Let's think about the scripture
this morning specifically, not just Timothy, but the Bible. What does it mean to be given
instruction? I mean, you know, if we were
at an educator's conference, we could ask that question and
we'd have a lot of different answers. We could talk about
standards of learning. We could talk about differentiation
and academic We could talk about learning
styles, behaviors, but what does it mean to be instructed? Like
if I say that Timothy is instructed by Paul, and then some people
would say, well, what about our instruction from the letter to
Timothy? What are we going to be told
from Paul? Well, here's the answer to that
question. We're not going to be told anything from Paul. Timothy
was told this from Paul, and we glean from Paul. However,
inside the instruction of this letter, Paul is telling things
to Timothy that only Timothy should do. For example, drink
a little wine for your stomach. That's not a command to the church.
It's a command to Timothy. That's a friendly advice. That's
a pastoral, apostolic wisdom. It doesn't apply to me. It doesn't
apply to you. But we can learn it, can't we?
We can learn that that's what Paul said to Timothy in this
context. And we can say, huh, I wonder if that'd work for me.
Let me drink a little wine from my stomach. And sure enough,
maybe it would. Maybe it'd be Pepto-Bismol, I
don't know. I've been thinking about Timothy a lot because in
this season of my life, I have come to end up with a lot of
GI issues due to stress. And I thought, maybe wine's the
answer. But I can't drink wine, I just
can't do it. I have a, I don't know, aversion
to drinking wine. But some of you may go, yeah,
that works for me. So what do I do? Coffee. Coffee, that is my drug of choice.
Doesn't really help my stomach though, but it makes me feel
like the world is all settled. But instruction. So in this letter,
the point I'm trying to make is that there's going to be a
lot of things taught. And a lot of times we misconstrue
the Bible. We get so blind by the fact that
the Bible is a group, especially the New Testament, is a collection
of letters written to specific people on a specific occasion
with a specific purpose. that we sometimes internalize,
and worse, we actually specialize the Bible as if it's written
to us individually. Okay, the New Testament is not
written to us. It's not written to James Tippins. It's written for me, but not
to me. And so when we read a letter,
for example, I'm going to read the letter of Paul to the Romans. This is a letter written by the
Apostle Paul. We're going to deal with the
Apostle and his authority this morning, thus the authority of
Scripture in and of itself, thus the authority of God to command
the church to submit to the apostolic authority of the Scripture and
so on and so forth. But when Paul wrote to the letter
to the church of Rome, he's writing to the elders there, to instruct
the church in these things so that the church may know who
they are in Christ. That's why Romans was written.
Because the Roman people who had been born again by the divine
power of God the Spirit were very, very ignorant of justification. Very, very ignorant of election. Very, very ignorant of what it
meant to truly have Jesus Christ as propitiation. So they felt
insecure. So Paul wrote that letter generally
to the churches of Rome. All those who claim Christ who
were together in assembly under unified purposes according to
the scripture with elder oversight and those serving each other
in the assembly. Romans is not written to any individual Christian
that ever lived, and it never will be. So an individual Christian
reading the New Testament is like a researcher on Mars. Has absolutely no application. I want you to hear that. Now,
this isn't new. I've been saying this my entire adult life. I've never, ever not said this. This is not new, but beloved,
there is no application of the New Testament letters except
that we are together in the body. Period. Now, oh well, now I read
Ephesians and I, I mean, you know, I saw, speak the truth
in love, so I've been trying to keep it real and speak the
truth in love. Listen, unless you are subject to the whole
context of Ephesians, of that letter, and in the right occasion
for that letter to be understood and lived out. It has no application. Yes, you may be given by the
Lord and the Spirit some conviction and it may change your demeanor.
Just like when we read and hear the gospels and the gospel truths
of the letters, it encourages us. But why do the apostles teach
this to the church? To encourage the church to be
the body. Okay. Now, In Timothy, first and second,
two letters, this was written according to my understanding
of the history. This was written later in Paul's
life. I would say two years before
he died, two years before his head was taken from his body.
And I take that because 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy was written basically
within just a year of each other. And Paul is on his last leg in
2 Timothy. Physically and emotionally, he
is finished. He even tells Timothy, I'm being
poured out like a drink offering. I am done. My life is almost
over. I need you. I need John Mark.
I need a jacket. I'm about to freeze. Luke is
with me, tending to my sicknesses. And lo and behold, bring those
letters that we started writing. We've got to finish writing letters.
We've got to finish writing. We've got to get some things
down on paper before I die. This is the command of God. And
so then we don't hear from Paul again. That's it. And so now we have these letters
before us, and they have been put in the Bible by the Spirit
of God because they are useful. And it's interesting that the
very thing that we uphold, the authority of Scripture and the
sufficiency of Scripture, is found in Paul's instruction to
Timothy. So Paul is writing to Timothy, his child in the faith. Let's look at the first two verses.
I'm not gonna go any past verse one and two this morning. It
says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God our
Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. To Timothy, my, and if
your Bible doesn't say my there, it's wrong, my true child in
the faith. grace, mercy, and peace from
God the Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord. So here is the
introduction to this letter. Here's the salutations, the greetings. Good to see you, Timothy. This
letter is written by Paul to Timothy. And in this letter, he tells
Timothy to instruct the church in certain things. Now see, some
people probably will hear this sermon one day and they'll argue
with me in their head. No, everything commanded in the
Bible is commanded to every person. Everything taught in the Bible,
that's not true. That's just really ridiculous to even say.
Because I am not a mother, nor can I be a mother. I am not a
wife, nor can I be a wife. I'm not a daughter, nor can I
be a daughter. So those things instructed to those particular
people in the Bible have no relationship to me, except that now I learn
what they have been taught to do. Husbands now, I know what
husbands and ladies, you know, what husbands have been taught
to do elders Not everybody's gonna be an elder If God's called
you to be an elder you will be an elder there's no way around
it and you can't quit I Can show you all my resignation
letters they stack deep You just can't you want to you
just can't It's not about decisions and professions and vocation,
it's about call. The good, the bad, the ugly,
the indifferent, it's all there. And so, not everybody's gonna
be an elder, so not everybody's going to be taught to do certain
things. Church members are not taught
to interfere in the oversight of the church. Church members
are not taught to teach the Bible to the church. Think about that for a second.
Church members are not taught to be elders, but they're taught
what elders are to be. Why? Because that's the whole ball of wax. We're one body. If I don't know what my ears
are for, I don't know what my eyes are supposed to do if I
don't know how I'm supposed to use my feet. Oh my goodness, you see
the point? We've got to know each other's
responsibilities. We've got to know each other's
qualifications. And when we get to Timothy, when
we get into these letters, we're going to start seeing some things.
And specifically, we're going to start seeing that Paul is
going to make a lot of fuss about several different things going
on in this church. And where is Timothy's church?
The whole city of Ephesus, every believer that lives within the
boundaries of Ephesus, Timothy is their head pastor. I'm just
gonna say that by way of explanation rather than dealing with it theologically
or ecclesiologically. It's not necessarily, there's
no such thing as a head elder or head pastor, you know. Elders
oversee. But he's one of the only ones,
just like, Titus was left in Crete to appoint elders. And
so that's another thing that we learn in the Bible about the
organization of the church. The church has God-commanded
organization, God-commanded submission, God-commanded headship. And there's
no way around it. There's no manly wisdom. There's
no earthly wisdom. There's no organizational structure.
There's no leadership development that can come in and say, God
doesn't know best. We're going to do it this way.
But that's how I was taught as a young boy. And I say young
boy when I first went into the ministry and I'm thinking, OK,
everybody who claims the name Jesus, they all believe the truth
of the Bible. Guess what? They don't believe
the Bible. There's this ministry packet.
There's this gospel presentation. It's A, B, C, D. And if you order
now, we'll give you E. Free shipping. And then it's replicated. And for people who are taught
from Scripture, that stuff is really strange. And then what
do they do? Then they use Scripture to subject
people who question what's happening according to Scripture to tell
them to not question what's happening not according to Scripture. You
follow me? And that's the American church. We need something for
our children. Sit them in the seats. Let them
hear the Word. And then when you get home, answer their questions
and let them hear the Word again. So Paul's writing to Timothy,
and this letter is very intimate. He's writing to him. He calls
him a child in the faith. Why? Because Paul was the instrumental
person who brought Timothy to the truth. Who saved him? Jesus
Christ on the cross. Who illuminated him? Who gave
him faith? God the Holy Spirit. Who brought the truth to Timothy? Well, God did. How? Through Paul. Through Paul. Through the word
of Paul's mouth, teaching him about the things of Christ, teaching
him about these things. And so Paul's going to deal with
all sorts of problems. He's going to go straight in
from this introduction to false teachers who are abusing the
law, abusing the commandments, abusing all these things, who
promote speculations and all sorts of stuff. Then he's going
to go into issues of how Christians should be taught to pray, elders,
one of their primary jobs we see in the book of Acts. Why
is it that we had to ordain men and women to be servant leaders
in the church? And I say that because it's sort
of the way, but a servant, a slave, a deacon, Every one of us are
servants, slaves, deacons to one another, but yet there is
also administrative duties in those things to which the elders
cannot take time out of their calling to do, because when they
do, according to Paul, Timothy, you are usurping the call. And
that's why I don't counsel like I used to, because I'm not a
therapist. And so now when I do counsel,
it is pastoral. This is what the Word of God
says to do. And some people go, And they never talk to me again.
But the sheep of Christ, as hard as it may be, we stay centered
on what the scripture teaches. And then he's gonna talk about
all sorts of things. He's gonna give qualifications for those
who are in, not leadership, but those who are in head positions
of service. And we'll talk about what it
means to be the head. Christ is the head because he's Lord,
but what was Christ's headship? How was it modeled? Service. Submission. You see that in Philippians,
right? The mind of Christ, that he was
all in all ways equal as God. He did not take equality with
God as something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing,
obedient unto death as a slave on the cross. Therefore God highly
exalted him that abound in the name of Jesus. Not just Jesus
the word, but Jesus the anointed one. Jehovah saves the anointed
one that's named that. Not everybody that's named Jesus.
Jesus is a very common name. Very common name. But the one who is anointed by
God, God exalted him. Every knee will bow and every
tongue confess on heaven and earth and under the earth that
Jesus Christ is the God Lord of heaven. He is Yahweh. So Paul's gonna say those who
are head servants, they need to be as qualified as anyone
should be. And then he pulls this list,
as you'll see in the months to come, he pulls this list from
all the other writings of the New Testament, and it shows us
that everything that is required of a lead servant, of an elder
or a deacon, is required of every member of every church. And that
if anyone fails in these areas, they need to be corrected. What
is correction? That's church discipline. What is church discipline?
Church discipline is the invisible interest and action of good oversight. And I say invisible because when
it's done well and biblical, it just works itself out. I mean, remember our children
when they're little, back before LED lights existed, you know.
The lamps that you had clipped to your headboard at home were
like six billion degrees. The sun went out when you turned
those things on. And they would catch fire. If they fell in the
bed, they would combust. It would burn you up alive in
your bed. And I mean, since I was like 12, I had one. And we learned,
don't touch them things. Don't push them down to the bed,
to the wood. Don't put your book up there to it. Don't do it.
Well, Katie was the only child that we had who was, you know,
still in the stage where those lights were available. And it
even had, hot, do not touch, on the outside of the bowl. Because
I'm not kidding, it was a good 200 degrees. I mean, you could
cook some toast on that sucker. And she tried to reach up one
night while she was laying in the bed with Robin and me. And
Robin said, no, hot. She tried to reach up, no, it's
hot. It's hot, no. She reached up, she finally just,
Robin just let her put her finger on it, and it, well, it looked
like Rudolph the Red-Fingered Rain Child. It was something
else. She cried and we felt bad. But
we didn't write a newspaper article about it. We didn't where there
was no social media. You know, it was no internet, really. There
was no free internet, he had to he had to be part of community
they had to pay for like 50 bucks a month for like two hours worth
of stuff. We didn't go and talk about it. We didn't take pictures
and post it everywhere. We didn't use it as an example,
even though I'm doing it now 24 years later. You know, we
didn't use it as an example for everybody to know what kind of
parents we were and all this. We just dealt with it and it
was over. And people said, what happened
to Katie's finger? Why she got a bandage on the finger? We said, well, she's
just learning. She's just growing. She's learning not to touch hot
stuff. And the reason none of the other children touched that
is because, for two reasons, we were phasing out the fire
hazards, and then also their older sister was like, don't
touch that, it'll burn you to death. You'll catch on fire and die. You know,
did God say, God said not to touch it. You know how it gets
worse and worse? Don't look at the lamp, you'll combust. Don't
say the word lamp, you'll die. I mean, you know, what's the
point? That's discipline. She wasn't
in trouble. She got the consequence of that.
We taught her sometimes through the pain of what should be done,
and that's what the letter of Timothy is all about. It's a
disciplinary letter, but we don't like the word discipline unless
we're in the military or unless we're in the gym. I need discipline.
We need discipline. Discipline is corrective action
and instruction. It's never punitive. Where did
that come from? That's not punitive. That's what the flesh does. The
devil goes, You're not in trouble. If you're in trouble, if any
of you think you're in trouble, you need to take a self-inventory. But church discipline, church
correction is part of the oversight. It's part of the job of the elders
of the church to pay attention, to go, hey, don't, Mike, don't
put your finger in the electric outlet. Why not? It looks so cool. My finger fits
right in there. It's gonna fry you, man. Hey,
don't, don't get so bent out of shape when so-and-so says
something to you. Hey, don't get so bent out of shape. What
am I supposed to do? Yeah, the Bible says for us just
to endure and just be patient and to be kind and to teach and
to remind each other of the gospel, remind each other of all this
goodness that Christ has and what he's done and his attitude
and his mindset and what we're supposed to be all about. We're
not here to police each other. There's nowhere in the Bible
that gives us permission to police anybody. And so when we're taking
notes like a detective in our mind and taking the personal
inventory of whose sins are doing what and who aren't fulfilling
their obligations, it is because we are not fulfilling ours. And Lord have mercy, I wish the
critical texts, the critical analysts would have found more
evidence for John 7 through the end, John 7 into John 8 so we
could really harp on the stone throwing mob. But it is true, Jesus says, if
you've been forgiven much, you better forgive little. For by
the measure that you forgive, you will also be forgiven. What
is forgiveness? It seeks no restitution. It seeks reconciliation. And
so this text is gonna have a lot of things about how we ought
to live and what we ought to be doing. And beloved, they're
not shadows. This instruction is not for us
to look at and go, oh, he's showing us who Jesus is. No, we see who
Jesus is. For Jesus has never sinned. We're being called to do these
things, to obey them. And when we don't, we suffer
the consequences of that. Condemnation? Absolutely not.
Hell? No way. That's what condemnation is.
The wrath of God? No. But the anger of God? You
better believe it. We read it in Psalm 30. What did the psalmist
say? Oh, Lord, your anger is only for a moment, but your mercy
stands forever. We've been adopted, beloved.
I've been brought into Christ. We're into Christ, not into each
other, though we are into each other. We've been brought together
for each other into Christ. We're into Christ. So when we
ignore the instructions of the New Testament, we are truly antinomian
and we are truly anti-Christ. You see, we have to listen. James is, I mean, I'm not there
yet, because I'm not teaching right now midweek, but James
is clear. Do what the Word tells you to
do. Paul is so clear that says anyone who doesn't do what I
say in these letters, count them not a brother. Oh, we're judging
not by the gospel testimony. No, we're not judging their salvation. We're not giving them our intimacy.
Get them out of here. But yet what I see in the world
today, what I see in my own flesh is, oh man, you know what would
be real easy? I see these people acting like
this, I'm gonna act like this. I'm gonna do like, I'm gonna
speak like this. I'm gonna act, I'm gonna confront things the
way they're doing it and see how they like it. I'm gonna put
their finger on the light switch, see how they like it, you see?
It's not the way it works. And then Paul's gonna warn Timothy
again against false teachers and what the elders are supposed
to do there. And most of all, he's going to then start talking
about how the body of Christ is supposed to operate in its
intimacy that the older men and the older women in their jobs
and the younger men and the younger women in their jobs and what
we're supposed to be about doing. And if everybody that gathered
together under the truth of Jesus Christ would listen and read
the letters to Timothy, especially the elders, an elder that doesn't
know I, II Timothy and Titus doesn't know his job. And I love how people who are
not elders know what elders ought to be doing, you know? I've been
told that recently in an email. And I'll just leave it at that.
But everything that person told me that I wasn't doing in the
email, none of it's in scripture. You know, none of it's in scripture.
Well, you got to make, we live in a different age and we got
to do something. Then I had another brother call
me Friday and just encouraged me to make sure that what I teach
is as relevant 250 years from now without any Paul's as it
is today. And how does I do that? By teaching
from a text by the authority of God through the apostles that's
2,000 years old that never changes. There's no relativism. We don't
have to have any cultural explanations. I don't have to have anecdotes
and illustrations. Scripture. And that's the point
I'm getting across. prayerfully. Here we have Paul,
and he's writing this letter as a friendly letter. He loves
Timothy deeply, but it's a letter that is incredibly important.
And though it is an intimate letter and a friendly letter,
it holds great authority. It's not just saying, hey Timothy,
I want to give you some things to do. I want you to, what does
he say? Teach other people what I'm teaching
you. So Timothy's job was to learn
who he was supposed to be, by the authority of Christ, learn
what good behavior looked like in the context of his position
as an overseer, and then teach others in the church to do the
same, and then teach other men who have the call to be overseers
to continue to grow in the truth so that they also can do it.
That's why, you know, that's why it's written there. The perpetuity
of the church of Jesus Christ is found in the authority and
the sufficiency of Scripture. And beloved, in some of my higher
education, of which all of you know who have known me for a
while, I wish I could just undo. I'd love to have that time and
money back. It was the biggest mistake of
my life in the context of wastefulness. I don't know. Maybe some coffee. I mean, you learn some stuff.
Oh, this is cool, like education. I love education. I love to teach.
It's my job, right, to teach. So some ways of communicating.
Communication, that's good. Oh, I need to learn how to speak
a little bit. No, you don't. Paul didn't learn how to speak. Paul didn't learn how to present
a sermon. How many classes of homiletics does a man need to
be a pastor? None. He needs to know what the Bible
says front and back. He needs to prayerfully study
it. And he needs to always be studying it. It is in the Word
of God. We don't need commentaries. We don't need history. We don't
need these things because what we do is we put these things
as tangible assets above the authority of Scripture. And Paul
is showing this to Timothy. And then the next question that
comes to people's mind, well, who is Paul anyway? Because you know, there
is a large section of Christendom. And Christendom is a broad word
that means anybody who uses the Bible, okay? In the context of
history. It has nothing to do with whether
they knew the gospel. I'm talking about the institutional,
established people who say, we use the Bible. But there's a
large section of certain circles that believed Paul was not authoritative
because Paul twisted the scripture and Pauline teaching was something that should be ignored
because of some of his personal sins. Well, I hate to tell you, a lot
of people thought that about Paul in his day. You know what
Paul said? You better believe I'm a sinner.
I'm the chief. That's what he tells Timothy,
right? Paul's a sinner. No, I'm not.
No, he didn't say that. He's like, buddy, you don't have
a clue how sinful this old flesh is. Because this is what happens
when we grow in the truth, isn't it? We don't look in the mirror
and go, well, I'm looking pretty good today. A little dusty. But
God's doing a good job here. That's not maturity. That's stupid. We look in the mirror and go,
whoa, am I? Who am I? But a worm is to be
stepped upon by the Lord. Lord, thank you God for your
mercy to satisfy your wrath for me. Because the closer we get
to the truth and the more we study the gospel and the more
we see the teachings of Paul and the other apostles as to
what we're supposed to be about, the more we see we're just wicked. And anyone who says that they
hate all sin is a liar in their center there. That's why John's
epistle is, anyone says he's without sin is a liar. Don't
listen to those people. What do those people look like?
We've already gone there. Paul, look what he says here.
An apostle of the anointed one, Jesus, the Messiah, Jesus, By
command of God, our Savior, and by command of Christ Jesus, our
hope. Now Paul had to defend his apostleship
a lot. He knew he was a sinner, the
chief of sinners, the least of these, yet he was the most zealous
religionist that probably walked the planet at the time before
God converted him and showed him the truth. And this friendly interaction
to Timothy holds great weight. It's coupled with divine authority. Beloved, we gotta get this. We
gotta get this, because if we don't get this, we're gonna get
to some of these instructions and we're gonna fly right off
into the ditch. We're gonna leap off the bridge
and wonder why we're in a free fall, because we forget, because
we've left the bridge, we've left the foundation, we've left
the bottom. The base of all the teachings in the New Testament
is the fact that God alone is the author of it. And that this is written with
divine authority, with very few exceptions. Everything written
in the New Testament is God speaking through his apostles. God's wisdom
through his apostles. God's commandments through his
apostles. God's clarifying doctrine teaching through his apostles.
And you think, what are those exceptions? When Paul says in
the Corinthians, this is my thoughts, not the Lord's. You see that
twice. That's it. But if God's apostle gives me
his personal wisdom, I should probably pay attention to it
as well, right? But it's to encourage us. It's to encourage Timothy. And
this divine authority trumps all justification, application,
and ideas of everything else. Everything that we think is right,
it trumps it. So here we have an apostle writing
to an elder. But what is an apostle? I mean,
the word means sent, sent person. In the Old Testament, we see
apostles there. The prophets would send people into certain
areas to say, hey, go send this message there. The apostles then
would send other people that they would call apostles because
they sent them as messengers. So an apostle is someone sent
by someone else. So who sent Timothy? Wasn't Timothy sent sometimes
as an apostle? Yeah. And he'd walk in with some
letters. And who wrote the letters? And so who was the authority?
Paul. Well, who was Paul? He's an apostle. Timothy's an
apostle? Yeah. But he doesn't have any
authority because he was coming under the authority of Paul,
who was an apostle. But Timothy wasn't an apostle
of Christ. Timothy was an apostle of Paul. Paul was an apostle of Christ.
You see? And there are no apostles of
Christ today except those who live eternally here with Christ
and their writings are here. So if I give you a Bible, well,
I can't even be an apostle of Paul because he's not here to
send me. So now I must just be an elder.
I must just handle this and the minimum requirement for me skill-wise
is to be able to read. That's the only skill I need. I don't have to read good either
or be grammatically right. I just have to be able to read.
I'm not so sure that that's even a requirement, if you can remember
it. This apostle writing to this
elder, we need to understand these roles. Apostles have absolute
authority over all things concerning the church. whatever the apostles
command the church must do. Why? Because he's not an apostle
of himself. He's not a messenger from Rome.
He's not a messenger of the Sanhedrin. He didn't come as a messenger
of historical tradition of Judaism. He came as an apostle of the
anointed one of God, who is Jesus Christ, who is Jesus, by the
command of God Almighty, our Savior, and of Christ Jesus,
our hope. Now, I'll get into some of those
distinctions next week. And he's writing this authoritatively
as a messenger from God alone to Timothy, his true child in
the faith. And then he gives some prescription
and some blessings here to which Paul always ends his letters
also. He says, grace, mercy, and peace
from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. And there's a
reason why grace and mercy, mercy is sandwiched there. You don't
see that often. But the apostle is the one who
is sent. And the apostle, the sent one, speaks with the authority
of the one who has sent him. And so Paul writes to Timothy
as if Christ is writing to Timothy. He speaks as God speaks. Just like the prophets of old.
So this letter is sent to the elder of Ephesus who was also
Timothy's child in the faith, a protege, if you will, a mentee. And the Lord Jesus Christ has
written this letter for Timothy's benefit. And now elders and the
church of today can read these letters for our benefit. What
should we be doing? Whatever Paul says. Well, who
is he? Well, excuse me, whatever Christ
says. Because, you know, there's another
subsect of society who believe that only the words that Jesus,
only the quotes of Jesus are authoritative. That's ridiculous. An apostle by the command of
God? You see why there are no apostles
today? You see why there are no prophets
today in that office? Because anybody can, I mean I
can stand here and say, God showed me this morning, told me to say,
gave me this word, and then I can give you some instruction. You
know what you should do? Did Paul say that? Did James say
that? Did Peter say that? Did John
say that? Survey says, you're wrong, you're
an idiot. You did not hear from God. Because
the way I will be told of God to tell you something, is that
God told Paul, who tells me, who I read it to you, I just
read it to you, and then you can check it for yourself. Interpreting
scripture is not difficult, just read it. Inflect, ask what's
being said, look at it, look at the context. This one cent. Paul was very
adamant about defending his apostolic authority. In 2 Corinthians chapter
10, for even if I boast a little too much about our authority
which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying
you, I will not be ashamed. The apostles were given, as we
see in Ephesians chapter 4, for the building up of the church.
The elders were given for the building up of the church. But
the problem is, sometimes we think we know what we need to
be built up with. But God has prescribed what perfectly
works to build us up, what perfectly works to correct us, what perfectly
works to encourage us. God's Word has established everything
and only anything found in God's Word will work. And to try anything else is just
stupid. You see? Why do you keep saying
stupid? Because that's how I am when
I try other things. I'm stupid. I'm stupid. When I think that
any type of psychology is going to change you, if I think any
type of therapy is going to change you, if I think any type of,
and I'm talking about in relation to God's promises now, You may need some of that medically,
but not spiritually. How am I supposed to forgive?
We read the Word of God. How am I supposed to relate?
We read the Word of God. How am I supposed to understand?
We read the Word of God. Jesus in John 15 is talking to
the apostles, and what he says there may be true for us, but
it's not to us. We aren't given the authority.
All authority being given unto me, and then you go forth there
and do... Jesus isn't talking to James Tippins. He's talking
to the first messengers of the early church when there was no
assembly. And now that the Word of God
is complete, and now that the apostles are all dead, there
is no other commission of God to go out and do the apostolic
work. We are to take the Bible and
stand there in it, and do therein what it says to do, and be content
with it. Life in godliness has much gain. What does that mean? Knowing
the Bible, living the Bible, resting in the sufficiency of
the promises of God in Christ Jesus. You want more? It's not God's calling. Zeal, passion, unrelenting desire
is not of the Holy Spirit. Peace, rest, and contentment
is of the Holy Spirit, which are in direct opposition to those
things. Jesus says in John 15, if you
were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but
because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you. the 11. So what he says about the 11
is true of Paul as well. The world hates the apostles.
Beloved, they hated them. Can you imagine having 13 people
in the world who could turn it upside down on its head without
riots? But there was a big riot in Ephesus,
wasn't there? But it wasn't Paul's fault. It wasn't Barnabas' fault. It was their fault. Paul, like a spy, went around
meeting with people and speaking with people and teaching people
and planting churches in peace. He said, tend to yourselves.
Don't talk about this. Don't go around dealing with this thing.
Stay to yourselves. Be in yourself. Be busy with
your hands and serving one another. Be quiet. Be content. Be gentle.
Be patient. Hush. We're not supposed to go
against the government. We're not supposed to rally against
the machine. We're not supposed to do all these things. It's
not the church's calling. We don't care about this world
and what we hope it would be. This world is what it is supposed
to be. Jesus called His apostles out
of the world. Then the apostles called the
saints out of the world. The proclamation of the gospel,
not the offer of the gospel, not the decision to choose the
gospel, not the idea that you can make a choice. That started
more contemporary than most of us want to know. But to proclaim what God has
done for His people through Jesus Christ, His Son, and these apostles
are still hated today, beloved. For almost 20 years, I've been
saying this, and you've heard me say it for the last 10. A lot of people who claim to
be in Christ love to hear gospel preached, but they don't want
to be shepherded. A lot of people like to hear
the Bible preached in the context of their redemption, but they
don't want to be held accountable to the instruction they're in.
And beloved, when we talk about the full counsel of the Word
of God, that's what it's talking about. A lot of people love to
hear preaching, but guess what? An elder is not a preacher. A preacher and elder are not
the same. An elder must be able to teach
and preach. The sweeping is not the janitor.
The janitor sweeps. The elder preaches. So someone
just preaching the Bible is not overseeing anybody. And preaching
the New Testament to nobody without anybody together is nobody. Yes, we can talk about theological
things. Yes, we can beat the drum. But what does Paul say
to the Hebrew people, who not only had they had it for their
entire lives, they saw it by the grace of God, but then were
continually dealing with Judaizers who continued to press illegal
uses of the law. As we'll see in a couple of weeks,
what Timothy was warning, Paul was warning Timothy about making
conditions that were not set forth by the gospel of grace.
Paul said, you all folks, you folks know better than that.
You need to move on. You need to grow. Are you just now, you
still kicking and jumping upside down because of your salvation
by grace? Rejoice and be thankful, but
grow up. I mean, if I handed out pacifiers
today, would you get excited? There's two or three in here
that might go, yeah, pacifier! You know? Milkshake? Yeah, we'd all get excited about
a milkshake. What if I gave you one every 30 seconds and made
you drink it? Sometimes, and I'm not saying
that the gospel is wearing itself out, that's not true. You know
me better than that. Don't say, don't hear what I
haven't said. But I'm saying, if all we want to hear is about
our redemption, but we want to ignore 90% of the rest of the
New Testament, therefore because of your redemption, it means
we don't want to be instructed by the Lord. Folks, what is up with the world
today? And I'll tell you this, most
people who claim to know the true gospel of sovereign grace
do not want the instruction of Christ. And there's a problem there. The world hates the apostles,
and worldly people hate the apostles, no matter what they claim about
Christ. I would say that When we see
Paul talking in Galatians, in verse 6, chapter 1, he says,
I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting Him, Christ,
who called you in the grace of Christ, and are turning to a
different gospel. Now what is the, let's put that
in relationship to Paul's apostolic authority. Paul, the messenger
of Christ, speaking the words of Christ by the authority of
God Almighty, the Lord Jesus Christ, goes to the region of
Galatia, a lot of cities there, it's a region, it'd be like saying
the southeast of the United States, a lot of places there, a lot
of people, and preaches and sets up churches and appoints elders
and then leaves them functioning according to the instruction
of the word, of his instruction. And then when he gets out of
there and the apostles get out of there, see the boss man's
gone, and some of these guys are like, hey, you know what?
This is getting some traction. Let's join in and start using
those hashtags. You see? Irrelevant. I know,
200 years now, what's a hashtag? You eat it at a restaurant? They try to ride that wave. They
try to come in and make whatever they want, self-glory from the
momentum of the new church. and they want to add what they
think is sincerely necessary to the gospel, which is what?
Obedience to the law. And what does Paul say? You have
abandoned, you have abandoned and turned from, you've deserted
and turned from the gospel of grace that Christ has taught
you. Did Christ go to Galatia and teach those people? No, Paul
did. So Christ taught them through Paul. And then Paul leaves and the
other folks come in there starting to make wrong uses of the law
and other things, as is happening today amongst God's people in
every pocket of the world. And so Paul would say then, you
are abandoning Christ and his gospel by abandoning the teachings
of his apostles. I want you to hear this. It's not my words, it's Paul's
words. To refuse instruction is to refuse Christ Himself.
I'm going to say that one more time. To refuse the instruction
of Christ's apostles is to refuse Christ Himself. You can know
all the gospel truths you want to know. and you can be securely
regenerated by the Spirit of God, and you can know without
any hesitation and confidence that Christ is your Savior, but
to ignore His teaching is to spurn Him. What's that mean? I'm lost if I don't obey? I didn't
say that. Did Paul say that? No, but Paul
said that when you do that, you're to be treated as though you're
lost. What does it mean to be treated as though you're lost?
You don't get the benefits of the intimacy of the assembly. Why? Because otherwise we'll
invent all manner of correcting, all manner of worldly wisdom
on how we're supposed to correct issues and deal with each other.
We'll hire consultants to come in and help the church. We'll
have third parties come in from other states to mediate, mitigate. I've seen
it. I hear the stories. And all we need to do is just
listen. So to ignore the Scripture is
to ignore Christ. And when we do that, beloved,
when we do that, we're not testing anything, are we? We're not being
wise at all. We're just tossed to and fro
by every wind of teaching, every wind of doctrine. You know that
word doesn't mean theology, right? It means instruction. Doctrine
means instruction. Every wind of instruction. You
better do this. You better believe this. You
better know that. You better act like this. You better speak like that. You
better do all these things. We just get tossed to and fro. What
are we doing now? I don't know. What are we doing tomorrow? Well,
we've changed our mind. That's called fickleness and that's
sin. Assumption is sin. Fear is sin. Doubt is sin. And
we'll eat up with it. And we're never going to be free
of it in our flesh, but we can be free of it this morning. And we can't be free of it this
afternoon at three o'clock. When we feel it come over us, we can
come back to the Scripture and go, okay, Lord, I'm going to
submit to the Word of God. I need the discipline to listen and
to hear and to be at peace. God is not in the business of
drowning us in knowledge and understanding because, and then
we just never have to learn anymore. We have to learn constantly.
I've been a student of the Bible as long as I can remember. And
what's crazy is when I get excited about someone else who I think
is a master of scripture, I've always been very disappointed
when it came to the things of the gospel, or the things of
the instruction to the church, that people aren't really students
of the Bible, they're students of culture, they're students
of their teachers. And there's no authority outside
the apostles. There's no man in the world who can speak independently
about matters of the church. There's no man in the world that
can speak independently about matters of Christ. Let that sink in for a second.
This is not really, this is the reason the letter's written,
folks. You see how stale this type of preaching sounds? And
it feels? I'm just not feeling it. Good! It's doing something. It's exalting Christ. What I've
said this morning and what Paul says in verse 1 about his authority
to write these letters and what he's going to teach here exalts
Christ. Because Christ is the sender of the messenger of these
teachings. These are the doctrines of Christ. the instructions of Christ. See,
Christ instructs us about himself, and then Christ instructs us
about ourselves. And some people say, well, I
just disagree. Well, it's 1 Thessalonians. How about that one? 1 Thessalonians
chapter two, or chapter four, verse eight, Paul says, if anyone
disregards what I'm saying, They disregard not man but God
who gives you His Holy Spirit. So what I've said this morning
concerning the apostolic authority of Paul and the sufficiency of
the letters that he's written and the instructions therein
is not my opinion. It is directly taught by the
apostles. So to ignore or to call me a
false teacher is to call Christ a liar. Let me say that again,
to call me a false teacher because I am quoting Paul is to call
Christ a liar. Don't listen to people who call Christ liars,
Christ a liar. Matter of fact, I would shun
them and let them know it. Be very, very careful what we
listen to. And then some people would say,
well, how is this Apostle Paul, how is this letter to Timothy
so authoritative? He's just a man. You're right. Hallelujah. That's called critical
thinking. That's called brain working at
right level. Great question. We don't just
take things for face value just because somebody says to do it.
We must see, does that make sense? How can a mere man, because if
Paul can do it, why can't Billy Bob do it? Why can't James Tippins
do it? Because the word of God disagrees
with me if I say something wrong, and the word of God corrects
me, and then I can say it rightly. And that's what we're looking
for, right, in intimacy? We want right understanding, right learning,
right gospel, right love. Why? Because all of that together
is right worship. The Father is seeking those who
worship Him in spirit and truth. Those, not you, those. So how is it that Paul is not
an error here? Look at Paul's track record.
His entire life before Christ met him on the road to Damascus
and against his will gave him truth was supposedly by the authority
of God and the word of God and the prophets and he was doing
the will of God according to what he understood the Bible.
How are we supposed to trust the apostles against other men? Well, Jesus says in John 14,
he's talking to these men. Not to James. He's talking to
the apostles and then he grafts Paul into the twelve. Makes him
an apostle as a picture of God's electing grace. Picture of God's
sovereignty. Let's take this Jew of Jews who
hates my guts and let him be the apostle to the Gentiles.
That's sovereignty. I'll turn a hater and to a gospel
preacher. Jesus says in John 14, but the
Holy Spirit, the Helper, whom the Father will send in my name,
will, listen to this, teach you all things and bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you. Oh, I wish that was true
for me. So when the apostles write, they
write by the Spirit. in their own words, and in their
own voice, and in their own personality, and in their own understanding
of things, but taught by the Spirit of God, or their own perspective
of things, but taught by the Spirit of God in their understanding.
And so, therefore, when they wrote, they wrote a lot of things.
There were probably a lot of letters that Paul wrote that
were just personal letters that weren't meant for the church
to know. Because the Spirit of God did not collect them and
put them in this collection of writings. So here the Spirit
of God is speaking to the apostles. And what did the apostles do?
The apostles brought salvation to the world. The apostles went out and proclaimed
the gospel and then where the gospel was received, that means
by the Spirit causing people to believe, like Thessalonica,
where the gospel was received and God's people began to gather
together in agreement with the commands of the apostles, thus
the commands of Christ, then the apostles trained and established
the right function of this family of faith called the assembly.
Not the church, that's a bad English translation, doesn't
even mean assembly. But that's what we call it, so
for the sake of simplicity, we know what a church is. It's a
people, not a place. And then these people who are
God's people submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ and all His
commands for them to live in peace and harmony and unity,
and the oversight was responsible. Those responsible for the oversight
were the elders of the church. What kind of a moron wants to
do that? You're looking at one. You can
do nothing else. Timothy was called of God and
trained by Paul, and then Timothy trained probably a thousand men,
who trained a thousand men. But let's say they only did ten.
Thirteen turned the world upside down by the power of Christ,
and then they wrote it all down, and it's still turning the world
upside down today. The apostles bring salvation
by the Spirit to God's people. I Corinthians 121 says, For since
in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom,
it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those
who believe. So the apostles wrote their letters
then to perpetuate this continued growth of the church, not only
in intimacy, but also in number. God is calling His people to
faith. He's calling His people to see. He's calling His people
to grow. And then the job of the church is to stick together
under the commands of Christ and His apostles and see it to
the very end. And that's why this letter's
written. And that's the authority through which this letter has
teeth. and it bites into us. In Hebrews
4, the scripture is living and breathing and sharper than any
two-edged sword. It cuts flesh and bone and marrow
and soul. For those of us who have played
video games that are, you know, of the magical sorts, you know,
you always want that soul-winning sword, right? It captures some
kind of power, and you can use it for something else. The Word
of God is a soul-winning sword, and it captures its people. It
captures God's people. It snatches us out of darkness.
It blinds us and gives us sight in the same breath. Paul wrote this letter because
Timothy was an elder. And it was the most frustrating
job the young boy could have ever had. And he was going through massive
division. Massive community hatred. Massive
attacks. And one of the primary reasons
is that people didn't want to listen to his instruction. Didn't
want to listen to Paul's instruction through him. So Paul wrote this
letter to encourage this young pastor and say, hold on, don't
let anybody look down on you because of your age. Who cares?
When you're 40, it'll be the same way. When you're 80, they'll
still hate you. It doesn't matter. They'll call you boy now, but
20 years from now, they'll call you stupid or they'll call you
a heretic or whatever. It doesn't matter how old you
are. Whatever they can grab hold to, to mock you, To hurt you,
they will grab hold to it. It doesn't matter. So those circumstances
will just open doors to new ones. People do not want to listen
to Christ's commands on how they should live together and how
they should obey His appointing, His appointed instruction through
His appointed messengers, His apostles. And that's why all of that is
just to get out the authority of this letter, an apostle of
Christ. by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus
our hope. So let's look at that. Has Paul written a letter? Now
Galatians is a tough one. Galatians is Paul's first letter
and Galatians is a letter written about some, the only letter not
written to a church by Paul because of problems was Ephesus. And
that's why it's so awesome, because Paul is in a good spirit. Paul
praises God. He writes his doxologies in there.
I mean, Ephesians, even though, you know, John's writing is always
going through my head, for my soul and for my joy, the teaching
of Paul to the letter, to the church of Ephesus is there. It's
always in my head, every moment of the day, always there, because
there's a lot of just Awesome stuff. But even then, what does
He say? He gives direct instruction. What to do, what not to do, how
to live, how not to live, what to think, what not to think,
how to speak, what not to say, and all these things. Why? Because
Christ has saved us for Himself. Let us live according to His
glory for our joy. To the apostles, even in Galatia,
even when Paul gets in there and he gets Abraham and Sarah
and Hagar and Ishmael and he gets the flood and all sorts
of stuff, he just goes right to the juggler, calls them bewitched,
calls them dumb, all sorts of stuff. He still loves them. He's
never going to abandon them. Because Paul's appointment as
an apostle was for the joy of the people of Christ, not their
chastisement and destruction, but for their growth and their
edification. So we see that Paul has been
commanded by God to instruct the people who have been saved
and who have hope in Christ. God is our Savior. Jesus Christ
our Lord is our hope. So therefore the instruction,
as John would say, the commands of Christ are not burdensome
for the body of Christ. What are the commands that John
deals with? It's to love one another as Christ loves us. And we don't get to sit around
and go, but he's not my brother. Oh, we got that one too. Love
your enemies as yourself. Duh! I can't get away from this. Come on, God. I'm justified. No, you're not. You're justified
because I killed my son instead of you before me, but you're
not justified the way you're acting amongst each other. So
straighten it up. It's not condemnation. It's encouragement. Hey, get your hand out of that
fireplace. It's been burning for weeks. Get it out of the
fire. I just don't want to. Let me encourage you to get your
hand out of the fire. How about let me take your hand
out of the fire? See how silly that sounds? But that's what
we do as human beings. That's what we do as Christians
when we don't want to hear the instruction of Christ. We don't
want to settle in the people because we want more. We want
something different. We want to justify ourselves
and our anger, our frustration, our assumption. We want blood,
but the blood has already been shed and it's name is Jesus.
It's already been paid. It's been poured out. The body
has already been broken. We don't have to break ours.
We don't have to break our body.
We don't have to break our fellowship. That is the work of the enemy.
Every single time. Well, I'm being persecuted for
the gospel. No, you're not. You're being persecuted because you're
a rear end. We've been persecuted because you're hard-headed. Real persecution comes when people
are silent. When we're silent and people
persecute us, that's gospel persecution. When we're standing in the sufficiency
of God's promises and we will not engage in other actions,
that is gospel persecution. Jesus Christ is our hope. He is our hope. And this intimate
letter, as friendly as it is, is very authoritative for us,
church. Paul sent Timothy to Corinth. He called him, my beloved
child in the faith. Why did he send Timothy to Corinth?
And this is in 1 Corinthians. We see this letter, we see this
chastisement, we see this, but what does he do? Why did I send
Timothy to you? What does he say? To encourage
you and to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere
in every church. So you see what the apostles
did? The apostles didn't stand up here and say, do this, do
this, live this way, talk that way. He said, this is what we
must do as I am doing, you do. So elders, as we do, you do. See why elders can't be busy
about other business? See why elders, men of God, called
of God, cannot be on social media debating. It's sinful, it's wicked,
it's evil. That is not God's orchestrated
means of correction. This is. I don't care. Hate me. Block
me. Turn me off. Turn the other way. Poke out your ears. It doesn't
matter. We are responsible for one another, beloved. We live in an incredible age
of technology. When the lights go out, God's going to shut all
these blowhards up. So what do we do? We rest. We
maintain sufficiency. We listen to the Word of God.
My plan was to teach Timothy, and then I decided to teach Genesis.
Why? Because sometimes the timing is wrong. Oh, he's teaching Timothy now
because he's upset. I got 18 weeks of Genesis under
my belt. I'm not upset. I'm not upset
with the church. Are you upset with the church?
Are you upset with Christ? We get that way, don't we? Why
is the world the way it is? Why is my life the way it is?
Why is this? It's normal. Listen, it's normal and it's
natural. It's what we do. But my job and the job of the
Elder Brothers in this church are to encourage you as we watch
over you, as we care for you, as we make sure that what you're
trying to accomplish is under the promises of God's Word. And
when we say, hey, look, let's let that go, or hey, let's just
be still, or let's stop. God does not call somebody out
of the chair into the mission field like that. It's years and
years and years and years and years. Paul, 13 years before
he ever planted a church. Ever! Folks, calm down. Be patient. Sit still. God is sovereign. He doesn't need your commitment.
He needs you to see His promises are sufficient. And we submit
to the promises because God is our Savior, Christ Jesus is our
hope, so therefore we can listen to the apostles who married themselves
to the church through the blood of Christ. We are then to marry
ourselves to one another through the blood of Christ. And one of the things that we'll
see is that as a church, as a body, as a person, as individuals,
we need to pray more than ponder. We don't need to talk about that.
We don't have to talk about stuff. We talk about stuff when it's
necessary, but talking is not going to resolve it. Just like
Sister told me this morning, praying is going to resolve it.
God is going to resolve it. Then we can talk about it as
needed, but most important, we can praise Him for what He's
done. The instructions of this letter are going to feel painful
for some of us. Do not rebuke an older man. You
know what that means? You cannot open your mouth to
someone older than you in a rebuke. That's another one. Be not quarrelsome. Do not give in to suspicion. What else? Slaves, regard your
masters worthy of honor. What? Oh, I'm woke. I ain't listening
to that. Well, you're not very woke then. When God takes the scales off
of our eyes, the instruction of the scripture, it will fight
against our flesh. It will not cause us to fear
our redemption. And beloved, we're not to be in the business
of causing others to fear their salvation. Because in doing so,
we're actually saying we're God and they can do something about
it. You know, fear has never saved a soul. That's why I and
we should despise that type of evangelism. That's why we should despise
that type of correction. We love each other. Because God has first loved us.
How has God loved us? How does God feel about us? God
doesn't display His feelings on paper. God acts in His love
on the cross. That's what He did. He gave His
Son for the life of His people. So let's continue to worship
together in remembering the Lord Jesus Christ. our Lord and our
Savior and our hope. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the
truth of this letter, Lord, and much was said to remind us about
the authority of these apostles, of these men whom you by the
Spirit have called and destroyed. You destroyed their lives, Lord. They suffered amazingly. But
they never left the hope of Christ. They never gave up. They never
quit. Because You had called them and
equipped them and gave them the encouragement to endure because
of Your power and Your promises by Your Spirit. So Lord, as we
read their words, as we understand the power of Your grace to us,
Your people, Lord, help us to be that emboldened. Lord, help
us to be bold with the gospel. Let us be able to speak the truth.
Father, help us to be able to say, hey, that's not correct,
or that's an error, or if that's your hope, then you're not born
again. But Lord, help us not to be jerks,
and help us not to divide over the issues of where we're called
to encourage and to equip one another. Lord, teach us patience.
Teach us to be kind and gentle. Teach us that we do not have
the authority to send people to hell or to consign them to
reprobation. We don't have the authority to
not forgive and to not seek reconciliation. We don't have the authority to
ignore what we don't like and to embrace what we do like according
to your word. But Father, all authority has
been given to your Son who has given His word through your apostles
and now we have it and we cherish it and we long for that intimacy.
And so Father, I pray for wisdom For the elder brothers of this
church, as we continue to reach out to the body at large, and
Lord, we reach out to those who are just missing, who are doing
everything else in life but assembling with the body. Father, may that
not be. It is not good for us or for them, but Father, let
us not be bitter in our soul toward anyone just because we
are sufficiently seeing the need. Father, let us not pass judgment
on anyone because they may be different or weaker or more sinful
in our own eyes than we are because we are all recipients of grace
and it is only by grace that we have stood before you righteous.
For you have given us the righteousness of Jesus Christ as our clothing
and it's not up for us to put it upon us, but Lord, you have
clothed us permanently by your power and through your word,
Lord, we are able to see you and to savor every moment. And Father, we pray for one another
who are struggling. There are so many, Lord, who
are struggling in their flesh and in their bodies, and some
in their mind and their spirit and their conscience, Lord. And
we are to encourage each other, not by guilt or shame or fear,
but Father, by encouragement, by reminder, by expectation,
and Father, most importantly, by service. Let our intimacy
and our service to you be revealed through our service and intimacy
to one another. And Father, help us above all things to be patient. Lord, grow us to a people that
displays your glory by your grace, as we've been saying for the
whole moment of our time together as a small little family of faith.
But, Father, I pray, Lord, that in the end of it all, that everything
that we are and everything that we remain to be and everything
that we will become will never be able to be boasted by our
own lips. But, Father, we can only just
bow our heads and say, thank you, Father. We are a people of your possession.
Do as you please with us, Lord. And when we feel your discipline,
Father, help it not be something that we cower back, but we stand
bold before the throne of grace and call you Papa, call you Daddy,
for you have given us life in Christ Jesus. Amen.