just assumed that he was humanity
and that after he resurrected then his divine nature came onto
us humanity. I'm like, that's pretty smart. And the other two elders in the
room were about to have a heart attack. And if they'd had an
alarm. And so we just talked for an
hour. And we left that meeting with
me under explaining to this person what the Bible said and that
philosophically and in our understanding and reasoning we're not able
to really reconcile how God can be both truly man fully and also
equally fully God. But yet the two had not merged
in that context that there was a divine nature and a human nature
in Jesus that operated in synergy according to the will of God. So we're not supposed to understand
that. So we left that meeting going, let's have some more conversations.
And after about two or three more times, this woman, it just
sort of clicked. Wow, that's great. Because until
she received that as truth and understood it, she couldn't be
received into the fellowship of the church as a member. But after that first meeting,
one of the other brothers with me said, I just like to, I just
like to jumped up and told her to get out of the room. Like,
why? I don't know, it's just my spirit.
So I'm glad you didn't. Because that would have been
bad for you. You would have been disqualified. You couldn't have
been an elder anymore. Or for a few weeks, you know? You'd
had to take some time out to fix all that. What a mess. You
don't scream at people. You don't jump up and put your
fingers in people's faces. That's becoming unfitting. And
that feeling that causes that reaction is never of God. Ever,
ever, ever of God. When Jesus got angry, Jesus is
decisively angry. And He never sinned. When I feel
anger in me, I already know it's sin. And if I don't watch it
and put it into check, that everything that comes after that is going
to be sin. And so I have a decision to make. I can either keep the
sin inside and not let the kettle go, or I can make everybody feel
the steam. To which Overseers must not be quarrelsome,
must not be violent, but must at all times and always, just
like every other Christian in the fellowship of the saints,
must be gentle and patient. There is nothing that an elder
must be that you also must not. Everything that an elder must
be, you also must be. The elder must be A poster child of good membership. So he handed them over, church
discipline. They made a shipwreck of their faith. They denied the
good faith and conscience. So now Timothy's given this charge.
I want you to see this now. And if we took the first 17 verses
out, well, verses 3 through 17, we could take them out. The letter
can really begin right here. This is not filler over here.
Paul says some important stuff and some really good stuff, but
now the letter, the tone of the letter actually takes form. Paul
is saying, I command you now. And I'm entrusting you. What
is the word entrusting? This is something that must be
done and I expect you to do it. And not only am I expecting you
to do it, like take out the trash. I need you to do this for me.
I need you to pay this bill. I need you to deal with, I need
you to bring the papers and my blanket and my jacket rather.
That's what he tells him in the second letter. I need you. I'm entrusting this to you. I
need you to get this letter over here. I need you to send Epaphroditus.
I need this to take place. Go to Philippi. I need you to
do this. I'm entrusting. This is important.
I'm entrusting you. But I'm also commanding you.
And I'm entrusting you with this command. And everything else he writes,
starting in chapter 2, is part of the instruction to Timothy
of dealing with the issue of these false teachings. Because
the false teachers have been handled, haven't they? Now the
remnant of that has been spreading through all the congregations.
And so there are probably, let's just say for the sake of simplicity,
that there's a hundred other people now who are propagating
the same nonsense that these two men have propagated. And
Paul himself has corrected them and they refused his instruction.
So now Paul's giving the same instruction to Timothy on how
to deal with these things. What are we to tell the church
to do? What are we supposed to help understand people who teach?
How should they be qualified? And what tools is Timothy going
to have in order for him to successfully mitigate these things as a gentle,
patient overseer? And this is it. Timothy, my child. I want you to hear this. I think
I preached a whole sermon on this, didn't I? Timothy, my child. call you by name. Is that not
Christ-like? Does Christ not say that I know
my, they know my voice and I call them by name? Isn't that the
relationship we should have with other people? Should we not be
so invested in the lives of one another even when we find one
another in sin that our first response is to Passionately and
and and and plead with them and compel the intimacy of our love
for them That we invest ourselves into their lives that we may
walk with them in this fire Any other thing is not Christ
like Timothy My child And he reminds
him he reminds him of the prophecies made about you in accordance
with these things that have been said concerning you. What are
those things? Well, if you go over to chapter
4, yeah. He tells him in verse 11,
command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your
youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct,
love, purity, until I come. Devote yourselves to the public
reading of scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching. Verse 13 of
chapter 4. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy.
What does that mean? Someone spoke it over you and
what? Affirmed it in you. There's no
such thing as a self-affirmed Bible teacher. That's nonsense. It's nonsense. There's no such
thing as a self-affirmed pastor. At the minimum, God calls a guy
out of the wilderness in a place where there are no real churches,
there's going to be somebody that will take note of who he
is and start to see if he's qualified. Because there's somebody in the
world that can measure him one day. And at the minimum, Paul's
letter to Timothy will do just that. It'll do just that. Prophecy when the council of
elders laid their hands on you. They didn't beat it into him.
They stood in front of everybody and they put their hands on the
one who they approved of and said, we affirm this man is called
to teach. Why? Because he had the gift
of teaching. Beloved, the gift of teaching the scripture is
a gift of God. Teaching material is one thing.
Teaching the outlines is another thing. Teaching, you know, this
is what this means, this is what that means. That's okay. Anybody
can learn to teach. But to take this text and be
concerned not just with its purity and with its instruction and
with what it's trying to teach, but with the lives of the people
that you're talking to and that you talk about with God every
single day, this is the call. It's not administration. That's
a deacon's job and calling. It's a bloody, spiritually burdened
intimacy that connects you with people that they don't even understand
how connected you are. And so you gotta You gotta really,
really, really hold fast to the gift. And if truth be known, beloved,
there's nothing you can do to get away from it. So Timothy's first tool was the
intimacy with Paul. Somebody else walking with him,
giving him wise instruction. Because he didn't know. You know when you learn how to
deal with things? When you go through them the first time. So if you've got two grills to
put together, the first one takes you a day, and you think, I can
do this now blindfolded. Because you know how. When you
deal with something that first comes along your way, how are
you supposed to know how to deal with it? That's where wisdom comes in.
And so Paul is saying, you have me. I am here. I'm writing this
to you to help you, to instruct you, to give you the tools that
you need. You have my love, Timothy. You have my encouragement. You
have my equipping. You have all that Christ has
made me for yourself. I am everything. If nothing,
I live for you, Timothy. What do you think about that? That's the Christian faith, especially
in the pastoral area. I mean, do you want to be just
part of a program or do you want intimacy? You want 60 acquaintances
or do you want a good friend? Paul was Timothy's first tool. And then secondly was his calling,
the prophecies made according to those made about you. And
those who made them, remember who they were. Remember what
Paul writes to the Romans in Romans 13 about the government
and those who give an account for your faith. In Hebrews, he
talks about the same thing and those who give an account to
the Lord for the overseeing of the joy of your souls and all
of these things. You know, this is something else,
beloved. And I'm going to be honest with
you, there is a strange lack of true pastors in the world.
And just because they can articulate the gospel doesn't make them
a shepherd. Balaam's donkey articulated God's word. It doesn't make them a shepherd.
Because a shepherd not only teaches the gospel and points everything
to Christ, a shepherd oversees the flock and looks and watches
and then teaches the instructions of Christ. And then what? Equips the saints to do the work
of the ministry. How? Through the gift of teaching.
Ephesians 4. You know that was Timothy's church,
right? Ephesus. So Paul wrote that amazing letter
to the church of Ephesus, it's like the constitution of every
true assembly. This is what we are, this is whose we are, this
is what we're supposed to be doing. And finally we see this, is that
through that gift, that by these prophecies, by these proclamations,
by these anointing and the giftedness of God, you, Timothy, will wage
the good warfare. You'll wage the good warfare. Not guerrilla warfare, not get
my own wayfare, but the good warfare. And there's some things we know
because Paul wrote it down. But when he writes Timothy, the
final letter, he says that I remember with tears and I'm praying for
you day and night. And I long to see you that I
may be filled with joy. I'm reminded of your sincere
faith, and he says that a faith that first dwelt in your mother,
Eunice, or your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice,
and now I am certain and very well convinced dwells in you.
For this reason I remind you again to fan into flame the gift
of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For
God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and of love and
of self-control. So therefore do not be ashamed.
the testimony of our Lord, nor do not be ashamed of me, but
share in the sufferings by the power of the gospel." So here
we know what Paul has said and we continue to see it. This good
warfare is a warfare without fear. Beloved, this is where
I have failed many times as a pastor because fear cripples me. I'm
not scared of physical things, except wind. I'm not scared of a couple of
guys trying to hurt me. I've been in gunfire. It's frightening,
but you know, you don't lose your cool, you just... But I'm scared when people Destroy
your joy. I'm scared when people lose sight
of the gospel and lose sight of the word and its authority
and they become agitated and fearful in themselves. And then
I want to fix it. I want to get into that mix and
try to organize unity. And the only way I know how is
to continue to teach the scripture and to call everybody to the
same place at the same time at the table. of submission to Christ
that we can start at this platform for He is sovereign over it.
And the proper means to the end will come through the obedience
to the Word. But my fear comes when I think
that this warfare is something I have to do on my own. And it's not there. So, beloved,
I can say this, that it is OK. And we are OK. No matter who
comes in and out of our lives. We are OK when God and His sovereignty
purposes the things that hurt us the worst. We are OK. And the good warfare
As Paul will tell Timothy to do, he begins and he says, first
of all, what does he say? First of all, I urge that supplications
and prayers and intercessions and thanksgiving be made for
all peoples. So what is Paul's first instruction
to Timothy on dealing with these false teachings? Pray for everybody. And you know what type of prayer,
and that's why I started with prayer, because I know it's going
to end with prayer, but you know what kind of prayer that Timothy did not
pray? He never prayed an imprecatory prayer. Because Paul has never instructed
anyone to pray for anyone in that way. And true prayer never
has a haughty spirit, a self-righteous or arrogant spirit. True prayer
does not come to the Lord in hubris and confidence of position. But true prayer comes humbly
and broken with confidence of power. That whatever we ask in the name
of Christ will be done. It is done. So we think, we talk,
we write, we gossip, we call, we post, we discuss, we debate,
we argue, we fuss. Whether it be politics, or economy,
or family issues, or relationships, or doctrine, or whatever, and
all of that is just garbage, it's just trash, it's just worthless
garbage. Some of us even write poetry
and act like we're trying to be, this is passive-aggressive
stuff. Oh, I'm a poet, opining. The only God-ordained poet was
David. And we see what that got him. Beloved, we pray. We pray they may lead a peaceful
life that is quiet, godly, and dignified. The word dignified
is boring in our culture. But even when Jesus was undignified,
He was dignified. Even when they took away his
human dignity, he was dignified because he spoke not a word in
his own defense. He gave himself up to be crushed
by the will of the Father, that his body and his blood would
be broken and spilled for the remission of the sins of his
people for whom he paid their price. And then God, in His timing,
as He wishes, when He wishes, He makes alive His people in
the hearing of this good news. And He gifts them a change of
mind to believe not only in the truth of what is said, but in
the person to whom it points. And that's the reason all of
us today can say we know that we have eternal life, not because
we have faith, but because Christ died for us. Let's pray. Father, as we're able to understand
this, we thank you. Lord, I pray that you continue
to give me calmness and take away fear. Lord, let my only terror be in
the reflection of knowing who you truly are in your righteousness
that will ultimately and immediately be doused by the refreshing water
of your grace. That you are a father of mercy
to your people. And so, Father, that is a satisfaction
to me. That is a resolve that I did not make. But that is one
that you have put in our hearts. That nothing will satisfy us
but the peace of Christ. And because it is our greatest
satisfaction, all the other things that we experience will not rock
us. It will not take us away. And so, Lord, as we've been praying,
we continue to pray to lead us not into temptation. For, Lord, you are the one of
all power and all glory, the king of ages, immortal, invisible
forever. In Christ we pray. Amen.