to 1 Timothy chapter 1. 1 Timothy 1. Let's go to the Lord. Our God and our Father, we thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for bringing us here. And Lord, we need you but speak to our hearts this morning. We need you, Lord, to quicken us, renew us, and help us to see both our sin and your faithfulness. Help us to see our continual need for Christ to be our righteousness, for you to be our keeper, to preserve us As we go through this wilderness, Lord, we speak things hastily that we ought not. We have like passions as your saints in the past, and then, Lord, you've chastened us in the heart, and we see, we understand, and we mourn. but You continually keep us in Your Son and keep us knowing we're accepted in the Beloved. Lord, help us to be more merciful, more long-suffering, more patient. Help us to forgive one another. by making us see, Lord, how richly you've blessed us, how you've been merciful to us and forgiving for Christ's sake.

Help us now to clear everything that has happened this week, everything that's been on our minds this morning. Help us to forget it all right now, Lord. Make us look up, make our affection be set on Christ only. Quicken us, Lord, and make us to bow down in heart and believe and worship you. We ask it according to your grace in our Savior, for his name's sake, amen.

All right, let's begin here in verse one. Paul says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God, our Savior, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope. We're gonna see today, not only in this message, but in the next message, Lord willing, we're gonna see how that God accomplishes everything in his people by his commandment. by his word, by his power. That's how he made Paul an apostle. He commanded life and there was life. He commanded him to believe and he believed. He commanded him to go forth preaching as his apostle and he did. Everything is by the power of the Lord, by his word, by his commandment.

And he spoke here of Timothy as his son. He said unto Timothy, my own son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God our father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Whenever the Lord calls one of his people, he gives you a union with Christ as his child, as you see that God's your father and you're his child, but he also does that between us and the pastor he used to preach. He did that with me and my pastor. And there's a relationship there. And for a pastor, I have children, earthly children, and then I have spiritual children. And you feel the same joy and the same heartache with the spiritual children as you do with your earthly children. It's that real, it's a vital union that the Lord's created.

Verse three, he said, I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in the faith, so do. We're to preach no other doctrine but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We're to preach no other doctrine but God's electing grace, His redeeming grace, His regenerating grace, His preserving grace, His resurrecting grace. We're to preach no other doctrine but that which gives God our Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus, all the glory and salvation. We're to preach no other doctrine than to declare sinners are absolutely ruined. That salvation must be of the Lord, has to be, and it is.

God destroyed the genealogies in 70 AD so that no natural Jew can trace his genealogy. God destroyed the genealogies because, you remember how they used that? They kept saying, we're sons of Abraham. And that's not how a person is made a true son of Abraham. It's just because they're born naturally into the family. We know Romans 9, they're not all Israel, which are of Israel. And it's not just because a person's born of Abraham's family tree doesn't mean he's a true child of Abraham. If you be in Christ, then are you the children of Abraham. Those that are brought to faith in Christ are the true children of Abraham, chosen by God, and this is the promise. God said, I will come and create Isaac. Abraham created Ishmael, and that's our natural family. God created Isaac, and that's true of all his spiritual children. every other gospel than this doctrine that gives God all the glory. Any other doctrine is a fable. The false message being preached in the world is a fable. It is a fictional, imagined story that man has come up with, but it's not the gospel. It's not the gospel. We are to preach this message and preach this message alone.

I think it's very instructive that Paul deals with this issue in every single epistle. And when he starts to teach Timothy, who is going to be preaching, the first thing he deals with is the believer's relationship to the law. And we need to hear this. He said in verse five, now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience, and of faith unfain. I want to preach this message. I want you to get my main point, and I made it the title so it'll be easy. Christ is the end of the law. Christ is the end of the law.

Every false gospel exalts the sinner, puts the work in the sinner's hand, and exalts the sinner. kept coming to the Lord and saying, Moses said, what do you say? Moses said, what do you say? They were going back to the law. Moses represents the law, and they kept going back to the law.

Even when they brought him to the Romans, they said, we have a law, and by our law, he should die, because he said he's God. But there's only two messages. One is all of grace, and the other is words. I'm going to wait just a minute because I want to make sure we don't lose our attention here and our focus on the message. We're in 1 Timothy chapter one, 1 Timothy one.

The Pharisees kept, they accused Paul of that. Remember when they arrested Paul at Jerusalem, they cried out and said, this is the man that preaches against the law. He preaches against the law. So anybody that truly preaches the gospel is going to be accused of being antinomian. You that believe the gospel, when you bear witness of Christ to folks and declare he is the righteousness of his people, we're not under the law, they're gonna accuse you of being antinomian. They're gonna say, well, what about the law? And all that is is a defense of a man's will and a man's works, rather than to defend in Christ's glory as being the righteousness of his people.

The first murder was a legalist killing a child of grace. Cain killed Abel because God accepted Abel because Abel came by faith, trusting the blood of the Lamb. 10 tells us that, Hebrews 11 tells us that. And Cain trusted the fruit of the ground. He came with the fruit of the ground, the cursed ground. Picture of a man trusting his cursed flesh and his works, his fruit, his fruit. And God rejected him and Cain killed Abel for that reason.

So that's why you hear Paul in every epistle He deals with this issue of the believer being free from the law and righteous only in the Lord Jesus. Because this is the biggest danger we face is we have a Pharisee in our old nature and our biggest danger is wanting to go back to the law, wanting to condemn others with the law. And we have to continually be reminded Christ is our righteousness. He has fulfilled the law for his people. and we're under grace, not under the law.

Now, listen to what he says here in 1 Timothy 1.5.

Now, the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned. And every bit of that is of the Lord. Charity is commitment. It is the love of God, that love that made God commit to saving his people. the love that made Christ go to the cross and laid down his life for his people. And when Christ is formed in us, a new heart is given, and it is a heart of charity, it is a heart of love. And the conscience is purged by the blood of Christ. The only way we'll stop working and offering our sacrifices to try to be accepted of God is when God clears your conscience to know He remembers your sin no more. That's the only way we'll stop working for salvation.

And it's faith unfeigned. It's real faith that God gives. That's not a fake thing. We really trust Christ is all our acceptance with God. And he gives that faith. And so we walk by faith, constrained by the love of Christ. He does give us a love for Christ. We love Christ. We love our brethren. But the real motive and the real constraint is Christ's love for us. That's what keeps you doing whatever you have to do for the Lord, whatever he calls you to do and sacrifice for him, he makes you willing to do it by showing how he loved you and laid down his life for his people.

But the fable of false religion is called here vain jangling. Look at what he says in verse six. So from this one doctrine, he says, verse six, from which some have swerved, some having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. Men who are preaching the law don't know what they're They don't know what they're preaching. They know what they're saying, but I'm saying they don't realize that, you know, Paul would say to the Galatians, do you not hear the law? And they don't, or else a man wouldn't try to say he could be saved by the law if he really heard it. You that have heard it by God's grace, you know we can't obey the law.

And he's made you to know that. Now what was the law given for? Let's go to Romans 3. Let's see this one more time. Romans 3. And I want you to pay particular attention to a phrase right here. Romans 3 and verse 19. Here's why God gave the law. Here's why he gave the law. Romans 3, 19.

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, It saith to them who are under the law. Mark that phrase, we're gonna deal with that again here in a little while. But it's speaking to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. That's what it was given for.

You know, you can take a thermometer, and you can check your child's temperature, and it'll tell you your child has a fever. But that thermometer won't do a thing about the fever. It won't give any medicine. It won't help the child. It won't do anything. The law tells us we're sinners. The law cannot make us just. It can't justify us. It can't make us righteous. And men, when they teach the law to this day, they don't understand that they are bringing sinners under a curse, that a sinner cannot obey that law.

Listen to what Paul said in Romans 7. Romans 7, this is what he said about it. When he was lost, when he was lost, he couldn't hear the law. He said here in Romans 7, 8, he said, sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence, all manner of sin. Now, he's not talking about that he was going out and picking up harlots, and that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about all his best religious works. were all manner of sin, that's all they were. For without the law, sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.

And the commandment, which he thought was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. When that happened on the road to Damascus, when Paul's on the road to Damascus, Christ spoke And the commandment came, and that's when Paul was made to see that all these works he thought were righteous were sin, every one of them. And he was alive before he thought. He thought he had life by the law, but when God made him hear the law, that's when that self-righteous self died. That's when that self-sanctified man died. All his good works he saw were nothing but sin.

The Lord made him hear that law, and his sin revived, and he saw he needed Christ. He needed Christ. Paul said it was by the commandment. He said, that's how I was made an apostle, by the commandment. And when Christ speaks, that's when the commandment comes. That's when we hear what the law says, that's when sin becomes alive to us, and that's when we see that we need the Lord Jesus.

Now, who was the law made for? Who was it made for? Look here now in verse eight. But we know that the law is good if a man use it lawfully. And now knowing this, here's the lawful use of the law. The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless. and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that's contrary to sound option. according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. The law was not made for a righteous man.

Now, everybody that the Father chose in Christ by his grace, that's who Christ laid down his life for. He came down and was made under the law and obeyed God and went to that cross and bore the sin of every elect child of God and put their sin away. When he died, our old man died, and when he did that, by his obedience, Christ made all his people perfectly righteous. And when the Lord calls you and gives you faith to believe on him, he makes you to know that Christ made you righteous. He gives you a clear conscience to understand Christ is your righteousness, not your works, not anything you do by the law. Christ is your only righteousness.

And everybody that he's given faith to trust him is a righteous man. You know what that means? That means God says from the beginning of your existence to the end of your existence in this earth, God says you have been perfectly obedient the whole time. You've never sinned. You're perfectly righteous.

And God's holy law agrees His law agrees. Paul said the law's holy, just, and good. You know how you have to be for God to accept you? You have to be holy, just, and good. As holy, just, and good as God. And that's the only man that ever fit that bill was the Lord Jesus Christ. And all his people in him are as holy, just, and good as the Lord Jesus, as God himself. And that's how God declares it. That's how God sees it, that's how he declares it, and that's how it is. We're righteous in Christ. Absolutely righteous in Christ. And the law was not made for a righteous man.

Now listen, go back with me to Romans 3. I said we're gonna look at this phrase again. Look here now, Romans 3. Look at verse 19. Now we know that what thing soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law. That's who the law speaks to. All right, go with me now to Romans 6. Romans 6 and verse 14.

Speaking to believers, sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law. You're under grace. The law only speaks to them who are under the law, but the law was not made for a righteous man, and you are righteous in Christ. You're not under the law. You're under grace.

Go with me to Galatians, I mean, Galatians 3. Look at Galatians 3. Paul said here in Galatians 3, verse 24, he said, the law was our schoolmaster, the italics are added, the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, or until Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, after the Lord's called you and given you faith to rest in Christ, after that faith is come, We are no longer under a schoolmaster, not under the law. All right, Galatians 5, Galatians 5. Look here in verse 18.

If ye be led of the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now those verses are telling us the reason that's the case, you are not under the law, is because you've been made righteous in Christ. And so the law only speaks to them who are under the law. It speaks to the lawbreaker, it speaks to the sinner, the ungodly, the vile man, and you're not under the law because you're righteous in Christ. That's the word of God.

Now here's gonna be the question that men will ask when that's declared. They'll say, well then, how do you know what to do? How do you walk through this world and know what's right and wrong? That verse right there that I just read in Galatians said, if ye be led of the Spirit, that's how we know how to live. We're being led by the Spirit of the Lord. That's what Paul meant in Galatians when he said, I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I. Christ liveth in me, and the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.

He's leading me. I come and sit down and hear this gospel preached, and he teaches me, and he directs my heart. He tells me when I've done something wrong. He corrects me. He shows you, you're gonna learn to love by looking to Christ. He loved him, having loved his own, he loved them to the end. He laid down his life for his people because he loved them. He bore our sin because he loved us. He bore the judgment in our place because he loved us. And so that's how you learn to love. That's how he loved.

And so that makes you want to bear the sin of your brethren, bear the burden when they've fallen, rather than unleashing the law on them and condemning them. and kicking them out. You bear their burden, and you're merciful to them, like God, for Christ's sake, is merciful to us. And you restore them with the thing that made them believe in the first place, the gospel. It's the only way you can restore one another, is with the gospel. And wait on the Lord to bless that, and when he blesses that, that man will be healed, your brother will be restored.

And as you do that, you have to remember, I'm nobody. Because if I start thinking I'm somebody, and I'm able to correct the child of God that belongs to God, my father, I'm out of bounds. I'm in the wrong. That's not my child. That's his child. My place is to speak the gospel to him. He'll do the correcting. And there's no discipline like the gospel. What is it you that believe? What is it? that just breaks your heart. When you need to be corrected, what is it that breaks your heart? Like hearing the gospel of Christ and what he's done for you. How that he came and poured out his blood unto death in our place to make us righteous. And that, when the Lord pricks your heart with that message, that'll turn you from whatever it is to him like law will never do. The Lord said that. He said, I could smite them over and over and over. They're not going to change. Can the leopard change his spots? Can the Ethiopian change his skin?

But when he speaks the gospel and he commands in the heart, that's what turns his child. That's how you believed in the beginning. Law didn't make you believe in the beginning. You take this illustration. A man and his wife, if a man comes in and he has a list on his wall and he says, okay, I need to buy her flowers.

I guess I don't really want to do it, but the law says I have to do it. I'm gonna go buy her some flowers. Well, I need to take her out to a restaurant. I don't really want to, but the law says I need to do that, so I'm gonna do it. And all these things he's doing, not because he wants to do it, because the law says you have to do it. Would you call that love? That's not love. That's law. He's doing it because he has to.

But you that love don't have to have a list on the wall. You don't even have to because you love. When your child is sick, do you have to have a law telling you sit up late with that child and nurse that child and love that child and try to give them the medicine that's best for them and try to help them back to health? Do you have to have a law to tell you to do that? No, you do it because you love Him.

That's the constraint of a believer's heart. It's not law. It's the Lord. It's the Lord leading us by His Spirit. And we come in here to be restored by Him. We come in here to hear of Him and what He does and how He keeps us. And He restores you. He renews you. He fills you up with His Spirit. But it's not like He's not with you when you depart. He's with you, and all through the week, if a word comes into your mind, He said, you're gonna hear a still, small voice when you turn to the right or to the left. He said that in Isaiah, Isaiah 30. And if you have a word come into your heart that reminds you, this will honor my Savior. This is what'll honor my Savior. Where'd that come from? If you're His, He did that.

That's what He said. See, He's really present with His people. He is really and truly in each of His people, and He's really leading His people. And He's not trying anything. He is accomplishing it. He is doing what He came to do. He already put away our sin, and He called us, and He's saving us, and He's teaching us more and more. Everything.

He is all in our salvation. Every bump in the road, every trouble we have, that's what it's to teach us. Our flesh profits nothing. We don't contribute. It's all of Him. And that's what He's teaching us. And true growth is growing to see that more and more. I must decrease. He must increase. That's what He's teaching us.

And He's with us, brethren. And listen, this is what people will say, well, you're saying you're making void the law. You know why Paul said that in Romans 3? He asked the question, Romans 3.31, do we then make void the law through faith? That's what he said. Why'd he ask that? Because that's what he was being accused of. That's what the legalist always accused us of.

And they used that very verse, Romans 3.31, to say, he said, do we then make void the law through faith?

God forbid, yea, we establish the law. And he's saying we establish the law through faith because Christ did it. Not because we're doing it, Christ did it. And I've heard people take that verse and preach it that, see there, we're still under the law. We believers have to keep the law and establish it. That's not what he's saying. The chapters were added. If you take the chapter out and read into Romans 4, he's saying we established the law just like Abraham did, who lived years and years and years before the law was given. It's only through faith, because Christ did it. He did it.

They take that verse where he said, don't think I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, I came to fulfill. And they say, see there, he didn't destroy the law, we're still under it. That's not what he meant. He was saying, I came to fulfill it for my people, because they can't do it. That's what he meant when he said, except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you can't enter in.

He's that righteousness. We have to have the Lord Jesus Christ. We're sinners in our flesh, even now, and we can't keep the law. The law he brings us under, is the everlasting covenant of grace. That's the law he writes on your heart. He writes the law of righteousness on your heart and makes you hear the law declare you guilty. But that same law makes you hear Christ is your righteousness. You can find this in 2 Corinthians 3. And then he writes the law of faith on your heart so that you believe on Christ and God imputes the righteousness of Christ to you. He writes the law of love on your heart.

That's knowing that that Christ loved me and gave himself for me. That's how I'm saying. Not that we love God, that he loved us. And that love constrains you to try to treat one another like Christ has treated you. And do for one another what God's done for you for Christ's sake. And that's what he writes on our heart.

It's the law of grace. There's sins and iniquities I remember no more. And you have access to my throne of grace at any time to find mercy and grace to help in time of need. This is what he writes on our heart. And the believer that rests in Christ has completely, totally fulfilled the law in every way. Go to Romans 10 and we'll end with this. Romans 10.

Verse one, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. For I bear them record, they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

For Christ is. He's the righteousness of God. He's the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law. If you wanna be saved by the law, you gotta keep the law, thought, word, and deed, no errors, no mistakes, with no sin, and you'll have life. No faith involved, just your work. But here's what faith, the righteousness which is of faith, verse six, it speaks on this wise. Don't say there's something left to be done. That's what it means. Don't think Christ has to do anything else. Don't think it's too far off for you. Here's what it says, verse eight.

It says, the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, for with the heart man believeth. unto righteousness. And with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture said, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

Believer, you're not under the law, you're under grace. And anybody here that's yet under the law, the law says you're guilty. You cannot come to God in the law. Believe on Christ. Believe on Christ. And if God give you the grace to do it, he'll make you to know your sins and iniquities, he remembers no more. He'll make you know you're righteous in Christ. I'm not trying to keep the law. I've kept it. And so have every one of you that believe. Kept it in perfection. That's the only way it is kept. There's no giving it your best shot. You either have kept it or not. And all his people are righteous by Christ's obedience.

Father, we thank you for this word. Lord, keep us remembering that our Savior, the Lord Jesus, is our only righteousness. Make your people hear this, keep this ever in our hearts and our minds, Lord, and make us faithful to love you and to believe you and do what we do, constrained only by your love. Lord, be with those that don't know you, that your teaching, and we pray you would truly teach them and bring them to this understanding and robe them in your righteousness through faith. In Christ's name we ask it, Lord. Amen.